“Face front!” Rory bellowed at Sandra and me before barking out fresh commands to Pia and Rachel as we all scrambled just to keep the raft facing forward. Dark spruce leaned in from the banks as water rose all around us. Deadly rocks multiplied to either side, squeezing us into a V of white-green water that raced over what looked like a six-foot drop only seconds away.
We shot over the precipice of rock. Sandra spun around and screamed. Her face had contorted with so much terror I feared I might turn to stone if I saw whatever she saw, but I forced myself to look behind us. Rory stood on the lip of the raft, oar raised up with both hands, caterwauling his own brand of fearless ecstasy in his heaven of mortal danger. Behind him the log launched up in the air just after we did, blocking the sun, still turning as if it were alive, like it had some score to settle with him; rolling and falling, it smacked full force into the middle of his back with a meaty thud. His face stayed beatific as the oar soared skyward; both arms flew up and his shoulders bent back hideously over the log.
His body hurtled up and over us, propelled by the log, as we all fell or jumped into the swirling whiteness.
19
I burst out of the water screaming. A waterfall hammered the top of my head, forcing me back under, but I bent my knees and launched myself away from the rock face. Freed from the falling water, I was at the mercy of the current. It yanked me side to side, hurled me at rocks, and sucked me down. Gasping and sputtering, blinded by my wet hair plastered over my face, I somehow remembered the lawn-chair pose: I lay back and lifted my feet and kept my hands high.
As I hurtled toward a mess of fallen trees and boulders, I caught a flash of bright orange—Rory’s shorts. In horror I realized what I was approaching. The bottom half of his body floated up, his shorts pillowing with air, his head and shoulders pinned under the log, which was wedged solid in a jumble of branches and unforgiving stone. His forearm floated to the surface from a confusion of waterlogged tree roots. Bent limply from the wrist, his hand and fingers hung down, delicately moving in the rushing water as if he were testing its temperature.
I was tossed almost on top of him, though mercifully just to the left of his bobbing shorts, where I held out my arms to brace myself against the branches. Even in my terror the pain of my skin scraping raw against the bark and stones knocked the wind out of me. Torrents of water pounded at me in an attempt to sift my body through the strainer of branches and stone. River water foamed into my mouth until I gagged and lifted myself up high enough to breathe.
The log lay solidly across Rory’s back, an unbearable truth. The river roared like a freight train in my ears. I screamed something, maybe his name, maybe Pia’s, maybe Sandra’s, Rachel’s, God’s, I don’t remember. I took a breath and pushed myself down into the churning depths.
I’ve heard time slows down in situations like this. For me it did. I recall every detail, against my own will sometimes, helplessly.
Again the almost peaceful quiet underwater. Small sticks and leaves tornadoed by in the greenish murk. Rory’s white helmet glowed silver underwater, caught between the log and a puzzle of branches and roots, his dreads jerking crazily in the flow. His right shoulder was jammed at some terrible angle under the log; his arm lost under a tumult of stone. By clear effort of will, he turned his face toward me, half-obscured by the helmet. The one eye I could see was open wide, alive and pleading, his lips lifted off his gums and moving horribly, comically, by the relentless pull of the water.
I heard dull screams from above so I pushed myself up and away from him, a train of bubbles escaping my nose and mouth. Water smacked my face as I took a breath, punishing me; I gulped down more river. Above me, Pia and Rachel, sodden, squatted on the pile of fallen limbs, desperately reaching down to get a grip on the monster log that imprisoned Rory. But it was too big and their angle wrong.
“Where’s Sandra?” I coughed out.
“We don’t know!” Pia howled over the roar of the water, her bloodshot eyes full of horror.
Rachel reached down for me. “We looked but we can’t—”
“Get in the water!” I screamed. “Help me push it off him!”
Rachel scrambled past Pia, who sat momentarily frozen with one arm wrapped uselessly around the log, and let herself down next to me in the slamming water, eyes huge behind water-beaded lenses. Pia took one step—sickeningly—on the log that trapped Rory and slipped in. Without speaking, we took a breath and dropped down underwater.