We jammed our knees and feet into whatever crevices or breaks in rock or wood we could find to gain purchase and force our shoulders under the log, lifting with every muscle in our bodies. Straining, running out of air, we pushed. I felt as if we had submerged under a mountain and were trying to lift it. I could feel Rachel kicking at me as she fought to keep herself wedged in for balance. My face was now inches from his, close enough to see his one eye watch me with rapidly fading hope.
The log moved—in the wrong direction. It rolled farther down into the vise of branches and rock and forced him deeper under the debris. We fitted our shoulders and arms and hands under that fucking thing and screamed and cried underwater, bubbles streaming by as we heaved up with every last bit of strength we had.
Rachel and Pia burst up for air and thrust themselves back down, again and again, but I was able to hold my breath the longest. The third time they surfaced something passed between Rory and me. His eye gazed at me as I strained and pushed. There was a kind of love in it, or gratefulness. Something in him that believed in my power to lift that hellish log, a look of trust that stayed even after the eye clouded and most of the life drained away. And I couldn’t tell if it was the last conscious thing he did in his life or if it was the current, but his free arm moved toward me and his fingers swept across my cheek, gently and just once, then floated ahead of him and under the log, fluttering and waving at the water’s bidding.
20
When I finally exploded out of the water, gulping at the air, Pia and Rachel bobbed at the surface on either side of me.
“I think he’s dead!” I screamed at their stricken faces. Rachel’s glasses bent diagonally across her face, Pia’s helmet was dented and cracked. A cut above her eyebrow bled steadily. She blinked the blood away.
“Let’s get to shore and try from there!” Pia yelled over the river’s fury.
I reached up and seized a tree limb to hoist myself onto a rock but had no strength left. We all tried. It was impossible. Even Pia couldn’t deadlift herself up and out. We had no way to get to the bank except to go under Rory. I gestured to the others what we had to do; they nodded. I took the kind of breath I had trained myself to take before a dive—slow, deep, deliberate—and thrust myself down into the swirling depths and reached under him. My hand found a branch just under his chest and I pulled myself down into darkness, eyes squeezed shut this time, and muscled my way through the current and to the other side of him, his vest grazing the back of my neck.
Something grabbed my sleeve, yanked at me.
Rachel popped up like a cork to my right; Pia next to her. “Let’s try from here,” Rachel said breathlessly. “Maybe it’s better.”
It looked like a worse angle to me, but we three dropped down and under. This time we could touch bottom and that made all the difference. We all came up hard under the log and with our footing leveraged it high enough so the water worked with us now, helping us force it up just a few inches, enough to roll it onto a slab of rock that sloped down in the opposite direction.
We looked on in horror as Rory’s orange shorts stayed bobbing up and down exactly as they had been, head and shoulders still submerged under the cascade of water.
I am a swimmer, I thought, so now is when I swim.
Against all instinct I dove back in; let the mad current take me. In seconds it thrust me on top of him, pasted me against the snarl of river detritus. His helmet glimmered in the water beneath me, his arms floating in a T shape to his sides as if he were flying underwater. I sucked in a lungful of air. Dropped down and hauled myself toward him, hand over hand, by the odd root and branch. Don’t think, I told myself. Just do. One step after the next. My body held fast against the wood and stone, I reached under his chin and unbuckled his helmet.
Nothing happened. Of course he didn’t float up! The helmet still encircled much of his head, and two fat stones gripped the helmet while another imprisoned his shoulder. Pounding water held his body in place.
Other hands touched my back. Someone swam over me. Was I being held down? White stars danced in front of me. Panic tasted like blood in my mouth; I forced it away. Blinked, surfaced, dove down again.
Rachel swam beneath me, treading by Rory. The water exploded to my right, and I saw Pia, her long form swimming down to us. She hauled his right shoulder from under the rock as Rachel grabbed his left, their white cheeks bulging with air, their eyes huge as they strained. Together they pushed his body down and away from the helmet, which remained wedged between the stones.