Follow the River (39 page)

By midafternoon, they were in a trance of exhaustion. Mary lay face down on a huge tilted slab of gray rock. Blue-green splotches of lichen grew dim, then sharp, then dim again, an inch before her eyes, while the river drummed loud and faint and loud in her ears. She might have slept. She was not sure. But after an indefinite time she became aware that she was very cold and it was time to move.

Looking up the raging stream, between the V-shaped canyon walls, they could see range after range of such steep-edged mountains sitting with their feet in the river, each mountain a degree higher and hazier than the one in front of it, a progression of fading grays marching into the distance until they were indistinct in river mist. In the gloomy, furrowed valleys slanting up from either side of the river, ragged wraiths of mist curled and shifted upward, like a slow dance of ghosts. Now Mary began to suspect that the Indians’ avoidance of this gorge was as much from a fear of evil spirits as of terrain.

They crossed the debris of the avalanche late that afternoon. It took them an hour to climb through the boulders and rubble and dead wood. Several times, rocks loosened under their feet and bounced and crashed down into the river; worse, they heard stones clattering and bumping above them once, and hugged themselves against a jutting log, expecting to be buried in a rockfall.

The wind was cold, the stones were cold, the water, when they had to step into it and wade around the bases of bluffs, was very cold. Their skin was clammy and white and usually covered in gooseflesh. They would get hot and winded while climbing, and when they had to stop to rest, the wind would chill them immediately. They took turns wearing the blanket as they climbed; neither would wear it while they were wading;
and when they dropped down to rest they would huddle together in it.

They finally found a place where a finger of land sloped gently enough that they could walk in the woods, on a cushion of dead leaves. Here they found another hollow log lying on its side and decided this would be their camp for the night. They had to shout to make themselves heard over the roar of the river. Mary wondered how they would be able to sleep in such noise. Sometimes during the day the noise had pressed so hard on her soul that she had thought she would scream and go mad. It was as constant and loud as the windstorm the night they had spent across from the burning spring. Mary thought it was making her heart beat faster. Under this constant drumming of wilderness, the faint metallic sounds of the bell were welcome, like delicate music, a civilized sound.

Here in the woods they turned over rocks and found a few more worms. They had spent so much energy climbing that Mary was hungrier than she had been yet. There had been periods downriver when they had not eaten anything for four or five days, but even then she had not been as famished as she was now. So she ate the worms this time with no thought except how good they were.

Ghetel was behaving rather well. She seemed distant and distracted, but she was not giving Mary those hostile looks, and she had been following well. Really, very well, Mary thought. I may not be havin’ any more trouble with ’er. I mean if I can keep ’er full of worms.

Let’s hope there won’t be a hard freeze where the worms go deep, she thought. It’s nice to be able just to turn over a few rocks and find meat.

She was beginning to think of the worms in terms of meat now instead of as worms. That was good.

They filled the hollow log with leaves and burrowed in with the blanket. With the leaves and the blanket up around their heads, the roar of the river was muffled a bit and it was not so intimidating. As they lay together skin on skin they grew warmer, and as they grew warmer, their aches and bruises eased a little and they grew sleepy. Mary appreciated Ghetel’s body heat, and she thought a great deal about her and tried to
imagine what must be in her mind. She’s truly stalwart, Mary thought. She really is something out of the ordinary.

She felt tears sting her eyes as she held the old bones close. Thou’rt close as family, she thought to the old woman. Like family, a great botheration sometimes. But what we two’ve been through’d bind folks closer’n family.

She remembered the uneasiness she had had that day so long ago, when she had been afraid to give Ghetel the tomahawk. She had been right about that. The old woman really had wanted to hurt her; she’d been out of her noggin. It wasn’t hard to understand, really. But now Mary seemed to understand that the reason she had been able to read Ghetel’s intentions was because the two of them had become so close through this ordeal. It was almost like what she had heard about twins. There was some bridge between them. We’re close as twins, you and me, because we been dependin’ on each other so long out here in these valleys where there ain’t anything else but you and me, she thought.

Aye, old thing. You’re family. And when we get home, I’ll have Will see to’t that y’have anything your heart desires, I will.

She wondered how far they had come today. Surely not more’n ten or fifteen miles, she thought, though it seemed more like fifty, all that climbin’ an’ scootin’. She smiled at the thought: Been days since I had any skin on my feet. Now my knees and my hindy end’s likewise.

Ghetel’s breathing was gurgly. She coughed in her sleep, jerking violently, enveloping Mary’s face with rancid breath and spraying it with spittle. Mary patted her gently, rhythmically on the back, as if soothing her baby.

Her baby.

For a moment she pictured her baby. Or, rather, a little shape. She could not see its face. She had been careful not to know its face. Now she could not have remembered its face if she had tried to.

She envisioned a little shape, nursing at the breast of Otter Girl.

She was slipping into sleep. She saw Will. She saw herself with Will. He was asking her where the baby was, their baby
that he had never seen. There was a blank space in her mind when she fell asleep because she did not know how she would answer that when he asked her.

The valley seemed to widen as they went on the next morning. The river was about a quarter of a mile wide, running shallow, its surface roiled. The noise of its flow was less overwhelming here in this wider space. There were broad flat tables of rock to walk on and not so much climbing to do. They progressed without great difficulty for three or four miles. The sun was trying to break through the gray clouds that hid the mountaintops. They could see it as a pale smear in the dark sky, but sometimes the mist in the draws would swirl over it like smoke and blot it out again.

Something was drumming on Mary’s ears. She grew aware of it little by little, some deep rumble beyond the rushing of the river. They rounded a bend and it became louder.

“Look’ee, Ghetel!” Mary pointed. A mile ahead there was a line of greenish-white extending from bank to bank. Beyond that was a great dark mountainside topped with clouds. “A waterfall, ain’t it?”

Ghetel peered up the river, her mouth hanging open. Her lower front teeth were yellow and there was gray matter against her gums. Her lower lip was a rim of bleeding sores and scabs. She nodded and looked at Mary with a question in her eyes. Mary knew what the question was: Would the falls be another obstacle?

As they went up, the falls became more distinct, louder, more formidable. They were like a giant’s stairsteps, over which the gray-green water fell roaring five or ten feet at a drop, seething white at the foot of each cascade. The falls extended from shore to shore, broken only by a small wooded island that lay in the great pool below them.

The shore here was sand and shingle. Trees stood high out of the sand, their gnarled, grotesque root boles three or four feet above the ground where the soil had washed out from under them. As the women moved along and came opposite the island, they saw that there was a smaller island at the top of the falls, with brush growing on it. The dark water seethed
with foam here in the pool. The air was wet with the fall’s mist.

Mary kept studying the falls at the right shore, where they would have to pass, to see whether there would be a dry place to climb. They could not climb where the water gushed down; they would be swept away.

It looked bad. There was no sloping ground to ascend. The falls roared over their rock shelves right at the base of a perpendicular bluff of striated rock.

No, she thought. Oh, no. We just can’t come up blocked here. Not after all this. Let’s go closer. Must be we can find a way up.

The narrow shore of shingle and sand dwindled to nothing as they crept under the bluff. Soon they were standing right in the falls’ spray, on a narrow ledge of wet rock with the foamy water swirling a few inches below their feet. They held onto the sheer rockface and stared, nearly hypnotized, at the glassy curtain of water falling beside them. Mary clung with her fingertips to the cold, wet rock, squinting up the cliff looking for a way up, her heart tripping, her skin and rags growing damp. The hissing, rumbling force of the plunging river was pounding her senses into a state of disorientation. She felt that the very cliff they were clinging to was moving, tilting with them on it. She swallowed rapidly against panic. Her mouth was dry.

“Go back!” she cried. She turned her face toward Ghetel and shouted it again. “GO BACK!”

The old woman’s face was a mask of cringing terror. She clung to the rock, frozen, afraid to move a muscle. There was no room for Mary to go around her and lead her back to safety; the ledge was too narrow. Mary was trapped on the lip of rock, her legs beginning to twitch and quiver uncontrollably, and Ghetel was frozen between her and the route back to the shore. And that awful notion of giving up, of stepping so easily off into the water and putting an end to all this suffering, was beginning to insinuate itself in her head again.

What’s it matter? she thought again.

And somehow that thought calmed her. Her legs stopped quaking.

She grinned at Ghetel. It was meant to be a reassuring smile but it was ghastly as a death’s head; she could feel her mouth corners drawn back and down against her teeth, and the strain around her eyes.

Got to move her, Mary thought. Got to. We’re both going to fall in a minute if we don’t get back.

Leaning her precious spear against her left arm, she freed her right hand to reach over and touch Ghetel’s left hand, which was locked, rigid as a root, in a tiny crevice at eye level. She patted the hand gently for a moment, then closed her hand over it and gently tried to pull it loose, to move it over a few inches and make Ghetel understand that they were to go back. But the old hand grew even harder; the fingers dug in like talons. A terrified, keening wail started coming from Ghetel’s open mouth and she pressed her face against the rock. Her eyes were wild.

Dear God, she thinks I’m trying to throw her in, Mary thought. She’ll never budge if she thinks that.

Or she’ll try to throw
me
in.

She took her hand off Ghetel’s. The old woman stopped wailing.

Mary searched her mind for something to say. Then:

“Ghetel, hon,” she yelled, “I know an easier way! I know a way around!” She forced another squinting smile, and looked past Ghetel toward the way they had come, and nodded.

The look in Ghetel’s eyes changed a bit. She shut her mouth and looked suspiciously at Mary’s face for a moment, as if not sure she should turn her attention away from her for even an instant. Mary nodded and looked downstream again, nodding emphatically.

At last Ghetel began turning her head, but kept her eyes on Mary as long as she could. Finally she was looking the other way.

Now, Mary thought. She’s lookin’ the way of safety; maybe now she’ll go. Slowly, she moved her hand toward Ghetel’s again, and lightly patted it.

At the touch, Ghetel’s head spun around and the scream started, and in the same instant she released the rock to fling Mary’s hand away. The motion nearly dislodged Mary from
the face of the cliff, and Ghetel herself tottered for a moment before hooking her talons into the crevice again. An enervating shiver sizzled through Mary’s body and her heart seemed to be twitching in her neck. She clung to the cliff with both hands herself now, face pressed against the rock, the water still roaring ominously beside her. That had been too close. She breathed deeply until she could think.

Eh well. No gentle coaxing was going to do it, she realized. Sometimes there’s but one way to get through that thick Dutch head. She locked her own left hand more firmly into its fingerhold. With her right she took the shaft of the hickory stock and swung it out behind her over the water, then yelled:

“God damn’ee, Ghetel! MOVE!” And she swung the stick to whack across the bony old rump. It was not much of a blow; her balance was too precarious for that. But she struck her again, then again, yelling like a banshee: “MOVE, Y’CLOD! GET THAT REECHY CARCASS O’ YOUR’N OUT OF MY PATH! MOVE, DAMN ’EE!”

Ghetel looked at her, flinching, and she seemed suddenly more afraid of Mary than of moving; she began to move. She inched back along the cliff. Mary followed her.

In a minute they were back on the beach. They were so weak they sank to the ground. Mary moved close to Ghetel and drew the blanket over them both. They sat there for a long time, trembling, while Ghetel moaned to herself and said things in Dutch.

When they had calmed themselves, Mary got up and went a few yards down the shore, pausing now and then to peer up the mountainside. After a while she found a gap in the cliff where they could climb up by holding roots and ledges and get onto the slope above the cliff, and thus bypass the falls in the woods far above.

The climb took two hours, and they became dizzy when they paused and looked down through the bare trees onto the huge jagged waterfall far below them, the relentless gray-green water and swirls of white foam. The mountain slope they were on curved to their right, following a bend in the river above the falls. They had gone a mile around the mountain, a hundred feet above the water, when they saw below
them a juncture of two rivers, one coming toward them from the east, the other from the south. These two rivers joined at the base of this mountain to make the river they had been following; it was their combined waters that they could still hear rushing over the falls a mile behind them. But the sight of this wide fork of rivers stopped Mary in her tracks and threw her into confusion.