THE UPSIDE-DOWN RIVER

By Sam Decker

It didn’t die right away, the duck. It waddled in circles for a while and then fell over on its head, pumping its little webbed feet like it was trying to swim away in an upside-down river. When they were convinced that it no longer had any life in it, the two of them sat against a pine tree and passed the warm body back and forth until they had removed all the feathers. By then it was dark and they followed the river back to camp. When they came into the light of the fire Conrad was holding the animal by the neck, its small pink body swinging just above the ground.

Conrad and Ben were assigned to the same tent and they always paddled together, but it wasn’t until the seventh day of the canoe trip that the two of them chased down the duck and beat it over the head with a canoe paddle that they thought of themselves as friends.

Everyone at camp was at the very least impressed. Some—the girls—were horrified, though most appreciated the touch of savage ambiance it lent to the evening. The campers removed their sticks holding hotdogs and marshmallows so that Conrad could ceremoniously place the duck over the fire. The two boys cooked the duck until it was charred as black as the river and then they took turns gnawing at it, spitting the crispy skin on to the ground. They didn’t share any of their kill, but admittedly, no one had asked.

They had been at camp all summer, swimming and fishing and playing soccer, just killing time, waiting for this trip on the Groundhog River. It was a thirteen-day canoe trip in the northern Ontario wilderness. They were to be on the Groundhog for eight or nine days and then, for the remainder of the trip, on the Moose River, which fed into James Bay, a huge body of water at the southern end of the Hudson Bay. This was above the Arctic watershed so all water flowed north.

The trip was to end at Moosenee, a town accessible only by train or, of course, by river. Once they had made it there they were to take the train to a bigger town, the name of which Conrad had forgotten because it didn’t possess the thrilling quality of being inaccessible by road. There they would be picked up in a van and brought back to camp, where they would be idolized by the younger campers for a week or so before having to return to their separate homes. There were eight teenagers—five boys and three girls—and two counselors, probably somewhere in their late twenties. After the night with the duck Conrad and Ben thought of themselves as on a different level than everyone else.

The two of them felt crazy after a day on the river—like wild animals or at least insane wild men. Not boys, not gangly teenagers with muscles conditioned for suburban existence. This was a feeling they loved and sought after. And each day they came closer and closer to achieving it. They paddled hard for hours—Ben in the back, steering, and Conrad in the front—to collapse in front of the bright fire in the orange dusk, collapsing into the depths of tiredness and hunger which blurred things together that before seemed separate. It felt good to surrender to the limits of one’s physical strength. Each day he and Ben wore fewer clothes, gradually becoming more consistent with their own images of themselves as stoic natives, until finally during the day they wore only loincloths made by hanging bandanas from their belts and at night they usually just threw on some long underwear.

Creatch, of course, was their guru. He was one of the two counselors. Creatch was short for creature. They were proud to know someone with a name like this. Creatch knew which roots to eat and when, and if you were sore he knew what curative yoga move to perform and for how long. But more impressive than what he knew was what he’d endured. Creatch told stories about his past that made grown men weep, a fact he’d made a point of mentioning. One night Creatch told Conrad about the time he’d gotten rabies from a skunk in western Montana and how he followed train tracks, crawling practically blind through hail and rain for three days before he came across another living soul, some bum who spent his life riding in boxcars and claimed to have magical healing powers. Despite his weakness, Creatch declined his strange remedies, convincing the bum to lead him to the nearest town, all the while having to resist his burning desire to consume him.

Every morning Creatch could be found staring across the glassy waters of the river, in what everyone agreed was a deep Zen state, practicing with nunchucks, his hair wrangled into a thick red braid that hung down his back. Conrad and Ben would get up earlier and earlier each day to try and catch him going out there, but every morning he had already taken his stance by the river, scattering the flies with his whirling moves. Finally they just had to accept the fact that he began his routine some time in the middle of the night.

Conrad sometimes even forgot about his older brother who, last summer, took so many pills that he just lay down under a willow tree on their grandfather’s property and died. When their grandfather retired he bought a large piece of land in Vermont and built a big house from where he could sit and look out on it. He intended it to be a place for him to die. It probably never occurred to him that someone else was thinking the same thing, namely, his grandson who was staying in the basement because he didn’t feel safe with his own parents and the hospital didn’t believe he was all that sick. All of this Conrad inferred from a letter his brother had written him when he first moved in with their grandfather in late spring. But forgetting all this was Conrad’s reason for being out there.

On the tenth night of the trip the sky was like the roof of a cave; there were no stars, no moon. Conrad lay awake in the tent looking out at nothing or maybe he was looking into the backs of his eyelids, he wasn’t sure. When he blinked he felt two separate feelings, but he was confused which feeling meant his eyes were open and which one meant they were closed. He could have felt with his fingers but he didn’t want to destroy the mystery. His gums and the insides of his lips still burned from the wads of chewing tobacco that he and Ben had sucked on before bed while they played cribbage and drank whiskey—a bottle of Jim Beam which they had stolen a few weeks before the trip from the cook and held sacred. It was one of the first times Conrad had ever been drunk. Now he could feel the warmth of the whiskey drying up inside him. He felt alone and very awake. Suddenly, far off, above even where he imagined the top of the tent to be, the darkness started acting funny; it moved almost like water. Then the darkness started to burn into pale colors and translucent branches spread out above him. They were soft looking and they hung downwards. They were willow branches, he knew, the color of dust. He tried to make them go away by cupping his hands over his eyes but the branches continued to fall around him like silent fireworks. He saw his brother’s body. Then someone spoke and, abruptly, the colors withered and Conrad felt himself breathing again.

“You awake?”

“I think so,” Conrad answered.

“My stomach hurts.”

“It’s probably from the chew.”

“Maybe.”

For a little while no one said anything.

“Do you miss where you’re from?” Ben asked.

“No,” Conrad said, somehow offended by the bluntness of this question.

“Nothing?”

“What is there to miss,” Conrad said, not as a question.

“Normal things we’re used to seeing. Like cars and TV. Light switches, I don’t know. I miss my little sister. She’s fourteen months old.”

“I guess I miss my bed,” Conrad offered, trying his best.

“It really feels weird. My stomach. Like something’s eating away at my insides.”

Conrad could hear Ben moving around in his sleeping bag.

“Maybe you should try taking a shit.”

After a little while Conrad could hear Ben embark on the series of unzipping and re-zipping that had to be done in order to get out of the tent. There was nothing to see; he just listened. When Ben had finally made it out Conrad could smell the warm night air. He thought he could smell the river. It was a sweetness that rose above the rotting of wet leaves half turned to dirt. Conrad listened to his diminishing footsteps. Then he must have fallen asleep.

He woke up to Ben’s hot breath swelling across his face. At the same time he was aware of a violent ruckus. He accepted this as rain and an indication that he had been asleep for some time and didn’t think anymore of it. Though he didn’t much like the metal-coldness of the new air that the rain had brought.

“Conrad. Wake up. I don’t know what to do. Wake up. Are you awake? I think there is really something wrong.”

“What are you talking about?” Conrad barely knew where he was.

“My stomach.”

Just then there was a flash of light and with blinding simplicity Conrad saw everything in the tent, all of which looked as though it were made from the same electric-golden material. He saw Ben’s messy hair, spilt forward around his big eyes and his face, glistening with rain and tears. The light was cut by total blackness, which was then toppled by a concussive eruption of thunder that shattered any chance that Conrad may have had at remembering the things he had seen in that illuminating instant.

“This is killing me,” Ben moaned invisibly. “It feels like I’m being stabbed.”

Conrad put his hand on his friend’s soaked shoulder and pulled himself up into a sitting position.

“Okay. Okay.” He was trying to think. He knew he probably shouldn’t yawn, but he figured he could get away with it with the rain banging so hard against the tent.

“I’m gonna go wake up Creatch,” he finally said. “He’ll fix you up.”

Conrad, now completely drenched, peered in at his counselor through the screen of his tent. He was surprised somehow to find him asleep like a normal person, snoring enormously. He said Creatch’s name several times, all without success, and then forced himself to unzip the screen and tug on his cold foot.

“What the—what in the hell’s going on?” Creatch wanted to know. Conrad told him it was raining and that Ben was sick.

“What do you mean sick?”

“His stomach hurts.”

Without getting out of his sleeping bag, Creatch arranged himself so that he was face to face with Conrad; he looked at him in a way that requested a more whole explanation and Conrad looked right back at him and did his best to tell him only what needed telling and nothing more. Creatch grabbed a flashlight and stepped into some slippers that in the dark did not look very far removed from the creatures they had once been.

Back at their tent, Ben was lying in a ball with his face buried in his sleeping bag. Creatch uncurled him gently, handing the flashlight to Conrad who was still standing out in the rain. Conrad held the light down on them. Creatch, having peeled back Ben’s shirt to reveal his glimmering white belly, started prodding around gently. Everywhere hurt. Judging from the expression on the sharp crescent of Creatch’s face, this was bad news. Conrad saw Creatch open his mouth like he was about to say something, but he closed it again. Conrad couldn’t help but think that this too meant that Ben’s stomach was very bad news.

“Stay here,” Creatch ordered. “I’m going to have a word with Bulukus.”

This was the other counselor. Bulukus must have been a Greek name because that’s where all the stories about his family took place and it could be the only explanation for such an incredible combination of letters. Everyone admired Bulukus, but also felt sorry for him because he was supposed to go pro as a pitcher until he threw his arm out. He had a defeated way about him and he never got mad at anyone, because if he let himself get mad, Conrad imagined, he would just fall apart.

When Creatch returned he pulled Conrad out into the rain and wanted to know how he was doing. Conrad felt okay, considering, and he said so, though he was disconcerted by Creatch’s interest in how he was, as opposed to how Ben was, suspecting it probably meant he would be needed to do something.

“Bulukus and I talked and he agreed to take the rest of the campers out of here in a few hours.”

Conrad wasn’t sure what this meant but he was vaguely afraid of what it could mean.

“You and I on the other hand,” Creatch continued, “are going to have to get Ben out of here right now.”

“Now?” Conrad asked, immediately ashamed at the wealth of terror in his quaking voice. “Where are we going to take him?”

“We’re going to paddle him up river to Moose Crossing and get him to a hospital.” Creatch had a sturdy way of saying this as though they’d already done it and it wasn’t that big of a deal so he’d rather not talk about it. Moose Crossing was the place where the Ontario Northland Railway crossed high above the brown expanse of the Moose River. They had stopped there just that day to call the camp to say that everything was okay. “We’ll have to use someone’s telephone to call the O.P.P.,” which Conrad knew stood for the Ontario Provincial Police.

Back in his tent Conrad told Ben a simplified version of the plan. He didn’t worry about packing up any of their stuff because Creatch told him that Bulukus would take care of it. Conrad checked his watch and was surprised to find that it was only 1:00 in the morning. Ben didn’t look like in the mood to go anywhere.

“Let’s just go back to sleep,” he said dreamily. “I’m sure I’ll be fine in the morning.”

“Put on your shoes,” Conrad said, uncrumpling a rain jacket from the ball that it had been at the bottom of his pack. He saw the pointlessness in wearing it, as he was just putting it over his soaking wet clothes, but he did it anyway. It seemed like as worthwhile a measure as anything. When Ben made no attempt to put on his shoes Conrad put them on for him.

Ben could pretty much walk on his own, but Conrad wrapped an arm around his waist just in case he got the idea again that he wanted to go back to sleep. Conrad could hear the river before he saw it. When they finally made it there, out of breath, Creatch was already dragging a canoe into the water. Without saying much of anything they lifted Ben into the duffer spot in the middle and Conrad went into the bow and faced the loud darkness that was the river. With one foot in the canoe and one foot in the water, Creatch pumped hard and then jumped into the boat. The river took them.

They worked hard against the current, cutting easily through the surface with their paddles, as the rain was already breaking it apart, opening it up. Conrad squinted at the husky mat of trees that hung flatly on either side of the river, realizing that they were barely moving forward, if at all. He held his paddle out of the water for a number of seconds, letting the water slip off the glossy curved wood. Their pace didn’t change the slightest bit. Conrad was embarrassed by the smallness of his own contribution to their movement upriver and hoped that Creatch was unaware. He turned around and saw his counselor’s massive shape heaving his paddle through the water in rapid, powerful strokes.

“Paddle,” he said.

“We’re barely moving,” Conrad answered.

“Turn around and paddle!”

Conrad had been yelled at plenty of times, but this was different. The only thing he could think of to account for this difference was fear. Creatch was just as afraid as he was. This horrifying notion made Conrad paddle harder than he knew he could, as if by paddling so hard he was pulling away from Creatch, putting space in between himself and Creatch’s fear. For a while his whole body ached and then everything became so numb that he had to keep an eye on his hands to make sure he was still holding on to the paddle. After an incalculable amount of time Conrad remembered Ben. He stopped paddling and turned around. Ben was curled up in the fetal position, his eyes tightly shut.

“Ben. How do you feel?”

Ben relaxed his eyes and then opened them.

“I’m trying to pretend I’m not here.”

“That’s a good idea.” Conrad said.

“It’s hard.”

“I bet.”

“Do you think maybe I’ll pass out before it gets too much worse?”

This question had alarming implications that turned their lack of progress into something that could no longer be denied. They decided to paddle to the shore and try to run along the side of the river, pulling Ben in the canoe. Conrad was anxious to get off the water with the lightning becoming more frequent.

Conrad’s body was stiff when he stood up to leap for the muddy ledge, speckled with shining stones. This rigidity caused him to under jump and land in the river, though it didn’t matter because he was already pretty much as wet as he was going to get. Running with the boat proved to be faster, but also more difficult and tiring. There were hidden rocks and roots, drop offs, and places where the edge of earth, cut sharp from the rushing water, rose two feet or so above the river’s current level. They had to bend down to pull the canoe over these high parts, stretching awkwardly to keep from falling in. For most of the time Conrad just sprinted along with his hand resting limply on the back of the canoe, trying to keep up.

They switched back and forth between paddling and running a few more times. Each time they switched, the new way seemed easy and the old way seemed like it had been a waste of time and energy, but quickly this optimism corroded into the old feeling of futility, as the difficulties came back to them. Conrad could sense Creatch growing more and more frantic.

On their third attempt to run with the canoe Creatch fell down and then crumpled into the river. It looked to Conrad like his body short-circuited. He resurfaced a few yards away, coughing and grunting. Conrad stood there dumbfounded, watching his counselor drift away. The current was strong, but not so strong that he should have any trouble swimming to the edge.

“Help me!” Creatch yelled. Ben lifted his head up to see what was going on.

“I’ll hold the canoe here,” he said to Conrad, stretching out to grab a large clump of grass. Conrad let go of the canoe and ran towards Creatch, utterly clueless as to what was happening. Getting down on his knees he was able to grab Creatch’s sweater and pull him towards the shore. He then hooked his hands under Creatch’s armpits, heaving his bulky top half out of the water so that he could lean into the shore and keep himself from being taken by the current.

“I’m not sure, but I think it’s broken,” Creatch said. “The top of the shin just below the knee. It feels like there could be bone coming through. I’m not quite ready to find that out yet.” Conrad just knelt there, letting these frank, terrifying words pass through his mind like fog, clouding his ability to think or respond. Creatch figured that he must have stepped into a hole and then bashed his shin into a jagged rock.

“Help me get out of here,” Creatch said. His tone was reminiscent of the way Conrad’s grandfather used to ask for help going to the bathroom in the weeks after he had broken his hip.

Once Creatch was out of the water he lay back in the tall grass, letting the rain patter onto his eyelids. Conrad bent down to examine the injury. The whole area looked ominously complicated in the dark. It just didn’t look right. But before he could decide exactly in what way there was a flash of lightning and he saw it: a white splintery shard of bone protruding through an open mash of blood and hair and hanging rags of skin. It was made vague and innocuous once again when the lightning flashed away, but by then Conrad was already lurching off into the reeds to vomit.

“I guess that means there’s bone,” Creatch said, laughing sickly.

“What’s happening?” Ben yelled. “Who’s hurt?” He was still sprawled out in the canoe, hugging the clump of grass. Creatch screamed back that they’d be there in a minute.

Conrad crawled out of the reeds to find Creatch biting on a stick. Conrad was too afraid to ask what he was intending to do that would require such a measure.

“Tie this around the wound,” Creatch gargled through clenched teeth. He took off his waterlogged sweater and held it out for Conrad to take. “Don’t worry about the bone. They can fix that later. The only important thing is to tie it tight enough so that nothing gets in there. We also want to stop the bleeding.” Conrad tied the sweater into a bulky knot around the wound while Creatch pounded the ground with his fist.

Slowly they made their way back to the canoe, Conrad more or less carrying his counselor, whose hair hung over his face in wet crimson tangles. Conrad wasn’t as much surprised by his own strength as he was by Creatch’s willingness to be carried.

“What’s happens now?” Ben asked when they approached.

“This shouldn’t change as much as you might think,” Creatch said.

With no other option they went back to paddling. Creatch rested his injured leg on the wooden bar just in front of his seat. The wound didn’t seem to directly affect his ability to paddle, though he was certainly weaker now than he had been.

They paddled on through the rain in silence and after a little under an hour, a faint line grew out of the dimensionless darkness of the sky, which as they approached, slowly sharpened into train tracks. They had made it to Moose Crossing. Conrad had never been so happy to see anything. He reversed his grip and paddled on his left side, causing them to curve towards the right. Feeling a burst of strength, he dug the paddle into the rippling water, driving the bow hard into the shore.

“Go to the nearest house,” Creatch said. “Tell them that our kid is sick and he’s turning yellow. Don’t forget to say the part about him turning yellow.” Conrad looked down at Ben. He wasn’t yellow but he thought he understood why Creatch wanted him to say he was. Weird symptoms like that had a way of scaring people into action.

“What about you?” Conrad asked.

“I’ll stay here with Ben.” He said this as though it was his decision to stay.

“But what should I tell them about you?”

“How many different ways are there to say that someone broke his leg.”

Conrad felt like he had done something wrong, though he didn’t know what that could have been. He bowed his head and then took off up the steep path, which wound through hanging green branches, lunging off rocks to avoid slipping in the mud. He reached the top and there were the tracks shooting out across the river. There were two houses on one side and a depot on the other. His wet clothes stuck tightly to his skin making it awkward to run. As he crossed the tracks, heading towards the nearest house, Conrad wondered what kind of insane person would ever want to live out here. He banged on the door. No one answered. He banged harder. He didn’t know what else there was to do. Then a terrible thought occurred to him. What if no one answered? What would he do then? Was Creatch in a good enough condition to perform a pair of rugged surgeries with a Leatherman on Ben and on himself? Before tonight Conrad would have said yes, but now it seemed doubtful. Conrad looked at a garden that was near the door, which appeared to consist of nothing more than a few vertical sticks that someone had shoved into the sandy dirt. He walked through the desolate garden on his way around the house. On the opposite side there was a low window emitting a blue mosaic light. Looking in, he saw a squalid living room dominated by heavily lacquered furniture, all of which looked somehow out of place. The TV, showing a hockey game, was on mute. A shirtless man was passed out on the couch, an empty bottle cradled like a newborn baby in his arms. Conrad hit the window, even though he was pretty sure that the man wasn’t going to wake up.

He left the window and ran to the only other house. It was identical: the same log cabin style, the same boxy smallness; there couldn’t have been more than a few rooms in there. All the lights were off inside. Conrad knocked on the door and waited. He tried again. After he knocked the second time a light came on right away as though the person in there was hoping that whoever was knocking would go away, but had made a promise to himself that if there was another knock he would get up and see who it was.

Soon a light came on just behind the door, sending two squares of warm brightness out above Conrad’s head. The rain flashed white as it passed through this light and then turned black again just before it hit the ground. The light spread out as it got further from the door and was so faint when it reached the trees at the edge of the patchy yard that it merely made the droplets of water glow on the branches without affecting the blackness of the branches themselves. The door opened and an old Indian man was standing there with a shotgun. The shotgun wasn’t pointed at Conrad, but it was there and that was enough. Conrad hoped that he might not be in the mood to shoot anyone having just woken up. The old man’s face was surrounded by a coarse mess of white hair that reminded Conrad of cold winters in Michigan, snow that had lain around on the ground for too long. The skin on his face was oily and porous and much of it seemed to be going to waste with the way it hung inertly in thick folds. At first Conrad was disconcerted by the man’s lack of expression but then he was comforted by the thought that it was probably about as easy for him to smile as it was for a 300-pound man to do a pull up. The old man stood there in jeans and an opened flannel shirt, not saying anything.

“It’s an emergency. I need a telephone,” Conrad almost shouted. He kept talking. “I’m on a canoe trip to Moosenee with my summer camp. My friend is sick. Something’s wrong with his stomach. He’s turning yellow. Yellow. Also my counselor broke his leg and the bone is sticking out.”

“Where are they?” the old man asked.

“They’re with the canoe by the river.”

The man stood there looking down at him. Conrad hoped that he was assessing the situation, determining what to do, though he could have been just standing there, thinking about nothing. Conrad waited.

“Which one would you say,” the Indian finally said, “is worse off?”

Conrad didn’t understand the reasoning behind this question but he thought about it anyway, deeming that it must be important. This was the first decision he was required to make all night and he didn’t want to screw it up.

“Creatch’s leg is broken. We know that. And I don’t think it’s bleeding all that much anymore. With Ben, though, it could be anything. So I’d say he’s worse.”

“Come in,” the Indian said and then disappeared into another room. Conrad stepped inside. He hoped that he had said the right thing. The room had looked warmer than it actually was. He certainly wouldn’t describe it as cozy. There were small woodcarvings everywhere—animals mostly; some Conrad recognized as actual animals and others he supposed were mythical creatures. A carving of a bear on the lamp table next to the sofa caught his eye. It was about the size of a rat. The bear’s expression was docile, his eyes closed. Conrad had never seen a bear in the wild but he never thought of one like that before. Abruptly the old man appeared again, this time holding two butter knives.

“No, not knives. Phone. Telephone,” Conrad said, turning his hand into a phone by extending his thumb and pinky.

“I don’t have a phone,” the old man said. “Follow me.”

He put the knives into his pocket and went out the door. Conrad couldn’t decide whether he was dealing with a very stoic person or just a tired one. Either way his presence gave Conrad a feeling that everything might be all right. This was the kind of person that Conrad had tried to become after his brother died: quiet and unaffected. He wasn’t very good at it and usually he just felt like he was being an asshole. He admired the people to whom it came naturally and he generally trusted them; they didn’t seem as likely to screw things up, uncaught in emotion. Conrad followed the Indian across the train tracks towards the depot. It was a broad and sturdy building like an old military bunker.

When they got to the front door the Indian took out the silverware that he had brought, holding a slender knife in each clenched fist. Conrad was half expecting to see some display of indigenous magic, but the man simply slid the knives into the crack between the door and the doorframe. He waited, watching the man’s flannelled elbows dance around as he worked on the lock. It looked like he had done this quite a few times. Within a minute they were inside. He followed the man through a series of open, musty rooms. It was not too much of a departure from being outside; the haunting creaks of nature followed them through each drafty room, echoing off the walls that smelled like trees and churning in the empty space between their heads and the high ceilings. The floorboards looked hundreds of years old; the varnish, if there ever was any, was gone. Many of the rooms had small bunks in them, neatly made with white sheets and brown wool blankets. Soon they were standing in front of another door and again the old man outdrew his butter knives.

Inside was an office with a tidy wooden desk and some file cabinets. Nothing looked real or like it had ever been used, giving Conrad the odd sense that he was on a movie set. There was a window, which constituted almost the entire wall, providing a view of the tracks and the river and the dim swaying woods. Rain fell onto the tracks; it seeped along the metal support beams, pouring off into the river in wide ribbons. The man picked up the phone and put it to his ear, then held it out to Conrad, who looked back at him as if to say: don’t you just want to call? You’re already holding the phone. But the man sustained his absolute imperviousness and Conrad took the phone and dialed the number, which the man recited out loud. After a few rings someone picked up. The officer had the casual and soothing tone of someone used to hearing news that other people were apt to consider tragic or at least urgent. It seemed like he was the annoying type of person who took pride in being difficult to impress. Conrad told him everything, highlighting the fact that Ben was yellow and that Creatch had bone coming out.

“Okay,” the O.P.P. said. “Sounds like an appendix to me. But who knows, maybe it’s not. I’m no expert, see. It could be anything.” Conrad got the impression that the officer hadn’t spoken to anyone in some time and was thrilled for the chance to become reacquainted with his own voice. “The only reason I say appendix is because it’s the most common thing. But like I said, it could be any number of things. An appendix is not necessarily a big deal. But it can be. I’m going to give you a number to call. As far as the broken leg goes—”

“I don’t have a pen,” Conrad interrupted.

“Just tell it to me,” whispered the Indian. “I’m good with numbers.”

“That’s Sam’s number,” the officer said after having given it. “Normally you can’t access your location by vehicle but he’s got a truck, Sam does, that can drive right on the tracks. You just tell him that you have an emergency. He’ll give you a ride on up to Moosenee. It shouldn’t take more than half an hour. I’ll radio in for an ambulance to meet you right there at the station.”

Conrad hung up, feeling further from accomplishing anything. The Indian repeated the number and Conrad dialed. It must have rung more than ten times before someone finally picked up. All Conrad could hear was heavy breathing. Then the person, Sam or whoever it was, dove into an intelligible rant that could have only been inspired by extreme amounts of alcohol and reckless depression. In the following minute Conrad’s expectations dwindled from thinking the man could drive them even though he was drunk, to thinking he probably shouldn’t drive, but maybe they could use his truck, to concluding finally that it was very unlikely this person could even stand up or help them in any way. Conrad couldn’t tell whether he was singing or pleading or just complaining melodically. He was certainly sobbing. Conrad hung up on him and called the O.P.P. again.

“Goddamn that Sam,” the officer said. “The trouble is there’s not much we can do now. We can’t land a helicopter at night, not in a storm like this. The morning would be as soon as we could get one out there.”

It was decided that Conrad would meet the helicopter outside the depot at first light. He and the Indian went back outside.

When they got down to the river Creatch was sitting on the ground with his leg raised over the rim of the canoe. His hand rested on the back of Ben’s head, who was still curled up in the duffer spot. Creatch watched them approach and when they got close he introduced himself.

“I’m George,” replied the Indian.

“And this is Ben,” Creatch said.

Conrad was embarrassed that he had forgotten to introduce himself, though he couldn’t think of a time it would have been appropriate.

“I’m Conrad,” he said to George, who nodded, but was more concerned with Creatch’s leg.

“Let’s get you inside,” he said. “That way we can take a look at you in some light and the boy can lie down.” Then he turned to Conrad. “We’ll have to take them up one at a time.”

“Take Ben first,” Creatch said. “He should get out of the rain. He’ll be easier anyway.”

The two of them carried Ben to George’s house and laid him down on the couch. Conrad swore that his face now had a yellowish tint to it. He looked peaceful in his sleep, like he wasn’t in any pain, though Conrad remembered what Ben had said before in the canoe; it may have been the pain that finally knocked him out. Before they went back for Creatch, George brought from the kitchen a small bottle of whiskey, which he slid into his back pocket. It was more of a struggle getting Creach up the path; as Conrad was about a foot shorter than him it was hard to keep his bad leg from hitting the ground. They brought him to the depot where there was a first aid kit.

George set them up in a room with a TV set and two bunks. Creatch reclined in one of the bunks with his leg propped up on some pillows and Conrad sat in the other, hunched against the wall, having given his only pillow to Creatch. It was hard for him to imagine the amount of pain Creatch must have been in. George brought in a chair, which he placed by Creatch’s bunk, and sat down. Conrad was quiet while the two men made small talk and passed the bottle of whiskey. When they ran out of things to say they turned on the TV. Of the three channels only one came in all the way. This channel was showing The Wizard of Oz. It was at the part when Dorothy falls asleep in a field of orange poppies. She looked tired and happy. Conrad wondered if his brother looked like that when he went to sleep under the willow tree. He could see how it would feel nice to collapse in the warmth of the sun and not care whether you got up again, not care about anything at all. He thought about Ben sleeping on George’s couch and wondered if he imagined himself in a place like that—some peaceful field. Conrad was pretty tired himself. His eyes were barely open as he watched the snow float down on Dorothy and the Lion. Dorothy looked beautiful, Conrad thought, when she was just waking up.

Soon George got up to brew some coffee. It didn’t seem like he cared too much for the movie. Conrad had been waiting for him to leave the room so he could say something to Creatch.

“You probably shouldn’t tell anyone that we watched this,” he had wanted to say, but he couldn’t because he was already asleep, dreaming about how beautiful Dorothy was with those tired eyes that weren’t quite ready to open.