The Ann Ireland Library. Ann Ireland
The raft shudders with the abrupt shift in ballast.
Hiro sets his paddle across the gunnels and makes a gesture with his hands, palms pushing together as if he were playing accordion.
“Channel narrows,” Lucy interprets. There’s a charge of excitement in her voice.
“Of course it does,” Armand says. “This is exactly what the guidebook explains.”
He starts to read aloud again until Toby barks, “Shut up.”
Trace is back-paddling. Her jaw works as she shouts, words lost in the freshening breeze. Behind her the hawk thing swoops over the treetops and disappears behind the cliff.
“What do you want us to do, boss?” Baldo asks in that laconic voice that always sounds as if he’s half asleep.
There is an odd silence, a reprieve, then suddenly everyone calls out in tandem, “Whoah,” as a calamity enters their field of vision.
The crew lifts out of their seats, hoisting paddles aloft as if fending off a monster. The banks of the gorge rise as the river jackknifes, the placid water now on the boil. Their raft careens toward the flank of bare rock while Lucy cries, “Hold tight!”
“Paddle backward!” someone yelps.
Toby stares in horror at the wall slamming toward them. Better to jump, he quickly decides, and catapults into the water while the raft shoots out from beneath him.
Cry of shock as his chest freezes. River the colour of brine.
Water is your element, Klaus used to say, but this isn’t the measured metres of the YMCA pool, and Toby feels his body suck deep into the murk. Any moment he’ll pop up like a cork. No one drowns at a guitar competition — the idea is halfway comic. Keep pulling at the water and its skin will break, but it’s taking a long time, so much longer than expected.
He’ll open the final program with the sonata, classic mood, very controlled and nimble. He can almost taste the audience’s attention as he can taste this brackish water. Not much air left in his lungs, last pocket dialled to empty.
Jasper will be so sad. He would say, “What kind of nitwit leaps into rapids without a lifejacket?”
The tug comes hard, a sharp pain. Toby is snagged by his hair, then he’s staring into a pink face under a ball cap.
“Got him!” Lucy cries, leaning over the rim of the raft, arms strained to the max. Toby feels himself tear through to open air, skimming across water while she heaves him onboard, a massive trout.
Back on the shore the kid who’s minding the shop keeps walking backward as if he expects the musicians to attack him. He’s talking a mile a minute, not that Toby is counting. He’s too freaking cold, clothes glued to his body, shoes squeaking out aquatic smells and weeds.
Daniel translates, “The Quebec government in conjunction with the local Indian band has built a dam upstream to control water levels.”
“Now he tells us,” Marcus says.
Another cascade of French, then the translation. “You did not listen.” Pause. “The upper river run is closed.” Daniel frowns. “There were three warning signs.” He looks up. “Anyone see those?”
Lucy creeps up behind Toby and puts her arms around him, and he jerks, as if to be touched were lethal. He’s so cold he could shatter.
“Put this on,” Lucy says, slipping out of her sweatshirt.
Toby pokes his chattering arms through the sleeves, then draws the garment over his head. For a second, as darkness closes in again, he panics.
He emerges to see the rest of the group clustered on the rocks, subdued after his misadventure.
Baldo flips a butt into the innocent-looking river. Marcus lies on his back, face baking in the sun. Trace swats flies. Where’s Hiro? Is anyone counting heads? There he is, tank top peeled off and hanging on a bush.
“You gave us one hell of a scare,” Lucy says.
Marcus lifts his head. “Why did you jump ship, son?”
“It was a lousy idea,” Toby agrees.
“I was ready to dive in after you,” Lucy says. She sounds breathless, as if she’d actually performed this heroic act.
Toby says quietly, “Thank you,” the words she is waiting to hear.
Trace steps across the rock and crouches next to him, runs her hands up and down his arms, chaffing them back to life. “What was it like going under?” she wants to know, a flare of excitement inflecting the question.
“Bracing,” he says.
“Whoah, Nellie.” She grabs his forearm. He was about to keel over.
A crunching sound signals the arrival of the bus as it steers off the highway onto the gravel shoulder.
Armand jumps to his feet, waving wildly.
Sixteen
Lucy’s twin boys, Charlie and Mike, are planning to get their own place as soon as possible, the only setback being that neither has a job or savings. Mike says that students can apply for welfare. The boys can tell you exactly what their basement apartment will look like: a stack of vinyl records, old-school turntable, handful of clothes stuffed into cardboard boxes, mattresses on the floor — life reduced to its essentials. Maybe a high-def television. A decent set of speakers. Mike wants a dog, a Rottweiler or Doberman. Shame that pit bulls have been banned.
Lucy was in the kitchen preparing lunch for Mothers of Gifted Children when Mark wandered in, eyes bleary from a long shift guarding art. She was in the midst, recipe book cranked open, julienned vegetables everywhere.
“Pass the cumin seeds?” she said. “Top shelf.”
“Hmm?” Mark never heard what she said the first time.
“Cumin!” she snapped. Then she added, “Please.” She must make an effort.
Mark obeyed, or tried to, scrutinizing the row of spice jars, twisting them around so he could read the labels. Finally, he handed his wife the jar marked cumin.
“Uncle Philip will have touched ground by now,” he said, leaning against the fridge door so that she had to ask him to move. “Bunking into some seedy hotel to save money.”
This conversation took place a week ago.
“Probably,” agreed Lucy, mixing chili oil into the spices.
“Not such a bad life,” Mark continued. “Taking off for months at a time. We could do that.”
Lucy looked up. “How?”
Mark made a dismissive gesture toward the sprawl of dirty bowls and spatulas. “Just walk away. Take the boys with us, or leave them with my sister.”
“With Rosemary?” Lucy snorted.
“Why not?”
Wild Rosemary, whose own daughter waltzes in and out of rehab? The same Rosemary whose current boyfriend sports a three-inch knife scar on his cheek after a skirmish “inside”?
She knew that look on Mark’s face: wistful. He was missing who she used to be when they were younger. Well name that tune! She missed herself. She didn’t want to take off for months at a time like a pair of retirees. Her life was just beginning to get interesting. Last night her teacher, Goran, set his hand on her wrist and said in that smoky voice, “You are surprising me, Lucy. You are surprising yourself.”
She’d just played her entire program in the conservatory studio. When she was done, he stared at her, those almond eyes filled with actual tears.
Three hours of practising, wearing a visor in the dorm room because the overhead light hurts his eyes. Toby is still shivering, but he won’t give in to it, no