The River Read Online Free PDF

was like and I pretty much failed it. They always have tents and repellent and gear with them. You know, to take the edge off.” He laughed softly. “I’ll change that the next time we have a meeting. It was wrong. Psychologically wrong. You were right to leave all that in the plane—absolutely right.”
    Later, when everything changed and he did not think there was hope, that statement was all that kept Brian going.

7
    T he rain came about eleven.
    Derek had time for one quick joke.
    “You said it would be six and a half hours—it’s almost seven.”
    Then it hit them and there was nothing but water. The clouds had come quickly, covering the stars and moon in what seemed like minutes and then just opened up and dropped everything on them.
    It wasn’t just a rain. It was a roaring, ripping downpour of water that almost drove them into the ground.
    They had moved back into the lean-to to try to get some rest since the mosquitoes partially lessened, but the temporary roof did nothing, absolutely nothing, to slow the water.
    They were immediately soaked, then more soaked, sloppy with water.
    They tried moving beneath some overhanging thick willows and birch near the edge of the lake, but the trees also did nothing to slow the downpour and finally they just sat, huddled beneath the willows, and took it.
    I have, Brian thought, always been wet.
    Always.
    Even my soul is wet.
    He felt the water running down his back. He judged it to be about the same rate as the faucet in his kitchen sink at home and that made him think of his mother.
    Sitting at the table, the dining room table.
    With a roof. He’d forgotten how nice a roof could be.
    “This is crazy,” he said aloud to Derek next to him, but the rain took the words away and he leaned against a birch and closed his eyes and, finally, took it.
    I’m here,
he thought,
to show Derek how I did it, how this can be done, for other people, and right now there is nothing to do but take it.
    And somehow the night passed.
    Close to dawn the rain stopped and there was a softness after the rain, almost a warmth, and that brought the mosquitoes back for one more run. By the time the sun came up, full up over the lake and brought them warmth, Brian felt like he’d been hit by a truck while playing in a puddle.
    He ached all over, and when he turned to see Derek—leaned back against a tree sideways, curled into a ball with his jacket still over his head—Brian laughed.
    The sound awakened Derek, who was not really asleep, and he looked out of the jacket. “What’s so funny?”
    Brian shook his head. “I guess it’s not funny, but you look so miserable—”
    “You ought to see yourself.” Derek grinned. “Kind of like a drowned rat.”
    “That’s about how I feel.”
    They stood, and Brian moved down to the shore of the lake. He stripped his clothes down to his shorts and wrung them out and hung them on some branches to dry.
    This day,
he thought,
this day we must find shelter and a fire stone and get a fire going and some food.
    Hunger was already there.
    Not the kind that would come later, the cutting kind he remembered so well and that still made his mouth water when he walked past a grocery store or fast-food place.
    But it was there.
    “We have a problem,” Derek said suddenly. He had moved down to the lake shore as well and had stripped down to hang his clothes to dry.
    “That’s for sure,” Brian said. “We’ve definitely got a problem.”
    “No. Not what we’re doing here. I mean, we have a problem with you.”
    “What do you mean?”
    “You’re so . . . so quiet. I mean, I see you looking at things and thinking, but I don’t know what you’re thinking about or what you’re working out. I have to know all this to write about it, to tell people what to do.”
    Brian nodded. “I understand. It’s just that the last time I did this I was alone.”
    I would have killed, Brian thought suddenly, for someone to talk to, someone to share it with,