The Gorge Read online

  “You said they were dead. They can’t catch us.”

  “But their buddies will be swarming before you know it.” He squinted at the sun, which was now clear of the horizon and slanting through the golden treetops. Light glinted off the river, liquid diamonds, kicking up foam like Schlitz from a shaken keg tap.

  “What will we do when we get there?”

  Ace didn’t know where “there” was, but he wasn’t for a second going to let on. “The river empties out onto a lake, and where there’s a lake, there’s rich people. We can steal a boat or hot-wire a car, head north.”

  “North where?”

  “Anywhere the heat’s off.”

  “Like Virginia?”

  Damned women, always asking too many questions. Always yammering. Couldn’t shut up and appreciate the fine music of the outdoors. Couldn’t appreciate silence. Didn’t want peace, and didn’t want any man around them to have it, either. It’s a miracle God didn’t make Eve choke on that apple when the serpent passed it on down to her.

  Eve was to blame. Original sin, eating of the tree of knowledge, the curse of reproduction. Got Adam drove out of the garden. Brought death to the world. Ace figured the serpent did a whole lot more to Eve than just feed her the piece of forbidden fruit. Knowing her, knowing all women, she most likely had the thing curled around her legs, moaning for joy while good old Adam was out tending to business.

  As if they hadn’t caused enough trouble, they wanted to take the choice of life or death into their own hands and out of God’s. Ace couldn’t understand why God would even create such a nasty creature in the first place. Come to think of it, give him a snake any day. The odds of being poisoned were a lot lower.

  “Maybe Virginia, for a start.” His feet burned, and he was sure he had a blister on his left big toe. Nothing rubbed raw like a damp sock. “Okay, let’s rest a minute.”

  They sat on a flat rock the size of a double bed. “The river’s gotten faster,” she said.

  “Deeper, too. Wish I had a pole.” He glanced upstream, where water squeezed between piled boulders like spit between crooked teeth. He grinned and nodded his head. Sometimes, you didn’t even have to offer up prayers to get them answered. Sometimes, God knew what you would ask for before you even thought of it yourself. “Fisherman’s fucking luck,” he said, giving Clara a smile more sinister than that of any reptile.

  Clara’s eyes followed his gaze. Two people were heading toward the boulders in a canoe, the sun dancing off their white helmets. They both furiously worked paddles, flailing arms protruding from thick orange vests. One of them shouted, but the rush of water swallowed the words. The canoe twisted sideways and they beat at the water with their paddles, trying to orient the watercraft.

  “They won’t make it past those boulders,” Clara said, as calm as a spectator at a golf match. She had her tennis shoes off and was rubbing her feet.

  “Damn right they won’t.” Ace retrieved the backpack and rummaged inside. He brought out the Python and let his shooting hand rest in his lap.

  “They’re trying to make shore.”

  “Yep.” The couple had lost control of the canoe, so it was a toss-up whether they would land on Ace’s and Clara’s side of the river. Though the current was swift, Ace was willing to ford the river if necessary. After all, God had sent along the canoe, and who was Ace to insult God by not taking advantage of opportunity?

  Their features were difficult to discern due to the distance and the soft morning haze that hung over the water. The couple wore goggles that masked their faces and combined with their slick helmets to give them the appearance of insects. The canoe hit a swell and dipped, tossing a thin geyser off the bow. The paddler in front pitched forward and the craft spun out of control, bouncing off a protruding boulder. The person in the rear dug a paddle against the rock and pushed off, propelling the canoe into a shallow, milder eddy. The one in front jumped overboard into knee-deep water and led the canoe toward shore.

  Toward Ace. Sometimes, God made things easy.

  “Get your stuff,” he said to Clara. “We got a boat to catch.”

  By the time the two people had wrestled the canoe onto dry land, Ace had nearly reached them. He hid behind the bleached bones of a fallen tree and tucked the gun in the back pocket of his camouflage pants, not wanting to scare the couple. They knelt, gasping and heaving, trying to catch their breaths, exhausted from their fight against the current. One of them peeled off goggles and shook her head, freeing damp and curly locks of brown hair.

  “Jesus, Pete,” she said. “Didn’t you see the fucking rock?”

  “I was port and you were starboard, remember?” said Pete. “You have to stroke on the opposite side of the direction you want to go.”

  New Joy-zee. Probably Jews to boot. Ace hated Yankees on general principles, not just because he’d been born in a slave state. He hated Jews because he was supposed to, though he never understood that part about Jesus being a Jew. How could you hate Jews but worship Jesus?

  As Ace watched from his hidden vantage point, Pete unsnapped the chin strap that held his helmet in place. The helmet fell away, revealing a balding head. Pete appeared to be about forty, pink-faced, with a longshoreman’s belly and a stock broker’s upper arms. His companion, probably a wife or girlfriend, was having none of his explanations, though Pete made perfect sense to Ace. The bitch slammed her paddle against the wet rocks.

  “Getting in touch with nature, my ass,” she said. “Why couldn’t we have done Atlantic City like I wanted? Fresh seafood, slot machines, gin and tonics, you could have gone fishing on the dock if you wanted to get wet.”

  “Please, Jenny,” Pete said. “We’re doing fine. Let’s just rest a minute.”

  The bitch called Jenny sat on a rock, removing her orange padded vest. She had nice tits. Used them to get her way more often than not, most likely. It’s a wonder Pete had talked her out of Atlantic City. “What now, Cap’n Ahab?” she said.

  “We’re only a mile from the falls. We can eat lunch there.”

  “We just started,” Jenny-bitch whined. “We’ll never get back to the car at this rate.”

  Ace felt sorry for poor old Pete. He hoped Jenny was good in the sack, at least. She had to have something going for her, besides the tits or else why would Pete put up with her? Except, for some guys, tits was reason enough.

  Ace would have probably backhanded the bitch by now. He glanced back at Clara, who was still busy gathering the clothes she’d put out on the rock to dry.

  “Mother Mary on a crutch,” Pete said. “Canoe’s dented. They’ll probably keep my deposit.”

  “Two hundred bucks. I could have stretched that into three days at the slots.”

  “There’s life outside New Jersey, you know.”

  Give her hell, Ace cheered silently. Let her know who’s boss. Woman was made slave to man. No shame in it. That’s just the way God set it up.

  “Like, this is life?” Jenny’s voice grew shrill, tits shaking in her excitement. “This is life? This is a backache and wet clothes and mosquitoes and we could have gotten killed out there while you played Ranger Rick with a three-inch dick.”

  She was pouring it on, and Pete didn’t have the balls to rise to the occasion. Pussy-whipped or worse. She probably had the biggest dick in this couple. Old Pete probably bent over for her.

  Pete looked at the canoe, which sported a bushel-sized dent near the bow. “You’re right, honeybunch. What do you want to do? Break for lunch? You can have a dry pair of socks if you want.”

  Ace’s blood pressure jumped. First, he’d felt bad for Pete, hooking up with such a bitch. But now he felt anger, because Pete was letting her walk all over him. Enough was fucking enough. He needed a boat, but even worse, he needed to show these people what was what.

  Ace stepped over the fallen tree. “Howdy, folks,” he said, trying to be polite, though his voice quivered just a little. Yankees expected Southerners to be polite.

  “Hey,” Pete
said, instantly wary. Jenny drew up, folding her arms across her chest.

  “Looks like you had a little trouble.”

  “Yeah.” Pete gave a weak attempt at a laugh. “Water’s up this morning.”

  Ace nodded. “Running hard, all right. Not usually so wild this time of year.”

  “We’re not from around here, you know.”

  “Never would have figured it.”

  Jenny-bitch was letting Pete do all the talking now, for probably the first time ever. Pete’s eyes shifted from side to side. “Are you canoeing it? Or kayaking?”

  “I flew in from heaven on the red-eye.”

  “Listen, are you going to mug us? This isn’t Central Park, and… ”

  Pete glanced at the backpacks strapped in the canoe, no doubt wondering if they contained any valuables that weren’t insured against theft. Ace smiled, letting his dark, chipped teeth make the answer.

  “We don’t have any money,” Jenny said, the bitchiness gone from her tone, now just another scared cunt as she edged over to hide behind Pete. “Honest. We’re on vacation.”

  Remember that, Petey, next time you’re giving it to her hard and dry and hurting. Remember she deserves it.

  “I don’t want no money,” Ace said. He was many things, but he was only a liar when necessary, and right now it wasn’t necessary. “What good is money out here in the sticks?”

  “Jesus,” said Jenny under her breath before shifting into what could only be a high-pitched mockery of Pete. “‘Appalachian Mountains,’ he says. ‘Get in touch with nature.’ Nature, my fanny. Like this is some dreamland. Like you don’t touch anything but yourself these days.”

  Pete defensively raised the paddle and aimed it toward Ace, playing hero, keyboard-honed muscles already straining. “We’re registered with the Park Service. They have my driver’s license.”

  Ace looked around, made a big show of a shrug. “Who needs a driver’s license out here? And I don’t see no Park Service.”

  “Look, we don’t want any trouble.”

  “Don’t matter what you want,” Ace said, enjoying this a little more than he thought he would. “Trouble found you anyway.”

  Clara came out of the thick hedge of underbrush that skirted the branch-cluttered shore. “Ace, what are you doing?”

  “These nice folks here said we could borrow their boat,” he said. “Once I explained to them about your sick aunt, o’ course, and how we had to get there before the hospital turned off the machines.”

  “I don’t have a sick aunt,” Clara said.

  Ace made another big shrug. He sure knew how to pick them. Well, between her and Jenny and a dozen other women, put them all together and maybe you’d get enough brains to do a three-piece jigsaw puzzle.

  Fuck it. Time’s a-wasting.

  He pulled out the Colt revolver.

  “Mother Mary,” Pete said, no longer pink-faced.

  “I knew it,” Jenny wailed. “He’s going to rape me.”

  “I don’t do nothing to a woman against her will,” Ace said. “Just ask my sweetheart.”

  “He won’t hurt you unless he has to,” Clara concurred.

  “You don’t have to,” Jenny said, a little too eagerly.

  “We just want the boat, okay?” Ace didn’t need any extra drama. He had plenty enough already. Jenny was Pete’s problem, and God grant him the strength to deal with it. “Our feet are tired and it’s a long way to the end of the river.”

  “But we’ll get lost,” Pete said, his Northern whine now in perfect pitch with Jenny’s, as if the two had been practicing together for years. “We don’t know the trails.”

  “You’ll learn ‘em.” He waved the revolver like a bank robber in a movie, the piece heavy in his hand. “Leave the paddles. You can take your backpacks.”

  “He’s not going to rape me,” Jenny said. Ace couldn’t tell whether she was relieved or disappointed. Maybe she had a little seed of submission in her, as God intended. She sounded like a woman who could be put in her place at the hands of the right man. With this Pete clown, fat fucking chance.

  The couple took their belongings out of the canoe, and Clara tied her backpack to the steel support bar that ran across the middle of the boat. “How do you work this thing?” Ace asked Pete, hefting the paddle and testing its weight.

  Pete was all too anxious to get Ace downriver. “Row on the opposite side of the boat from the direction you want to go. Say you wanted to go left, and hard. Then both of you will paddle on the right.”

  “You’re not going to shoot us, are you?” Jenny asked, still standing behind Pete, still Yankee, still ninety-nine-percent bitch.

  “They might identify us,” Clara said.

  “Mercy is as mercy does,” Ace said. “We’ll be long gone by the time they hike out of these woods and get back to the world. Let’s get this piece of shit in the water and make like ducks. Besides, the angels ought to take care of them.”

  Ace dragged the canoe to the edge of the river, keeping the Colt where the couple could see it. Not that he expected Pete to make a play, but he’d seen plenty of men screw up at the hands of a woman, and Jenny might be the type who got off on recklessness. As long as she didn’t risk nothing herself. And she wouldn’t. She was a woman. Some things were as sure as the sun of a new day and the eternal love of the Lord.

  The canoe sat a little askew in the water, probably because of the dent. Ace climbed in front, pushed against the sandy bottom with his paddle, and eased the canoe toward the white water.

  “Hey, wait for me,” Clara said, running after him, splashing to reach the boat and clamber into the back, nearly tipping it in the process. Ace grinned. He hadn’t considered leaving her behind at all. He’d forgotten all about her.

  Maybe I’m getting sentimental in my old age.

  “Thanks for the canoe,” Ace hollered at Pete and Jenny, the New Jersey couple who would probably sell the story of this encounter to some magazine. Make money so Jenny-bitch could spend it on games of chance.

  Then the current caught the boat and he found himself fighting it, the paddle jerking in his arms, the rocks approaching too fast. Clara wasn’t much help on her end, and the boat jerked and plunged in the water, threatening to spill them at any moment. They had gone a hundred feet backwards, squirting down a thin waterfall that splashed Ace’s neck and shoulders, before he finally got the hang of it and pointed the canoe downstream.

  His arms were noodles. But, Ace had to admit, the rush was decent, and riding the rapids sure beat the hell out of hoofing it.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Bowie saw immediately that his decision to group Farrengalli, Raintree, and Dove was a good one, though he didn’t like putting Dove at the Italian loudmouth’s mercy. She’d handled herself well so far, despite her moment of weakness in the predawn mist. But that had been his weakness, too. Doubly so, since he was the leader, and the best leaders knew when to deprive themselves for the good of the group.

  Bullshit. He couldn’t lead himself out of a paper bag, much less guide this bunch of losers to a healthy payday. Matter of fact, a paper bag fit just right, because Farrengalli’s flask had aroused a thirst he hadn’t felt in four years, not since he’d picked up a white chip at a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous and dropped the liquid amnesia he’d relied on in the aftermath of Connie’s death.

  While Raintree’s craft made good headway after launch, Bowie’s crew was flailing and flagging, already a couple of hundred feet behind. Bowie had mentally dubbed Raintree second in command, though not through any overt show of favoritism. Raintree had taken position in the rear of the craft upon launch. On big water, a pilot sat far above the waterline, just before midship. In white water, the paddler in rear had the most responsibility, using the paddle as a rudder to guide the vessel.

  They had been on the water less than an hour. Lane, sitting in front of Bowie, was left handed, and would have made a good complement to his two right-handed partners if he had more stamina. ProVentures
’ corporate ringer was clearly worn out from the previous day’s hike, and apparently a night’s sleep on the hard ground had done little to recharge his batteries. So much for his company’s sleeping bag with its space-age polymers and annoying name of “Hibern8.”

  Lane was what was known as a “lilly-dipper” in boating vernacular. Though Bowie and McKay were strong enough to compensate for Lane’s futile flailing, there would come a time when three oars would be needed. Ahead, Raintree’s raft skidded through a rooster tail, with the craft leaping up and hanging free of the water for a full two seconds before smacking back into the foaming rapids.

  “See that?” Lane shouted above the roar of the water. “Awesome.”

  “Hang on,” Bowie said. “Curler coming up river right.”

  While the first part of the run had been relatively calm, with rocky shorelines broken up by occasional sandbars, the channel now narrowed, with one side of the gorge marked by a thirty-foot granite wall and topped by desperate scrub pines. The right side of the river was pocked with large boulders, and Bowie wasn’t sure the raft would hold up against full-speed contact. A vicious slab of wet, sparkling stone, its edge like a hatchet, appeared off the starboard bow.

  Bowie’s warning of a curler had come too late to prepare. The current had accelerated over the last fifty feet, the water deceptive because the whitecaps had disappeared. Instead, the surface of the water was ribbed, as if preparing to bottom out like bathwater rushing down a drain. Bowie could sense the pull of the water drawing them toward some hidden threat ahead, either a hole or haystacks, a standing series of high waves. First, though, he had to fend off the blunt-edged shelf of rock. He thrust out his paddle and jammed it against the rock like a jousting lance, expecting the telescoping handle to shatter. Instead, the impact jarred his forearms and caused the raft to turn sideways.

  “Left, left, left,” Bowie shouted, thrusting his paddle off the port bow. Lane, who hadn’t had time to change sides, still worked the opposite side, but McKay hesitated, unsure of the proper reaction. By the time he stabbed his oar in the water, the boat had turned another ninety degrees and they faced upstream as the raft bucked and rubbed over a series of submerged stones.