Appalachian Galapagos (5 page)

Lukas turned and punched Jimmy hard in the shoulder. Jimmy glared wide-eyed and punched Lukas in the chest. Soon, the boys were wrestling in the bottom of the boat, water splashing and beers bobbing like apples in a commode. It wasn't until Frank kicked them for the second time that they finally stopped. By then, the boat was rocking dangerously and only the incredibly heavy water in the bottom had kept it from flipping.

Like a pair of wet earthworms, the boys disengaged themselves and crawled back onto the metal front seat they shared. Lukas wiped blood away from the corner of his mouth. Jimmy shot him a hurt look.

"What the fuck are you boys doing?" Frank yelled, pointing back upriver. "You trying to do what the Devil's Shoals couldn't? You swamp us and we are dead. And look at this!" He held up the two pieces of the remaining paddle they had left. "We don't even have a paddle and there is no way we are ever going to make it around Widow's Corner without being able to steer."

Frank hurled the pieces far into the wide eddying water and sat down hard, holding his head in his hands.

Jimmy sat up. "Sorry man, Lukas called me an asshole is all. He's my boy, and he should have my back when we argue with ya."

Frank jerked his head up and stared bleary eyed. "He should? You're the one who asked who was the asshole that had the idea to run the river, and if I remember it right, it was
you
. I should have never even come on this trip."

Although Frank's face was a study in the seriousness of life-threatening anger, laughter was waiting right behind his clenched teeth. He clenched them harder, afraid that if it escaped, it wouldn't stop until they dressed him up in a tailor-made straight jacket.

"What, you too good for us all of a sudden? Are you so high and mighty you can't associate with your friends?"

Jimmy was working himself up, but stalled as Lukas started to laugh. It began as a titter, worked its way quickly into giggling and ended in a beer-spewing guffaw.

"What the hell are you
laughin
' at?" Jimmy asked, staring incredulously at his friend who had surely gone off the deep end.

"It's just...It's just," Lukas took a swig of beer to calm himself. "I'm just
laughin
at Darwin, man."

Jimmy and Frank stared blankly at each other.

"Survival of the fittest?" asked Frank.

"No. No.
Them
awards," Lukas said. "Three Tennessee rednecks, up shit's creek, a case of beer and..."

"...no fucking paddles," said all three of them in broken harmony.

They chuckled dryly, their animosity forgotten.

"You know, I peed my pants back there," Jimmy said.

"Me too," Lukas said. "I haven't been that scared since old man Coleman threatened to feed me to
Vivi
."

"Both of you are sick. I can't believe you peed in your pants. And you wrestled in it too? Disgusting," Frank said, keeping his secret to himself. "Fucking disgusting."

It was a long moment before anyone spoke. Finally, it was three simple words from Jimmy that sent Frank's urine once again flowing down his leg.

"Shit. Widow's Corner."

Frank shuddered, memories racing through his suddenly clear mind. It was the Boy Scout canoe trip and everything had been fantastic until Widow's Corner. Three of the nine canoes had flipped among the dangerous moss-covered rocks and shooting rapids. All the boys had been recovered except Robbie and Teddy. The Scoutmaster had made camp near the still water below the rapids, and had dived under and around the creek with the Eagle Scouts in assistance, desperately searching for the two missing boys. It was midnight, when they had all collapsed around the fire, deaths upon their consciences. The younger scouts, Frank included, had all been terrified that night, most going to bed and crying themselves to sleep.

It was the next morning that they found Robbie. Even now Frank's vision of the basketball-sized bite that had been taken out of the boy's sternum was Technicolor clear. But Teddy had never been found.

The sound of the rapids was growing louder by the second. Even louder than the Devil's Shoals. Frank searched the bottom of the boat frantically, taking inventory. Floating in the water were about seventy full beers, a half roll of silver tape, a length of rope, pieces of cardboard from the twelve-pack holders, a miraculously unbroken Styrofoam cooler, and the ridiculous looking Bitch-Be-Quick Stick.

It was the latter that began the idea that just might save them. "What the hell are we gonna do?" Jimmy asked, already shouting over the sound of the rapids that were still a hundred yards ahead.

The
Hiawasee
was generally a fifty-yards-wide creek, winding languidly through the Tennessee hills. At Widow's Corner, however, it shrank to a maniacal fifteen-yard-wide, rock-riddled gushing mass of frothing water. And that was when the creek was normal. All the extra rain had succeeded in adding too much extra water to camouflage the rocks, making it insanely quick and land mine treacherous.

Yet, as the idea took full form in Frank's mind, he frantically began to draft an internal map of each and every turn within the dangerous maelstrom. The childhood memories that he had tried so hard to forget were the only thing standing between death and a happy ending.

That, and life lessons from too many
McGyver
reruns.

Frank reached forward and grabbed the Bitch-Be-Quick Stick and the Styrofoam cooler. He shouted his instructions, and after repeating himself several times, the others finally understood. It was a scant ten yards before they hit the rapids that all three were finally ready to meet the Widow.

They were secured and attached by the rope, each with a length tied around their waist and fixed to the crossbars of the boat. If one went over, the weight of the other two would at least keep him near the boat. If they all went over, they would stay together in a foamy death.

Lukas and Frank sat in the front, back to back with the metal seat in white-knuckled grips. They held their feet out to the sides in order to keep them away from rocks that would crumple the boat like a used beer can if given the chance. In the back
sat
Jimmy, smiling a big, sloppy smile.

They had no paddles, but they did have the Bitch-Be-Quick Stick, which Jimmy held like a goofy Italian boat driver. It was now their rudder, the cooler bound to the end of the stick with duct tape.

The front end of the boat dipping into the first seductive trough of the Widow's rapids was enough to make Frank wish he hadn't had so much beer. Bile rose halfway to his mouth and stayed there. His legs were poised ready to cushion the rocks and push them away. Never had he imagined himself in this position. He could be at a board meeting, trying to sell advertising for baby food or new tires.

That's what he was good at.

That's what he knew best.

The first jagged rock, like the chipped front tooth of the Widow herself, loomed large on his side as the boat picked up speed. He imagined it snapping at his leg and him coming back with a bloody stump. The water threatened to propel them directly into it and he closed his eyes and prayed. The current, at the last second, spun them away and he let his legs take the pressure, his boots pushing off hard.

Another rock, easily ten thousand pounds, waited for them on the right. The scrape of metal, as the boat slid along the side, was relieved by Lukas' girlish scream as he pushed off as well.

A sound intruded on the angry rushing of the rapids. It took a few seconds for Frank to recognize the strange noise as Jimmy singing at the top of his lungs. It was a few more seconds before he recognized the song and couldn't help but smile. It was
The Devil Went Down To Georgia
, by the Charlie Daniels Band, and the
Hiawasee
did indeed continue into Georgia. If they made it out of the rapids, they would be three miles from the border. Frank cocked his head and tried to pick up Jimmy's strains from amidst the torrent of angry water while he and Jimmy thrust aside the deadly rocks. They twisted and dipped along the roaring white water funnel and what he heard made him grin and gave him new energy to fight the Widow.

Frank took a second to glance back and saw Jimmy standing tall in the rear, the Bitch-Be-Quick Stick steady in his hand, looking like
Jonah
,
steady in the face of the whale. Frank spun back around and shoved with his feet, almost losing them as the boat hit another boulder. The front was dented in a three-foot arc, right where his feet had been resting on the edge seconds before.

It was funny how all three of them joined into the Chorus, getting the words just right. Frank's heart leapt with the imagined fiddle music, his blood singing a fearful accompaniment.

The creek slowed for a moment and Frank and Lukas exchanged smiles. They would have high-fived
,
but their hands intellectually refused to let go of the seat they both sat on. They turned back to the rapids just as Jimmy screamed. And Frank's mind crumbled.

Twenty yards ahead, a log was lodged broadside between two rocks.

The same rocks they had to pass through. Their screams and curses were lost as the boat hit the log and all three were propelled, first high into the air, and then deep into the roiling water. Frank bobbed once, but sank as his head hit the next rock.

Before he lost consciousness, he had enough mind to call the Widow a Bitch.

The Flume Zoom...Dead Alive...Black Sabbath...A Fat Sweet Ass...Kansas Cry-Fest...Mortality Knocks...Conan The Destroyer...Who Wants To Be A Millionaire

Frank came to knee deep in water. His elbows rested upon mossy submerged stones. A knot on the side of his head thrummed with the beating of his heart. He spit out a mixture of mud, blood and sand, relishing the awful taste, because it meant he was alive.

Jimmy lay on a large granite slab several feet away, his hairy stomach protruding through his ripped t-shirt, the Bitch-Be-Quick Stick still clutched in a bloody hand. As Frank watched, Jimmy opened one eye and peered around. He shifted and his weight carried him off the rock and into the water.

It took two tries before he was able to sit without slipping on the mossy surface.

"That was in-fuckin'-credible, man," Jimmy whispered. "Like a fuckin' Disney World water ride,
surfin
' along on waves of Budweiser foam."

Frank plopped down next to him. He rubbed his head and checked his hands for blood. He had been close enough to dying that he had stared Death in the eyes, laughed in his face, jumped down his throat, and been shot out his ass with supersonic force.

"That's one way of putting it, I suppose! I'd call it a near death experience myself!"

Jimmy managed to lift his head up slightly and stare at the creek and the way it roared by like a watery freight train, wind booming his mullet around his ears. Jimmy let his head sag as if he too knew how capricious the luck had been.

"Where's Lukas?" he asked.

"Fuck...the...Widow!" Lukas shouted from behind them.

Frank had to laugh when he saw that Lukas had collected about a dozen full cans of Budweiser from the wreckage of the boat and was busy looking for more in the bubbly foam of the still water eddies.

It was twenty minutes later, and a good hundred yards away from the angry noise of the Widow, where they finally sat, greedily wolfing down some beer. Their burps floated in the cool night air like carbonated sighs. They sat upon the forest floor as they drank, leaning back against a bed of ferns.

Frank took a long draw from his beer and grinned. "I can't believe you actually saved the beer, man. You risked your life for fucking beer. That's actually disturbing."

His fear had been replaced by friendship. He found it funny how his lifelong friends could inspire and chase away the demons. The warmth he felt, right here, right now, could never be duplicated.