“Can we please rest?” asked Alexis, speaking for her husband, too. His pride kept him from admitting the difficulty that he was having with Robert’s frenzied pace. “We have to be close. I just need to rest. Please, Robert.”
Robert put his hand to his forehead to shade his eyes from the sunlight and looked to the west. The sun was getting lower in the sky and he wanted to get off the river while it was still daylight. “Okay, catch your breath and rest.” He turned to Kyle. “How’s your hand?”
Kyle made a fist with his right hand and held it up for Robert to see. “My hand is fine, couldn’t be better.”
“No, it’s not,” said Alexis. “I can see the expression on your face when you’re rowing. It hurts you, I can tell. You aren’t rowing straight either. Your raft is veering to the left. If your hand was fine that wouldn’t be happening.”
Kyle was looking down at his hand. He did not say anything. Robert understood the silence and was not going to challenge Kyle’s pride.
“We’re close. Let’s rest,” said Robert, with a sigh.
The river’s current took over and they meandered slowly with the river, occasionally steering to stay in its middle. They were floating toward the city’s downtown. They saw people now, dirty ragged-looking people, going to the water’s edge with buckets to fill. Some were sitting on the banks, trying to catch fish. They looked like starving refugees from a war, victims of a concentration camp. Not long ago, this would have been the scene from a charity’s television commercial for the starving people in a third-world country. The commercial would have pleaded for money to feed the hungry. Money was worthless now and everyone felt the pain of hunger. People were living in tents or tarps draped over lumber or large branches of driftwood. Others were huddled beneath the bridges that the threesome floated past. The city’s food supply was disappearing and the water had long since stopped flowing from the taps. There were campfires, and people were boiling river water to drink. They saw an old man who was sitting alone catch a fish from the riverbank. A group of hungry, desperate people beat him to death, and his fish was taken away. No one cared. His body was pushed into the river and the dark water closed silently around his corpse.
They passed by the large city’s downtown area without stopping, and then floated beyond and away from it. People gradually became fewer and fewer along the riverbank, and the tall buildings receded into the western horizon as they continued downstream.
The sun was low and the humidity was high. Shadows grew longer as Robert strained his eyes toward the distant horizon, looking for more landmarks that were familiar. He wiped the sweat from his forehead with a dirty shirt and placed the shirt on his head for cover from the setting sun. His eyes narrowed to slits when he saw the faint outline of twin bridges across the river in the distance. This is where they would exit the river and begin the walk home.
“I can see it. Stop rowing,” said Robert.
Kyle and Alexis stopped rowing and turned around in their rafts.
“Straight ahead.” Robert quickly lifted his hand and pointed forward.
“What are we looking for?” asked Kyle.
“Twin bridges. Concrete pillars in the water, and steel frames.”
“That’s it? We’re done with the river?” asked Alexis.
“That’s it,” replied Robert, in a relaxed tone. “I’ll go ahead of you. Look for a concrete boat ramp on the right, just after the second bridge. Get close and throw me a rope. I’ll pull you onto the ramp.”
“Then what?” asked Kyle.
“Get out and kiss the ground.”
Robert turned his back toward the setting sun and pulled hard on the oars. The gap between him and the others widened with each stroke into the water. When he was closer to the boat ramp, he removed his oars from the oarlocks and began to paddle for the riverbank on the right. There were large ragged chunks of limestone around the foundation of the bridges. Regardless, he hugged the right edge of the river, bouncing off the jagged boulders at the river’s edge. He used his paddle to hook some of the rocks and pull himself nearer to the concrete boat ramp by the last bridge. The current curved toward the ramp near the last pillar in Robert’s path. He pushed against the pillar with his oar, toward the ramp, and jumped into the shallow dirty water. His feet touched a submerged section of concrete. It was slippery from moss. The boat ramp went up at a gentle angle, to merge into the asphalt parking lot of a large roadside park. He took small steps in the water, tightly holding the raft by a short length of rope. When his legs cleared the water and he stepped onto dry concrete, he leapt forward, pulling his raft out of the water and securing it on dry ground.
He waved toward the others, and then cupped his hands to his mouth. “Bring it in tight. Get close to me and throw your rope.”
In quick succession, Kyle and Alexis paddled closer and threw their ropes to Robert. He pulled them to the ramp and the couple stepped from their rafts onto the concrete ramp, then onto dry land. Robert pulled their rafts completely out of the water and turned toward them. Kyle was on his knees in the green grass. He was bending over, kissing the ground.
“I wasn’t serious,” said Robert.
Kyle laughed and rolled to his back. Alexis knelt on the ground near her husband, smiling at his joy. He moved his arms and legs back and forth across the grass in unison, as if he was making a snow angel. She leaned closer to him, placing her head on his chest. She could hear his heartbeat. He lay motionless now, staring through the tree canopy above him at the remains of clear blue sky. The leaves moved gently in the breeze and the sound of the wind through the leaves was calming. He was remembering a summer day years ago when he first met Alexis. They went to a park for a picnic and when they were finished eating, they sat together on a blanket and watched the clear sapphire sky. That had been a perfect day in his memory. He remembered it welclass="underline" that was the day when he knew he was in love.
Robert walked toward them, casting a long shadow across their bodies, and gave them a gentle nudge with a dirty wet boot. “Don’t get too comfortable. There’s work to be done.”
Kyle sat partially up and rested on his elbows. Alexis turned toward Robert and shaded her eyes from the setting sun.
“C’mon, we made it. Just relax for a minute,” said Kyle.
Robert shook his head. “Not a good idea.” Robert pointed to the highway less than fifty yards behind him. “Drag the rafts back away from that road. We need to get them behind all these trees. We can use those bushes back there for cover.” Robert turned back around and stroked his beard as he looked across the terrain. “Just in case people are using this road, and I bet they are.”
They were at a roadside park near the bridge, with covered areas for picnics and playground equipment under large shade trees. The grass was tall now and the area was obviously not maintained any longer, and most likely never would be again. They pulled the rafts through the tall grass and the thicket of trees, away from the bridge, to get cover behind some bushes. They were standing on flat river-bottom land. The area around them was grassy with clumps of bushes. Surrounding the area was farmland. They stopped behind some large bushes and felt secure enough to start a campfire. Robert went through the thicket of trees and found one that had been cut into short logs with a chainsaw. He easily kicked the bark off the logs because they had been lying there for months, decaying. The job never had never been finished. He rolled three of the large stumps back to camp to sit on. They sat by the fire and prodded the glowing embers for entertainment. Robert was deep in thought.
“Hey, Robert, you’re too quiet,” said Kyle.