Jason looked at Bubba. “We need to try,” he said.
“Yes,” Arlette said. “There’s not much current.”
“Try,” Bubba snorted. Then he shrugged. “Okay. We try.” He looked up at the two crewmen. “Pass us a line,” he said.
One of the crewmen ran to the bows, pulled the dripping mooring line from the river. Bubba nudged the throttle, steered the boat to where the crewmen waited. “Look at that!” Bubba said, gesturing at the six-inch-thick hawser. “What are we going to hitch that to?”
Jason wrenched his head around to look at the little mooring cleats placed fore and aft on the bass boat. There was no way the hawser could pass around them.
“Tie it to my seat!” he said. “I’ll sit on the deck up front!”
“You’d just have your seat ripped out,” Bubba said.
“We’ll pass you a cable!” the crewman shouted.
He dangled a steel cable over the flat bows of the barge. Manon grabbed it, pulled, gave a surprised shout as the cable tried to rip the flesh from her hands. “Sorry!” the crewman said, removed his pair of leather gloves, and tossed them to Manon.
“There’s no way,” Bubba said. “Those little cleats will tear right off.”
“Use all of them!” Jason said. “I’ve seen how you tie barges together!” He moved over into the little jumpseat between him and Bubba. “You lash the cable onto the cleats. I’ll steer—I’m used to the boat.” Bubba gave Jason a dubious look, then jumped up and took the pair of gloves from Manon. The crewmen on the barge began feeding him cable. Jason wedged himself in behind the wheel of the bass boat. The seat and the side of the cockpit was in just the right position to put pressure on his wound, and a sudden sharp spasm made him draw in a shuddering breath.
He could hear the roaring of water ahead. He looked downstream and saw that more of the bend ahead had been opened as they’d come downstream. White mist rose between the trees. Bubba lashed the cable around all six of the boat’s cleats, the steel wire zigzagging over the casting platforms fore and aft of the cockpit. Manon and Arlette stepped clear as the cable passed beneath their feet. “I tell you one thing, man,” Bubba said. “One of these cleats tears free, this wire is going to cut us in half.” He looked at Jason. “All set, boy,” he said.
Ignoring the flare of pain, Jason looked over his shoulder at the bows of the barge that loomed behind them, took a gasping breath. “You guys ready!” he said.
“Go! Go!” one of the men screamed.
“God,” said Bubba. “I wish I had a smoke.”
Jason shifted the boat out of neutral, nudged the throttle forward. Retired and Gone Fishin’ began to move forward, then came to a sudden check as it reached the end of its tether. The engine took on a labored note as it began to feel the strain. Jason pushed the throttle forward, saw the cable tighten around the cleats. He was breathing in rapid pants, the oxygen fueling the adrenaline that snarled through his body. He could feel the boat vibrating at the end of the steel wire. He pushed the throttle forward again, slowly moving it as far forward as it would go.
The engine roared. The stern dug into the water, and the bow lifted, not because it was planing out of the water, but because the cable was holding the boat back. Jason turned the wheel, and somewhat to his surprise he found that he was swinging the bow of the barge upstream, toward safety. He straightened the wheel and the full weight of the barge came onto the cable. The stern dug in and the racing engine began to labor. Pungent engine exhaust drifted over the boat, stung Jason’s nostrils. He gasped for a breath of fresh air. Foam creamed aft of the boat, whipped to a froth by the racing propeller. Bubba, standing on the foredeck, began to dance a few nervous steps as he looked at the cable drawn taut over the deck.
Jason looked left and right, tried to judge his motion relative to the trees in the flood plain. “Are we moving?” he breathed. “Can you tell?”
Manon and Arlette peered at the cypress on the banks. Long minutes ticked by. The bass boat shivered and hummed as it strained at the end of its leash.
Manon turned to Jason, shook her head. “We’re still going downstream,” she said. “The current’s beating us!”
The current was slow, but it was remorseless, still stronger than the little outboard trying to tow the huge barge.
“Okay, then,” Jason said. “I’ll go across the current, not into it.” If he couldn’t get the barge upstream, he would try to drag the barge into the flood plain and moor it to a cypress.
He turned the wheel. Relieved of the weight of the barge, the boat jittered over the water like a junebug on the end of a string. Jason heard shouts behind him from the bargemen, who clearly thought he was abandoning the job.
“Tell them what I’m doing,” he said. He didn’t think his lungs were up to more shouting. Bubba bellowed at the bargemen through cupped hands. The boat shivered as weight came onto the cable again. The barge’s bows swung around. The Johnson outboard took on a throatier roar. Jason aimed forty-five degrees off the current, to bring the barge in to a landing on the tree-filled point short of the bend.
Bubba peered downstream, the wrinkles around his eyes deepening. “I think you got less’n a mile ’fore we hit that bend,” he said.
“You tell me,” Jason gasped. “You tell me if this is working.” He could see the trees moving past the bow of the bass boat faster now, as he was no longer fighting straight into the current. If the trees were getting any larger, they were doing so very slowly. The boat bucked and spat and juddered. “We’re moving!” Arlette shouted with a triumphant grin. “We’re getting there!”
Even over the sound of the screaming outboard Jason thought he heard a rushing sound, the water rolling over the falls. He looked to his right—working around his injuries involved a corkscrewing of his body that had him looking out from under his own right armpit—and he saw the trees on the point nearing.
“Come on, come on,” he muttered. He beat an urgent tattoo on the wheel with his palm. “Move move move.” Then he stopped speaking, because it hurt too much.
Manon and Arlette were suddenly dancing their delight, their cries dimmed by the roaring that now filled the air. Jason saw a willow float cross his bows only fifty feet away, its dangling leaves trailing in the water. Jason looked under his armpit again and saw that he was right on the point, that a pair of trees were going to cut along the length of the cable between the barge and the bass boat. He turned the wheel, felt the cable slack slightly as he aimed the boat into the trees. There was a sudden lurch as the cable went around a willow, and Jason spun the wheel to the right. The propeller began to chew up willow leaves. Bark peeled in tight curls from the tree as it took the weight of the barge. Jason throttled back as he circled the tree, wrapping the taut cable around 270 degrees of stout trunk. The cable draped across two more trees. Through the trees on the point, Jason saw the barge fall wide of the point, saw it hang in the current with white water just a few hundred feet beyond its stern. Yes! Jason punched a hand in the air, then winced with the pain. He leaned over the boat’s wheel and panted for breath.
The roaring sound increased, and a dark shadow crossed the sun. Jason’s heart gave a lurch as he saw that the roaring he’d heard over the straining outboard had not been falls or rapids downstream, but a helicopter circling overhead.
The helicopter was losing altitude now, the dawn light edging its rotor blades with silver as it dropped toward them, safely upstream of the point and its foliage. The river water was chopped into a froth by the downdraft as the helicopter hovered with its skids just a few feet above the surface. Jason blinked and narrowed his eyes against the furious gusts of wind. The helicopter was modest in size and olive green in color. Jason could see through the canopy to a helmeted figure inside, someone talking into a microphone. With modest surprise Jason realized the figure was a woman.