Breakfast was pannkakor, Marnie’s specialty pancake. As kids, Quinn and Ruby used to compete over who could eat the most. Ruby always had something to prove. She wanted to outrun, outeat, and outwit her older cousin, Quinn. Now that he was in college, there was no contest. He was way ahead of her.
“I found the river stuff,” he said. “In the garage where Dad left it. Raft, oars, rubber bags, ammo boxes, almost everything.”
“Let’s go!” she cried.
“If Dad was here, no problem,” he said.
“That was my escape plan,” Ruby confessed. To vanish down a water-hole to nowhere and never be found.
“I thought escaping Zamora was your escape plan.”
“It won’t take long for them to find me here.”
“But you told your mom?”
“She wasn’t home when I left. I’m afraid to tell her now.”
“Kate is going to worry to death until you tell her.”
“The police are watching her now. They want to know if I’ve made contact.”
“What’s that mean?”
“I had to leave, Quinn. I didn’t have a choice.”
Tears welled in Ruby’s eyes.
“I shot a guy,” she said.
“You joking?”
“It was an accident but I think I killed him.”
“Like in self-defense?”
Quinn knew people who’d been shot, gunned down in the city. His cousin, Tommie, had died on the street. Marie, another cousin, was paralyzed from crossfire.
“He was coming after me.”
“That’s not murder,” Quinn said.
“After I shot him, I took his car. I went to my friend’s house. His mom came to the door. She told me August wasn’t home. She told me to get away. I wish I hadn’t told her anything. She’s a bitch, his mom. I wish I hadn’t left him a note. Whatever I said, she’ll use against me. I’ll go to jail for the rest of my life.”
“It should be okay,” Quinn said. “It was an accident. He was coming after you.”
“They put kids in jail for way less than what I did. I need to hide.”
“You’re here. You’re hiding.”
“They’ll say I shot him in cold blood.”
“It was self-defense.”
“I need to go on the river, Quinn. All the times your dad let you paddle, you can manage. If you won’t take me, I’ll go by myself.”
Quinn slipped down the bank and waded into shallow water. He shoved the loaded raft with Ruby into the Main Fork of the Salmon and holding the tow line, sprang over the side of the boat, mounted a seat at the stern, and lifted the wooden oars lodged in the oar-locks. As the raft began to edge toward the fast central current, it was clear that Quinn had to take control or they would succumb to the river: its currents and subcurrents, its cascades and rapids rolling toward the Salmon’s confluence with the Snake and Columbia and on to the Pacific. Rolling with powers measured in tens of thousands of cubic feet per second of water flow. Or by the height of its banks, the depth of its chasms, the inches of its descent, the tonnage of rocks crushed from boulder to sand. Or meted in the days it takes to row across the panhandle of Idaho. Or its mysterious sobriquet, River of No Return.
Quinn fumbled and the oars flapped until he found the syncopated motion forward back, forward back. He lifted and swung each oar in opposite directions, grinning happily. He had the hang of it. A feeling swelled in his body as if it were human instinct to navigate water in rafts, logs, canoes, barges, and boats. Back and forth, he rowed.
“You scared?” he shouted over the din of the river.
Ruby perched precariously on the forward thwart. Strapped behind her between the rowing platform and aft thwart were the black rubber, cube-shaped waterproof bags and watertight metal boxes filled with supplies. She shut her eyes and clutched the loops of hoopie that crisscrossed the raft. For the first time in days, she was overwhelmed by forces more frightening than crime and punishment. It was the dualistic force of water itself, the combination of yielding and forging, crushing and forgiving, moving inexorably toward its destination. However, as the rocking motion became familiar, her fingers unwound. Her eyes opened to the majesty of mountains, sky, and great trees along the shore. She smiled at Quinn with relief. They were launched.
A raft is required to have a permit on its bowline. It’s required to register its length of stay and the names of its passengers. It’s required to carry life jackets, a first-aid kit, a portable potty, extra oars, and paddles. The permits are issued in advance through a lottery system and regulate boat traffic on the Salmon.
With limited resources, Quinn had cobbled together the best equipment he could. The life jackets were top quality but the extra oar was a foot shorter than the match set. He used Ruby’s money to buy food, a water filter, a dozen carabineers, and two second-hand sleeping bags. His father’s old pump, rubber patch kit, World War II rocket and ammo boxes, bailing buckets, tent, and U.S. Geological Survey maps that described the Main rapid-by-rapid and mile-by-mile were still serviceable. Rain gear and woolen sweaters they purchased at a thrift store. The portable potty was improvised with a bucket and sealed lid. It was too late to secure a genuine permit so Quinn forged one and tied it to the bowline. He gathered supplies, chatted with professional guides about Class III rapids, and practiced rowing techniques in the river’s eddies.
When a special-delivery letter arrived from Marnie, he announced, “We’re going in the morning.”
Ruby’s resolve weakened. Raft, river, the two of them, it had the ring of disaster.
“The police are searching for you. A girl’s body was found in Zamora.”
“They think I’m dead?”
“Kidnapped or dead,” Quinn said.
Their eyes locked. Their futures were bound together, written in the blood of Ruby’s father and Quinn’s mother, the blood of ancestors transported as slaves from West Africa to Louisiana and their great-grandparents who migrated from Louisiana to California. Their lives were in each other’s keeping.