When Pender’s body temperature normalized, they talked. The rain still pounded on the tent, and every so often a gust of wind flapped the rain fly, creating a noise as loud as thunder, reminding them that they were more lucky than safe, that nothing was over yet.
“Did you get a look around when we came up here?” Pender asked.
“Not a good one. I saw a lot of trees down.”
“I caught a pretty good view,” said Pender. “As far as I could see, every tree is down flat, like we’d been nuked or something. And they’re pointing sort of northeast. What force of nature causes that?”
“It’s a special kind of storm,” said Annette, trying to remember the name. “Derecho. That’s it, they call it a derecho. It’s a group of thunderstorms that merge and develop severe downdrafts. We had a downburst in the park in ninety-nine, but it was just a kilometer wide. It wreaked havoc on a few portage trails, but only a few people actually witnessed it.
“The old timers said a really big derecho came through the border region back in the seventies. It missed Atikokan, but I heard people talk about it.”
Pender thought about that for a minute. “This looked huge to me. I think we’re going to have a hell of a time getting out of the park.”
He found his day pack and pulled his map from it.
“So now you’re thinking of getting out of the park?”
Pender studied the map. “I don’t think many portage trails are going to be passable after this,” he said. “I think the next month or so in this park is going to be about clearing trails and campsites.”
Annette groaned. She realized how devastating it would be for the canoe outfitters, herself included. August was an important month in their trade. “That’s really going to hurt us,” she said.
“Maybe you can shift your canoe customers up to White Otter,” suggested Pender, referencing the vast White Otter Wilderness Area north of Atikokan. Like National Forests in the U.S., the White Otter Wilderness Area was mostly pristine land owned and regulated by the government of Ontario, which leased commercial rights to private vendors. It covered thousands of square miles of Canadian Shield terrain, including large and small lakes, twisting rivers, and endless miles of forests.
“That’s a thought,” said Annette. “And Canadian Shield Outfitters can try to switch some to their fly-in cabins or their lodge. We might be able to keep our cabins full, too. That would help.”
They huddled over Pender’s map, discussing exit strategies, anticipating difficult portages, evaluating take-out areas. They wanted a take-out with close access to the main highway, and one with a phone. The answer kept coming up, French Lake, even though it wasn’t the closest.
“For now, let’s just hope this tent hangs together and we don’t get washed away,” said Annette.
“You’re right. We’ve been lucky so far.”
They got quiet again. “Or maybe we haven’t been lucky,” said Pender. “What if our canoes got crushed?”
“We’d be okay with one canoe. If they’re both out of commission, we’ll have to raft out. That could take forever.”
“Well, we have lots of logs to choose from.”
Annette smiled. “I don’t know how much flotation fresh blowdowns have. Let’s hope at least one canoe made it through the storm.”
“I could go check.”
“Don’t bother. Whatever shape they’re in, they’ll be like that when the rain stops, too. No reason to get wet and cold again.”
“Might help our state of mind.”
“You worry too much, Pender. We’ll be fine. We have plenty of food, we’re strong, and we’re smart. Relax. Let’s take a nap. Maybe mess around a little?”
“All you Canadians think about is sex.”
The rain and wind tapered off in the midafternoon and stopped completely by 4 PM. They tumbled out of the tent, stiff and cold, and into an eerie wasteland. They walked through the downed timber and surveyed a scalped land covered by destruction and mayhem.
It was still and cool and eerily sunny. There was no wind, not even a breeze. It was as if the scariest storm Pender had ever seen never happened. Except for the devastation that surrounded them.
Annette brought her hands to her face in horror as she looked about. Not a single tree was left standing in the campsite. Most of the jack pines had been uprooted, their ropelike root tentacles stretching skyward from horizontal trunks. Some had snapped, their trunks still upright, their bodies missing, like soldiers brutalized by cannon fire. She could see root systems from spruce and pines in the distance, sad, dead sentinels overseeing a fallen army.
“Who needs a devil when you’ve got a God like this?” said Pender.
Annette hit him in the shoulder with a small fist. “Stop it. This is no joke. This is my world.”
He put his arms around her and murmured an apology.
“I didn’t mean it as a joke,” he said. “It’s how we dealt with death in Vietnam. Don’t let anything get to you. Be the meanest motherfucker in the valley.”
Annette didn’t respond to him, just surveyed the wasteland around them.
“Where did you put the canoes?” she asked, finally.
Pender slowly looked about the ruined hill, trying to find the boulder where he’d stashed the boats. It was draped in pine boughs. He walked to it, Annette following.
The ends of the canoes poked out from under a felled pine. Pender lifted the tree, and Annette pulled the canoes into a clear space. Miraculously, they were unharmed. Annette smiled at Pender, who exhaled with relief.
He looked down the slope. The small shelf where they came ashore was underwater. He scrambled down to see how deep the water cover was. He slid the last few feet, unable to stop until he was ankle-deep in water, standing on the shelf. He took a moment to scan the lake. It was already calm. It could be glassy by dinnertime, he thought. An island a half kilometer to the north looked ravaged, its heights mowed down to scrub and juvenile trees, some forest left on its lower reaches. It felt like they might be the last survivors of a world-ending calamity. Jesus.
Pender started to climb back up the slope when he sensed movement out on the lake. He looked south again. He saw a distant light flash, disappear, and then flash again. He could make out a dark spot on the water. A minute later, he could see it was a canoe. The flash was a paddle being lifted and lowered. It was headed toward him, Pender thought. As it inched closer, it looked like there was only one paddler. When it got still closer, he could make out two people in the boat. They weren’t moving very fast. The cadence of the paddle stopped for long counts, then started again. They might be in trouble.
Pender climbed the slope and got his canoe. “Might be some people in trouble out there!” he yelled to Annette. She was setting up a kitchen area. He hoisted the canoe on one shoulder, grabbed a paddle with the other hand, and made his way back down to the water. Annette got there as he boarded his canoe. She threw him a flotation vest and a ball of nylon cord.
“Give me a wave if you need help,” she said.
He nodded, pushed off, dug hard with the paddle. When he got close to the canoe, he could see the man in the bow was doing all the paddling and the guy in the stern was just trying to use his paddle as a keel to keep them straight. The guy in the bow was tired, paddling weakly, resting every six or eight strokes.
“Need help?” Pender yelled.
“Yes sir,” came the answer from the bow. The man’s shoulder slumped. “We gotta get to shore, get a tent up.”
Twenty feet away Pender knew that the canoeists were the fat boys, one of them hurt. When he reached them, Pender swung his canoe 180 degrees and stopped alongside them, both boats pointing north. The two canoeists were wet and cold, their lips getting blue, their fingers a pale white.
The man in the bow established eye contact with Pender. It was the one called Gus. The one with a bad leg.
“Jesus fucking Christ,” Gus muttered, shaking his head. “You just keep popping up.” In the stern, Bill mumbled a few obscenities through clenched jaws. He looked to be in a lot of pain.
“Karma, baby,” said Pender. “You guys want to come over for dinner or wait for a better offer?”
Gus pursed his lips. “Bill’s hurt. We’re out of food. Everything we have is wet. The hull’s cracked. We’re taking water. We’re pretty much fucked.”
“Can you make it another kilometer or so without bailing?” Pender couldn’t see the bottom of their canoe.
“We’ll be okay.” Gus was too tired to bail, too exhausted to mess with anything. They must have had a hell of a time in the storm, Pender thought.
He rigged a towline from their canoe to his. “We have an extra tent and plenty of food,” he said. “Paddle when you can, okay?” Gus nodded. Bill writhed in pain, holding a shoulder. He was shaking noticeably. Hypothermic or close to it, Pender thought. Gus was maintaining body temperature by paddling, but he wouldn’t be far behind Bill. The fat boys were in real trouble.
As Pender headed for the campsite, he could see Annette standing at the shoreline, watching them, Chaos splashing beside her. The fifteen minutes it took to get to her seemed like a lifetime. He was thinking of his own hypothermic episode. They’d have to get these guys in the tent, get them some dry clothes, and try to find some burnable wood. Get the other tent up. Figure out how to get through the night.
“Everyone okay?” Annette called as they neared shore. Chaos barked and jumped until she told him to stop.
“The guy in back is hurt and maybe hypothermic,” yelled Pender. “They need dry clothes and whatever. Take them from my gear bag.”
Annette grabbed the big canoe and held it so the men could get out. Gus gawked, surprised to see a woman in camp, and then stepped out. She positioned the canoe for Bill. “Can you get out yourself? Use me as a brace?” she asked.
Bill grunted. “I think so.” He placed a shaking hand on her shoulder and tried to stand while she held the canoe steady. Gus stepped over to help. Bill struggled out of the boat into a standing position on the submerged shelf. “Can you walk?” Annette asked Bill. He nodded. “Can you climb this slope?”
“I’ll try,” he gasped.
“Put your hand on my shoulder,” Annette said, positioning herself on his good side. She pointed to Gus. “You stay behind us and brace him.” Gus nodded. Annette crab-walked up the slope. Bill grunted and groaned with pain but stayed with her.
When they got to the tent, she opened the door. “You two get in there. Get your clothes off and toss them out here. You’ll find a towel and dry clothes in the green pack. Get dry, get dressed, and then get in those sleeping bags and cuddle. I mean it. Don’t wimp on me, gentlemen. It’s not love, it’s survival. Okay?”
They nodded and ducked in the tent.
Pender came up the slope with two packs, water streaming off them as he walked. “This stuff is in bad shape,” he said dropping them near the tent. He returned to the water to fetch the canoes and paddles.
When he returned, Annette was heating water on a gas stove.
“We need to get my tent up before dark,” she said.
Pender nodded. “Yeah. And we need to hang everything they’ve got to dry.” He had the nylon tow cord in hand, wanting to rig it as a clothesline, but there were no trees left to tie it to.
“We can just lay things on branches for tonight,” Annette instructed. “Shake the needles out now, and they’ll be pretty dry in an hour or so. But we can do that in the dark if need be.”
“If I round up some wood, think you can get a fire going?” Pender was thinking he wouldn’t even try if it was just him, but she was a magician with campfires and if she could get one started, it sure would help everyone’s spirits.
“See if you can find stuff that isn’t soaked,” she answered. “If we have enough dead wood that’s just wet and needles that are only a little damp, we can probably make something happen. But when I’m ready for your help on the tent, come running.”
Pender nodded again, moved off to look for wood, Chaos tagging along.
For the next hour, he combed over the peninsula collecting wood from long-dead trees, hacking branches from the underside of dead fall, looking for needles and twigs in small nooks and crannies protected from rain. He carried armfuls of fire material back to the campsite several times, helping Annette erect her tent on one of the stops, then dragged large branches and small trees back to the site to be cut up to campfire-sized lengths.
He hacked, sawed, or broke everything to size, stacked it on a foundation of logs and rocks to keep it above the wet ground, sorted into piles according to thickness like Annette had showed him.
Annette handed him a cup of hot cocoa and inspected the wood. “Good work,” she said. “You might be worth keeping after all.”
He grinned and sat on a log with a grunt. Annette had cleared a cooking area, leaving two blown-down trees in place, stripping the branches off them with a hatchet so they could be sat upon. The branches of the other downed trees were covered with the wet belongings of the fishermen—sleeping bags, clothing, and fishing gear. “How are our guests doing?” he asked.
“They’re going to be okay. The injured one is still getting dressed. His name is Bill. As long as he doesn’t get cold again, I think he’s okay on the hypothermia. We’ll take a look at that shoulder when he comes out. The other man is Gus. He’s the one you tried to cripple, in case you didn’t know. He’s fine. I’ve been pouring soup and hot drinks down them, and they say they’re feeling okay. They were heading for the Maligne when the storm hit. Didn’t see it until just short of too late. They saw our boats off in the distance when they made for shore. They got to land but couldn’t find much shelter. Tried to ride it out in rain gear. Bill got hurt by a falling tree, the same one that cracked their hull.”
Annette paused, shook her head.
“Sometimes you’re just snakebit,” said Pender.
“Gus thought Bill’s shoulder was broken, so they took off for the Maligne again when the winds started to taper off. Gus was having trouble handling the boat by himself, then the rains came and they started taking water. They got back to shore, waited out the rain, and then came looking for help. We were the only paddlers they saw on the lake before the storm.
“Oh yeah, and they’re out of food. Haven’t eaten all day.”
“Wow,” said Pender. “Just goes to show, huh? Those guys are very good. They know what they’re doing out here. Shows how lucky we were, right?”
“I guess,” Annette said. “But give us credit for reacting the right way when we saw the danger.”
They got quiet, lost in thought. Rustling came from the tent. The fishermen were coming out. Chaos ran joyously to greet them.
“They’re going to be ravenous,” Annette said.
“Why should they be different,” Pender answered. “I’m ready to eat Chaos.”
“We should probably hold our freeze-dried stuff for emergencies. I think we should at least try to catch some fish.”
“Okay,” said Pender. “You’re the guide. Any ideas?”
“The island due north of us has a deep drop-off on the south shore. Might pick up a pike or bass there. Another kilometer or two north of there is a river mouth. Might be walleye sitting in there waiting for baitfish. Definitely some northerns. Think you can take care of our guests without attacking them for an hour or so? I’ll go take a shot at some fish.”
“Very funny. You’d have a better chance of catching something if I paddled the boat, held it in position for you.”
“Maybe you’re right,” she said.
The fishermen approached, Chaos dancing at their feet, Bill wincing with every step. Pender nodded to both of them. They nodded back, avoiding eye contact. An awkward silence hung in the air as they gathered in a small space, Pender and Annette sitting on a log, Bill and Gus standing in front of them.
“Thanks for the clothes,” said Gus. His voice was much louder now, like when they faced off at the portage, the deep, husky macho voice of a football player, filled with energy and testosterone. “They might never fit you again.” He laughed a jock laugh and opened the baggy rain parka to show a T-shirt and fleece stretched to bursting by his girth, the shirt falling an inch or two short of his waistline.
Pender smiled. “I washed everything out yesterday, so you probably won’t get a disease.” The fishermen nodded, Bill wincing again.
“You better sit down,” said Pender, standing to offer his seat. Bill nodded and did so, groaning as the jolt from sitting set off nerves in his shoulder.
“Let me look at that,” said Annette. She stood and worked her hands around his shoulder, then under his jacket and shirt, asking him if this hurt or that hurt. After a few minutes she straightened up and stared at him, deep in thought. “You might have a broken collarbone. The best we can do right now is stabilize it. I’ll rig a sling and we can experiment with the best position for you.”
Annette stepped back to address all of them. “We need a plan for tonight. Pender and I were going to try catching some fish before dark.” She stopped abruptly. “Bill and Gus, this is Gabe Pender. Gabe, meet Bill and Gus, and try not to piss them off this time.”
After a round of self-conscious chuckles, Annette was all business again. She looked at Gus. “Do you fish as well as you paddle?”
“I’ve been fishing these waters for twenty years. Caught everything there is to catch. Even—”
“Okay, I’m sold,” Annette cut him off. “We need to work together. We might be in a survival situation here. It could be days before the portages are cleared, so we need to conserve our food.” She nodded to Gus. “You and Pender have fishing detail. I’ve told him where to fish. He’ll manage the boat. You cast. Fishing may be awful after the storm, but let’s give it a go.”
Gus and Bill stared at her.
“She’s lived here for about as long as you’ve been on the planet,” Pender explained. “She guides. She outfits. She’s our best chance of getting out of here. Don’t worry, she gives me all the scut work.”
“While you two are catching dinner, I’ll take care of Bill and get the fire ready. Okay?”
The three men nodded.
As Annette tended to Bill, Pender and Gus got ready to fish.
“How much do you weigh?” Pender asked.
“Two seventy,” said Gus. “Maybe less right now.”
“Okay. We can use my canoe. You’ll have to paddle and cast from a kneeling position. Can you do that for an hour?”
“Li’l fella, I can stand on my head and fart ‘Jingle Bells’ for an hour,” Gus said. “You just take care of your end of things.”
“Get your gear. You still have fishing gear, right? You didn’t lose it in the nasty storm, did you?” Pender gave Gus an eat-shit smile.
Minutes later, they pushed off from shore, two men in a solo canoe, each perched awkwardly on his knees in the small boat. It sat dangerously deep in the water. “I think we’re going to have to cut it off at fifty pounds of fish,” said Pender.
“Funny,” said Gus. “You’re a real funny guy for a little fella.”
“Just remember that I’m the little fella that chose not to kill you, Fat Man.”
“I think we both know that wouldn’t happen again. You wouldn’t have a chance in a rematch. Not a chance.”
“Don’t push your luck. We already have one guy to carry out. I’m not sure I can get two of you out of here.”
Their conversation was cut short by the twitchiness of the overloaded canoe. Every movement they made caused it to wobble. The canoe was also badly out of trim since Gus outweighed Pender by eighty pounds. But they were skilled canoeists, and they stabilized the vessel by keeping their body weight centered and paddling rapidly in perfect tandem, each man’s blade pull perfectly countering the other’s. They were sitting off the island in a few minutes. Pender explained Annette’s scouting report. Gus had rigged two poles, one with a chartreuse plastic grub, the other with a floating minnow crank bait.
He cast the plastic grub first, eight, ten times, without a hit. He reeled it in and reached for the other pole.
“You think anything’s going to hit a surface lure after this storm?” Pender asked.
“Probably not,” said Gus as he produced two lead weights from the soft-sided pack that held his tackle. “I like the action the floaters have in the water. When I want to get deep, I just add weight to the line.” He squeezed the weights onto the line a couple feet above the lure, then cast it toward the island. After a dozen casts with no action, they headed for the mouth of the river.
On his fourth cast, Gus got a fish. As he swung it into the boat, both of them exclaimed at once. It was a whitefish, a rare catch because they spend their summers at great depths in the deepest lakes.
“Storm must have turned the lake over,” said Gus as he cast again. Pender had been thinking the same thing. The only other time he had caught a whitefish in fifteen feet of water was after a storm that disrupted fishing patterns for a couple of days. Gus, however, was not deterred. He kept pitching the line out and retrieving it. Every six to ten casts, they’d move a little. It took an hour, but they added a couple of bass and a middling northern pike.
“We’re going to eat tonight,” said Gus with relish after they boated the pike. They stopped at a rocky point and skinned and filleted the fish. Gus tended to the whitefish and northern pike. They were difficult to fillet, but he prepared them with the smoothness of a sushi chef and then turned to watch Pender work on the bass.
“I know. I suck at this,” said Pender, feeling the attention. “But I have other strengths, such as dry clothes.”
Gus acknowledged the humor with a facial grimace and silence. They paddled briskly back to camp, Pender sending Gus up with the catch while he took care of the canoe.