swimming

  He lost the shoe, clawed back to the bank and knew there was only one way to chase the raft.
  “I’ll have to swim.”
  But how far?
  It didn’t matter, he thought — Derek was down there somewhere. Brian had to catch him.
  He shook his head, took off his remaining shoe, and left it on the bank.
  He kept his pants on — they were not so heavy — and entered the river, pushed away from the bank until he was far enough out to start floating a bit.
  He kicked off the mud and began to swim. Within three strokes he knew how tired he was — his whole body felt weak and sore from the beating he’d taken in the rapids.
  But he could not stop. He worked along the edge, half swimming, half pushing along with his feet in the mud.
  Downriver.
  He had to catch the raft.

Chapter 22


  He became something other than himself that afternoon.
  When he began to swim — after he’d overcome the agony of starting and his muscles had loosened somewhat — he tried to think.
  The raft would move with the current, if it did not get hung up.
  Brian would also move with the current, plus he had the added speed of swimming, and he should gain rapidly.
  But when he rounded that first bend and did not see the raft, and cleared the next bend two hundred yards further on and did not see the raft, worry took him.
  He stopped at the side and stood as much as he could in the mud.
  It was nearly a quarter of a mile to the next bend and there was no raft.
  Every muscle in his body was on fire. He slipped back into the water and began swimming again, taking long, even strokes, kicking and pushing along the mud; pulling himself forward.
  Another bend, and another, always reaching, and always Brian’s eyes sought the still form, the thatched top of the raft.
  Nothing.
  The river seemed to have swallowed Derek. Altogether he rounded six shallow bends and still there was no raft, the stupid raft that had hung up on every bend when he was trying to steer it and now perversely held the center of the river somehow. There was nothing but the green wall along either side, the trees that grew higher and higher now that the rock hills were passed, until they nearly closed over the top of the river; the green wall that closed in and covered him as he slid along the water, wanting to scream, but pulling instead, always pulling, a stroke, then another stroke, until there was not a difference between him and the water, until his skin was the water and the water was him, until he was the river and he came to the raft.
  He nearly swam past it.

Chapter 23