manic in the group’s mood as the raft noodles midstream. They’ve been cooped up too long in small rooms. Marcus finally gets everyone singing sea shanties, and Toby reaches over the side to drag his hand in the current. The water is coated with fine pollen dust, luring dragonflies that dart and hover. Sun bathes his skin, ultraviolet rays be damned, and he feels the tension of the past few days exit his body.
Hiro adeptly steers his kayak around sandbars and rocks, marking the route ahead. Back in Japan he’s on a rowing team that gets up at the crack of dawn to practise.
Marcus, despite his extensive knowledge of shanties, turns out never to have set foot in a boat smaller than a car ferry. “Whoah, man, look sharp!” he shouts. “Rock to starboard side.”
“Port, actually,” Lucy corrects him.
“Will ya get your paddles out and work now?”
“I’m skipper,” Toby reminds him, though he didn’t notice the rocky patch and it’s the current that saves them from mishap as it loops around the boulder back into the deeper water.
Lucy points: is that a hawk soaring over the firs?
“No, dear, it’s a cormorant,” says Marcus, taking a snort of beer.
Armand reads aloud from his guidebook, translating from German. “Watch for the narrows. In early spring, high waters rage through the sudden narrowing of the gorge.” He points a finger upward. “Limestone walls heave as the river surges toward the sharp bend, transforming the placid river into a turbulent froth.” He twists so that he’s looking back at Lucy and Baldo. “You hear this, my friends?”
“No!” they chorus.
“A turbulent froth. But —” Armand peers at the page “— this danger disappears by midsummer when the run reverts to being a suitable family activity, ideal for novices and children.” He beams. “So, precious musicians, your search for glory is not in jeopardy, ja?”
Toby stashes his life jacket under his seat when it starts to bunch under his chin. He’s an ace swimmer, and these are hardly class three rapids. Klaus drove Felix and him to the Y every weekend for lessons and made sure they earned their badges.
Trace shoots ahead in her kayak, then paddles back to report on what’s in store, making fancy manoeuvres, switching direction on a dime. This time she waves her paddle and shouts mutely into the breeze.
“She is trying to warn us,” Armand cries, lifting up from his seat to see better. The raft shudders with the abrupt shift in ballast.
Hiro sets his paddle across the gunnels and makes a gesture with his hands, palms pushing together as if he were playing accordion.
“Channel narrows,” Lucy interprets. There’s a charge of excitement in her voice.
“Of course it does,” Armand says. “This is exactly what the guidebook explains.”
He starts to read aloud again until Toby barks, “Shut up.”
Trace is back-paddling. Her jaw works as she shouts, words lost in the freshening breeze. Behind her the hawk thing swoops over the treetops and disappears behind the cliff.
“What do you want us to do, boss?” Baldo asks in that laconic voice that always sounds as if he’s half asleep.
There is an odd silence, a reprieve, then suddenly everyone calls out in tandem, “Whoah,” as a calamity enters their field of vision.
The crew lifts out of their seats, hoisting paddles aloft as if fending off a monster. The banks of the gorge rise as the river jackknifes, the placid water now on the boil. Their raft careens toward the flank of bare rock while Lucy cries, “Hold tight!”
“Paddle backward!” someone yelps.
Toby stares in horror at the wall slamming toward them. Better to jump, he quickly decides, and catapults into the water while the raft shoots out from beneath him.
Cry of shock as his chest freezes. River the colour of brine.
Water is your element, Klaus used to say, but this isn’t the measured metres of the YMCA pool, and Toby feels his body suck deep into the murk. Any moment he’ll pop up like a cork. No one drowns at a guitar competition — the idea is halfway comic. Keep pulling at the water and its skin will break, but it’s taking a long time, so much longer than expected.
He’ll open the final program with the sonata, classic mood, very controlled and nimble. He can almost taste the audience’s attention as he can taste this brackish water. Not much air left in his lungs, last pocket dialled to empty.
Jasper will be so sad. He would say, “What kind of nitwit leaps into rapids without a lifejacket?”
The tug comes hard, a sharp pain. Toby is snagged by his hair, then he’s staring into a pink face under a ball cap.
“Got him!” Lucy cries, leaning over the rim of the raft, arms strained to the max. Toby feels himself tear through to open air, skimming across water while she heaves him onboard, a massive trout.
Back on the shore the kid who’s minding the shop keeps walking backward as if he expects the musicians to attack him. He’s talking a mile a minute, not that Toby is counting. He’s too freaking cold, clothes glued to his body, shoes squeaking out aquatic smells and weeds.
Daniel translates, “The Quebec government in conjunction with the local Indian band has built a dam upstream to control water levels.”
“Now he tells us,” Marcus says.
Another cascade of French, then the translation. “You did not listen.” Pause. “The upper river run is closed.” Daniel frowns. “There were three warning signs.” He looks up. “Anyone see those?”
Lucy creeps up behind Toby and puts her arms around him, and he jerks, as if to be touched were lethal. He’s so cold he could shatter.
“Put this on,” Lucy says, slipping out of her sweatshirt.
Toby pokes his chattering arms through the sleeves, then draws the garment over his head. For a second, as darkness closes in again, he panics.
He emerges to see the rest of the group clustered on the rocks, subdued after his misadventure.
Baldo flips a butt into the innocent-looking river. Marcus lies on his back, face baking in the sun. Trace swats flies. Where’s Hiro? Is anyone counting heads? There he is, tank top peeled off and hanging on a bush.
“You gave us one hell of a scare,” Lucy says.
Marcus lifts his head. “Why did you jump ship, son?”
“It was a lousy idea,” Toby agrees.
“I was ready to dive in after you,” Lucy says. She sounds breathless, as if she’d actually performed this heroic act.
Toby says quietly, “Thank you,” the words she is waiting to hear.
Trace steps across the rock and crouches next to him, runs her hands up and down his arms, chaffing them back to life. “What was it like going under?” she wants to
