River Odyssey (13 page)

It was raining when I climbed onto the bridge. There was a sidewalk there and a metal fence to keep people from falling, or jumping, I supposed. As I ran up the sidewalk my lungs and throat were burning. I looked down to where I had left the bike. The police car was there, its lights flashing, and a policeman was looking up in my direction. And he saw me.

As I raced up the sidewalk, trying to gauge how far from shore I was at each step, I remembered what Ziegfried had said about jumping into water from a height. From a couple of hundred feet, he had said, hitting the surface of the water was like hitting concrete. If you could hold your body perfectly straight and enter like a needle, you might survive. But it was extremely unlikely. If you landed flat, you would break every bone in your body.

Well, I had no intention of jumping from such a height. I would climb over the fence, scale down one of the arches and jump from a reasonable height.

The rain picked up and so did the wind. When I reached over and dug my fingers into the wire mesh of the bridge fence, a strange thought ran through my head. Was this what my life had come to, a fugitive running from the law? Was this what I was now? No, I told myself. No. This was not who I was. This was not what I had become. This was just a nightmare. As soon as this was over and I had regained my submarine, I would sail straight out to sea. I would get off this river and never come back. I would live my life without ever meeting my father. So what? I could live with unfinished business. Who really cares about that?

Heights, I had learned, always look worse from above. From below, they’re not such a big deal. Even that morning, as we had passed beneath the bridge, I remembered looking up and admiring its size but didn’t imagine it was as high as it appeared now. As I climbed over the fence onto a metal girder, I found the height terrifying. And I found shimmying down the girder terrifying, because there was no railing there, and the metal was wet and slippery and the wind tugged at me. But there were police sirens on the bridge, coming from both directions. There was no going back now.

As I shimmied down, I looked hard for any sign of the sub. The height was dizzying. I felt sick. I was afraid of falling.

“Just get closer!” I told myself.

I reached a kind of landing and felt safer there. The wind was starting to howl. I couldn’t tell if the sirens were still wailing or not. No one would come down after me, I was certain about that, but they would call for rescue boats. I shimmied down farther. The height was not so terrifying now but it was still dangerous. Where was the sub? How long before it would pass beneath? I shimmied farther. Once, I almost lost my grip and it scared me to death. I fought back the urge to break down and cry. Instead, I turned and looked at the river and yelled at it with all my might:

“GIVE ME BACK MY SUBMARINE!”

I saw a shadow in the water below. I heard a man yell from a megaphone above. Taking a deep breath, I jumped.

I HIT THE WATER
so much harder than I expected. It was what I imagined being hit by a car would feel like. The force ripped the sneakers from my feet. It would leave me with bruises on my back and legs, but I would deal with that later.

When I rose to the surface I was dizzy and could hardly see straight. It was raining harder now and very windy. Visibility was still poor. Once again I found it impossible to swim in the current; it was so much work just to stay afloat. But where was the sub? I swung my head around and could hardly see the bridge through the rain. It loomed above me like a dark shadow; the river was pulling me away quickly. I tried to look downriver. If rescue boats were coming, I couldn’t see them. Surely they wouldn’t come so quickly? Where, I wondered desperately, was the sub? I had to find it, I just had to. But I couldn’t see anything. Everything was fuzzy. And then, something appeared above me. How was that possible? It looked like an angel. Was it an angel? Was this what Sheba’s dream had been about? I was so confused.

I wiped my eyes and looked up at the wings flapping above me. My heart glowed. It was Seaweed. Oh my heavens, how wonderful to see him! He must have jumped from the sub before the hatch shut. Here he was, hovering in the air above me. He must have been wondering what the heck I was doing.

“Seaweed! Show me where the sub is! Show me the sub!”

He continued to flap his wings and hover above me. I thought of something else.

“Go find Hollie, Seaweed! Find Hollie!”

He raised himself higher in the air and flew a short distance away. I watched him land and could tell by the way he was sitting on the river that he was actually standing on something. The hatch!

I could swim underwater better than on the surface because that’s what I had trained myself to do. I took a deep breath, went under and swam as hard as I could across the current. I swam and swam, came up for air and went back under. The water was too dark to see through but when I came up for air I caught sight of Seaweed and corrected my direction. In a few minutes my hand struck the hard shell of the hull. I was so happy I could have cried. I think I did actually.

The top of the portal was level with the surface of the river. It jutted up a few inches then went under again. I found a handle, pulled myself over and opened the hatch. Water spilled inside, down on top of Hollie, who was staring up and barking excitedly. He scrambled out of the way. Seaweed dropped out of the air, landed on the edge of the open hatch and peered inside, uncertain whether or not to go in.

“Biscuits, Seaweed!” I said anxiously. “Biscuits!”

He looked at me sideways, questioning my sincerity. I said it again, more confidently. “Biscuits!”

He dropped inside. I pulled myself in after him, with lots of water, sealed the hatch, rushed to the control panel and flipped the dive switch.

We went down to periscope depth. I picked up Hollie and hugged him. He was very excited but perfectly okay. I scanned the radar screen. Three small boats were rushing towards our area. They were coming to rescue the young man who had just jumped from the bridge. I wished I could have explained to them that I was okay, but didn’t want to expose the sub. Maybe when they didn’t find a body they would figure that I had swum to safety. Or maybe they would assume the river had claimed another victim. Not this time. I checked the depth, dove to fifty feet, engaged the batteries and headed downstream.

My only thought was to get away. This river was far too dangerous. I didn’t want to disappoint Sheba but maybe Marie was right. Maybe the whole river was cursed. Look at all the people who had died on it. Sheba wouldn’t want me to die trying to find my father.

But I was too tired to go anywhere yet. Being tired was exactly how I had made the worst mistakes. I couldn’t afford to make any more. So, I motored back to the police marina, snuck in under the barges to the very same spot, but didn’t raise the portal above the surface. If anyone started the engine on the tugboat, I knew I would hear it loud and clearly. I shut everything off, fed the crew and got ready for bed.

Hollie’s blanket was soaked. I wrung it out, hung it up and put my jacket down for him. I knew my jacket was the only thing that would substitute for his blanket because he was used to sleeping on it inside buildings. Seaweed was tired and went straight to sleep. I peeled off my wet clothes and examined my bruises. It felt like somebody had beaten me up. My leg was still sore from getting trapped in the wreck. The river was trying to kill me! Sheba’s last prediction was that something terrible would happen on our way, but that we would be okay. I thought it had already happened at Anticosti Island but this was worse. This was the worst thing that had ever happened to me. I was done with this river. It wasn’t worth it. Never before in my life had so many things gone wrong.

As I pulled on dry clothes and lay down on my cot, I heard Hollie paw my jacket into an acceptable shape. It took him a long time but he plopped down finally and sighed. Things could have turned out so differently, I knew, and I shivered in my bed just thinking about it. I felt grateful I was still alive. I felt grateful my crew was all right. Ever so slowly, I fell asleep.

We slept a long time and I had long, interesting dreams. In one dream there was an angel, but I couldn’t see her. I asked her if she was the angel of the river and she said yes. I asked her if I would ever see her. She said that I already knew who she was. I thought that was a strange answer and felt the strangeness of it still when I woke.

After tea and breakfast with the crew I started to feel better. With the lights on and all of us rested, everything seemed different again. The river was very dangerous, that was for sure. Many people had been killed by it, for hundreds of years. But I didn’t believe in the curse of the mummy. I still wasn’t sure if I believed in ghosts. I had been trapped by the old wreck because I had thrown the anchor without looking first. I had lost the sub in the river because I had abandoned it carelessly to save a cat. Those were mistakes in judgment, to tell the truth. Jacques Cartier had travelled up the river successfully. Why couldn’t I? Surely he had had difficult moments? Surely he must have felt discouraged at times? I read that he ran into storms in the mouth of the river and had to change course and seek shelter. He also fired a cannon to scare the local people when he was unsure of their intentions. He didn’t trust them. He must have felt afraid then, and yet he never gave up and never let the river beat him. He had used good judgment. As I drank my tea, peeled some oranges and studied the map, I decided not to let the river beat me either. I didn’t believe in curses and I just hated giving up.

The rescue boats had returned. I felt bad they had searched for me, although that was their job, and it
was
good practice. Rescuers had to practise to stay sharp. There would be no dredging of the river with a current of seven knots. There would be no point. There would be no extensive searching either. They would know that a body would wash up downstream. I bet there were places where bodies got caught in the shallows and the police knew just where to look for them. I read in Sheba’s book that Hindus in India would burn bodies instead of burying them, then put the ashes in the Ganges River, which they believed was a god, then let the river carry them away. But sometimes they couldn’t afford to burn the whole body and would just drop the charred remains into the water. And there were crocodiles in the Ganges. Yikes! I was glad there were no crocodiles in the St. Lawrence.

It was early dawn. Today there was no flaming sun. I waited for a freighter to pass by the front of the marina. She was sailing to Montreal, or perhaps to the Great Lakes through the St. Lawrence Seaway. Giving her a quarter-mile lead, I motored out at periscope depth and settled in her wake. How smart to follow a ship that had likely navigated the river a hundred times. Why hadn’t I thought of that before?

TWENTY-FOUR HOURS
to Montreal. We slipped in behind the freighter and stayed in her wake the whole way. I felt like a camel driver. Staying awake on a camel all day is a hard job. I learned that a year ago when we visited North Africa. So is following a freighter up a river. I made lots of tea, kept the radio on, and, after dark, sailed on the surface with the hatch open. But it was painful staying awake so long. Sailing up the river was the hardest thing I ever did.

Hollie was restless too. It had been two days since he was out for a run. He stood in the portal with me as we plowed upriver with lots of lights around. The sky had cleared and the stars were out. Hollie had an appreciation for the stars. He was quiet about it, but I could tell he felt an awe when he looked up and saw a sea of lights above us, because the stars were always more spectacular at sea, and, well, even on the river.

But things became complicated as we approached the city. Up to Trois-Rivières, about halfway, it was easy. Then, the river spread into a lake for twenty miles or so, Lac St. Pierre. That was easy too. But the far side of the lake shattered into fragments of a river, like ice breaking up, and, although the map showed the best way to go, I was glad that freighter was in front of us. As she disappeared between two narrow riverbanks, like a moose disappearing into the woods, I submerged to periscope depth, closed the distance between us to an eighth of a mile and followed her in.