Death of a River Guide (34 page)

The rain continues.

Heavy upon their tents, heavy upon the rainforest, heavy upon the surrounding mountains down which race the tributaries that fill the Franklin.

Just as night falls the despondent camp has a new and strange arrival: a tatty yellow rubber raft paddled by the bald dancer they met some days previous. He is very cold and has lost, in addition to his entire supply of food, something but not all of his previous arrogant distance. He is given the warmest spot by the fire and he is given a bowl of vegetable curry, complete with sweet potato, which for all its aggressive energy he accepts with gratitude. He tells them his story and it is this.

On the day following their previous meeting, the woman with the nose-flute had declared her undying affection for both men and her physical desire to be with the man with dreadlocks. Enraged and embittered - for it had been the bald man who had organised the entire river trip in the first place, and who had funded their plane fare from Sydney - enraged and embittered and plain jealous, a fact he now freely admitted, he decided the party would be best split into two groups. He then announced that one group would be him, the other them. He set off immediately, but the following day met with bad luck when his raft was overturned in a rapid and swept off downriver. He spent a miserable night in the rainforest without food or clothes or fire, covered only in manfern fronds, cursing the river and the woman and his best friend. The following day he had to come to a decision as to whether to wait for his two ex-friends, which, as he now admits, would probably have been the most sensible option, or whether to attempt to find the raft and catch up with Aljaz's party. Pride in his own capacities and his desire to take his leave of the others prevailed, and he set off scrub-bashing his way down the river. At about mid-afternoon (here, having lost his watch, he was imprecise on detail) he discovered his ruck-sack with his clothes and his sleeping bag washed up in an eddy. Heartened, he continued his walk the next day in the heavy rain, to finally find his raft snagged on some sticks on his side of the river. He fashioned a new paddle out of a tea-tree trunk, string, and his enamel plate and plastic bowl which had been in the rucksack, and thus curiously equipped had continued downriver hoping to catch up with Aljaz's group.

The bigger rapids he has been forced to navigate that day have left him terrified and humbled. He asks Aljaz if he can henceforth travel with his party. Aljaz and the Cockroach agree. His name, he says, is George, but the Cockroach immediately announces that for the rest of the trip he will be called Gaia Head, because it seems to fit him much better than George as a name. At which Gaia Head looks away and shrugs his shoulders. Having decided to take their food and their shelter and their knowledge of the river, he now has no choice but to take their name.

Gaia Head wonders why they had been so grave and quiet when he told them his story. Until Sheena (Why her? I wonder now. Why was it she who had the courage that had abandoned the Cockroach and me?) tells him what she knows of what has passed that day at the Churn.

‘Jeezus,' says Gaia Head. ‘It was only meant to be a fucken holiday.' And shakes his head, now stubbled with circles of black hair, as if iron filings have been thrown upon it, his mind the determining magnet.

By the next morning the river is slapping within half a metre of their lowest tent. The mood of the punters is depressed and frightened. The Cockroach tells them, because he must, what he had not told them or Gaia Head the night before, tells them exactly what happened down the cliff, and bursts into tears in the middle of it. Aljaz, ashamed, guilty, says nothing. The punters stop asking him their insistent questions, which are now all directed to the Cockroach, who is seen as the real trip leader.

The rain continues.

They break camp quickly, partly because they must clear the gorge before the flood waters rise any higher, partly because of the forlorn hope of finding Derek, or at least his body. Down the slimy boulders of the Coruscades they work, carrying bags, paddles and ammo boxes, like ants carrying crumbs to the nest, they scurry up and over the boulders that dwarf them. Racing before them are the Cockroach and Aljaz dragging and lifting and pulling the rafts. Aljaz feels himself possessed. Of a madness made up of guilt and anger and shame about what has passed. And the madness makes him feel powerful and invulnerable, because he no longer has cares or fears about himself. And he knows that the Cockroach feels the same. Their work has become the expression of their madness. They feel no pain as their lungs sear with their efforts of racing with heavy loads over the uneven gorge boulders; or, rather, they feel the pain but they want to feel it more, wish it to hurt so much that the pain might extinguish all the guilt and shame and anger they feel about Derek. And their work is a fury, because they are mad and because they are caught in a frenzy, because they must get through the gorge quickly as the river is rising and they must keep ahead of the flood peak. For the portage to work quickly the guides must take the rafts, food barrels and their own gear through in the time most punters take to carry just their gearbags to the bottom of the rapid. The Cockroach and Aljaz race back for the next load, exhorting and praising the red-faced punters as they stumble and fall with their small waterproof gearbags and solitary paddles. And the punters look at them and their own fear is amplified by their guides' madness, for what they had only dimly felt as a titillating apprehension they now know as a truth: the river is not benign, the river is dangerous, the river kills. And their own fear is amplified by their guides' new lack of fear, by the inhuman loads they carry and the speed at which they labour and the way they seem to have become as unpredictable and as insane as the river itself. ‘Good on ya, keep it up, let's keep her moving,' exhort the guides. But the punters only stare back in terror, at the guides and at the river. They move only because their fear of remaining is greater than their fear of moving.

Down the rapid they advance, then back into the rafts to shoot the bottom rapids of the Coruscades, Gaia Head's raft tied onto the gear frame, Gaia Head taking Derek's place in a big raft to shoot the big rapids, and although Aljaz partly wraps his raft on a rock, and takes in a lot of water, they keep moving on down the river. They take the easy chutes on the left-hand side of the next two rapids, paddle a few hundred metres then pull into the bank. Down the rocks on the left of the huge Thunderush rapid they advance, their teamwork now a sight to behold in the pouring rain, forming long human chains up and over the rain-darkened and slimy boulders, throwing bags and gear from one to the next. The podgy faces of the punters drip perspiration, though the gorge is chill, and they smack their tongues up beneath their noses, tasting their own moisture, still strong even though diluted by the rainwater running over them. They marvel at the fresh brine of their bodies, a taste unknown to them since childhood. Beneath their stinking wetsuits their pastry-coloured flesh bruises easily, like overripe fruit. Their feet hurt and their backs ache and the air rushes down their throats like a licking flame. Down the bank they race against the rising waters, and who knows who is going faster? Their wetsuits feel slippery with their sweat and though the day is cold the weather has long since ceased to worry them. They know only one thing: that they must get through the gorge before the flood peak reaches and overruns them. Their fear is all-encompassing. The gorge is death, and they want to put it behind them before it claims another one of their number. United in their fear and purpose they now talk little, and their exhilaration at their unity keeps their minds from falling off the tightrope into total fear. And racing back and forth between them, carrying ever greater loads, are their lifelines back to their real world: their gaudily clad guides. Exhorting, running, helping, running, praising, running. And searching, looking everywhere, in every eddy, around each partly submerged rock and every flooded bush, in the hope of finding Derek's body. And all the time it keeps on raining and the river continues to rise, its brown-foamed edges eating up the sides of the banks.

Occasionally the punters rest and look up from the rocks and see and hear and smell the massive moving force that is the river. In flood it is no longer the calm, serene, mild watercourse, little more than a creek, they had known until two days ago. It is an extraordinary physical presence that cannot be denied. The entire gorge seems to vibrate with the sound of its rapids. Its low hum is punctuated by the rumble of huge boulders being rolled along, clacking and cracking and groaning in their work of reshaping the riverbed, and by the clump of waterborne trees and logs colliding with low-lying riverbank trees, through which the flood waters now manoeuvre. The whole river is like a huge army on the march, overrunning the countryside, taking all before it, collecting ever greater strength from every dripping moss-lined rock face, from every overexcited stream. And the rafting party are like refugees, seeking to avoid its power, seeking to avoid its wrath and its moments of terrible violence; and their momentum, like that of refugees, is inexorably linked to that of the martial movement of the river. They look down at their next footstep, trying to reorient this cracking, roaring world with their own human scale, back to something they can comprehend and control.

And Aljaz wonders was one day camped on the bank enough respect? It was his fault. It was he who had failed to listen to the shushing of the bending tea-trees, to read the swirls in the river properly, to read the way they had snaked toward the bank at the campsite, to understand the ebbs and flows of the little boils out in the current. They had all tried to warn Aljaz and he, who knew their language, had ignored them.

At the bottom of the Thunderush portage they come to a very big rapid which they must shoot. Aljaz and the Cockroach sense that there can be no time for contemplation, or doubts will set in with the punters. And the river guides, in their madness, have no fear of the rapid as they rightly ought. They shout instructions over the roar as they methodically load the portaged gear back into the boats. They get in the boats and Aljaz talks the rapid through with his customers, pointing out the line he wishes to take through the mêlée of huge waves and surging white water. He spins the raft into the current and suddenly feels terribly small. He feels the force of the rapid pick the raft up and start to rush it down toward the big fall. The boat spins around too far and Aljaz is heading into the drop with the raft in the suicide position - sideways to the drop. ‘Hard left! Hard left!' he yells to his punters, but they are overwhelmed by the force of the water, by the sheer volume of noise, by the spray and waves confusing their senses. They no longer know where they are, whether or not they have shot the drop or are yet to go over it. Their strokes are out of time and ineffectual. Aljaz realises he has lost control of the raft. The punters realise that Aljaz has lost control and stop paddling, some screaming, all futilely turning their bodies sideways to the rapid, averting their faces from the huge waves as though this might save them. Aljaz puts in a massive reverse sweep with his paddle and manages to turn the boat a little around from its sideways position, just as they reach the lip of the fall. ‘
Fall into the centre!
' he screams. ‘
Fall in!
' he screams as he grabs Marco and throws him onto the floor of the raft and then throws himself over Marco and hangs on to the netting with his left hand. He feels the boat rear up near vertical as it falls over the drop, and looks up to see massive walls of white water crashing on every side, crashing down on their puny craft, to see one side of the raft again rear up almost vertical. His and Marco's bodies slide from one side of the raft to the other as the raft is rocked and buffeted and thrown hither and thither like a paper bag in a gale.

And then Aljaz realises that he is not flailing desperately in the rapid, not being sucked down deep into the river's entrails to then be suddenly tossed up to the surface just before his body is swept over another fall, realises they are through the drop and have not been flipped and that they are all still somehow, miraculously, in the raft and not swimming down the rapid. He sits back on the pontoon and sees that they are heading towards the rocks on the left. ‘Paddle!' he yells and he scruffs and pulls the punters in the back of the boat with all his might into a sitting position. ‘Paddle hard!' And then as they start to paddle he continues to shout just one word until they are all paddling in rhythm with his cry. ‘Hard! Hard! Hard!' The boat flops sideways into a small stopper and temporarily stalls its downward descent. The stopper is not big enough to flip the raft. Aljaz uses the moment and the stopper to help him turn the boat to the right.

As the raft exits from the stopper it slowly, ponderously begins to turn and then they are heading right and they are safe. Aljaz jumps to his feet. He looks from the rear of the raft back up at the enormous rapid they have just descended and throws a defiant fist in the air. ‘
Yes!
' he screams. ‘
Yes!
' And as he punches the air again and again he feels the excitement, the old excitement back, the feeling of being one with the rapid's power and the gorge's passion, the feeling of belonging and living. For a few brief moments everything else is forgotten, even Derek's death, in the wonder of their achievement. He turns around to face the punters and grins. ‘You dopey bastards -
look
.' And he waves his arm around behind his body to encompass the surging white immensity of the rapid that is their backdrop, against which their raft is a bobbing red speck. ‘That was you.' The punters are unbelieving. Aljaz's body feels as if it has exploded into the gorge. He feels every slap of water and bead of rain as a caress, feels the warmth blowing down from the rainforest on the back of his neck and the cold rising from the river as a massage of the senses, sees every detail of the gorge as if it has all come into focus from a previous blur, sees every hue of every colour, sees every droplet of the mist rising from the waterfall, distinguishes every sound of the rapid and the boat. He feels as if he is the rainforest and the river and the rapid. It as though time has stopped and he has been given infinity with which to explore and know every aspect, every detail of this wondrous moment. The punters do not move. ‘We are top of the wazza,' says Aljaz to them. ‘I love you. I love you all.' Aljaz replaces his grin with a brief solemn glance and puts his hand upon Marco's shoulder. ‘At this moment I even love Marco.' He knows he looks ridiculous, a soggy Napoleon thanking his troops. So he exaggerates his own absurdity by revelling in it, leaping about the raft, kissing them on their helmets in the manner of a possessed missionary anointing heads, laughing, screaming, ‘Yes!' repeatedly and, ‘Top of the bloody wazza!', occasionally throwing his fist in the air. ‘Yes! Yes! Yes!' Then he looks down at the punters and he sees in their faces only terror, only the knowledge that they might follow Derek. There is no ecstasy on their part. They are too frightened of what is to come to acknowledge what has been achieved. And the moment of oneness vanishes. Aljaz feels the weight of Derek's death fall back upon him, feels his fear rise up to meet it, feels his own failure again and again and again.