Louis Shalako
The
trail wound down, slippery in places, back and forth, left and right, down into
the ravine, and finally they came to the river. The underbrush was much
reduced, it was much more open between the trees, the result of plenty of feet
wandering around. They weren’t all fishermen, some would simply be sightseers.
It might be a nice place for a picnic. Some might be birdwatchers, or hunters
in season. The sky was there, the trees had opened up above the actual river,
and it was clear that people came there often enough, with the gleam of an old
wine bottle almost overgrown with long grass making its own point. The smell of
the conifers was making itself known, a revelation in itself on some level.
That air was very clean.
The rushing water drowned out all but the loudest of other noises, and they found themselves raising their voices to talk.
It would explain why the nephew hadn’t heard anything in particular, as the pair agreed.
“Well, we might as well have a look.” The water was going from left to right, and the land seemed to generally rise to the left.
“Hold on.” Hubert unlimbered the pack, pulling out a camera he had borrowed from the technical boys downstairs.
“Hey. That’s using your head.”
Muttering to himself, mostly, Hubert fiddled with it, and took a couple of shots, upstream and downstream, one across the river, one sort of down into the water…just to get the general impression. One final shot, back up the way they had come in, which was a kind of slot, with tall buttresses of gnarled rock rising up on either side, a few shrubs growing out of cracks in the rock, and that sticky, sloping muddy spot right at the bottom, where it had been LeBeaux’s turn to almost go down.
“Okay.” He put it away. “What’s next.”
LeBeaux picked left, and they began following the trail that way, with rocks and boulders sticking up out of the ground here and there. At that particular spot, the river was perhaps ten metres wide, studded with rocks, swirling currents, and barely a third of a metre deep. While an unconscious person could drown in a couple of centimetres of water, assuming they were face-down, it was difficult to see how a body wouldn’t get caught up, wedging itself between two boulders. There were places where the current was much less, and the water much shallower. There were exposed and sunken gravel beds and submerged logs, tiny water-weeds trailing in the current, with snags sticking up in places. You couldn’t really see down into the Seine, not very far and certainly not in any great detail. This was different, and the clarity of the water, shallow as it was, was astounding.
The water came down in foaming white cataracts, louder now, and the land on both sides of the narrowing channel was a few metres up from the water, forming a slot, picturesque but also daunting. A few metres upstream, a fallen tree, still half rooted, showed the hazard of falling in. It wouldn’t do to get caught under there.
“That would be sheer hell at high water.” How Hubert knew that was perhaps more instinctive than actual knowledge.
He could sort of visualize two or even three times as much water coming through that, and thinking it through, the water levels would rise and fall accordingly, all along its course. In late summer, the thing might drop off to little more than a babbling brook.
At high water, they might be up to their waists at this point.
“Well, we can climb, or we can break out the waders.” LeBeaux was non-committal.
“Let’s try the trail, first. I’d like to find one of these so-called pools. It’s a popular spot.” Hubert kicked at a rusted tin can just for emphasis.
He’d also noted the remains of a fire-pit, with the blackened ends of bits of wood and a ring of pale rocks, a heap of sodden ashes as much as anything. One or two little bits of paper, candy-wrappers most likely, and a few cigarette butts, none of them particularly fresh. The only thing missing so far would be the used condoms, as for that, it was only a matter of time, and perhaps looking a little further into the bushes. Somewhere around here, there would almost have to be a pair of sodden underpants, abandoned for any number of reasons, and those told a kind of story as well.
“Tell you what.” Hubert slid out of his pack and climbing gingerly in the boulders and the undergrowth, hung it on a broken branch sticking out of a tall pine or something like that.
Pulling out the camera, he slung it around his neck and strapped the bag closed again.
“What.”
He leaned the rod in there and now, without so much of a load, the way up looked much easier.
“I’ll tell you what. We’ll go a hundred, two hundred metres, just to get a look. No more.” He looked behind. “We’ll come back here and then work our way downstream a ways.”
Recalling the map, he pulled it out of an inner pocket and had another look.
“Hubert.”
“Yes, my young friend?”
“I think I’m in love.”
Hubert, taken by surprise, threw his head back and laughed, really laughed, for the first time in days. It was a kind of relief, offset by a sudden guilt at the thoughts of enjoying himself in the place where Gilles had died. The moment passed quickly.
He shook his head, tucking the map away.
“Now that, is just plain precious.”
Hopefully, that would shut him up for a while.
***
After thrashing around on the riverbank for a half an hour, forty-five minutes, they had determined that the river just got smaller and smaller as they went along, and with numerous side-creeks, gushing torrents, coming in from right and left, the ground got rougher and rougher in the going. At some point, it seemed to go straight up, and the terrain was near-impassible. Short stretches of trail visible on the other side of the river were just more of the same, and possibly worse. The roar of water was such, there almost had to be a waterfall up there, but they just couldn’t see it. They weren’t there to see waterfalls, and it would seem obvious that Maintenon’s body wouldn’t have gone upstream.
Finally, they had worked their way back down again, picking up Hubert’s pack along the way. Finding their original clearing, there was another man there, with a pole, and a little bag slung over a shoulder.
The fellow looked to be in his mid-thirties, healthy enough, ruddy in the complexion, with blue eyes, and clad in sturdy working-man’s clothing which probably came from the very same store in town. There were lures, flies, tucked into the hatband of a battered fedora hat, which was interesting.
“Are you catching any?” A natural enough question.
“Ah, no. No, not yet.” LeBeaux shrugged. “We were looking for a good spot.”
“Oh. Try a little further down.” The fellow unslung the bag, setting it down on a rock.
He began to unlimber the fishing rod, which was in two pieces…he looked around for a place to sit, but not before a quick nod.
“Good luck to you.”
“Thank you, and the same to you.”
They moseyed on down the river.
“There’s a trail going up the other side.”
Hubert pointed and LeBeaux had a look.
“So there is. Huh.” A little further on, there was another side trail, this time on their side of the river, which was indeed wider and deeper now. “Deer maybe—or people, maybe.”
 |
| "...so, are you catching any...?" |
LeBeaux nodded.
There was the sound of waterfalls back in the woods up there, perhaps a small one anyways, and the trail probably led up there. People loved waterfalls of any size and shape. There was no such thing as an ugly waterfall. Hubert didn’t mind them himself, in fact the place was sublime. He didn’t mind it at all, and at some point, just for the sake of appearances, they might as well cast a line and try their luck. It would be just their bad luck to catch an actual fish, although they could always put it back—the key thing there was to get the hook out without inflicting too much damage. He knew that much—
The river, far from straight, cut back and forth, left and right…always downhill, always looking for the path of least resistance.
“Well, I’m sort of getting it now.” Another ridge of rock rose up before them, with the narrow trail a zig-zag of bare clay, and yet the river had cut its own cleft. “Maybe this is where we get out the waders…and get into that water.”
The water was curiously flat, with eddies coming up and swirling around, with little currents turning around and going upstream, boulders visible at the surface and shadows deep in the depths. This water was darker, greener down at the bottom.
Hubert shook his head.
“That’s the first really deep pool we’ve seen. Let’s keep going—” There didn’t seem to be any dead bodies in there, but at least they could sort of recognize the possibility—the river was long, and the country was very rough indeed.
There didn’t seem to be too many fish in there either.
Some of the little side creeks and ravines were positively choked with boulders and dead logs, and jams of smaller debris. Something with just a trickle of water coming through the blockage was merely a scale model of something much bigger, on the main river and just around the next corner. He was starting to get it now.
He was no frontiersman, no woodsman, but now that he’d had a look—
They said the cliffs were near-vertical further down, and only a mountain goat could ever get down there.
Poor old Gilles might very well be caught under a logjam further down.
Merde.
END
Louis
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