“If we go inland,” Nick said, “we don’t know where we’re going. We know what’s down the Mississippi. There are bound to be people there who can help us. If we go inland, we could wander around forever and never find anyone in better shape than we are.”
“The Mississippi’s full of rapids,” Jason said. “And we’d have to stick close to the bank because this pole won’t reach too far.”
Nick looked at the cattail in his fist. “I’ve got a daughter downstream, in Arkansas. I’d like to get to her.” Jason looked at him. “You’re not planning on going all the way in this boat, are you?”
“Well,” eating the cattail, “before we decide, maybe we should take stock of what we’ve got.”
“I’ve got a telescope,” Jason said. ” That’ll get us to Arkansas all right.” Nick gnawed on his cattail stalk as he began looking under hatch covers. “What’s this red thing?” he said, looking at the Astroscan.
“That’s my telescope.”
“Really? It’s funny looking.” He opened another hatch, pulled out a heavy metal box, and opened the lid. It was filled with fishing tackle.
“Well, there we go,” Nick said.
Jason looked at the tackle box in surprise. He hadn’t seen it there last night, not in the dark. “No fishing poles,” he said.
“Don’t need ’em. There’s spare line—we can just hang it over the end of the boat and troll.”
“Okay.” Jason felt annoyance creeping round his thoughts. Why was Nick messing around with his boat?
He should have found that stuff.
“So we catch a fish,” Jason said, “how we gonna cook it?”
“Maybe we’ll have sushi.”
“Gaah.” Jason made a face. He wished Nick would just sit down and let him pole. He had done fine before Nick came on board.
Nick grinned. “No, we shouldn’t eat freshwater fish raw. Not unless it’s a choice between that or starvation. We could get flukes that would eat our liver.”
“Get what?”
“Flukes. Little worms.”
“So we don’t get to eat raw fish,” Jason said. “It breaks my heart.” Nick opened more hatches. Water sloshed. “We can keep fish alive in these cages till we’re ready to eat them.”
Another hatch. “Batteries,” Nick mused. “Why batteries?”
“To start the motor? Run lights at night?” Jason wasn’t quite able to keep sarcasm out of his voice. Nick bent over, tracing the cables from the batteries. He looked under the boat’s front casting deck, then gave a grunt. He reached beneath the deck, grunted, pulled something from brackets. What lay in Nick’s hands looked like a little outboard, a tiny motor at one end, a propeller at the other. And an electric cord wrapped in a neat coil and tied.
Nick jumped up on the front deck, connected the motor to a bracket right on the bow. Plugged the cord into an ordinary electric socket sitting flush on the deck. Then turned a switch. There was a kind of a muffled thud, and Jason felt the motion of the boat change. It straightened its course and picked up speed.
“We’ve got a little electric motor, see,” Nick said. “It must be for trolling.” Jason let the pole hang from the end of his arm. “You mean we’ve had power all along?” he said.
“More or less. We shouldn’t use it too much, though, we don’t have any way of recharging the batteries.” Jason felt despair wrap around him like a black cloak. If he’d known the motor was there—if he’d just had the brains to search the boat until he’d found it—he could have got the boat moving last night and saved his mother. Or if he’d accepted any of old Mr. Regan’s offers to take him fishing, he would have known the motor was there, and he could have used it right away.
And his mother would be alive and they would be on their way back to Los Angeles and he wouldn’t be on this stupid boat with a stupid stranger.
“Shit!” he shouted. He raised his pole and threw it as far as he could. The water received it with a splash. Nick looked at him in surprise. “Something wrong?”
Jason threw himself onto one of the cockpit seats. “Nothing,” he said. He put his head in his hands. He was an idiot, he thought. A total fuckdroid. If he’d just known the motor was there… The boat made almost no noise as Nick edged it toward the floating pole. He shut off the electric motor as the pole bumped against the side, and then he reached for it, pulled it in, held the pole dripping in his hands.
“Maybe I’ll pole for a while,” he said. “That okay with you?”
“Sure.” Jason edged away to give him room.
Nick looked at him. “Would you rather go inland, Jason? Is that what you’d rather? Because I’ll go where you want—it’s your boat.” He sounded as if he grudged that fact.
“I don’t care,” Jason said.
“I think it’s safe enough on the big river now,” Nick went on. “We can use the electric motor to get out of trouble.”
“I don’t care,” Jason insisted. The river, he decided, was his fate. It had destroyed his whole existence; if it wanted to take his life as well, along with that of the stupid stranger, then it was welcome to do so. Jason moved forward, slouched in the shotgun seat. “I’m going to take a nap.” He closed his eyes and tried to get comfortable.
He could sense Nick hesitating, on the verge of saying something more, but then came the splash as the pole dipped, and a surge as the boat began to move. Water chimed at the bow. Then there was a series of frantic splashes as Nick tried to adjust the boat’s course, but the boat was traveling too fast for the pole to get a purchase on the bottom, so Nick had to wait for it to slow down before he could pole again.
Jason smiled to himself. The boat was heavy and awkward to move with a pole. It had taken him a long time to work out the proper procedure—give the boat a push, then let the pole hang over the stern and use it like a rudder to keep the boat on the right course until the boat began to run out of momentum. Jason saw no reason why he should instruct Nick in this procedure. Let him discover it on his own. More poling, more splashing. Shuddering and a grinding noise as the side scraped bark from a tree. And what’ll you do, Jason thought at Nick, when the pole gets stuck in the mud?
This had happened to Jason. Suddenly the pole stuck fast, but the boat kept moving out from under him, and as the adrenaline surged through his veins he had to make an instant decision whether to hang onto the pole, or stay in the boat. Fortunately he’d made the right decision and stayed with the boat instead of hanging above the flood atop the pole. And when he did that, when he let go of the pole, it had fallen and clattered into the boat on its own accord. And that’s what had happened every time since. Push, surge. Push, surge. Nick seemed to be getting the hang of it, and faster than Jason had. Insects whined about Jason’s ears. Go bite the cows, he told them mentally. Then he heard an alarmed cry from Nick. The boat swayed. There was a clatter as the pole bounced off the stern, and then muttered curses as Nick picked up the pole. Obviously the pole had got stuck in the mud, and Nick had been forced into the same split-second decision that Jason had faced earlier. Nick had chosen correctly. Jason didn’t know whether he was sorry about that or not. Strange kid, Nick thought. Alone on the river with a bass boat, a telescope, and an attitude. Nick watched Jason’s head slumped down on his chest. The boy was exhausted.
Mother dead and father in China. Nick didn’t know whether to believe it or not. But he wasn’t going to challenge the kid’s story—if it was true, if Jason had just lost his mother in the quake, then Nick wasn’t going to intrude on the kid’s feelings.