Is That All You Got?

It had sounded like fun, but that’s how Chris described everything when he enlisted us for another adventure. What he meant, of course, was a lot like fun ― only different. Fun was far from my thoughts on that day in 2002, with the wind howling on the Battenkill River, threatening to pluck our canoes from the water and smash them against boulders the retreating glaciers had so carelessly left in their wake. I’m not ashamed to tell you, I was scared. He’d done it again. How did Chris talk me into these things?

Five of us paddled furiously against the wind, attempting to pierce the choppy waves of the boiling river. We aimed two canoes and a kayak toward shore, but the storm repelled our efforts, playing with our battle-scarred vessels, cupping us in one hand and dropping us into the other. A surge of water pushed us laterally in the irregular troughs. If we breached, we’d be screwed. Chris was in the stern of one canoe, or as he would have corrected me, “Jeeesus, Jack, it’s the back,” ruddering his paddle deep in the sawtooth waters while Wally, in the bow (front), pulled for shore. The Geek and I struggled to stay afloat, yelling over the wind that sounded like a freight train whooshing past. Chris laughed ― I braced for catastrophe.

He yelled at Caz paddling in his kayak, “Caz, what the fuck are you doing?”

Caz was doing it all wrong. Of course he was. I suppose in Chris’s mind none of us got it right very often, but somehow we had all made it to this point, queued up as human sacrifices to the wind and river gods.

“Geek, this thing is going to flip!” I hollered, envisioning myself bobbing in the river like a sodden cork, sliding beneath the surface, smashing my head against algae-covered rocks, and guzzling a mouthful of the Battenkill. Drowning. I hate when that happens.

“The bridge! Get under the bridge!” I pleaded with the Geek.

“I know! I’m trying!”

Despite Caz doing it all wrong, he’d gained on us. Maybe it was the Geek and I who were doing it all wrong. We crashed through the waves toward the small bridge fifty yards downriver. As we got closer, the bridge acted like a funnel, channeling the fierce winds toward us. I yelled to the Geek, but the wind snatched my words and hurled them in the river. I imagined our campsite a few miles downstream; gear tossed helter-skelter and tents hanging from the trees like shredded kites.

We banged into the bridge footer, and I sunk my fingernails into the eroding concrete like a grappling hook. Extending an arm, I prepared to come alongside Chris and Wally, but the river had other ideas, spinning us out of control like a 1976 AMC Pacer on an icy Western New York road. We collided into their canoe, an angry fist slamming into an empty 55 gallon drum. As we tipped, inches from submerging below the roiling waters, Chris clamped onto our canoe with his gnarled claw of a hand, righting it.

“Wally, pull forward. Fuck the paddle,” yelled Chris.

Caz came alongside us and like a flotilla of hinged percussion instruments we clanged to the off-beat in the turgid river, shivering in temperatures that had dropped twenty degrees in ten minutes. In the distance, jagged lightning stabbed the mountains, followed by muffled thunder.

“Did you see that?” I yelled.

No one answered. And then it started. The rain, like pins pricking our skin.

“I’m getting out. I don’t want to get fucking electrocuted in a canoe.” I stood up. The canoe rose in the waves as if a giant hand pushed the bow from beneath. And the wind, sensing my vulnerability, shoved me hard, sending me sprawling. I smashed my elbow against the thwart behind my seat. “Fuck!” I knelt in the canoe with one hand on the gunwale and the other hanging in front of my face, a ridiculously poor shield from the raindrops pummeling my face and bare chest. The torrent came at us sideways, thrown at us, rather than raining down from above.

“Wally, put your paddle against that rock. Geek, grab that. Not that. That! Caz, are you getting out or what?” Chris barked commands like a drill sergeant. We followed his directions; what did we have to lose? It’s not like Chris ever suggested something that would cause us bodily harm. Sure.

Overhead, the sky dripped with dark clouds, and the wind continued its tuneless caterwauling. I looked to the heavens, knowing I wouldn’t see a wicked witch pedaling a bike with a wicker basket on the back as spinning houses crashed to earth. That’s movie stuff. Still, I looked again just to make sure nothing was coming at us.

Chris and the Geek pulled our canoe from the water, flipping it upside down. The paddles, our beer, and my backpack dumped onto the inclined riverbank.

“The beer! Jack, grab the beer!” Chris yelled like his wallet was about to slide through a sewer grate. “And the paddles.”

Shivering in the numbing wind, I grabbed the paddles while rain sheeted across my glasses rendering them useless.

“The beer, Jack! Grab the fucking beer!”

Yeah, Chris. I know. I get it. I’ll grab the beer.

We huddled together on the banks of the Battenkill, shirtless, arms across our chests, losing our core heat to the wind gods, freezing our asses off.

Chris loved it. He stood, arms spread wide, smiling, daring the gods to have their way with him. “Is that all you got?!” he hollered.

The wind dug deeper, exhaling a furious burst. Chris wavered slightly, still smiling, his feet firmly planted. And he challenged them one more time, “Is that all you got?!”

The gods tried their best to defeat us, but failed. Chris laughed. We all laughed.

The next day we read in the local paper: “TORNADO TOUCHES DOWN IN BATTENKILL RIVER NEAR CENTER FALLS.”