controlled my breath to stay calm. Still dry from the waist up, I did not know how high the river would flood. I looked across at the big island sinking fast, itself severed from the quiet farm by a thickening vein of river. There was damp, thick grass clumped up on the bank and spreading out to the floodplain. I thought about my car at the foot of the bridge.
How far could I walk into the current? I waded straight upstream off the nose of the islet and realized how dangerous the river was. Fifteen feet in, the muddy warm water came over my stomach, and I beat it back to the little island to consider my options.
I could swim to the big island and cross to shore from there over the narrow cut. But I would not want to be swept into the rock canyon below, helpless in the unstoppable mass of rain that had fallen overnight. The bulge was now here. I looked at my fishing rod, which was useless. I could probably make the swim across.
Or I could wait it out. I looked at the trees on the islet. How high would the river rise? How could you know? How long would it take to crest? I envisioned myself climbing up the stoutest and highest of trees and getting into a bower and waiting. Waiting as the afternoon lasted, and then, who knows? I’d be hanging on to a limb all night, in the dark, the water rippling at my fingertips. It wasn’t a comforting thought. Better to swim for it. My heart was banging, and again I had to expel air to quell the panic. I lasted 12 or 15 minutes, going from side to side on the little island until I couldn’t stand it. There was a limit to the time for thinking, and I couldn’t wait it out any longer. I had to do something.
Breathing rapidly, I walked upstream into the water up to my waist. To the left, the big island seemed to have disappeared into the bend of the river. I went on against the stream, holding up my rod. As the water rose to my armpits, I felt my boots lighten, and then I went weightless, the coursing river taking me. I dog-paddled toward the shore. My breath was short and tight, but I kept going and didn’t think about anything. The current floated me, and my leg struck something solid. I tilted. The water dragged my side and ground my hip into the submerged head of the big island. I let go of the rod and it disappeared; then my head and chest bobbed up, and I gasped for air. I tried to stand up but the water was to my chest, and the force was so great that it knocked me down. I lay horizontal in the water and began to swim. I got my breathing under control and went with the current and shot into the deep cut between the side of the big island and the farm, angling my body toward the shore. Sweeping past clumps of grass, I reached up and grabbed one, and my body swung below. I had purchase. Panting and slipping, I pulled myself up, clothes heavy with river water and then draining onto somebody’s farm. I squatted for a minute on the soft bank, then got up and started walking down along the river on the peaceful, shiny, dewy field of grass, my left leg scraped and tingling. It had worked, though.
I rounded the bend, and downstream in the canyon at the cliff, the river roiled into a hump of boulders. It snaked through a churning suction clogged by the base of a tree trunk, cross strewn with another tree and jammed with wildly thrashing branches, bundles of tan reeds stuffed into the gaps. The brown water spat up white froth around the throat and formed a cable of sinewy bulges. Beyond that, it smashed up against the brazen wall of the cliff and flooded to the top of 35-foot arches under the stone bridge where, only a few hours earlier, I’d waded in ankle deep.
James Wu learned to fish and write in West Virginia and now practices both in and around New York City. He is currently at work on a novel about poaching.
