A Turkey In Each Hand    

By TAD BARTIMUS

"John, I'm in the river."

The sky is a mottled gray, with patches of robin's egg blue on the horizon, black boiling clouds nearby. The water is the color of slate with a hint of rust on boulders and moss rocks deceptively close to the surface. The current is swift, even in high summer, and there are deep pools where I know fat, opportunistic brown trout laze, waiting for food to float by.

The water is cold. Very cold. That is the first sensation I have, right before my first conscious thought: this is going to be bad if I don't get out soon. In the next millisecond I remember to keep my head up, fight to turn around. Face downstream. Relax. Stop flailing. Keep my feet out in front, try to sit up But my legs, even on land, don't work well. 

As the litany of survival in big water floods my brain I am grabbing at the bank with my bad hand, the one with the two fingers that don't feel. There's nothing to hold onto. Not a willow, not a weed. Just river rocks and more river rocks, falling in as I did when my left leg went out from under me and the island's undercut bank gave way. 

I didn't so much as fall in as slide in, gracefully, without a fight. I knew I was going down even as I leaned backwards in denial, which made the bruises on my spine and elbows more uniform.

"John, I'm in the river."

Later, I realized I'd never called him John. He's always been Johnny. Johnny France, the cowboy-bronc rider-river rafter-fisherman extraordinaire who taught me to "cast with authority" and not say "damn" when a fish with an IQ of eight made off with my favorite fly. 

"'Damn' never accomplished anything," said the man who always calls women "ma'am," likes his whiskey neat and his horses wild.

Perhaps, because I'd called him John instead of Johnny, he heard me. He was a long way off, but he heard me. He was standing beside the raft eating turkey, the last one to have lunch. My husband was farther downstream, his back to me, his ears upwind. He wouldn't have known what had happened until I floated past him, if I was still on the surface. My young friend, just beyond Johnny, had never been on the river before. Still grabbing futily at dirt as my waders filled up and I started to sink, I saw her turn, a look of disbelief on her sweet face. Too bad, I thought. I'm ruining her day.

Something was hanging me up. Ah yes, my fly rod. The 40th birthday present from my husband, the gift that had disappointed me: "Why didn't you just give me a washing machine?" I'd snapped. A decade later that rod – expensive, beautiful, an object that had brought me so much pleasure – was stuck in the bank, its graphite tip still holding strong against an immutable force of nature.

"John, I'm in the river."

Johnny's big, dirty cowboy hat was bobbing closer and closer, his eyes catching and locking mine. "I'm here," he said, just as his chewed-up fingernails and arms like homemade rope grabbed my bad hand as I swept by. He had me. 

"Let go of the rod," he said. But I wouldn't. We'd go down the river together or come up together. "Give me your other hand." 

We stayed like that, him leaning back with all his slight cowboy might, me a rigid dead weight in freezing water, trying to dig my boots into a crumbling bank, until my cool-headed young friend grabbed Johnny around the middle and walked us both back onto solid ground. 

"Thanks," I said, never taking my eyes from John's. "You're welcome," he said. By then my husband was on the run and the slow-motion movie speeded up; get her out of those wet clothes, wipe the blood off her arm, somebody grab that rod. 

When I was young I often put myself in danger. Now that I'm banged up by life and know the consequences of precipitateness, I see myself as a cautious conservative, watching where I step. For one second, I didn't. 

"Look," said my young friend, breaking into her first smile. "Johnny never let go of his lunch." 

"Yep," said my savior. "For a while there I had a turkey in both hands!"

We all laughed. The sun broke through. I took my rod and cast once again into the swift-flowing Madison River. Everything looked the same. Nothing was.

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