No Deliverance: Fears Realized in Northern Wisconsin
No Deliverance
I wasn't exactly a fretful child?I was usually more than willing to take my share of stupid, potentially crippling risks. Jumping off high ledges into bramble bushes, building ramps for my bicycle, taking scuba lessons, going to school, running through traffic, that sort of thing.
I liked the water, and I liked boats, but I wasn't looking forward to going on a six-hour canoe trip with a bunch of other people in northern Wisconsin, because I knew they would tip my canoe over, and I'd drown. Even with my dad?a large and powerful man?sitting in the canoe with me, they'd do it. And they'd do it because that's what people on canoe trips in northern Wisconsin are supposed to do. I didn't mind getting wet?I just wanted to get wet on my own terms.
Worse than the tipping, though?according to my sister (who'd been on the same trip a year earlier)?I knew we'd be passing through three sets of rapids. Two of them weren't so bad?there were a few rocks and the water splashed some, but they were over quickly, like the small hills on a roller coaster. There was one set in the middle, though?right at a hairpin turn?that was a known killer. Sharp rocks and whitewater.
It was June 1972. This wasn't much of a reading crowd we were driving up there with, and the film version of Deliverance was still at least a month away from Green Bay's theaters?so at least I was spared those added anxieties. But I knew about those rapids, and that was enough.
We all gathered in a church parking lot at 6:30. There were about 15 people altogether?a couple adults, a couple kids, but most of them in their late teens. They were all giggly and excited about the trip. We had three cars between us, and were looking at a three-and-a-half-hour drive up. Of course, given that I would probably die about halfway through, I wasn't too worried about the three-and-a-half-hour drive home.
The trip up wasn't so bad. It was a nice day, and nobody sang.
By the time we got up to the canoe trip place, though?little more than a shack on a lake, with a dock and a bunch of flimsy fiberglass canoes?the temperature had climbed into the high 80s, dragging the humidity along with it. Given that we were on the water at the edge of a forest, the clouds of mosquitoes, gnats and horseflies were as thick as the air itself. I knew already this was not going to be much fun.
I said nothing, though?I was young, but I already knew enough not to be one of those insufferable kids who decides that he doesn't want to do something after his dad's driven him three and a half hours to do it. Instead, I followed him down the ancient gray wooden dock, and let him swing me over and down into one of the small, thin-hulled, beige canoes. I wasn't sure how it would be able to hold him without simply sinking, but it did.
"Try not to touch any part of the canoe with your bare skin," he warned me. "You'll get glass splinters and they'll itch like hell for a long time."
The bugs only got worse the farther we paddled. In the heat, the marsh stank of black mud and decay. I was wearing shorts and a t-shirt, and noticed?though without too much consternation?I had enough on my mind?as my pale thighs grew an alarming shade of pink, then red. There were times when the river grew so shallow that my dad had to get out of the boat and drag us. At other times?we weren't the most accomplished paddling team ever?we ran ourselves aground, or got ourselves snagged on low-hanging branches. I was sweating, I was uncomfortable?and we hadn't hit those rapids yet.
After two and a half hours, we hit the first patch?and as my sister had promised, they weren't so bad. We just picked up our paddles and coasted through them. It was almost fun.
"If the next one's like this," I said, foolishly, "we'll be okay." But I knew better. I'd heard too many stories?not just from my sister, but from other people on the trip today, who'd been there last year, too.
Two hours later, half drained of blood and sunburned nearly beyond recognition, we hit it?and we hit it without warning. Came around the corner, and there it was in front of us?no way to pull off to the river bank and assess the situation beforehand, no time to adjust our trajectory.
Now, I have a little problem when it comes to situations like this.
Whenever I was, say, walking along a fallen log that spanned a creek, I would become convinced I was going to fall in the water, and I did. Whenever I was riding my bike, and became convinced I was going to wipe out or hit something, I would. Even to this day, if I'm in a sticky situation and become convinced that something bad is going to happen as a result of it, it does.
It's almost as if the fear nudges my body in such a way as to ensure that the bad thing will happen.
So I'm about to enter a stretch of rapids I've heard too many horror stories about, I'm convinced that something bad's going to happen?and, as if to justify those fears, it did.
Almost immediately, the canoe began to drift sideways in the current. We hit one rock, then another, then were completely out of control. Then, after smashing into another group of rocks, the canoe flipped, and I was trapped underneath it.
My dad, big as he was, was thrown free. And by the time he fought his way against the current back to the overturned canoe, it had been wedged tight between two rocks. I still had air where I was beneath it, and was able to reach an arm up to let him know where I was. He began pulling at the little boat, trying to wrench it free, cutting his hands on both the fiberglass and the rocks?but to no avail.
Now, here's the weird thing. During the trip down the river until this point, we had seen no other people, apart from the ones who were on the trip with us. No one on shore, no one fishing, no inner tubes, no other boats. At this point in the river, however, the banks were filled with people?families of them?sitting there with picnic baskets, watching.
They had gathered there?and only there?in order to see this sort of thing happen.
Now that it had happened?and now that I was trapped under the fucking canoe, the river threatening to drown me, the way I knew it would hours ago?none of them moved. None of them lifted a finger to help. I'm surprised none of them cheered.
"Goddammit?somebody help us!" my dad screamed over the roaring water, as he fought to keep his balance and free me.
Eventually, a man on shore set his beer down, stood up from his blanket and, using a tree for support, stepped carefully down into the current. A moment later, they pulled the boat free from the rocks. My dad grabbed me by the arm and carried me to shore, as the empty boat careened downriver about 50 yards, before coming to rest against the bank.
The two of us caught our breath a minute, glaring at the bastards who sat there watching me drown.
"I'm not real sure I want to go on," I told my dad, quietly. There were no tears. "I think I just want to go home now."
He took my arm, and we began walking toward the canoe.
"Can't do that," he explained. "There's no one here to take us home. We gotta go on to the end?that's where the cars are waiting for us."
He was right, of course. Once you get started on this thing, there's no quitting in the middle, no turning back. Even if I'd broken my leg or shot myself with an arrow, there was no quitting in the middle.
We reached the boat, flipped it over and emptied the water out of it. The paddles, remarkably enough, were just a few yards farther downstream. We grabbed those, got back in the boat and continued on our way. We still had a ways to go, with more rapids between here and there.
On the bright side, though, I guess?nobody tipped our canoe over.