Chapter - Canoe dump

	Chapter - Canoe dump
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"You OK, John?" Rodney's voice across the water was hoarse and anxious.

John clung to the floating cooler and answered between coughs.
"Yeah" cough
"I'm OK." cough cough
"Just some water."

"Can you get over here to the canoe?"

"Yeah." cough cough splash splash gasp cough cough

"Hooray for life jackets." John sounded tired as he clung to the overturned canoe.

"OK. We get the canoe on its side, get in, and turn it the rest of the way upright. Then we bail water."

"Right." Rodney did most of the turning and helped John into the canoe.

"I don't feel too good." John threw up in the canoe once, then weakly over the side.

"John? You've got a big bruise on your head, on the left forehead. You don't look good. You just sit still and I'll bail." Rodney grabbed the bailing bucket tethered to the canoe with a long cord.

"Right." John didn't object. That scared Rodney even more than his other symptoms.

"Is that our paddle?" John asked hoarsely a moment later.

Rodney looked up from bailing and sure enough it was a paddle, just out of reach. He looked around. There was no paddle in the canoe. There were no other boats nearby. The current had already pushed them out of sight of Fred and Miriam. John was clearly not well. He needed the paddle to get John to a doctor. The river looked very wide and forbidding.

Rodney tried using the bailing bucket to move the canoe closer to the paddle. It didn't help. The paddle still drifted just out of reach. He looked around.

"The camera! You've still got the camera around your neck."

"Right. Too dumb to drop it."

"No, it's good. I'll use it to reach the paddle."

Rodney lifted the camera strap from around John's neck. He flung the camera out to the end of the strap. It fell at the end of the strap just past the paddle, pulling it back a bit closer to the canoe before it slipped off.

It was a bit closer, but not close enough.

Rodney tried again and this time, when the camera slid off, the paddle was close enough to reach.

"Thanks, John!" He put the camera strap back over John's head.

"Right." John said hoarsely, with a weak smile.

Rodney looked around again. The fishing poles and tackle box were gone, but the cooler was still floating nearby. It looked too big and heavy to pull into the canoe without risk of tipping them out, and that could be bad for John.

"If I get close enough to the cooler, can you hang on to it?"

John looked around, blinking a bit. "Right."

He wasn't responsive, but at least he was looking at the cooler. Rodney turned the canoe and paddled a few strokes to coast past the cooler. John made a feeble attempt to grab it with one hand, but slipped and it slid past.

Rodney back paddled until the cooler was beside John. With the paddle, he turned the cooler until one end was beside John.

John grabbed it. "Gotcha," he mumbled.

Rodney paddled forward slowly. The cooler made a small bow wave, dipped down at the front, and slipped from John's fingers. John stared at it as the canoe slid past it.

Rodney grabbed it. He couldn't paddle and hang onto it at the same time. Maybe he should leave the cooler? What would his mom say? He didn't have any way to tie it to the canoe. Or did he?

"Gonna use your camera again, John." He gently lifted the camera from around John's neck. He looped the strap through the handle of the cooler, and wound the bailing pail twice through the strap. It wasn't strong, but it should hold if he paddled slowly.

Rodney looked at the shores of the river. Now that he had a paddle, the shores looked closer and less forbidding.

Was that a landing over there? If it was the one he thought it was, the current had moved them a mile down the river already.

Paddling slowly to accommodate John and the cooler, they reached the landing safely. He looked at his watch. It was only 10:00am. It felt like they had been on the river all day.

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