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Show RIVER as if I'd just figured out that the river was made of water, or maybe I just realized at last the truly fierce and uncaring nature of the Old Man. He was ruthless as time or nature or God; he did not give one damn for any man or the whole of mankind. Looking at the wide, muddy water gave me a kind of vertigo, as if I would fall in or more exactly be sucked into the river by some invisible, magnetic force. I went to bed about ten, but I was still too buzzed to sleep. In the dark my mind kept going over and over the wreck, starting with a vivid image of those long, high bows as they relentlessly swept down till they rolled over me, and then it would click back to the image of those bows, so clear that it was like seeing it again. I turned on the light and tried to read a detective magazine but I couldn't get my mind off those bows. I got dressed and went up to the pilot house. Captain Gale was standing his night watch. The pilot house was dark except for the luminous green glow of the radar and the reflected light of the river-sweeping searchlights. It was quiet, too, except for the intermittent crackle of the radio and the constant throbbing of the engines. After a while Captain Gale asked me why I didn't turn in. "I tried, but I keep seeing what those bows looked like coming down on me." Gale took this as if he'd been hit. "Listen," he said with real concern. "Take a couple of aspirin and get some sleep and you'll be OK. Forget about it: if s all over now." The next morning I ate a huge breakfast of hotcakes and sausage and eggs. I spent most of the day up in the pilot house, watching the river. From that perch the river seemed distant and safe, much more like a winding highway than the -216- |