Lia bucked the wind as she walked quickly down the path from Arvida to the swimming beach on the Saguenay River. Duke, her golden retriever, ran in and out of the bush beside her. She stopped suddenly and cried,
"Oh my God! They're going to hit the rock!"
A double kayak had swept around the rocky outcrop on the eastern arm of the little cove below her, the dual paddles flashing in unison against the leaden skies. The river was swollen from the recent rains and the wind was erratic.
"Who is crazy enough to be on the river today?" Lia thought as she jumped down the bank keeping her eyes on the kayak.
The fierce north wind buffeted the delicate craft as the two paddlers struggled to keep it on course. Suddenly the kayak's bow crashed into a large rock in the middle of the cove. It was called the "swimming rock" because it was the goal of every novice swimmer in Arvida to reach it at low tide. But at high tide it was submerged and almost invisible to strangers to the area.
The force of the impact flung the bowman over the side of the kayak and his flailing feet scrapped against the rough side of the rock.
The sternsman reached forward to jab at the hard granite with the end of his long paddle, but the kayak's forward ridge was firmly stuck in a deep crevice. His jabs became desperate until the inevitable occurred. The blade split with a crack that echoed over the howl of the wind. In one fluid motion the sternsman stepped up on the wobbly gunwales and dove towards the open water. The backward force of his dive finally freed the stricken kayak sending it to its demise against the western rock arm.
Lia lost sight of the sternsman and she presumed he had been swept downstream with the current. The bowman however was swimming against the current in a strong crawl. Suddenly he stopped and brought his knee out of the water.
Lia gasped again, "Oh no!"
She knew at once that he was having one of those disabling cramps, and if he did not start swimming again soon he would be sucked into the eddy, the swirling waters that had claimed the life of a teenager two weeks ago.
"Kurt! Kurt!" The swimmer's cries disintegrated into choking stutters.
"I have to do something!" Lia said to herself. But she hesitated. Her Canadian father had made sure she became a strong swimmer when she was growing up in Austria, but her Red Cross lifesaving classes this summer had all been on dry land. She faced the offshore wind and whispered into the empty space,
"Am I a wimp or a winner?"
All she could see when she looked out across the water was a pale arm slowly sinking into the dark waters of the Saguenay River.
"I'm coming!" Lia yelled to raise her voice over the wind and the slaps of the incoming waves against the rocks. The deep sand almost tripped her as she ran down the bank threwing off her jacket, and trying to keep her eyes on the hand disappearing under the choppy water.
Duke was standing in the shallows ready to snap at any stray minnow.. Curious, he lifted his head to watch his mistress half-run and half-swim past him. When she dove into the river he stepped gingerly into the deeper water.
Lia checked her progress against the cove's rock arms, then, keeping her eyes open, she swam underwater until she spied the man's body turning slowly in the deep water. She stretched out, grabbed a handful of his hair with two hands and pulled as she kicked backwards with vigorous leg thrusts. She surfaced with the man in tow and gasped for breath. Treading water, she threw her arm around the man's neck bringing his face up into the cold air. Although they were on the edge of the eddy, Lia felt the strength of its magnetic force trying to suck them into its orbit.
