Читать книгу Canoeing with Jose онлайн

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Thirty miles south of Fargo, the skies opened. Animated by the force of Kocher’s awesome temper, we pounded through the showers for several hours.

As cold hard rain turned to drizzle, bloody effluent streamed down the banks, turning the river red. The air smelled of sour flesh, and we saw the grey walls of a meat processing plant rising in the distance. Armies of carnivorous flies descended, turning the white canoe black. José pulled his hands into his rain jacket, covered his head with a grimy T-shirt, and swatted his back and shoulders after each vicious bite, shouting repeatedly, “Jesus fucking fuck.”

Finally we arrived, weary and humbled, at the docks of Fargo’s Lindenwood Park and Campground. We had paddled 40 hard river miles that day, 100 altogether over the first three days of the trip, and we weren’t going an inch farther. We paid their cursed camping fee and began unloading the canoe.

The gum-snapping teen at the campground’s headquarters was incredulous when we told her what we had done. “That’s not even possible. You can’t paddle a canoe from Wahpeton to here. Even if you could, that’s like 70 miles—it would take weeks.”