Heller and Shannon: That's amore

 
Shannon had been a ways downstream from where LR stood when he first saw her. She was already out of sight, swept around the bend by the swift current by the time LR launched.

LR paddled briskly but he was not stupid about it. The river was not one of the placid streams of southern Michigan. It could punish the hasty, the distracted or the stupid. LR was none of those.

It took him about ten minute to close the gap and then another ten to “bump” her kayak into a wide gap between two huge boulders. There was enough room for LR to wedge his kayak in beside her. Unfortunately, they were on the opposite side of the river from the camp.

Shannon suggested “I could hang onto the grab-handle of your kayak while you paddle across the river.”

LR shook his head. “That isn’t going to work. The front of your kayak will be right where I have to paddle and the angle of your kayak will make it really hard to cut a straight line.”

He didn’t add that he was dubious about her ability to hold onto the grab-handle. She hadn’t impressed him yet with her athletic ability. The LAST thing he wanted to have happen was to have her lose her grip and for both of them to end up another mile down the river.

“So what do we do?” Shannon asked. It wasn’t a challenge. It was a request for information.

Digging into his fanny-pack, LR pulled out a hank of 550 cord. “This is parachute cord. Next to duct tape, its the greatest stuff in the world. We're gonna tie the kayaks together. I'll tie onto the front of your kayak and you tie onto the back of mine but you gotta use the knot I show you.”

To LR’s surprise, Shannon didn’t argue with him.

He showed her how to tie a taut-line hitch and he stressed the importance of going through the hole in the hull of the kayak. “There is no telling how rotted out the lines are. Better to not trust them.”

Under LR’s careful watch, Shannon knocked out a picture-perfect taut-line hitch, mumbling “Two in the inside, one on the out” while she tied it.

“One of the great things about para-cord is that it is stretch” LR said to easy any tension. “It doesn’t yank on knots the way thicker rope would.”

And with that, LR backed out of their “garage” and pulled Shannon’s kayak into the current. LR had cut the para-cord so there was about a 12' gap between the two boats.

Damn! The current was swift.

He pointed his kayak angling up-stream and started for the other shore. No way in hell was he going to be able to paddle the two kayaks back upstream. They were going to have to beach and then carry or drag their kayaks back to camp. 

Even with his up-stream vector, the current was inexorably dragging his and Shannon's kayak down-river.

Looking over his shoulder, he picked a gap between the boulders and timed his paddling so the nose of his kayak tickled the boulder just upstream of the gap. Then he poured on the power and edged into the gap.

He was helped by the fact that the current was marginally slower close to the shore.

As he was getting ready to stuff his paddle into the water to stabilize his kayak, Shannon piped up “You might want to be careful. That is how I lost my paddle. It yanked out of my hands.”

Forewarned is forearmed. LR cut a length of para-cord and tied an ample loop in the end of it and tied the other end to his kayak. After making sure that the blade of the paddle didn’t get trapped by the rocks, LR rolled out of his low-slung vessel onto the top of the shorter boulder.

Then he reeled in his kayak and pulled it out of the water. Then he hand-over-handed in Shannon’s kayak and helped her onto his boulder and then they pulled her kayak onto the boulder.

Above the boulder-line was a belt of thick brush. Looking closer, he saw it was mostly interlaced blackberry bushes that were tightly woven together with woody-vines.

“No rest for the wicked” he commented to Shannon.

Once again, he reached into his fanny pack. This time he pulled out a sheath knife unlike any Shannon had ever seen and a pair of gloves.

“Its a Mora” LR explained.

“That’s amore?” Shannon asked. “What does that have to do with a love song?”

It took LR a second to realize that Shannon was kidding around with him. He expected her to be freaked out and here she was making corny jokes.

Strange chick.

Moving up to the brush line, LR started bending over the brambles and cutting through them with his short-bladed knife. Turning around to dispose of the long, thorny branch he almost ran into Shannon. She had her hand out to grab the branch.

“You don’t want to do that” LR advised. “They are covered with wicked-bad thorns.”

“Do you have another pair of gloves?” Shannon was going to help if she possibly could.

“Are you left-handed or right?” LR asked.

“Right-handed” she replied.

“Then I guess this is your lucky day” LR said as he peeled the glove off his right hand and handed it to her.

Bending down the branches with his armored, left hand and cutting them with the knife held in his right hand, he was able to make rapid progress.

He kept looking back to make sure he wasn’t going too fast for Shannon to keep up with.

“What are you looking at?” she asked when she caught him watching.

That is when LR realized that he had been enchanted by the fact that Shannon had so many body parts that jiggled. They jiggled at different speeds and in different directions. 

The fact that her throwing form was awkward and the long, springy, arching branches fought being tossed into the river compounded the effect.

“Voluptuous” he thought. LR was not big on fancy words but “Voluputous” fit Shannon to a T. 

"Nothin'" LR said. "I was just keeping an eye on you to see how you were holding up."  Well, that was mostly true.

Shannon was the exact, total opposite of Stephanie. Stephanie had dumped him six months ago. LR was totally blind-sided. He thought they were a perfect fit. They were both intense and competitive and ambitious and physically fit. They both had little patience with incompetence.

What LR came to learn was while he was intensely loyal, Stephanie was intensely ambitious. She dumped him when it became apparent that LR was not compatible with her plans for the future.

After clearing a 6’ wide path through the arching branches of the blackberries, LR carried Shannon piggy-back over the blackberry stubble and thorn-strewn ground. Shannon was barefoot and LR had on a pair of water-walkers. The soft weight of Shannon’s breasts on LR’s shoulders was pleasantly distracting.

No sooner had LR dragged the kayaks through the path he had cut through the blackberries than they heard the voices of the men from Kingsport, Tennessee coming down the game trail that parallelled the river just above the belt of brambles. Snek and Slider were taking bets about how far the two had been swept down the river before the Volunteers found them.

Based on the snippets LR overheard, he had a feeling that Snek and Slider were going to make a fair amount of pocket change.