Kerry Sipe, a friend and newspaper colleague stood up in our canoe to pee and asked: “Does this make you nervous?”
I said it did and then, just like that, the canoe turned over, dumping us into the Neuse River. The water was cold — it was December –and neither of us was wearing a life jacket.
It was also nighttime and Kerry and I were alone.
This was supposed to have been a pleasant, Sunday afternoon stroll, so to speak, down the Neuse, from U.S. 1 to U.S. 64 near Raleigh, N.C. But we had underestimated the distance and how long it would take. The sun had gone down but the moon was full. It was a beautiful night.
The canoe didn’t sink and both of us grabbed hold. His camera and my glasses had gone to the bottom of the river and I didn’t want to lose the canoe too. It was borrowed.
I had brought a life jacket but Kerry hadn’t and I didn’t consider it sporting to put on my life jacket on when he didn’t have one. So I had laid it in the canoe between us and now my life jacket was floating away.
I asked Kerry to grab it.
He let go of the canoe, swam three or four strokes, grabbed it, clutched it to his chest, and was swept away, caught in the current. I clung to the slowly drifting canoe. We yelled back and forth for a few minutes as the distance between us grew. And then he went around a bend in the river and disappeared. After that I could only hear the river.
I was a good swimmer. But I was wearing cowboy boots and winter clothing, including a jacket, and I decided not to risk trying to swim for the nearest bank. I figured I could hang on to the canoe for as long as I had to, in spite of the cold.
It had been raining a lot and the Neuse was out of its banks in places. Here and there, the bank had given way and a tree had fallen into the water. Sooner or later the canoe had to drift into a downed tree and I’d be able to climb up through the branches.
And that’s what happened. I climbed through the top of a tree, to the bottom, to the bank of the river.
I was safe, at last. But where was Kerry?
Continued tomorrow.