My brother and I drowned in the Horsefly River when we were kids. It was summer vacation, I was thirteen and he was twelve and Dad was sick of us, I guess.

“You’re only here for a month, why don’t you go out and do something?”

Horsefly is a village of less than a thousand people—retirees, homesteaders and hermits—spread thin across a beautiful British Columbian landscape. There’s one road, one bridge and one school with around fifty students. Horsefly is a middle-of-the-forest town in the Cariboo where black bears dig up vegetable gardens and coyotes yip at the edges of cattle pastures every night. The sky is big and blue and kids make their fun over the bridge and down by the river.

Dad’s truck was dusty. Country living is like that—dust and dog hair and wet clothes hung over wood stoves that would leave my laundry smelling like smoke when I returned home at summer’s end. We packed into the cabin of the truck and drove down the one road, across the one bridge, my brother and I in our swimming shorts and T-shirts, Dad holding the wheel in one hand and a can of something cold in the other. The tires hit the bridge with the kathunk-kathunk of five thousand pounds of rolling dust and rust. When the village was calm, it was a sound you could hear a kilometre away.

I don’t remember what he said to us that afternoon. I don’t remember a lot about that day. I call Dad all these years later and I ask him how long we drove for. He kinda just huffs, “I dunno, twenty minutes?”

I send a message to my little brother—who’s closer to thirty now than he is to twelve—asking the same thing.

him: It was probably a half hour.

We bring this day up to each other every now and then, like a funny story—Haha, remember that time Dad abandoned us in the river? We weren’t raised together. All the childhood memories we share take place in those summers I spent up north.

me: living in abbotsford was so boring, all I ever did was play video games, sleep and get neglected 🙏

me: so going to horsefly for the summer was always special cause its like wow .... fresh air .. adventure ...

him: 😿

I don’t know who’s right; it could have been a half hour; it might’ve been only twenty minutes. I think that ten-minute difference means a lot to each of us. In the sixteen years since that day I’ve opened Google Maps and traced the route with my cursor dozens of times. The road is straight but the river curves. It veers one way before dragging itself back in zigzags that look tight and brutal from Google’s satellite but are mostly gentle when you’re out there in the water. To me, ten minutes could have been the difference between life and death.

Go play. Dad might have said that. My brother and I jumped out and huddled on the shoulder, the river shining at the bottom of a steep embankment behind us. I ask my brother if he remembers Dad getting out of the truck to see us off, because I can picture him standing at the top of that embankment, watching us through dense foliage as we climbed down to the river’s edge. The image is so clear to me. I can see the sunlight coming through the trees, their leaves casting a hundred little shadows over him. But my brother doesn’t remember.

And I don’t ask Dad during our call because the question seems cruel.

Did you watch us go? Did you take the chance to see us one last time, or did you turn around and drive home, eager to take the afternoon off from being our dad?

I like to think he watched us sink into the Horsefly River. He isn’t a mean or uncaring man; he was always good to me those summers. I like the image of him standing in the shade of the embankment. It’s like a flower I’ve picked and pressed between the pages of my memory.

The sun was hot and the water was warm on the surface but cold underneath. We sat in it, the river drawing a line across our shirts at the chest—the water was so shallow in the beginning, that was the best we could do.

My brother says he can’t recall most of what was said that day.

him: But I do remember talking about how my nipples started chafing and hurting on my t-shirt

me: i remember the nipple convo too!!!!!!!!!!!

We skidded along the river’s bottom on our butts, rocks chewing up our legs until we finally gave in and walked, our wet clothes hanging off our bodies as we marched in the direction of home. Floating down the river was a common pastime in a place that, to this day, still doesn’t have cell service. You make your own fun out in the country, and though we’d never been that far upstream before, we weren’t worried. This was our Horsefly River.

Eventually we came to deeper, slow-moving sections of water shaded by the long arms of trees that lined the riverbank. My brother and I dove into those cool depths and when we popped up again we said This is so much better than swimming by the bridge. The current was fast and dangerous there and could tear you away from the safety of the rocky beach like a grown man dragging a child by their ankle.

Walking sucked, but it was worth it every time we reached a deep spot. We were having fun.

As we rounded another bend we saw three men fishing from a boat. They were parked along the bank in the shadow of a tree, their lines angled in the deep water. I wanted them to think I was cool so I dove down where all the fish were and dragged my hand through the silty riverbed. When I broke back into open air one of them called to us.

“Where are you going?”

“Horsefly!”

The men stared as we floated by. Then one fisherman said something that scared me a little.

“Did you pack a lunch?”

I ask Dad how long we were in the river. “Geez, maybe five or six hours? It was just getting dark,” he says in that I-don’t-really-want-to-talk-about-this tone.

My brother points out that it gets dark at nine in August.

The sun was hot, yeah, but the water was cold and the river rocks were sharp and we were alone in this. My brother lost his shoe and when he chased after it I begged him not to swim too far from me. Maybe he heard the fear in my voice because he stopped and we floated along behind his shoe together.

We came to a fork in the river. It was an island, but we didn’t know that. We were small and the trees along it were just as tall as those on our left and right. A log jam jutted from its leading edge, dead trees stacked high in a violent tangle. The river was getting deeper and faster as we approached and it would be so easy for the water to drag our bodies under, branches catching our clothes and trapping us.

My brother sends me a screenshot of the island and the log jam is still there. I ask him if we went left or right and he says we went left. In my memory the log jam is tall and wide and choosing wrong means we don’t make it home.

him: We also got out at one point and started walking on a quad trail. typical grass in the center, light brown tire tracks, trees both sides

me: very horseflycore

him: and we almost immediately saw a bear straight up probably 30 metres in front of us

me: AHHH!!!

me: i 100% repressed this

him: We did in fact see a bear on the quad trail and immediately started walking back without looking at the thing

me: 😭

He remembers a lot more than I do. My best guess as to why? I’m like Dad. I was scared so, geez, I dunno, I guess I didn’t want to remember every gory detail.

We saw one more person the entire time we were in the river. There was a house on a cliff, a million-dollar log home sitting on a couple dozen acres. We saw a man standing on his balcony and my brother said we should pretend to be dead. I didn’t think that was funny, but he did it anyway.

I wanted to ask the man for help but he went inside and it was just me and my little brother, rolling like a corpse in the shallow water beside me.

Eventually the stars came out. The trees turned black at the river’s edge and I thought we were going to die. I thought they’d find our bodies washed up on the rock beach down by the bridge in the morning. I remember staring at the stars overhead as the sky went darker and darker around them.

Kathunk-kathunk.

him: The things that stand out the most for me remembering that day is how shallow the river was, encountering the boat people who asked if we packed lunch, losing my shoe downstream, getting out onto a quad trail and seeing the bear, playing dead in front of the house on the cliff, and being in pitch black night for half an hour until we heard the kathunk-kathunk of the bridge and knew we made it back.

I wish I could describe how it felt to hear that sound.

Dad was there. Sitting on the bench under the bridge in the dark. My brother and I crawled out of the river onto the rocky beach, cold, tired, alive. I don’t remember if Dad hugged us. I don’t remember what he said. I don’t remember what we had for dinner.

Later, he’d say that he talked to his buddy Wally. When Dad told him what he’d done to us, Wally mentioned there was a log jam on the river. A big one.

For five or six or seven hours my brother and I drowned in the Horsefly River.

There are more cruel questions I can’t ask. Like at what point did Let’s get these kids out of my hair turn into Shouldn’t they be home by now? How long did you wait for us by the bridge?

What would you have done if we never came crawling out of the water, cold, tired, but alive?

Image: Natt Cann, Scars. 7, 2014, monotype

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