drags derek

He turned Derek onto his back, grabbed him under the shoulders, and tried to pull him down the bank.
  Derek didn’t move.
  Brian pulled and the man just lay still, and Brian looked to see if his shoe had caught on a root by the fire or in the brush, but it had not.
  It just couldn’t be that hard to move a — healmost thought body — person. Just a person on his back. He ought simply to skiddown the bank.
  In the end Brian did get him to skid — about three inches at a time. He heaved and jerked and pulled until finally Derek was on the bank, lying on his side, facing the water.
  There was a small ledge and a drop of approximately six inches to the water. This close in to the shore the lake was very shallow, not enough water to float the raft, and Brian had to horse the raft sideways to get it in so that it was lying sideways next to Derek and just below him, grounded on the mud of the bottom.
  He kneeled in the water next to the raft. He had been soaked since starting to build the raft and figured to remain wet until… until they made it. He did not wish to think of the alternatives.
  He used his hip to jam the raft into the bank and reached across to pull Derek onto the raft.
  Again, it was like moving lead weight. Derek seemed bolted to the earth and Brian had to settle for pulling first one end, then the other, back and forth from Derek’s arms to his ankles until the man was at last on the raft, which settled into the mud of the bottom under Derek’s weight and remained solid.
  Brian positioned him first on his back and then decided he might choke and moved him over onto his side, in the center of the raft. The middle cross-piece on the raft caught Derek in the soft part just above his hip and helped to hold him in place, but Brian did not think it would be enough. He tore more strips from his jacket and made a tie-down. This he used to go from one side of the raft, over Derek’s shoulders to the other side, to tie him into position.
  Finally, with Derek lashed in, Brian used Derek’s own jacket rolled up to make a pillow, which he worked beneath Derek’s head.