Ghost Horses (10 page)

One inflated backpack floated in front of Ethan, the other swung out behind Jack. Like the backpacks, Jack was floating, too, belly down, in the swollen Virgin River, his head leaning against Ethan's. This time his dreams were sweet and comforting. No more ghosts. Ethan's grunts and yells sometimes penetrated the dreams, as Ethan floundered, stepping into a hole or tripping on a submerged rock. Once Ethan jerked Jack's wrist forward and said, “Is your watch waterproof? If it's telling the right time, we've been slogging along like this for more than an hour. The current helps. It's pushing us forward.”

“Are you swimming?” Jack asked drowsily.

“No, you jerk, I'm walking. How could I swim with you on my back? Anyway, I don't know how to swim.”

“Really?” That surprising bit of information worked its way into Jack's consciousness. “Are you saving my life?” he asked next.

“Yeah, man, you got it,” Ethan panted. “Like in the Ghost Dance, I'm bringing a dead person back to life.”

U
p ahead!” Ethan cried. “I see people! Jack—we made it!”

“Cold,” Jack mumbled.

“I know. So am I, and my back's killing me. Look, I need you to try to walk. The water's not so deep here, and you're heavy. Come on, move your legs. Right. Left. Right.”

Rocks bumped against the sides of Jack's sneakers when Ethan stood him upright. As the canyon walls opened wider, the water level had gone down so that it was no more than waist deep. Placing as much weight on his feet as he could, Jack tried to stand, but his legs wouldn't hold him. They felt like two poles of ice that were no longer legs. His whole body had become stone. Ahead of him, he could see a kaleidoscope of colors in the distance, flashing lights that were as bright as red and blue suns.

“Hey!
Over here!”
Ethan shouted. He gave a loud, trilling Indian cry and waved an arm.

“Here,” Jack whispered.

There was an eruption of what sounded like applause. Lifting his head, Jack saw dozens of people lined along the walkway that led to the mouth of The Narrows, people in yellow plastic ponchos and ranger uniforms. It was still hard for him to put sights and sounds together; it was as if images had been broken into pieces and scattered on the ground. But a voice—his mother's voice—pierced his consciousness.

“Jack! Jack! Are you all right?”

In his haze, Jack saw his mother's pale face, saw her arms reach for him, but two medics grabbed him first and began to carry him quickly to the riverbank. Another medic approached Ethan, but Jack could hear him say, “I made it all the way down. I can walk the rest of the way.”

Water churned around Jack and then he saw rocks and the steps that led to the top of the trail. More people, more colors, more sounds fell on him like raindrops. “Mom?” he asked weakly.

“I'm right here. I'm right beside you,” Olivia cried. Her voice sounded near and far at the same time, as if she were speaking inside a bubble. Was she crying? Jack tried to put the pieces together, but they came out all wrong, like a Picasso painting he'd seen in a book at school.

“Dad—where?”

He felt his mother's hand rest lightly against his cheek. “He's all right, Jack. He's in an ambulance.”

“Ambulance?” Once again, nausea rose in Jack's throat in a wave that almost choked him.

“He's banged up, but he's OK. He broke some fingers. Jack—where do you hurt?”

“My head.”

The two medics had him on a stretcher now, but they were moving too fast for Jack to see anything except a blur of tall cliffs and some unknown people's midriffs.

“You're going to have to step back, ma'am,” he heard one of the medics say. “We've got to get an IV into him. Ned, his body temp's way too low.

Get that heated blanket on him, and fast.”

“Mom—” Jack croaked.

“I'm right here. Ashley's here, too. And Summer. Everything will be all right now. You're going to go to the hospital. You're safe.”

“Ethan—” Jack swallowed, trying to get the words out. “He saved me.”

His mother's face appeared in the sky over him. He couldn't really make it out except that her curly hair caught the sun like tiny shining spirals. “I know,” he heard her say. “I know.” And then Jack's lids drooped, and he drifted once more into darkness.

 

When he opened his eyes, he was in a pale green room with a tiny window that showed nothing but a square of blue sky. A clear tube snaked out of his wrist, and the sheets underneath him felt scratchy against his skin. Blinking, he slowly looked around. His mother dozed in an orange vinyl chair, her head bent to one side and her lips slightly parted. Beside her, with two fingers curved in metal splints, sat his dad, and to his right Jack saw Summer, Ashley, and Ethan hunched in three smaller chairs, watching what sounded like the Simpsons coming from a television hanging on a wall. He was in a hospital. Jack blinked again.

“Well, look who finally decided to join us,” his father said.

His mother jolted upright. Leaning over, she kissed his forehead and smiled. Jack had never seen his mother look so old; dark half-moons smudged the skin beneath her eyes, and her face was as pale as a bleached sheet. The fine wrinkles around her mouth seemed deeper, as if worry had carved them. “Honey, how do you feel?” she asked softly. “How's your head?”

“My head?” Jack reached up and gingerly touched the back of his neck. He could still feel a dull throb. “It hurts. What happened?”

“What happened?” Ashley squeaked. She was on her feet, clamoring on the other side of Jack's bed. “You about scared us all to death. Mom and me and Summer were over at the Chloride Canyon 'cause Summer figured out what was wrong with the ghost horses. I mean, she told Mom and then Mom checked and sure enough, that was the reason.”

“She did?” Jack began, but Ashley could not be stopped. A torrent of words as fast as the water in The Narrows spilled out of her mouth.

“And then one of the guys comes roaring up in his pickup and tells Mom that he heard there was a flash flood at Zion, and didn't she say that her family was hiking up there today? Man, you should have seen her, Jack. Mom drove about a hundred miles an hour. We must have made it from the Chloride Canyon to the park in ten minutes!”

“Ashley, I did not go a hundred miles an hour! Maybe it seemed that way—” Olivia blushed. “Well, yes, I was speeding, but no more than ten miles over the limit. Honest!”

“Uh-
huh.”
Ashley grinned. “And then Mom jumps out of the car and runs all the way up the trail, and Summer and I tried, but we couldn't keep up 'cause Mom kept running. When we finally caught up with her, Mom was trying to go into the river, but the rangers wouldn't let her because they said it was too dangerous, and it wouldn't help anybody if she drowned. And then later Dad came floating down, but you and Ethan were still gone, and—”

“Whoa, Ashley, slow down. Jack's had a concussion, you know,” Steven told her, smiling. A dark bruise was beginning to form on Steven's brow right above his eye, and a gauze-and-adhesive bandage circled his forearm. He walked over and settled on the edge of the hospital bed, then with his good hand lightly touched the top of Jack's head.

“I'm so glad you're OK, Dad. When you got swept away….” Suddenly, Jack couldn't finish. Shadowy pictures of what had happened came and went through him, like a deck of cards with pictures being flipped behind his eyelids. Yet one image burned as if his mind had been branded, and that was of his father, arms flailing, snatched away by a wall of churning water. His dad could have died. They all could have.

“Hey, son, don't get upset. I'm fine. A bit banged up like you, but I'm here. Except—” Steven's face twisted into a mask of remorse. “Except that I feel so awful about what I did—taking you kids into so much danger. I should have checked the weather report at the back-country desk at the visitor center. I should have talked to the rangers before we left. But I thought, since we weren't going too far up the canyon—” Steven's voice choked. “I was wrong. And my negligence nearly cost us our lives.”

Olivia put her arms around Steven and whispered, “They're safe now, sweetheart.”

Ethan and Summer crowded the foot of Jack's bed, and, surprisingly, it was Ethan who broke the somber silence in the room. He grabbed Jack's toe and tweaked it, saying, “It's about time you woke up. You know what time it is? It's 11:00 in the morning. I've been sitting in that dumb chair for two hours already, but nobody feels sorry for me 'cause I don't have a lump on my head. If I had a lump, maybe I could be in one of these electronic beds and get my own television, too.”

“Hey, Ethan,” Jack said, grinning.

“Hey, yourself.” Arching his spine, he told Jack, “Man, do you know how heavy you are? By the end I swear you must have weighed 300 pounds. And you kept talking about all kinds of crazy stuff, like you saw people dancing around and coming out of the rocks and shooting stars popping out of the water. You were out of it.”

“You had hypothermia,” Olivia interrupted. “Between that and the crack on your head, you were hallucinating. Jack, if it hadn't been for Ethan, the doctors think you wouldn't have made it. Your body temperature was dangerously low—any lower and your heart might have stopped altogether. Ethan got you out just in the nick of time. You owe him a lot. You owe him your life.”

Jack looked at the foot of the bed and for the first time really saw Ethan. He'd never truly looked at him before, other than as an enemy he had to keep away from. Ethan had on an old striped cotton shirt and a pair of jeans that had been rubbed bare at the knees like any other kid's. With his hair hanging loose past his shoulders, he looked like an Indian. When he crossed his arms over his chest, he was a warrior. A real Shoshone brave—one who would save a friend. With a start, Jack realized that he was that friend.

“Thanks, Ethan,” Jack said, his voice low.

“Hey, no big deal.”

“Yes, it is.”

Ethan just shrugged his shoulders, but a smile curled the edge of his lips like a tiny wave.

“Did I say a lot of stupid stuff?” Jack asked.

“Everything you said was stupid,” Ethan answered, laughing.

“I don't know what happened. I kept seeing things. It was so weird—I saw people with their faces painted and this woman in a white dress.”

“An angel?” Ashley asked.

“No—maybe. I don't know. Her dress was all beaded—it was like the kind we saw at Ethan's powwow, only this one had a long fringe at the edges that was like a foot long, and the woman had this white feather in her hair. And she kept going over to Ethan. And there was a man, too. He had on buckskin, and he had some kind of shield.”

“Our mother had a white dress with fringe,” Summer said softly. “After Mother died, Grandmother put the dress away. It's for me when I'm all grown up.” Raising her eyes, she added, “And our mother wore a feather right here at the back of her head.” She reached back to touch her crown. “Is that where you saw the feather?”

Jack began to nod, but stopped, because it hurt.

“And the shield the man carried, was it a wheel of blue feathers?”

Jack tried to remember. Was it blue? Or was his mind playing tricks on him again. “I—I think so,” he stammered. “Maybe.”

“Then the Ghost Dance worked, Ethan. Mother came back to you when you needed her. Father, too.”

“They came for both of us,” Ethan whispered. “For me and for Jack, too.”

“You smelled the cedar smoke, didn't you?” Summer asked Jack.

A memory of smoke seemed to curl in his nostrils once again. “Yes.”

Olivia bit the edge of her lip. “Kids, remember, Jack was hit on the head. And he also had hypothermia, which made him see things that weren't really there.” Olivia rushed on before Summer could answer. “Things always have a logical explanation. Ethan, you said you tried to build a fire, right? Out of cedar? That's why Jack smelled smoke.”

But Summer's dark eyes never left Jack's. “Did she say anything, Jack? Did my mother bring a message?”

“No. She tried to get to Ethan, though. The man kept reaching out his hands. I remember that much.”

“They were there.” Summer's dark eyes welled up with tears. With the palms of her hands she rubbed away the tears that spilled over. After that, nobody in the room seemed to know what to say, although Jack could tell that neither of his parents believed a word of it. Olivia looked at Steven, who nodded, moving his mouth as if he were carefully forming a reply that he didn't know whether he should make.

Suddenly the door to the room swung open, and a woman in pink scrubs with fuzzy blonde hair walked in carrying a tray of food. “Hello, everyone,” she said in a cheery voice. “I see our patient is finally awake. Bet you're hungry, too. I've got just the thing for you, and if your family could all move back for just a second, I can set this tray down on your table.” Orange juice with a tin-foil top, some bright yellow pudding, a banana, and green gelatin were crowded on the tray she pushed in front of Jack. When she picked up his wrist, pressing two fingers against his pulse, Jack noticed how cool her hand felt. Her lips barely moved as she counted the beats. A clipboard appeared, and after scribbling on the paper, she turned Jack's head so that she could examine the base of his skull.

“Looking real good. The doctor will be in soon, and then I think you're out of here, kiddo. Bet you're going to hate that, huh?”

“Nope,” Jack said, opening his orange juice. When he took a sip, it felt cool and sweet in his mouth.

“If any of the rest of you would like some food, the cafeteria is on the first floor. You know, a year ago a couple of people got caught in The Narrows. They didn't make it out. You're a lucky young man,” she said, clicking her pen shut. “You all were lucky.”

The door closed behind her with a gentle puff of air, probably rigged, Jack guessed, to keep it from slamming and waking up other patients. What the nurse had said was true enough: Ethan, Jack, and his dad were lucky. Many people caught in a flash flood didn't live to tell about it. He would never forget how close they came to dying. Other people, like Ethan and Summer's parents, walked into death and never came out again. Had Ethan's mom and dad really visited Jack on that ledge? He tried to grab onto the memory, but it slipped through his mind like water, like smoke. Maybe they'd been there, or maybe he'd just dreamed it. He'd been raised to believe only what he could taste and touch; he couldn't make sense of seeing ghosts.

Ashley, who hated silences, broke the stillness that had settled on the room. “Jack, you didn't hear about the mustangs!” she exclaimed. “I was trying to tell you what Summer said to Mom. You know—how she solved the mystery!”