In the Heart of the Canyon (26 page)

“It’s just
Lava”
complained Abo. “What’s the big
deal
, everybody?”

JT knew he was kidding, but there was an element of truth in what he said. Lava was unquestionably the Big One, but it got more than its fair share of horror stories. Which naturally Mitchell had passed on the night before—near drownings and broken limbs and wooden dories getting ripped to splinters. Swim Lava, Mitchell promised, and your hair will turn white.

“Mitchell’s got Susan scared to death,” Dixie said now. “She asked me if she and Amy could walk around it.”

“Nobody’s going to walk around it,” said JT. “We’re going to have
good clean runs. We’ll take it from the right, hit the V-wave, get drenched, bail like hell, and be through in twenty seconds.”

“Mitchell’s just trying to scare people off so he can get a spot in the paddle boat,” said Dixie.

“I call Not-Mitchell,” Abo said promptly.

“Not-Mitchell,” Dixie echoed.

They both looked at JT.

“That leaves you, Boss,” said Abo.

“I’ll take Mitchell,” he said with a shrug. “Abo, you want to let Sam paddle?”

“Why, SURE I do!” Abo declared.

Dixie closed her eyes. “Abo? You’re here,” she said, leveling her hand up high, “and you want to be here.” She dropped her hand.

“And Evelyn,” said JT. “I think it’s really important to her.”

“Evelyn can paddle,” said Abo. “As long as I have Peter up front. This quiet enough for you, darlin’?” he asked Dixie.

“Now cover up your butt.”

Abo glanced over his shoulder, then pulled the bedding farther up around his hips. “Who’s taking Ruth and Lloyd?”

“I am,” said JT. There was no argument here. The fact that he had more experience than either Dixie or Abo didn’t guarantee anything. It did, however, make him feel prudent.

“How’s Ruth’s leg doing, anyway?” Dixie asked.

Fair is how JT would have characterized it. Holding. No more Cipro had turned up, so Ruth had only taken half the course, which meant they’d probably contributed to the global problem of antibiotic-resistant bacteria.

However, he wasn’t going to ship her off the river, not on Day Eleven. Two more days, and the Flagstaff ER could take over.

“I’ve seen worse,” JT told them. “But this is definitely Ruth and Lloyd’s last trip.”

“That’s so sad,” said Dixie, blowing on her coffee.

At breakfast JT had to tell Mitchell to shut up with his stories. Despite the apprehension, everyone ate heartily. Yesterday’s rift over Mark and
Jill’s parenting judgment had healed for the moment in the presence of excitement over Lava. They all applied sunblock liberally today, as though it would protect them from the rapids themselves.

“I am so sick of groovers,” said Peter, relaying the roll of toilet paper to Jill.

“Anyone seen my water bottle?”

Mitchell called out. “Mitchell,” said Peter, holding his camera. “Smile.”

Mitchell smiled broadly.

There are no real rapids to speak of in that stretch of river above Lava Falls, and without them, the guides and the paddlers had to work extra hard to keep up their speed. They passed a landslide, with boulders perched precariously atop towers of rubble. Then they entered a vast volcanic field, with glistening black basalt dikes and lumpy beds of lava. Soon they rounded a bend, and a huge black rock rose up from the middle of the river—Vulcan’s Anvil, a malevolent ship in placid water.

And with its appearance, the guides pricked up their ears for the sound of Lava Falls.

JT looked over at Dixie, and they grinned at each other. It was there. It was always there: loud, wide, and hungry.

Twenty minutes later they pulled into shore on the right, along with the cluster of kayakers and several other rafts.

“Everybody out,” said JT. “Time to scout.”

“Is this Lava?” Sam asked.

“This is Lava,” JT replied. “Lets see if its got any surprises for us today. Wet your shirts; it’ll be hot up there on the lava bed.”

“Got your camera ready?” Peter asked Amy as she dunked her baseball cap. “Got enough memory? Want to take mine, as backup?”

Amy positioned her hat, letting water drip down her neck. “I’m going to use my waterproof camera.”

“Excellent idea,” said Peter.

Ruth and Lloyd traipsed up the path behind JT. “Ruthie,” said Lloyd, “this is such a beautiful place. I’m thinking we should come back here sometime.”

“Do you think JT would kill me if I took just one teeny tiny chunk of this lava rock home with me?” Susan whispered to Amy as they climbed up the hillside.

Lena peered down the steep drop-off “It doesn’t look that big,” she said.

“Shouldn’t Amy buckle the bottom buckle on her life jacket?” Evelyn asked Abo.

JT stood at the edge of an outcrop, tight-chested from the intense heat that radiated off the black rocks. In the five minutes it took to get up here, his shirt had already dried. Down on the river, one of the kayakers headed for the drop.

“Too far left,” JT said. But he was wrong; the kayaker bulleted through the rapid, spinning in triumph at the bottom.

“Anyone else having trouble with the eggs from this morning?” Abo inquired.

“Because—I don’t know, I’d just feel more comfortable, riding with the boys,” Jill said to Mark.

“I totally understand,” he replied.

“Oh golly,” breathed Mitchell, gazing down at a tiny raft in the maelstrom of waves. “Yikes.”

“No wonder it’s a ten,” said Evelyn.

“Holy fuck,” Mitchell said.

A
my tried to keep up with the group as they hiked up the short trail to the scouting point, but with her feet so swollen, every step made her wince. She felt like she was walking on cacti. The rocks were black and hot, and the trail was overgrown with prickly bushes that clawed at her legs. When she reached a small lookout, she stopped. Lena was right; Lava didn’t seem all that big. From the way Mitchell was talking the night before, Amy expected something along the order of Niagara Falls. This looked like any other rapid, only wider.

Then she watched a fat white pontoon boat slide down into the mess and plow through a standing wall of water, and she calculated that the wall was as high as the boat was long.

Oh.

Peter, who had been up with the rest of the group, now came slapping back down the trail to join her.

“Go up and see it from there,” he urged her. “You get a much better view. Hey. You okay?”

Amy didn’t want to tell him about her feet. She didn’t want to draw attention to them. She crossed her arms. Her breasts hurt, and she felt off balance. “So where’s that stupid ledgie thing?”

Peter pointed to a long irregular interface near the top of the rapid, where the dark, smooth-flowing river exploded into white chaos.

“The dark part’s the Ledge,” Peter said. “And all that white stuff below, that’s the Hole.”

“And the Hole is where we don’t want to go?”

“Where we definitely don’t want to go,” he said. “Even if you can
swim. Like I can. If you remember, I learned to swim on this trip. But I don’t want to swim in that hole.”

“I just want to get it over with,” said Amy. “Its so hot here.”

“How many shots do you have left in your camera?”

Amy took the waterproof camera out of her fanny pack. It was school bus yellow, sheathed in hard plastic, with a blue rubber wrist strap. She squinted at the dial. “Seven.”

“Well, listen. This thing is bigger than I thought. There won’t be much time. Twenty seconds, JT says. If you get a shot of Mitchell, great. If not, no big deal. We’ve got a lot of other good pictures of him.”

“I definitely want a picture of him in Lava,” said Amy. “He’s been talking about it the whole trip. If there’s going to be one picture of him that sums it all up, it’ll be Mitchell at the helm in Lava Falls.”

“You are
such
a bitch,” Peter said proudly.

“Thank you,” said Amy.

Back at the boats, JT gathered everybody together and waited for their full attention. A hush fell over the group.

“Okay now,” he said, looking around. “From the looks of it, things seem pretty normal. There’s a lot of hype here at Lava. And for good reason. This is big stuff. But I want everyone to stay calm. Keep your wits about you. Listen to your paddle captain. Listen to Dixie. Listen to me.”

“Where’s Blender going to ride?” Sam asked. He stood hopping from one leg to the other. The dog had ridden in the paddle boat that morning, much to Sam’s delight.

“My boat,” said JT.

“Who’s in your boat?” asked Sam.

“I’ve got Ruth and Lloyd, plus Amy and Mitchell.”

Sam stopped dancing. “So who will hold on to the dog?”

“Well,” said JT, “well, I guess Mitchell will.”

“Moi?”
said Mitchell.

“That’s right,” JT told Mitchell. “You’re going to be riding up front, so you’re in charge of the dog.”

(Way to make things as hard as possible, he thought.)

But Mitchell shook his head somberly. “Well then, this hombray will rise to the occasion.”

Once again, JT reminded them to check their life jackets. Solemnly they all boarded their respective boats as the guides stood knee-deep in the water and coiled up their bow lines. There was a kind of informal queue among the parked boats, and their group was next.

When Amy, Mitchell, Ruth, and Lloyd were in their seats, JT pushed off.

“Here’s the deal,” he said, rocking the boat as he climbed up and settled himself on his seat. “Main thing is to just stay low and hang on tight.” He reached back and tightened the retainer strap on his sunglasses. “And listen closely! We’re going in on the right and in two seconds I’m going to shout
‘V-wave!’
”

“What’s a V-wave?” asked Amy.

“It’s just a huge backward wave. Anyway—when I yell
‘V-wave,’
I want you to duck—and then I want you to
immediately
start bailing. I mean
immediately!
And with the buckets—don’t bother with the bailing pump; there isn’t time. Just bail like hell. Then there’ll be another huge wave, and then we’re through. Whole thing takes twenty seconds. Pretty simple. Not a lot to remember.” He snapped the latch on the ammo box at his feet. “So, Amy … What is it you’re going to do?”

“Hold on? Duck when you say ‘V-wave,’ and bail?”

“That’s what I like,” said JT. “A passenger who listens.”

“What do I do with the dog?” Mitchell asked. “Should I hold on to his bandanna? Put him on a leash? What should I do?”

All this time the dog had been sitting patiently at JT’s feet.

“You’re going to squeeze him between your legs, as close to your crotch as possible,” JT said. He gave the dog a nudge. “Go see Mitchell.”

“Come here, doggie,” said Mitchell. “Don’t bite me again. I’m a nice guy” Gingerly he stretched his arm over the stack of dry bags. JT gave the dog another nudge. JT knew he was pushing things here, but he didn’t have any alternative. Ruth and Lloyd were out of the question, and Amy—well, he recalled Amy sliding around in the
boat during Crystal. Amy had to hold on with both hands, good and tight.

“No time to hold a grudge,” JT said to the dog. “Go on now.” Blender slunk toward Mitchell. He sniffed the man’s fingers, thumped his tail, then settled at Mitchell’s feet in the front of the boat.

“Wrap your legs around him, Mitchell,” said JT. “Squeeze him like you’re a woman.”

Mitchell laughed nervously but corralled the dog between his thighs. “So—where’s this V-wave?” he asked, craning his neck.

“You can’t see it from here.” JT took up his oars and pounded down the safety pins for good measure. “Only when you’re right down in the middle of things.”

“Want me to be on the lookout for you? Act like an extra set of eyes?”

“No, Mitchell,” said JT. “I want you to stay low and hang on, just like everyone else. Keep the dog between your legs. Ruth? Lloyd?” He wrenched around in his seat. “You set on instructions?”

“I am happy to report that I moved my bowels today,” said Lloyd, tightening the strap on his hat.

Ruth looked at JT and shrugged.

“So are we ready?” JT called over to the other boats.

“Ready,” said Dixie.

“I’m ready,” said Abo.

“Then let’s rumble,” said JT.

In the front of the boat, Amy crouched down, squatting against her heels. She was glad to get off the hot black rocks, to be out on the water again; the perpetual puddle in the bilge felt cool against her swollen ankles.

She wasn’t scared. JT knew what he was doing. He had, after all, run this rapid 124 times.

“Everybody got a good grip?” JT asked them. “Got the bail buckets handy?”

Amy slipped her right hand through the wrist strap of the camera, then took hold of the chickenline, shielding the camera from JT’s view
with the bulk of her arm and shoulder. With her left hand, she worked her fingers under the tight web of straps.

Mitchell was watching her closely. “These straps are tight as guitar strings, aren’t they!” he exclaimed. “Sheesh! Wow! Here we go! Look out Lava!”

Amy could tell that Mitchell felt uncomfortable with her, and she suspected it had to do with her being so fat and him not approving but trying to hide it with jovial chatter.