First Descent

by Pam Withers

  Copyright © 2011 by Pam Withers

  Published in Canada by Tundra Books,

  75 Sherbourne Street, Toronto, Ontario M5A 2P9

  Published in the United States by Tundra Books of Northern New York, P.O. Box 1030, Plattsburgh, New York 12901

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2010938593

  All rights reserved. The use of any part of this publication reproduced, transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, or stored in a retrieval system, without the prior written consent of the publisher – or, in case of photocopying or other reprographic copying, a licence from the Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency – is an infringement of the copyright law.

  LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES CANADA CATALOGUING IN PUBLICATION

  Withers, Pam

  First descent / Pam Withers.

  eISBN: 978-1-77049-274-5

  I. Title.

  PS8595.18453F57 2011 jC813′.6 C2010-906384-8

  We acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program (BPIDP) and that of the Government of Ontario through the Ontario Media Development Corporation’s Ontario Book Initiative.

  We further acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council for our publishing program.

  Cover images: Dreamstime

  v3.1

  To my niece Esther Tuttle

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Preface

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Acknowledgments

  PREFACE

  One of the world’s last great wild rivers remains unconquered. Only one man has ever attempted to kayak it: Rex’s legendary, domineering grandfather. At seventeen, Rex is determined to conquer it in hopes of carrying on the family legacy. He flies to South America and hires an attractive female guide with her own agenda – and secrets – who shrugs off his advances. Then the guide abandons Rex. Chasing his grandfather’s footsteps brought him this far, but now he must re-examine his motivations and find a way down the Furioso River.

  CHAPTER ONE

  When the shot rang out, I leapt from my bed, lifted a corner of the bedroom curtain, and looked down on the river bend. A fresh crack in the humpbacked ice jam glistened in the morning sunlight, like a wet wound. I squinted at it carefully, feeling my pulse rise. My mind flashed back to other rivers and other springtimes, reminding me that spring breakup can sound like gunfire.

  I shaded my eyes and looked upstream towards the wall of sandbags. My back still ached from hefting them into place. All last week, I’d worked alongside most of the town’s able-bodied population for long hours, proving how very strong I am for seventeen. Not that my grandfather took much notice.

  With one hand still on the curtain, I swept my eyes along the half-mile ribbon of steaming black water formed by the release pipe from the pulp mill in Milltown, Alberta. Fringed on both sides by fragile ice shelves, the dark open patch was followed by solid ice downstream. As I shed my pajamas and reached for my wetsuit, I spotted a boy on the far side of the river’s edge. I frowned. He was playing on an ice shelf along the water warmed by the pulp mill.

  Not smart, kid, I thought, zipping up my wetsuit and reaching for my paddling jacket. Where’re your parents, anyway?

  I checked my paddling jacket’s pocket for the good-luck charm I keep there – a necklace my famous grandfather once got off a starving native woman in the Andes. Far better than having a famous grandfather is having this necklace, which no one but him, my mom, and me know about. Plus I have the actual journal that he kept on that journey. I keep it under my pillow and read bits of it before I fall asleep.

  I patted the necklace again and made my way towards the back door.

  “Morning, Rex.” Mom smiled at me as I grabbed a banana off the kitchen counter. “You’re up early for a Saturday. I’ll cook up brunch after your training session. Be careful, now.”

  “Thanks, Mom.” I headed down the hallway, nearly slamming into Gramps’ tall but emaciated frame as he stepped out of his bedroom.

  “Can’t you ever watch where you’re going? Where the hell are you going, anyway?”

  “Sorry, Gramps. I’m off to paddle.” As if my wetsuit didn’t make that obvious. As if he didn’t see me paddle every morning. Gramps is Gramps and I try to shrug off his temperamental outbursts, but it’s harder to do that lately.

  “What’s the point of training? You didn’t make the cut.”

  For a split second, the steel-edged remark hit exactly like he meant it to. But I took a deep breath and silently counted to three. He crossed the hall and slammed the bathroom door shut behind him.

  Mom appeared with a sympathetic smile. “Don’t mind him. He’s …”

  “… not himself since Grandma died,” I finished for her. I refrained from saying that he’d always been testy and it had been a month since the funeral. But, like Mom, I try to give him lots of slack.

  When I was a child, he was my hero – from the time he first showed me photos of him in National Geographic. Those faded photos still hang framed on his bedroom wall, above his dust-covered expedition medals and trophies. But I don’t go into his room anymore. I’ve got my own growing collection of trophies to look at and, someday soon, maybe, my own mug in National Geographic. And yet, well, a part of me still wants to worship him, this crotchety old man.

  Mom smiled. “At least he’s coming out of his bedroom more. Have a good session, Rex. I admire your discipline on these cold days.”

  I grinned at her as I peeled my banana. “It’ll be warmer in South America. If I come up with sponsors for my expedition.”

  She winked and returned to the kitchen. I ate my banana and took the stairs to the basement’s rear door. Stepping into the backyard, I hurried towards the boathouse as frosted grass crunched under my neoprene boots. I puffed a cloud of steam into the frigid air. It’ll be a lot warmer in South America, I reminded myself. And I will land the final sponsor who’ll pay my way there. More important, I will, I hope, one-up Gramps’ career while launching my own. As in finish the one and only expedition he failed. Write my own entry into the yellowed pages of the journal that rests under my pillow.

  When I reached the boathouse, I shrugged into my life jacket and spraydeck, buckled up my helmet, and lifted my lightweight slalom race kayak and paddle down from their racks. I felt my biceps, pleased that the sandbagging had added to their firmness.

  The fact that I could paddle on a short runway of liquid this time of year, instead of just lifting weights, was courtesy of the local pulp mill. As tough as it had been to move here from Montana in the middle of my senior year of high school – so Mom could help look after my ailing grandma – I was glad, at least, for this preseason strip of water to paddle.

  I lowered my whitewater kayak off the ice into the water and squinted at the kid on the ice shelf on the other side. Eight, maybe? Dressed in a thin parka, jeans, and runners, he was trailing his mittenless fingers in the frigid water, unaware ho
w dangerous his position was. Or maybe he didn’t care. He was probably native, from the reservation across the river.

  “They let their kids run wild,” Gramps likes to say. “And they live in filthy, overcrowded houses.”

  I don’t like how he talks about people from the reservation – or reserve, as they call them here in Canada. Just ’cause Gramps is from here doesn’t mean he’s right, does it?

  I stretched in the cold air and seated myself in my boat. Silently, I powered across the dark river. “Hey, kid!” I addressed him in my friendliest voice as my kayak drew near the reserve’s side of the river. “I think you should get off the ice. You could fall in and drown, you know.”

  He sat up and narrowed his blue eyes at me. A frown made his forehead bunch up. He crossed his little arms over his chest, curled his lower lip, and mouthed, “F— off.”

  That’s when the second shot sounded from upstream, like a rifle. As the startled boy scrambled to look around, a louder crack reverberated from under him. His ice shelf broke off the bank and lurched into the river, nearly pitching him off. His eyeballs bulged as he clung to his breakaway floe.

  Someone must’ve seen it happen from the fire-station tower upriver because, as I sprinted over to calm the poor kid down, the town siren let loose full blast to call volunteer firefighters. The boy started bawling.

  “It’s okay, I’ve got you,” I said. “Just sit still.”

  I nudged the bow of my kayak against the edge of the floe and tried to push his square of ice back towards the far shore. But the kid twisted around, and the movement made his floe bob out of my reach. Even as I chased him, his floe hit the main current, which made it wobble so much, I was sure it was going to pitch him into the drink.

  “Don’t move! I’m coming!” I said, half-deafened by the siren.

  He sat stock-still for a moment, but as my kayak drew up to him, the boy panicked and tried to leap right onto my boat. It tilted and capsized, just like that.

  Man, it was cold. Brain-freeze cold. I did a quick roll, spinning the kayak all the way back upright in less than a second. I take pride in never missing a roll.

  As ice water dripped down my face, I watched the boy’s flailing hand reach towards the side of my boat. I planted a sweep stroke just in time to whip the kayak away from his grasp. One dunking was more than enough.

  “Listen, kid,” I said, as I watched him dog-paddle to keep himself afloat. “I’m going to turn my boat so that its tail end is near your hands. Hold on to that end, only the tip. Okay? Don’t try to crawl up until I tell you.”

  Flashback of Gramps saying that to me when I was little, so very many times. When he was less grumpy. Or maybe I just hadn’t seen it for adoring him so much all those summers Mom and I spent with him. He was the dad I’d never had.

  “O-k-k-k-kay,” he said between chattering teeth, clinging to my stern like his life depended on it, which it did. By then, we’d managed to drift towards my house, on the other side of the river. Firemen were running down the bank as I half-listened for further cracks from upriver. I had to get this kid and me to safety.

  “So,” I said to my young client, “you’re going to stretch your arms towards my waist and pull yourself up onto the boat. Keep your weight even, or I’ll flip. Got it?” I’ve had dozens of coaches, some good, some bad. I know how to sound like one of the good ones when I need to. Not like Gramps.

  “G-g-g-got it.”

  “Good. Now lift yourself very slowly out of the water until you’re lying on the back of my kayak, hands around my waist, feet trailing in the water. That’s it – no! Balanced!”

  He shifted himself just in time and clung so tightly, he squashed my ribcage.

  “That’s better. Good stuff, little buddy. Now don’t move one inch till I get us to shore. Deal?”

  “D-d-deal.”

  I struck out for shore, my double-bladed paddle slicing rhythmically through the icy water. The entire kayak trembled with the shivers of his little body. I watched puffs of condensed air from my own breath float calmly away. Everything was under control.

  As we drew near the ice shelf onshore, I heard his small voice whisper, “Thank you.”

  “No problem.”

  A fireman lay down on the ice shelf and reached to pull the kid off my kayak. “Attaboy,” the fireman said, “I gotcha.” He wrapped the boy in a blanket and handed him off to another fireman.

  “You need to get him back to the reserve fast,” I suggested. “He’s shivering badly.”

  “The reserve?” The fireman’s eyebrows arched. “This is Joe MacDonald’s son. He lives two houses from me. Must’ve had a sleepover there last night.”

  “Oh,” I said, avoiding his eyes and feeling color creep into my face.

  The first fireman reached out to pump my hand. “You’re Malcolm Scruggs’ grandson, right? Lucky you were there.”

  “No worries.” Luck had nothing to do with it. The river – my river – had prearranged it entirely, had even woken me up to make sure I was there. I gave the kid a thumb’s-up. He was soaked, but basking in the attention of people running towards him. He waved good-bye to me.

  “So your name’s Rex,” the fireman continued. “I’ve known your grandparents a long time. Sorry about the loss of your grandma.”

  “Thanks.” I was still in my kayak, shivering.

  “I heard you won the national championships.”

  “Yeah.” I smiled broadly. One part of me felt great about the rescue I’d just done, but I also had a gnawing feeling that I needed to get away. I had to get home in case the ice jam really was about to break.

  “Must’ve made your grandpa proud. He used to be famous himself, eh?”

  “Still is,” I added dryly. At least in his own mind.

  “What for?” challenged a little girl, listening in.

  I smiled at her. “For being the first one down a bunch of wild rivers. It’s called a first descent. Mountain climbers dream of doing first ascents; kayakers like my grandpa and me do first descents.”

  “Have you done one?” the fireman asked.

  “Not yet, but someday. Sorry, but I really have to get home,” I said as I used my paddle to back away from shore. With the noisy siren still blaring and half the town’s population streaming down to the riverside, my nerves were on edge. Whatever the crowds might think, and whatever I might want them to think, it had been an easy rescue. I probably could’ve done better, as Gramps was sure to point out if he’d seen it.

  As I headed downstream, I glanced up at our house. The living-room light silhouetted Gramps watching me, Mom behind him. Under his gaze, I felt a need to sprint harder, faster. When I was halfway to our beach, someone turned the screeching siren off. I breathed deeply of the quiet – only to be jarred by what sounded like the mother of all gun battles from the ice bulge upstream – Crack! Zing! Bang!

  Adrenalin surged through me like electricity. I went into a high-speed sprint, knowing that the ice jam behind me was splitting apart as surely as if someone had blown it up. I didn’t need to look to know that the pent-up river beneath it was about to explode, like lava from a volcano. If the first push of broken ice reached me before I neared shore, I’d be churned like meat in a grinder. I’d seen TV news footage of breakups before: ten-foot-long ice chunks tossed so violently that they acted like saw blades, ripping up vegetation, tearing entire trees up by the roots.

  But I was an athlete – fast and experienced for my age, even if Gramps would rarely admit it. I had a shot at outrunning the surge. And, somehow, I knew it wasn’t my time to die yet. I had the good-luck necklace in my paddling jacket pocket, after all.

  The juice and pistons in my arms worked overtime, trying to close the gap between midriver and shore. If people were screaming, I was only vaguely aware of it. If Mom was tearing at her hair while Gramps was gritting his teeth, I had no way of knowing. My world for those suspended moments was just me, the river, and the thin crust of ice lining the bottom of Gramps’ riverfr
ont property. When the bow of my kayak was about to hit the shoreline’s ice edge, I leaned back, put in a super-powerful stroke, and let the kayak slide up and over it.

  The second my boat touched frozen mud, I leapt out and lifted the kayak by its cockpit as I ran up, up, up our yard. Behind me, the thud and crash of giant ice blocks tumbling over one another thundered like boulders being spilled from the shovel of a monster bulldozer. Still more ice chunks were clawing at the riverbank, with a shriek like fingernails-on-a-blackboard amplified by rock-concert speakers. The water surge spewed these chunks onto the frozen river below the mill’s strip of meltwater. That’s exactly where I’d have been pummeled and crushed if I hadn’t outsprinted the water.

  Only when I reached the house did I drop my kayak and turn. Ignoring the warfare of ice, water, and shoreline below me, I searched the crowd I’d left behind for any sign of panic. People were huddled watching, shaking their heads in wonder, even though they’d seen spring breakup dozens of times before. No one was screaming or pointing, which meant no townspeople had been caught. That’s all I needed to know.

  I spun around and walked into the house, one hand pressed against the pocket that held my necklace. On my way up the back stairs, Mom nearly knocked me over in her rush to reach out and hug me. She clung to me with a tear-stained face.

  “Rex, Rex, Rex, I can’t believe you … what a fright … you saved that boy … oh, my crazy, crazy son.…”

  I worked to free myself from her embrace. “Mom, chill, okay?” The kid is okay, the kid is okay was the only thought going through my adrenalin-saturated mind.

  “Sorry, dear,” she said, releasing me slowly. Mom’s okay, really. She understands me, is proud of me, and mostly supports my goals, even the ones that would freak most moms. I gave her a quick kiss on the cheek.

  After I showered, changed, and arrived at the kitchen table, I was startled to see Gramps joining us for the first time in days. He was staring at me with something that felt almost like respect. My heart picked up. Then he looked away, busying himself with a cup of black coffee.