First Descent

by Pam Withers

  “You got lucky, Rex. Shouldn’t have risked your life for a kid you don’t even know,” Gramps said.

  I looked away, disgusted.

  “You did the right thing,” Mom said, reaching for my hand.

  I swept my eyes over Gramps.

  Gramps stirred his coffee vigorously, added sugar, glanced at me, then at Mom. “On the other hand, Rex, that was quite the sprint. Makes me think I’ve made a good decision. A decision your mom and I have been preparing to tell you about.”

  “A decision I’ve agreed to only on two conditions,” Mom cut in, her eyes on Gramps.

  “Yeah, Gramps?” What have I done wrong now?

  “I know it was hard on you, not making the cut for the Olympic team.”

  Hard? To miss it by one slot? All he’d said at the time was, “I knew you weren’t there yet, Rex.”

  “Uh-huh,” I said, frowning.

  “And maybe because you don’t have those credentials, you haven’t been able to get enough sponsors to pay your way to Colombia.”

  “Not yet, but I will. I’ve got fifty percent of the sponsors I need.” I looked him in the eyes. “I’m seventeen. Same age you were when you got your first sponsor.”

  “Exactly. And I rewarded that sponsor with a first descent that launched my career.” His voice was sharp, as if he were rebuking me. Or do I detect a fragment of fear? Is he afraid I might finish what he hasn’t? That the history books will herald my name in future mentions of the Furioso River of Colombia?

  Mom stood there, shifting from one foot to another, her eyes on me. “Mother’s passing seems to have put a streak of craziness in your grandfather,” she said, with fondness in her tone.

  I stared from Mom to Gramps. Gramps ignored her. “I’ve decided to sponsor you, Rex. Foot half the expedition. Especially since you’re obviously no good at getting enough sponsors.”

  My breath left me in one long gasp. I wondered who’d taken possession of my grandfather’s body. Then I caught a look that passed between Gramps and Mom. She’d made him. She’d talked him into it. How did she do that?

  I rose to wrap my arms around his bony chest anyway. “I’ll do it, Gramps. I’ll finish that river for you.” From over Gramps’ shoulder, I looked at Mom, at the pride that was tearing up her eyes, and I beamed her a heartfelt smile of thanks. No other mom in the world would have done that. Not one.

  “Not just for Gramps. For the Scruggs family legacy,” Mom said, gathering Gramps’ withered palm in one hand and mine in the other.

  Gramps’ chin sank, like he was suddenly very tired. I tried to pretend that it had been Gramps who’d just uttered those words. In all my childhood daydreams of someday living up to his reputation, I’d never once heard him encourage me. Gramps dispensed only hard-boiled criticism.

  “On two conditions,” my mother added, still holding our hands like we were an inseparable threesome. “That you, son, arrange for at least two other qualified expedition members to join you, and that Gramps and I determine the region is safe to travel in.”

  “Agreed!” I promised quickly, my mind leaping to a mental Rolodex of South America’s best whitewater kayakers.

  “Gramps wouldn’t agree at first,” Mom said.

  “I told her you were still a boy,” Gramps’ gruff voice spoke up.

  “And I informed him you’re nearly a man.” Again, her eyes were teary.

  “Well, you’re the same age your mother was when she had to drop out of high school to have you,” Gramps spoke up, pulling his hand out of Mom’s.

  I watched Mom’s crimson face. Why does Gramps have to be so cruel? Mom had told me ages ago she didn’t even know who my dad was. So she’d made a mistake when she was young. Is Gramps going to hold that against her forever?

  “Anyway, try, and if you fail, maybe it’ll be out of your system,” Gramps said.

  I refused to let his words sting me. This was my chance, my big chance, to prove myself to Gramps, my mom, and the world. I turned and hugged Gramps and Mom in turn. “I’ll be fine.”

  Gramps eyed me soberly. “There’s one other condition.”

  I waited.

  “That necklace of mine.”

  “Still have it.” I pulled it from my paddling jacket pocket. His hollowed-out eyes locked on it.

  “Did you know I got this off a starving Indian? Traded her an avocado sandwich for it.”

  “You’ve told us lots of times, Gramps.”

  “I want you to try and locate the family that gave it to me, the Calambáses. They live along the river you’re aiming to paddle.”

  I hesitated. I hoped he wasn’t going to ask me to return the necklace to them. He didn’t know how attached I’d gotten to it, how I believed it kept me safe. And I couldn’t tell him because he’d think that was a sign of weakness.

  “Tell them you’re my grandson.”

  I shrugged. “Of course, Gramps.”

  “They might be able to help you hire a guide, someone who knows the area. Even better if they speak English.”

  I breathed easier. No more mention of the necklace. “Okay. You’re the best, Gramps. I’m totally going to own that river.”

  “Or you’ll come back with your tail between your legs. But you’ll come back either way, I reckon. That’s what I promised your mother.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  The same day in southwest Colombia, Myriam Calambás set her bucket of dirty clothing beside the rushing river, lifted her calf-length wool skirt, and stretched a toe towards the water’s coolness. Tumbling waves splashed their way around the river’s boulders. The seventeen-year-old knew every inch of the land on both sides of the river for miles, but this was her favorite place.

  She sang softly, in English. It was her way of practicing her best subject at school without getting disapproving looks from her family. A rooster’s first crows sounded down the hill. She paused to listen as she breathed in the familiar, earthy smell of dust and humidity, tinged with the fragrance of pine and eucalyptus trees.

  This was her special time of day. Every morning before dawn, she’d rise from her bed, dress quickly, and tiptoe out of the adobe hut. Without a backward glance at her four younger sleeping brothers and sisters, she’d hurry past the hacienda, which served as the reservation village’s community center, towards the river. Her bare roughened feet traveled firmly over the courtyard’s flagstones as hens cackled and geese waddled out of her way.

  Her father disliked her coming to the river alone. He’d warned her again and again. But Myriam prized her moments of quietude here.

  She flicked her long black braid over her shoulder and cocked the felt hat on her head just so. Shifting her wool poncho, she stepped forward and curled her toes into the mud of the little eddy. Then she gazed downhill at the mists that clung to the sides of her mountain, like tufts of sheep’s wool caught on branches.

  The tap of small claws on the rocky path behind told her that Capitán, her family’s small mutt, had roused himself to follow her. She smiled and stooped to scratch his ears.

  Filling the bucket with river water, she crouched to scrub her family’s clothes. As the oldest child, Myriam had the most chores. But all the people on her reservation worked from sunup to sundown. Hard work was all that stood between them and starvation.

  I would like to cross the river and run around free and happy for just a few minutes, Myriam thought, without fear of stepping on a land mine or being grabbed by a soldier.

  Something about the tumbling mountain river pushed that reality away for a few moments each day. Myriam liked to imagine that her river whispered secrets. She liked to imagine her grandmother, her great-grandmother, and hundreds of great-greats before that pausing by this river each morning with clothes, food, and children to wash. She liked to imagine how peaceful life must have been before the Spanish conquistadors had come. Before the Spanish colonialists had herded up her ancestors and turned them into serfs to work the land around the ranch houses, called haciendas, they built. And
before fifty years of civil war had killed or displaced what was left of her people, the Andean indígenas of Colombia. “Dirty Indians,” some Colombians called them.

  Myriam had just finished her washing when Capitán emitted a low growl, the hair on his back standing on end. She tensed. As she glanced across the river, Capitán’s low growls turned into barking and his snout pointed accusingly at the far shore.

  “Shhh!” Still crouched, Myriam placed her hand against the dog’s coarse fur, her eyes searching the far shore. She could see nothing, but there were many large boulders behind which a soldier could hide. She knew soldiers sometimes lurked there, scouting land for the coca fields that supported their cause, or maybe just spying on her people.

  She decided to heed Capitán’s warning. In one swift move, she turned and fled, running in a zigzag motion, fast as a puma, adrenalin coursing through her veins. Zigzag is how she’d been taught to run from soldiers’ bullets from the time she was a small child.

  In the minute or two it took to sprint to her community, she recited silently: Leave us alone. We are no threat. Let us live in peace.

  As she rounded a head-high slab of stone above her community’s courtyard, she slammed into Alberto, her boyfriend, which sent her washing pail crashing to the ground.

  “Hey! Watch where you’re going,” he teased her, reaching long arms down to pick up the bucket of clean clothes, letting his hands linger on hers as he returned it to her. He looked hurt when she pulled away. Then she noticed what he held in one hand.

  “Alberto! You caught a rabbit!” Her mouth watered at the thought of rabbit stew.

  He started to smile, then frowned at her pail. “You’ve been to the river alone. I’ve told you not to. Why do you do it?”

  She drew herself up and reached for the stiffening rabbit, avoiding his eyes. “I don’t take orders from you, Alberto. But everyone will be happy your trap got a rabbit.”

  He released it into her hands, although his face still wore a pained expression. “I could kill a rabbit every day if I had a gun.”

  Myriam held the rabbit at arm’s length to keep blood from dripping on her clean washing. “If you had a gun,” she reminded him, “we’d all be dead when the soldiers found out.”

  Silence hovered between them for a moment. “You’ve been avoiding me, Myriam,” Alberto said, watching her as Capitán scurried away to chase a goose in the courtyard.

  She stepped back. “Just busy,” she said quietly.

  “Myriam!” her grandmother called from inside the hacienda community center, downhill from the adobe huts the villagers lived in.

  “Sorry, Alberto. I have to go.” She turned and walked through the courtyard, hens clucking at her heels. Why can’t I just say the words I practice every night, the words that will end things between us?

  ——

  Hurrying towards the community center, Myriam realized the place had come alive since she’d snuck away at sunrise. The smell of arepas – cornbread patties – frying in a pan mixed with the yapping of dogs and the laughter of her aunts and uncles. Everyone was organizing goods and children for the walk to market. The women had strings of herbs, piles of hats, and bundles of woven goods they’d made. The men – most wearing the calf-length skirts that served as the community’s traditional male clothing – had burlap sacks of potatoes, maize, coffee, beans, carrots, and fruits they’d harvested.

  Before ducking into the run-down former hacienda, Myriam waved at her tall powerful father as he lashed sacks onto their mule. Papá’s weather-beaten face, paler than most of the other men’s, was so serious when her mother was away in the next village of their reservation, visiting Myriam’s other grandmother. His green eyes – so unusual in the community that they probably enhanced his power as leader – were downcast.

  “Abuelita, you’re coming to market?” Myriam was astonished to see her grandmother in the hacienda doorway, organizing small fiber bags of herbs – chamomile, mint, and medicinal – that she had dried. Some days, the old woman hardly stirred from her bed in a dark corner of the part-dirt, part-concrete floor hut up the hill that Myriam and the six members of her family shared. Other days, she used her knowledge of herbs to tend to villagers that were ill. Sometimes she even pushed her stiff fingers through Mamá’s loom to help with weaving crafts, or carded sheep-wool strands on a wooden spindle whorl for the younger women to knit with. It had been months since she’d insisted on accompanying the family to the market to help them sell their goods.

  “Of course,” Abuela replied, her ancient face wrinkling into a toothless smile as she stepped back into the hacienda. At that, the tiny, shawl-wrapped figure lifted herself onto tiptoes to remove her felt hat from a wooden peg. She dusted it off, perched it on her head, and grinned wider, stray whiskers poking out from above her puckered lips.

  Then her face turned serious, and she plunked herself down in a plastic chair with a colorful, hand-woven cushion. She motioned for Myriam to sit in one beside her.

  “Myriam,” she said, reaching for her granddaughter’s hand. “It is time for you to leave school and marry, and for me to spend more time teaching you about herbal medicines.”

  “No, Abuelita,” Myriam protested, her heart sinking. She’d known this was coming for a while. “I want to go to university.” She dared not tell her abuela that she’d already filled out applications, with her teacher’s help.

  Abuela fixed her eyes on her bundles of herbs and on some shirts piled in a chipped enamel washbasin in the corner of the room. She shook her head. “Schooling does not help you cook, work in the fields, and look after little ones. And there’s no one else to take over my healing work.”

  “But, Abuelita, Rosita wants to be a healer. She wants you to teach her.”

  “Rosita is only twelve,” Abuela snapped.

  “Abuelita, I want to go to university to help keep the soldiers away. With my English, I can tell foreigners about what they do to us – tell them on the radio, on the Internet.” Myriam sank to her knees on the concrete floor and directed imploring eyes at her grandmother. Does Abuela even understand what the Internet is? She certainly knew that the radio station was a long, dangerous bike ride away.

  “When I was your age, Myriam, I was already expecting your father. Your mother left school in fifth grade. Indígenas do not go to university, especially indígena girls.”

  Myriam rose on unsteady legs, head bowed, fists clenched tight. Every nerve in her body wanted to defy her beloved grandmother, but indígena girls were raised to be respectful of their elders. So she mumbled only five words – a sentence that didn’t count, she told herself, because she said it in English.

  “I will find a way.”

  The effect on her grandmother startled her. Her frail body went rigid. Her glassy eyes grew crystal clear. She stared at Myriam as if confronting a ghost.

  “No, you won’t!” she responded, wagging a bony finger at her granddaughter.

  Myriam stumbled backwards out of the community center, shock hindering her movements. She had imagined that exchange. Guilt had surely made her imagine her abuela understanding English.

  “Myriam, Papá’s ready!” shouted Rosita, dashing into the courtyard with the two-year-old twins, Flora and Freddy, in tow.

  “I’m coming,” Myriam responded grimly as the two girls each hoisted a twin onto their backs, tucked them under their ponchos, and secured them with long, brightly colored woven sashes. Mamá, of course, had taken the youngest, a baby boy named Alejandro, with her.

  Abuela emerged from the community center’s doorway, barefoot, wearing her hat and wielding her cane, eyes on the party ahead starting down the mountain. Alberto was with them, looking back at Myriam. The girls picked up bags of embroidered tablecloths, put on their rubber boots, and sidestepped some kittens to escort their grandmother to the rear of the group.

  A desperate thought entered Myriam’s mind, a thought she’d first battled away when Alberto had proposed to her. If only I can keep the mon
ey from the goods we’re selling and use it to escape. Or find a way to earn money of my own. I need to get out of here.

  At the front of the group of more than two dozen people, cheerful Andean music floated from Alberto’s battery-powered radio, his proudest possession. He and some of the teens sang and swayed to the beat, as if on their way to a party, while the adults shook their heads, bemused. Myriam liked the songs, but wasn’t in the mood as she negotiated the steep switchbacks and long spiky grass.

  After an hour of walking, the trees began to thin. She felt a tug on her skirt and turned to see Rosita looking at her. “Myriam, soldiers.”

  Myriam looked up, heard the radio switch off, and noticed a commotion at the front of the line. Her father, by far the tallest and strongest man in the village, halted the mule. Everyone was staring at a group of men and youths whose faces were half covered in black bandanas. Wearing green camouflage uniforms and military boots, they stalked towards Myriam’s group with sophisticated U.S.-made M60 machine guns and AR-15 rifles swinging loosely from their shoulders. The bandanas and boots meant they were paramilitary soldiers, hired by the rich to fight the guerillas, who supposedly fought for the poor. Guerillas – whom Myriam distrusted just as much – wore berets and cheap rubber boots. Myriam guided Rosita’s hand into her grandmother’s, then edged downhill, Freddy’s sleeping head bobbing against her shoulder.

  “We’re looking for the people in your village who give food to the guerillas,” the tallest soldier, the commander, said to Myriam’s father. He leaned his sweaty face close to Papá’s as his soldiers, including a few teenage girls, halted a couple of paces back and lifted their guns from their shoulders. Alberto was standing stock-still to one side, his face a frozen mask averted from the soldiers. Myriam feared more for Alberto, who was nineteen, than for anyone. Please don’t press him into your army, she prayed.

  “We have never helped the guerillas,” Papá said in a firm, calm voice. “You know we don’t get involved with either side. You know we are unarmed. We are neutral.” He was standing with his feet planted widely apart, his face and voice revealing no aggression or fear.