First Descent

by Pam Withers

  She nodded, her tired eyes struggling to focus. She was younger than Gramps, I decided, but not by that much. She started speaking faster, hands gesturing, like she was telling me a story. I caught a phrase here or there. “Your grandfather was very ill” was one of them. Not true, I thought. Neither his journal nor the stories he’d told me ever indicated that. Then something about a necklace. The one her family has given Gramps? I wondered. The one in my paddling jacket pocket right now? I decided not to pull it out, in case they might try to claim it back.

  I glanced about the square as she spoke and could tell from their gazes that the older women didn’t understand Spanish, but the younger ones did. One girl around twelve years old, embroidering a tablecloth while chewing on her braid, was watching me intently.

  “Abuelita” came Myriam’s voice just then, and I felt immense relief as she strode into the plaza. But her eyes weren’t focused on me. She placed a hand on her grandmother’s forehead and frowned. Calling for someone to bring some water, she motioned to me. “Help me get her back into the community center. She should be resting.”

  “No problem, but, Myriam, these are my friends, Henrique and Tiago, from Brazil. They’re going to kayak with me.”

  She turned around briefly, shook hands with the two kayakers when they rose, then motioned me to place an arm under Abuela’s shoulder. Abuela, I judged, weighed as much as one of the goose feathers scattered about in the dirt. She sagged into Myriam’s and my arms as if she’d spent all her energy being my welcoming committee.

  Myriam lowered her onto a thin mattress atop box springs in the community center and pulled an embroidered blanket up to her chin. Then she took the cup of water from the girl who’d been embroidering.

  “Thanks, Rosita.” They lifted Abuela’s head gently to help her drink. Myriam fetched a leaf from a bottle on a nearby shelf that was crowded with bottles of leaves, oils, and flowers. She placed the leaf in a clay cup and fetched some hot water from the stove in the plaza to pour on top of it.

  Abuela looked like she needed a doctor more than a leaf-tea. Do doctors even come up here? Jock had said only a priest and soldiers ventured this high.

  I looked around the room. Concrete walls, half the floor concrete, the other half dirt. Plastic chairs scattered around and one filthy window, whose sill was filled with candles. Wooden weaving frames crowded the room. There were dried herbs hanging from the ceiling and boxes of magazines and newspapers around the floor. A radio sat in a place of honor on a rough wooden table. This village was very poor, for sure. I almost felt guilty for accepting the coffee and avocado sandwich.

  “Thanks,” Myriam finally addressed me. “She’s not well. Let’s move outside.”

  Abuela seemed to have fallen asleep already. The girl named Rosita hovered over her.

  Myriam and I sat in the plastic chairs still in the plaza, Henrique and Tiago still conversed nearby, and I pretended that it wasn’t full of dark-skinned women and children staring at us.

  “Hey, guys, want to join us?” I asked my friends, trying to quash a sense of foreboding about the way they were sitting out of earshot and speaking in near whispers.

  “Later,” Henrique replied with a forced smile before he and Tiago started in again – in Portuguese, of course.

  “Did anything go wrong on your trip up with Alberto?” Myriam asked me, one eye on my buddies.

  I shook my head, wondering what she meant.

  “I only just got back from guard duty. Do you need something to eat?”

  I wanted to ask her what she meant by guard duty, but not now. “Abuela gave us sandwiches,” I said, “along with a story I couldn’t follow.”

  A small smile tugged at Myriam’s lips. “The avocado sandwich story.”

  I raised my eyebrows. “The what?”

  “When she was my age, Abuelita was wandering in a field when she met a white man who traded her an avocado sandwich for her necklace.” The smile was gone; resentment had taken its place. “It was a necklace that had been passed down in our family for generations. She should never have given it away. It would be worth a fortune now.”

  I swallowed. Heat flared in my cheeks. “So why did she?”

  Myriam’s face grew colder. “She was starving, like all our people were.”

  “Oh.”

  “Then the man fell ill, and his companions left him. Abuelita is a healer, so she brought him medicinal herbs where he was camping. And then he disappeared. End of story.”

  End of story? But we’ve only just got started.

  “That was my grandfather,” I said in a voice that started to crack. “He was trying to kayak your river, the Furioso. But not all her story is right.”

  She looked at me, then turned her eyes to the kayaks lying where Alberto had dumped them. That’s when I noticed that, while we’d been talking, the children had pulled them out from the wall and were climbing all over them, fighting over who could sit in the cockpits. I grinned, walked over, and squatted down to their level. Henrique and Tiago stopped talking to watch me. I wriggled the kayaks a little to make the kids’ rides more exciting. A few scrambled off and ran crying to their mothers. But the rest rollicked and laughed and motioned me to make the ride rougher and faster, especially a toddler with a red knit hat who was sitting in the cockpit of my boat. Like a coin-operated ride in an arcade, this was a new toy for him. Come to think of it, I’d seen no toys in the plaza at all. So I rocked the kayaks for the children, and even pulled the collapsible paddle out of my backpack. I put it together and showed them how to play-paddle. A long line soon formed to take turns captaining the boats.

  When the children waved to someone behind me, I swiveled my head. What I saw was a row of astonished-looking men and boys in skirts and sleeveless ponchos, most barefoot, some holding hoes and machetes. And beautiful Myriam, failing in her effort to not smile.

  CHAPTER NINE

  The next day, morning sunshine sparkled on the Furioso River as Henrique, Tiago, and I paddled the last rapids between us and the clearing where Myriam had agreed to meet us for lunch. “Whoo-hoo!” we shouted with big grins. The water was refreshingly cool, nothing like the cold I was used to at home. We’d just paddled a series of challenging but fun rapids, none of them hair-raisingly dangerous. Just like Gramps’ journal had promised.

  Ah, fresh mountain air, peaceful woods, and vaguely interesting rapids. Delighted to finally have embarked on our endeavor. My companions seem nervous, I have no idea about what. Me, I’m almost bored with this trivial whitewater so far. On the other hand, this river section allows me to evaluate my men, whom I consider lacking in some pertinent skills. But off the water, they have responded well to my orders to bargain vigorously with the primitive indigenous villagers. Since these damned boats are heavy enough in the skimpy currents, it is unfortunately necessary to buy some of our food en route. – Malcolm Scruggs

  Gramps’ observations sure made me appreciate my little plastic kayak and the way it spun and played in the waves. I was psyched to finally be tracing his footsteps and determined to show him I was up to finishing what he’d started.

  “Nice rapids,” Henrique said as he paddled close by.

  “Yeah, a good warm-up for the canyon,” Tiago agreed. “But do you think it’ll be a day or two before we hit this canyon?”

  “That’s what I think,” I said.

  “That’s a day or two more of exposure to soldiers up here,” Henrique said with a long face. “Tiago and I are worried about that. We think you should be too. We grilled some of Myriam’s people last night, and there’s more going on up here than the government reports let on. Politics and unrest, you know.”

  A bolt of panic hit my chest, but I stifled it fast. “Politics? What are you talking about?” I asked, making sure to look exasperated. We’d come this far; we were so close. I refused to let anything get in my way. “I’m not into politics. I’m into paddling. I thought that’s what you came here for, too.”

  I didn’t like th
e way that made them exchange glances. Before they could say anything else, I sprinted ahead, determined to ignore what they were trying to say. I relaxed only when I caught sight of Myriam on the riverbank. The sun was shining on her lovely face, her white blouse, and her long, dark braid. She was wearing jeans today, which were much more flattering than the shin-length wool skirts the older women wore and that I’d always seen her in until now. She was playing on the riverbank with her little brother and sister. They were cute, especially the boy in a red knit hat, Freddy, who’d taken to sitting in my kayak when it was onshore. The bike Myriam had ridden up the river trail – with one twin in her sash, the other on the handlebars – was lying in the grass nearby. Too bad Myriam and I weren’t alone up here, but I needed my two buddies in order to paddle the river, and I guess she had to do double duty while her mom worked a loom back at the community center and her younger sister Rosita went to school.

  “Why don’t you go to school?” I asked Myriam as I pulled into the eddy beside her and flicked water at the twins to make them giggle. Henrique and Tiago paused to play on a wave above.

  She pursed her lips. She specialized in resentful looks, but not half as much as Alberto. “I just left school last week.”

  “Now that you’re finished school, are you going to marry Alberto?”

  Her eyes widened and her hands moved to her hips. “Did he say that?”

  “He did.”

  She chewed her lip as if deciding how to respond. “It’s not decided,” she finally said. “I want to go to university to be a reporter, but that’s not what indígena girls do, I’ve been told.”

  “Well, I think you should go to university. Indígena girls in the United States and Canada do.”

  Her face turned my way with a glow of something like hope. “Very many of them?”

  “Sure,” I said. “If they want to go and don’t have much money, sometimes they can get scholarships.”

  I was only a foot from where she sat cross-legged beside the water, but I remained in my boat, reluctant to end my morning’s session and happy to let my paddling partners play upstream till they got that political nonsense out of their heads.

  “And their parents let them?” Myriam asked.

  “Why wouldn’t their parents let them?”

  Flora and Freddy, free of their sister’s hold, stuck their bare feet into the water and touched my boat.

  “Hey, Flora and Freddy. Want to see me roll?” I asked.

  They turned their eyes to me because I’d said their names. I paddled to the river’s center, capsized, and hung upside down, counting to three just to worry them a little. Then I rolled back up and waved, watching their eyes grow big.

  Henrique and Tiago pulled up, smiling. They’d seen me entertain the twins.

  “What happens if you don’t roll up?” Myriam asked as she took the twins’ hands in hers.

  “I always roll,” I said, refraining from looking at the Brazilians.

  “That’s not what Jock told Alberto.”

  My face reddened. “Except when I’m straight off a plane and have altitude sickness.”

  “How are you three going to get under that bridge?” she asked, pointing to a little footbridge downstream. The water lapped just inches under the bridge. There was no clearance for my head and body even if I ducked.

  I winked at Henrique and Tiago. “Watch this.”

  I paddled to the bridge. Just as the bow of my boat reached it, I purposely flipped and counted to twelve as the current continued to move my upside-down boat and me downstream. By the time I rolled back up, my boat was downstream of the bridge. I spun the kayak around and paddled back upstream to the bridge, then leapt out to walk back up to my companions.

  Freddy and Flora were clapping. Myriam offered a faint smile. Henrique and Tiago repeated the performance to more clapping.

  “I’m going to show the twins one more trick,” I told Myriam as they pressed themselves against their big sister.

  Myriam shrugged and said something to the twins, who sat still and clasped their hands as if waiting for a new show.

  Getting back in my boat, I maneuvered it to the deepest part of the quiet eddy and capsized. I ejected from the boat, but instead of coming to the surface to grab a breath, I came up directly underneath the overturned boat, my face now in the little air pocket beneath the kayak’s seat. I hung there underwater for a good few minutes, until the air in the air pocket was plenty stale. Then I ducked out from under the boat, surfaced, and waved at the twins, who were crying, and Myriam, who was looking concerned. The Brazilians, well aware of what I’d been up to, were starting to look bored. Henrique released his spraydeck and stepped onto shore, heading for the picnic blanket.

  “You can hold your breath a long time,” Myriam observed, clearly relieved I hadn’t drowned. She rocked the twins to quiet them as they looked at me warily.

  “Anyone else hungry?” Tiago asked, exiting his boat and joining Henrique.

  I lifted my kayak out of the water and also headed to where Miriam had spread a blanket on the grass. Setting my boat down, I emptied it of water. “I was hiding under the boat, breathing in the air pocket beneath the seat,” I explained to Myriam. “I used to drive my grandfather crazy after he made the mistake of teaching me that trick.”

  She smiled wanly, turning to the twins on the picnic blanket and opening her small burlap bag. “I didn’t bring much food,” she apologized as the twins eagerly grabbed for the corn patties she handed them.

  “No problem. We have lots in the waterproof storage bags in our kayaks,” I said.

  Henrique, Tiago, and I produced guavas, tangerines, cheese, sausages, crackers, and an avocado. Myriam and the twins stared at the food like it represented a feast.

  “Help yourselves,” I said to the three of them. “There’s lots more where that came from. We bought supplies in town before we came up.”

  “That’s why your backpacks were so heavy?”

  “Partly, but our sleeping bags and paddling gear add up to a lot of weight, too. It’s no big deal. I’m used to walking with a forty-pound boat on my shoulder.”

  This morning my friends and I had woken in the dusty, windowless hut beside the Calambás family’s hut that Papá had insisted we stay in. There, I’d unrolled my sleeping bag and tucked Gramps’ journal under the bundled-up clothing I used as a pillow. Long after my buddies were snoring, I read the journal by flashlight, my heart beating fast to know that I was no longer a small boy reading it on the sly after lights-out, but a grown-up expedition member in a Colombian hut beside the legendary Furioso.

  “No camping near the river,” Papá had objected to my suggestion before we’d moved into the hut. “Safer near us.” Maybe he wanted to keep an eye on us, though I didn’t see why. It’s not like there was anything to steal. I hurriedly dismissed the notion that he might be worried about soldiers. We hadn’t seen any, after all.

  They’d spared a boy and the mules long enough for the animals to carry our boats from the village to where Gramps had described starting his journey with two expedition mates. We’d walked alongside the mules. But I’d arranged that, beginning tomorrow, we’d use bikes borrowed from Myriam’s village to get to the start of each paddling section. Then, at the end of each day, we’d hide our kayaks where we finished paddling, walk back to the day’s starting point, and retrieve the bikes to cycle back to the community for the night. Lots of walking and biking, but good for our lower-body fitness. The other option – carrying food and sleeping gear in our kayaks – would add weight that might compromise our paddling performance. Not to mention that everyone kept insisting it was dangerous for us to camp – advice that didn’t sit well with Henrique and Tiago. I’d have to keep reassuring them – and talk Myriam into telling her villagers to stop scaring them with talk about soldiers being up here. Even if they existed, they had no cause to hassle us. We weren’t hurting anyone. We were just paddling a river.

  I smiled as I watched the twins tear
into the food once Myriam had given them permission. They ate like they hadn’t eaten in a while. Myriam held herself back until Henrique, Tiago, and I told her several times she was welcome to it. Then she demonstrated one heck of a voracious appetite for a slim girl, all but polishing off the cheese. Not that I minded.

  “So what’s downstream from here?” Henrique asked.

  “Trout tanks. They’re a ten-minute walk from our village.”

  “I mean for rapids.”

  I waited for her answer, wanting to see if her description matched Gramps’, as it had this morning.

  “Bigger. More white waves. And there are no breaks in the rapids between here and our trout tanks. Then it is calm for a stretch.”

  “No waterfalls or mazes of boulders?” Tiago asked.

  “There’s nothing like that between here and the trout tanks.”

  I fished out Gramps’ journal and ran my finger along his entry.

  Continuous Class III rapids until shortly before an Indian village. Had my men sweating a little, but delightful level of challenge in my opinion. We startled a cougar as we came around one river bend. If only I’d had a gun on me! Just now, we’ve paused to pick some berries and check our kayaks for damage. – Malcolm Scruggs

  “Class III till the village, he agrees,” I reported. “Not that we’ll take his or Myriam’s word for it entirely.” We would stop, get out, and walk down the riverbank to explore anything we couldn’t see from an eddy. Kayakers call that scouting. And I was beginning to trust Myriam’s knowledge of the river. Her river, I thought with a grin. Hers and ours.

  “You’ll meet us at the calm section?”

  “Yes,” she said, lifting Flora into the sash that the indígena women carry babies and toddlers in. She picked up her bike and repositioned Freddy on the handlebars. “And I’ll show you our trout tanks.”

  “Okay. Sounds interesting. Race you there,” I said with a wink at my buddies. She’d beat us, of course, even with two children along.