PRECIPICE

by Leland Davis

  Liza had been the rock to which he’d clung in his grief and confusion, his savior. What he lacked in direction and drive, she made up for in spades. He’d fallen madly in love, and they’d married the following year. Being a senator’s wife was a dream come true for Liza. She loved everything about it, from the influence to the parties, the prestige, and the political game. When his first term had ended, she had encouraged him to run for reelection and managed a brilliant campaign for him. There was no way he would have let her down or taken away the things that made her so happy. She had carefully steered his career ever since. Never one to buck the system, Sheldon had gone along. Anything was fine with him as long as he had Liza to hold onto.

  She walked across the room toward him, her high heels clicking on the hardwood floor, and turned him by the shoulder so she could fix his tie. He’d worn the tuxedo hundreds of times, but he could never quite get it right. She insisted that he not wear a clip-on. They were low class. Her ministrations to the propriety of his appearance had all of the intimacy of a dental examination and the delicate precision of surgery. Sheldon endured it silently, dropping his hands placidly to his sides and feeling the weight of the heavy cufflinks tugging at his sleeves. There was nothing left to say.

  He wasn’t sure when the love which had sustained him for so long had turned to resentment that he was living her dream and not his own. The heart attack had called it to his attention, but it must have started long before. The tangled mess of love, family, responsibility, booze, politics, and physical ailments dimmed like a hazy reflection in his mental rear-view mirror, and it was impossible to separate the causes from the cures in the morass. All he was sure of was that no matter how he’d gotten into this mess, for the first time in his life he was willing to take action to get himself out.

  She adjusted his cummerbund, brushed some lint from his pants leg, then turned and clicked away into her bathroom. Sheldon certainly would not miss these social functions. His wife lived for them, seeming to come alive when they walked out the door only to return to a distant somnolence the moment they returned home. For a long time he hadn’t wanted to take this joy away from her; but what about his joy? He had precious little left except for his talks with his daughter and the rare moment of peace when he was on a hunting trip far from the turmoil and treachery of this wretched town.

  He pulled his coat off the hanger where it hung on the closet door, slid it on, and headed downstairs. He had time for one drink before they had to leave.

  4

  Sunday, October 16th

  CHIP STARED INTO the flames of the bonfire and distractedly took the Mason jar that was making its way around the circle. He raised it to his lips and was careful to breathe out through his nose as he sipped the clear liquid. He could feel the white lighnin’ burn from his tongue down his gullet before exploding like a bomb of warmth deep in his belly and spreading all the way to the ends of his fingers and toes. He heard one of the other guides belt out a feral “Yeeeeoooow!,” the shout building in volume and echoing into the chilly West Virginia night. Chip took another sip of the fiery liquor then wiped a stray drop from the jar’s threads and licked it from his finger as he passed the homemade corn whiskey on down the line.

  It was the end of the rafting season, the very last day. He had guided the Upper section of the river on Saturday and then camped with his customers on the side of the river that night. The rafting company always served steak and salmon at the campsite, and as usual, they had tapped a keg of beer for the guests and guides. Although the trips were exhausting, Chip loved working the overnighters. You just couldn’t beat getting paid to eat good food and drink beer. Plus you made better tips when you partied with your crew. The next morning the same group had taken buses back to the top and done the same section of river again, with Chip guiding his crew smoothly down the rapids a second time.

  When all of the trips were finished for the day, the entire staff that remained had gathered for their end-of-season party. Some talked excitedly of winter paddling trips which they had saved up money all summer to afford, while others had plans to migrate to jobs operating ski lifts or patrolling the slopes at various resorts. These were the ‘lifestylers,’ Chip’s peers. The college kids on break and schoolteachers earning extra summer income had gone home months ago. The guides that were left were the true professionals, people who molded the rest of their lives around the river rather than fitting river time into the gaps of their normal lives.

  Chip hadn’t always been a lifestyler. He’d first gotten hooked on whitewater when his father took the family rafting when he was only twelve. He’d been fascinated by the colorful plastic kayaks darting around the river and had asked his dad if they could learn how. Later that same summer, his dad had enrolled them in a weekend kayaking course through an outfitter in North Carolina. Chip had taken to it instantly—he was a natural.

  Back home in Atlanta, young Chip had begged for more. His father had found a kayaking club that met at a local community swimming pool, and Chip had become a weekly fixture at the meetings. He’d mastered the Eskimo roll for righting an upturned kayak both with and without a paddle, and he was soon joining the adults from the club on their weekend adventures to the rivers of northern Georgia, Alabama, and even North Carolina. Chip’s obsession had only grown deeper when he’d gotten his driver’s license and was able to drive himself to the rivers.

  As soon as he was old enough to work, he’d gotten summer jobs guiding rafts. After graduating from high school, he’d spent an entire year working on the rivers of North Carolina, ostensibly to establish residency so he could get in-state college tuition. He’d spent four years at Appalachian State University in Boone where he got a degree in environmental geology between summers of raft guiding. He’d kayaked after class almost every day. When he’d graduated from college, his parents and professors had all wanted him to get a job. But he’d told them that he already had one—he was a river guide. He’d been a full-time guide ever since. He’d had opportunities over the years to make the jump to become a sponsored pro kayaker and hit the road to compete or film for extreme-sports videos. He certainly had the skills for it, and he paddled with some of those guys from time to time. It was just that making a lot of noise wasn’t Chip’s style. Rather than earning a living by touting his skills, he preferred to fly under the radar and always kayak on his own terms.

  A tiny figure barreled around the fire and ran into him, nestling under his arm. Kaitlin was a spunky little thing, maybe five-foot-one on a good day, and her head barely reached to Chip’s broad shoulder. She was cute and had a decent figure, although she was a little bit stocky like many girls who made their living pushing thousand-pound rafts down rivers. She wore her long brown hair in pigtails which made her look younger than her twenty-six years. Chip and Kaitlin had been a thing for a couple of years in their early twenties, but the divergent migrations of their lifestyles had eventually forced them apart. She went to Florida every winter to teach sea kayaking and escape the cold, while Chip couldn’t leave his beloved whitewater rivers behind. He and Kaitlin were still friends, and he occasionally regretted that it hadn’t worked out between them. He’d tried to at least get her back in the sack several times over the years, but she wasn’t into the casual thing.

  “Whatcha doin’ this winter?” she asked a little too loudly, whether due to the clamor of the crowd or the alcohol in her veins Chip couldn’t tell.

  They both took a quick step back as one of their drunken fellow guides built up a running start and leapt over the raging fire, his momentum carrying him headlong into some bushes just beyond the fire’s glow.

  “Ecuador, I think,” he answered.

  “Don’t you ever get tired of that?”

  “Not really,” Chip replied. What else would he do? It wasn’t that he lacked ambition; it was just that he’d been chasing rivers for so long that he couldn’t imagine doing anything else. If there was some deeper purpose to his life, he hadn’t found it yet.
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  “How about you?” he asked. “Florida again?”

  “Yeah, I’m the manager this year. They barely let me stay up here this long.”

  Chip knew that her Florida job would soon be year-round, and he might never see her again. Her job was turning into a management career instead of a guiding gig, which was part of what had pulled them apart in the first place. She wasn’t his first friend or romantic interest who had moved away from this lifestyle, and he knew with a pang of sadness that she probably wouldn’t be the last. It was the price he paid for the freedom he enjoyed. At times like this, that price could seem high.

  “Don’t you ever get tired of that?” he asked teasingly.

  She laughed and playfully pushed him away then grabbed him in a fierce but friendly hug.

  “Come down and see me some time,” she said earnestly. “I can get you a job down there if you ever want to give it a try.” Her tone left it open ended, still hopeful that he might change his mind. He’d admitted to himself many times over the years that he still had feelings for his cute, spunky coworker. The feelings were especially strong at the end of an entire rafting season through which he’d remained resolutely single; but deep inside, he simply wasn’t ready to walk away from his passion for flowing water.

  “Maybe I will,” he replied philosophically, although they both knew that he wouldn’t. They’d covered this ground before.

  “I’ll see you next year,” she said with a touch of sadness, and then she walked off into the milling crowd.

  He felt totally alone. For the last few years, Daniel had always been there as a buffer against this sort of awkward encounter with Kaitlin, and to help him distract him from his melancholy afterward with auspicious plans for new whitewater adventures. It still didn’t seem real that Daniel was gone.

  Chip’s thoughts flittered unbidden back to that horrible day in May, a series of scenes playing out before his mind’s eye in high-def detail. It had happened so quickly and yet taken forever. One minute Daniel had been sitting there in the eddy next to him grinning ear to ear—just two best friends enjoying a warm-weather treat of spring high water on one of their favorite creeks. Chip had peeled out first and dropped into a long, complicated rapid.

  As he made the first move, he bumped something unfamiliar that lurked just under the water’s surface. A new log had been washed down by the high water overnight and wedged in the rapid, and Chip was barely able to scoot over it. He knew it was dangerous and how close a call he’d just had. Adrenaline shot through his veins and nearly overcame his focus as he completed the rapid. He wasn’t scared for himself—he had already made it. He had to get to the bottom and signal back up to Daniel.

  He avoided a known hazard on the bottom left, finished the rapid, and swung around waving his arms over his head in the danger signal; but he was too late. Daniel was already dropping into the rapid. Chip watched in horror as Daniel hit the log hidden in the top right portion of the rapid and stopped dead, then suddenly vanished under a sieve-pile of rocks that the log was wedged against. The opening in the rocks was big enough for plenty of water to pass through, but not nearly big enough for a person in a kayak. About a foot of the end of Daniel’s bright yellow kayak stuck up at an odd angle, the only visible sign that he was there at all, the flow of the rain-swollen creek pinning him in place.

  Chip paused for a pregnant two seconds, hoping that Daniel would somehow flush through. Then he surged into motion. The clock was running. He had a window of only a few minutes in which to rescue and possibly resuscitate his friend.

  It was only five paddle strokes to the bank, but it took an eternity. It felt like he was paddling in glue. He fell into the river in his rush to get out of the boat. He lost more precious time swimming out to grab the boat before it washed away with his rescue rope inside. He groped around for the rope then let the river take the kayak as he scrambled up the bank into a dense thicket of rhododendron bushes. It seemed to take forever to make it fifty yards over the rocky, uneven terrain to where the end of Daniel’s kayak marked his location under the water. Chip was sucking air in terse gasps from the exertion, his heart pounding so hard in his ears that it drowned out the roar of the creek. He never let up, never slowed, never paused to catch his breath. If his heart exploded from the exertion, so be it.

  When he’d arrived adjacent to where Daniel was pinned, there was a moment of indecision as he wondered if he should jump in to try to reach his friend or throw the rescue rope. Then he opened the rope bag, held the free end, and tossed the other end over the pinned kayak. The rope washed around the kayak and under the log. Chip reeled in the slack until the rope hung on something and then pulled as hard as he could, hoping to pull either the log or the kayak free. Nothing budged. Chip pulled until the rope began tearing skin from the palms of his hands, then he finally let go and dropped dejectedly to a seat on the soggy ground.

  It had been at least three minutes since Daniel had gone under—a long time to survive submerged in a creek swollen by warm spring rain. It was impossible to safely swim to the spot without at least one other paddler there for backup—someone would have to hold Chip in place with a rope lest he wash into the other deadly spot farther down the rapid. To jump in now would mean near-certain death. There was nothing more he could do. He could barely see the log through the rushing water even though he knew it was there. There was no way they could have spotted the new hazard, and no way to turn back the clock on the last few minutes to take the horror away. To this day, he had no idea how long he had sat in stunned impotence on the bank, watching the water surge around the end of his best friend’s boat and wondering if there was something more he could have done. Wondering if he should have jumped in to try to save his friend. It was the worst feeling he’d ever experienced.

  The jar made its way around the fire to Chip again and he took a long pull this time, trying to clear the memory of Daniel’s death from his mind. It wasn’t just the loss of Daniel or his conversation with Kaitlin that bothered him. Both were symbols of the path he’d chosen, the sacrifices he’d made, the “normal life” things he’d given up, and of the limits this lifestyle put on him even as it kept him free. Since the accident, he had doubts about whether it was worth it any more; but he didn’t know what else to do.

  He turned his thoughts back to the plane he was catching to the Northwest in the morning and then to the images of the mysterious waterfall he’d been shown at the Cathedral Café last week. Daniel would want him to go. It was exactly the kind of challenge that had both motivated and defined their friendship for years. As the excitement built in him, it overcame his melancholy. Whitewater was still what he lived for, the only thing he really knew.

  He passed the jar to the right. Then he took two steps back, let out a huge whoop, and leapt high over the bonfire’s dancing flames to a roar of accompanying cheers from the crowd.

  5

  Tuesday, Octobr 18th

  A FINE LAYER of tan dust coated everything, dulling the shine of his black ponytail and silk shirt and caking into the pores of his skin, instantly absorbing his sweat. Puffs of it billowed up around the soles of his designer Lucchese crocodile-skin cowboy boots as he strode across the barren ground, shifting his shoulders to settle his tactical horizontal shoulder holster into place. Although it was uncomfortable driving long distances in it, he had paused before getting out of his truck to put on his beautiful silver stainless-finished, wood-gripped custom Springfield version of the Colt .45 which had been a gift from his boss. Not only was wearing it important for appearances, but Héctor had learned in this line of work that you could never entirely trust anyone—even your own guys. Especially your own guys.

  Despite the humidity blowing in from the Gulf, the dust made him feel dry—a feeling amplified by the hot breeze that wafted away wisps of silt from his boot prints and the tire tracks of his freshly-parked Chevy Avalanche. The dust created an embrace of comfort that soothed him after weeks in the soupy mountains. Heat shimmered off t
he packed dirt, rising in undulating waves to collide with solar rays that bludgeoned down like a celestial sledgehammer. Héctor felt himself enfolded in the warmth even as he involuntarily cringed from the first wave of stench. You never got used to the smell. The putrid rot of decaying flesh lanced out from inside the large metal barn, stabbing sharply into the top of the back of his palate and upward into his sinuses, making his stomach churn. The rumbling and clanking of an old tractor with a front end loader drowned out the whine of the breeze as it worked behind the building, methodically pushing loads from a mound of tan dirt back into the gaping hole from which it been excavated only yesterday.

  He walked through the wide door into the shade of the building, focusing his mind on settling down his stomach while his eyes slowly adjusted to the low light. Hopefully he wouldn’t have to do this many more times. It had been a necessary part of his work until now; but if his plan came to fruition, this carnage would become obsolete. Despite the fact that it had provided him his portal from poverty, he did not relish it. It would soon be a relic from a more barbaric time, a more primitive system. If only his whole country could dream of such advancement.

  As his eyes adjusted to the low light, the hazy images resolved into details. The vaulted metal building was a hundred feet long and fifty wide with doors on each end large enough for a bus to drive through—as evidenced by a battered bus which sat to his left, its placard still proclaiming a destination of the border town Reynosa. The process had become much more efficient since they had gotten their own buses and drivers. Just inside the door to the right sat a battered, wood-slat-sided flatbed truck near a Dodge Charger with the markings of the Policia Federal. There was no electricity in the building; the only light came through the doors.