Lava Falls

by Lucy Jane Bledsoe

  If Laurie was honest with herself, and she tried to be always, she had to admit that a part of her welcomed Marylou’s newfound wider view of life. Not her heartbreak, of course not that, but there’d always been a gap in their friendship between Laurie’s clear-eyed view of relationships and Marylou’s rose-tinted one. How Marylou could have missed Joe’s desperation, his itchiness, his foot which had been out the door for years, was beyond her. Laurie herself had been married three times. Of course there was no pride in that. But there was knowledge. Wisdom? Perhaps too strong a word, and perhaps not.

  It was just that she now felt she and Marylou could be closer, and what was the harm in celebrating that?

  Laurie pivoted around to give her friend’s knee a squeeze. Just before turning back to face forward again, Laurie glimpsed a spot of blue upstream. The professor and his student! It cheered her instantly and she wished she hadn’t tangled with Maeve. She didn’t mind his musings on the earthly timelines. Maybe she was sexist. After all, Maeve’s PhD was as valid as his. No, that wasn’t it. He was passionately appreciative, forward looking, and Maeve was full of doomsday, crumbling dams, enslaved rivers. Not to mention her bad shorts and haircut. Well, then too, Laurie just liked a man, that’s all. She smiled at herself.

  A hard jostle almost sent her over the side of the boat and she realized she hadn’t even noticed the upcoming riffle. She grabbed two of the straps holding down their gear and rode out the bouncy waves, a few washing into her lap, wetting her orange and red and yellow sarong. Once the ride smoothed out again, she turned to watch the cheery blue raft fly through the riffle. Howard’s boat caught a speedy current and swept it right smack into the women’s boat. The collision of inflated rubber caused a big jolt, and they all shared a laugh. Laurie tried to think of something clever to say, but Howard rowed hard, pulling away quickly before she thought of anything. Sometimes keeping silent was the most advisable course of action, especially with men, and she was pleased she’d been sparing in her attention during the interaction. The pair took the lead, remained visible for a couple of hours, but then disappeared altogether by late afternoon.

  Laurie saw their camp late that day, next to a trickling waterfall, and longed to stop as well. The young blond Brynn stood under the waterfall in her athletic bra and shorts, letting the water sluice over her head and face, and seemed to not even notice the two yellow boats skimming past. Howard, who was arranging their gear on the beach, waved. All six women waved back and Laurie felt irrationally disappointed that he’d become not just hers, but all of theirs.

  On the morning of day three, the river made a swirling S, from Mile 41 to Mile 45, and midway through that meander a raven drew Kara’s attention to a place high up on the canyon wall. The bird flew in circles, each one bigger than the one before, its glossy black wings soaring against the red rock. In the center of those loops of flight, at a spot on the side of the vertical cliff, Kara spotted a few sticks placed horizontally across a wash. She squinted, thinking she maybe didn’t see them at all, because how would sticks, probably actually small logs, get placed on a ledge way up there? Before the Glen Canyon Dam went live in 1963, the volume of the river grew enormously with spring snowmelt, but even then the river wouldn’t have flooded anywhere near that high.

  The sticks spanned a gap in the stone wall, as if bridging a route across the face of the rock. There was a figure on the sticks, lithe legs crisscrossing their way along the length. A flow of raven hair, long and uneven, swished out from her shoulders as the woman tilted, almost lost her balance. Then she lunged, made the far side, where she squatted, as if in the relief of safety. But none of that was possible. Kara couldn’t have seen a human figure on the side of the cliff.

  “It’s an Anasazi bridge.” Josie’s voice startled Kara.

  “Really?” She twisted around to look at Josie, who for the third day in a row was piloting one of their boats. She was such a solid girl with tight clear skin and a tighter ponytail, more just a stub of light brown hair. Her ears, in full view with the hair pulled so completely back, nearly came to a point at the top. Her eyes were a tawny color, like a mountain lion’s.

  “Hundreds of years old,” Josie said. “The Anasazi had granaries in the sides of the cliffs.”

  Kara didn’t say she’d seen a girl walking across the bridge, because of course she hadn’t. As their boat floated swiftly downstream, she turned for one last look. There: tiny sticks across a rock fall, far above the river and far below the rim. No figure. Just very old sticks, a red face of rock, topped by a blue sky and circling ravens.

  “But how did they even get down to the bridge? And the granaries?”

  “Hold tight,” Josie said. “Rapid coming up.”

  Kara liked Josie’s voice, the quiet confidence backed by a reserve of deep vulnerability. It was a compelling combination. Hold tight. Rapid coming up. Kara let the words tremble through her and was shocked by the pleasure.

  As they slid into the rapid, romped on the big waves, she felt her resolve to resist that pleasure jostle free. She gave up. Gave in. The hot, dry desert air laid bare the essence of herself as a body, no more, no less. The walls of radiant rock crumbling. The often-interrupted but never-ending migration of the green river. Her thoughts unmoored, flowing loose and fast, easy and serendipitous. The heat and clarity.

  Maeve, the other passenger in her boat that day, made an mmm sound, as if she’d just bitten into a ripe peach. Alarmed that her thoughts had been read—though that was as impossible as there being a girl on the side of the cliff—Kara jerked around to look at Maeve, who smiled happily at seemingly nothing. Kara laughed out loud.

  Paige wished she were in the boat with Kara. She thought she might have a crush on her, which kind of surprised her because even though all her friends had dated girls, at least once, she never had. Anyway, she was currently dating Justin and found him quite captivating. For one thing, he was four years older. So refreshing! He knew a lot about sex, which they had in the supply closet at work, as often as possible, deep in the aroma of coffee beans. She liked his calloused hands, his inscrutable eyes, which were always bruised looking, like he never slept. Life tortured Justin. He made no bones about that, all his difficulties with employment and family, and she knew she’d never want to, like, marry him, but it was the best sex she’d ever had in her life. His need for her was so great, and his, well frankly, skills, were off the charts. She even asked her mom if he could come on this trip, knowing full well he wouldn’t want to come, and also knowing her mom would say no, which she did. She supposed she just wanted to make the challenge to both of them. Would Justin give her a whole two weeks, not to mention his vacation days? And was her mom willing to see, really see, Paige’s life, her real life? Also, just making the request became a way to bring him along in her mind, and she did think of him all the time, and how they could be fucking in the tent or in the sand or even maybe in the shallow pools along the shore. He told her she was a nymphomaniac and she’d said, hell yeah she was.

  So this possible crush. Kind of a surprise. Kara was tall and lanky, with shoulder-length black hair, currently tangled because whose wasn’t out here, and a meditative approach to everything. She didn’t speak quickly. She spent more time alone than the others did, sitting by the river while the rest of the women gathered around the camp kitchen, or taking walks up side canyons by herself. Nah, Paige decided, the girl really wasn’t her type, and anyway, she did like the equipment on Justin. Quite a bit.

  Still, she wanted to be closer to Kara, wanted to know how she achieved that peacefulness, that calm independence. What Paige had, she realized, was a powerful friend crush.

  Over the next few days, Paige’s curiosity about Kara grew, but her enthusiasm for every other aspect of the trip ebbed. In fact, things just got worse and worse, including a bout of diarrhea, protracted dinner conversations on topics that interested her not at all, hellishly hot weather, and her mom’s endless singing. Oh, and there was the time Maeve accidental
ly let go of an oar and the end smacked Paige in the face.

  On the sixth afternoon, the women battled a fierce upstream wind. The strong gusts splashed waves in their faces and made downstream travel nearly impossible. Paige had been stuck at the oars for most of the day, rowing and rowing and rowing. If she stopped for even a second, the wind pushed them back upstream. The current accounted for nothing against this gale. Her arms and back ached, and she was starving. There’d been a few “jokes” about her youth making her responsible for more rowing than the other women, and she resented it. Today, during the brutal windstorm, Kara and Josie had taken turns rowing the other boat, but her two passengers, Maeve and Laurie, lasted five minutes each when they took turns, and then they handed the oars back to Paige. Her mom, riding in the other boat, had sung all the verses of “Blowing in the Wind” a couple of times, and then remembered “Wind Beneath My Wings,” a song right up her alley, and sang that one with too much passion and not enough skill. It took an enormous amount of self control for Paige to not scream, “You are not Bette Fucking Midler!” Her mom’s attempt to blanket all difficulty with music had gotten much worse since Paige’s dad left. It was as if Marylou thought she could sing herself to happiness.

  Thankfully, long before their usual stopping time, Josie shouted, to be heard above the noisy squalls, that they should just make camp for the day. They were unnecessarily exhausting themselves. No kidding. Genius call. Once the boats were tied to stakes on the beach, Paige collapsed on the sand, every muscle vibrating with fatigue, and stared up at the hard blue sky. The wind blasted sand across her face, stinging her eyes and filling her nostrils.

  She tried but couldn’t stanch the fury she felt toward her mom, the stoic way Marylou endured the hardships of this trip, unwilling to just admit, flat out state the truth, that this was not fun. It was, in fact, a brutal way to spend two weeks. Sand folded into every crevice of Paige’s body, including, she’d discovered while wiping, her labia. No, she wasn’t going to wade into the ice cold, not to mention sweep-you-away swift, Colorado River to rinse off, either. She just wanted someone to set up her tent and give her a plate of food.

  Fat chance. These older women expected her to wait on them, again the jolly jokes about the decades they had on her and how they remembered what it was like to have unending energy at her age. They were the ones who ordered coffees so specifically you’d think they were a cocktail of meds. Exact amounts of nonfat milk, one-third caffeinated and two-thirds decaf, and topped with a quarter teaspoon of cinnamon. God forbid if your hand slipped and you did a half teaspoon. Dump the drink and start over. That was the problem with getting old, she supposed, you kept fine-tuning your desires until you had these elaborate, and frankly preposterous, formulas for every tiny thing in life. Of course on this trip, for these two weeks, these women were drinking cowboy coffee, the grounds boiled right with the water, and liking it just fine.

  Okay, so she was twenty-one and in the prime of life, but they’d had their salad days, as her mom liked to call them, and so let her have hers. Leave her alone. She could hear her mom calling her name right now, probably to help unload these barely floating excuses for boats. As if she hadn’t done more than her share of the labor already.

  Paige dragged herself off the ground and carried dry bags, coolers, the toilet bucket, cook stoves, and bags of tents up the hill to the camp, the whole while shouldering against the wind. It blew and blew and blew, as hot and foul as bad breath.

  Once they’d unloaded the boats and were finally free to do as they pleased, Paige trudged her tent to the very back of the beach, away from the snorers, and hauled it out of its sheath. Boom. A big fiery blast of wind exploded onto the beach and nearly ripped the tent from her hands. The fabric buffeted into the air as she held on, the tent flapping like an environmentalist’s pride flag. She heard the shouts of the other women as they tried to secure the gear back in camp, the wind ravaging everything. Paige gripped tight, hoping the tent wouldn’t function as a powerful kite and carry her up into the air, maybe over the torrents and then drop her. A moment later, the air quieted. She shook out her tent, inserted the poles, and popped it up.

  She heard the next big gust blasting through the mesquite trees before she felt it. She stopped what she was doing, rummaging in the tent bag for the stakes, and turned to look at the swirling cloud of dust and sand headed her way. She threw an arm across her eyes just as the gust arrived. It snatched up her tent and lofted it into the air.

  “Hey!” Paige shouted as the wind carried the tent high over the camp kitchen, over the heads of the women setting up their own tents. Like a billowy wingless bird, the tent gained altitude as it sailed upstream over the river. A moment later the air stilled and the tent dropped into the water where it changed course, now conveyed by the current rather than the wind, and floated downstream, still fully erected and zipped.

  Paige had run down to the beach, under her flying tent, and now stood watching it float away. She turned to look for Kara, who after all was a firefighter and knew how to rescue things, but the tall woman did not dive into the river to nab the floating tent. Of course she didn’t. The tent rode down the center of the fast-moving flow, and anyway, the windstorm kicked up yet another notch and everyone clung to her own partially erected and wafting tent, trying to hold on.

  Right then, as if things weren’t bad enough, that creepy couple came into view, the old guy pulling hard on the oars to beat the wind, and headed right for their beach. A moment later, Howard leapt ashore, handing Paige the bowline. He ran up the bank, and right past all the women clutching their blowing tents, to the rocky hillside backing the beach. He hefted a large rock and hauled it back to camp, dropping it on a corner of Laurie’s tent. Meanwhile, Brynn disembarked and took the bowline from Paige. She drove a metal stake into the sand and tied off the raft. She smiled at Paige and said, “Thanks.” Then Brynn helped Howard secure everyone’s tent. Back and forth they hustled, making multiple trips to the hillside, carrying loads of rocks like prison laborers and setting them on the inside corners of all the tents. A few of the women joined the effort, once their own tents were secured. Paige’s was totally gone.

  The wind stopped as abruptly as it had started earlier in the afternoon, and a stillness softened the camp. The women breathed sighs of relief, finished setting up their tents, began filling pots with water and chopping vegetables for pasta. Of course someone invited Howard and Brynn to join them for supper.

  “Sorry to crowd your camp,” Howard said once they were all seated in camp chairs with full plates. “But the wind was killing us. And Hance is a difficult rapid. Big standing waves. Treacherous boulders and ledges. Best to tackle it in the morning and in calmer weather.”

  “Oh, heavens,” Laurie crooned. “If you hadn’t shown up, we would all be tentless at this point.”

  Ew, Paige thought. Actual bile rose from her belly. A small gag reflex. The age spots on top of his head, clearly visible through the sparse gray hair, the matching wiry gray hair on his arms and legs. The saggy skin under his chin. The visible black nose hairs. She’d known Laurie, her mom’s best friend, literally her whole life and knew she was what Marylou affectionately termed man-crazy, but Paige rarely had witnessed that part of Laurie. Anyway, obviously Brynn and Howard were together. At least that’s what her mom thought: that he’d left his age-appropriate wife for Brynn. Then again, that’s what Marylou would think. As if everyone else’s life mirrored hers.

  Which it didn’t. In fact, Paige didn’t buy her mom’s story that Howard and Brynn were a legit couple. Nothing in Brynn’s body language suggested that she enjoyed the old man. She definitely didn’t want to be fucking him, that much was clear. And yet. It was as if they were playing out a charade of being a couple.

  Something was wrong. Radically askew. Paige couldn’t quite put her finger on it, but this wasn’t the same old story of an older guy falling for a younger woman. Or if it was, there was a serious twist in the narrative.

&nb
sp; Which brought Paige back to what annoyed her so much about her mom’s generation. There was so much they just didn’t see. Didn’t want to see. They clung to the old rules. They refused to acknowledge that chaos reigned, even in personal relationships, especially in personal relationships. That was the thing about Armageddon—okay, a dramatic word, but she didn’t think it was a big stretch—it didn’t just ravage the planet, it also infected hearts and souls. It was a cancer. The human race was fucked. Only a few exceptional people escaped the rot. People like Kara. Maybe Maeve, too. Marylou, on the other hand, didn’t even realize there was something to rise above. She believed deeply in human decency. She still did. Okay, yeah, it kind of made Paige tear up, this sweetness on her mom’s part, this clinging to the life raft of a reality no longer in play.

  But no, this “professor,” if you bought Laurie’s story about the pair, was taking advantage of the pink girl. Howard could be some kind of sophisticated kidnapper. What did he have on Brynn? Something. Or she could be swirling in the vortex of a victim’s mentality, somehow believing that she wanted to be with him, that he was going to save her from . . . what? Something.

  Laurie was a freaking shrink. Couldn’t she see this?

  God, Paige hated this trip. No one had said word one about where she was going to sleep now that her tent had liberated itself. What, on a rock like a coyote? And tomorrow morning: Hance Rapid. Howard had said treacherous ledges. What were “big standing waves”?