Desolation Canyon

by Jonathan London

  On the way back, I saw something scurry under a rock. Something way smaller than a snake. So I knelt and lifted the reddish rock. “A scorpion!” I said. Lisa’s shadow fell over it. The scorpion’s tail curled back, needle-sharp and vicious. I thought of smashing it with the rock, then thought, why not leave it alone? I carefully lowered the rock and stood up.

  Lisa studied me, like she was trying to figure out a puzzle. “That was kinda cool, Aaron. Not killing the scorpion, I mean.” Then she looked back over her shoulder, but Cassidy was nowhere in sight.

  I think she was trying to tell me that being brave doesn’t mean killing things for no reason.

  But Cassidy had a reason. I think.

  Dad asked me to help clean up and reload the kitchen boat. I’m lazy by nature, but I didn’t mind. I wanted to be away from Cassidy, and I didn’t even want to talk to Lisa. Not right now. I just wanted to think, and I could think and clean up at the same time.

  Back home in California, I would boogie board in the ocean, or hop on my skim board in the sea foam, and I wasn’t that afraid of getting hurt or drowning. I was in my element.

  But out here in this canyon, with someone like Cassidy, I felt out of my element. Like I could be pulled in and drowned—or bit by a rattler. Or smashed by a boulder dropped by a sixteen-year-old with more tattoos on his body than teeth in his head. Or brain cells.

  But how could I compete with him for Lisa’s attention?

  And what compelled me to even want to do that?

  It seemed that two feelings were battling inside me: that I was better than Cassidy—smarter, more sensitive—and that I was inferior. Not as powerful. Not as brave.

  But so what? I’m twelve and he’s sixteen. Where’s the level playing field in that? I should just be okay with who I am, right? Why is that so hard to do? I should like who I am and let Cassidy be who he is.

  Or should I? He’s totally unpredictable. You never know when he’s trying to save a life or take a life. And he could be funny, which really drove me nuts. He was always making Lisa laugh. The only time I made her laugh was when she laughed at me.

  Back home people actually think I’m funny. I’m kind of the class clown. Like one time I was sitting in the back of the class and cut up a poster with a pair of scissors until it dangled like a mobile, or piece of art. Then I held it up—right in the middle of a lecture by our teacher Mrs. Gruber—and said, “Will it sell?”

  The class cracked up, and I had to go to the principal’s office. Again.

  But whenever I’m alone with girls, I get some kind of social brain freeze. Any attempts at humor go over like a deflating balloon.

  “Earth calling Aaron,” said Willie, snapping me out of my zone. “Why are you scrubbing the cheese?”

  Back on the river we faced a strong headwind. I took turns with Dad at the oars—just like Lisa was doing with her dad. Against wind like that, it takes all your energy not to let the raft slip backwards.

  Up ahead Cassidy was rowing the kitchen boat while his dad took a snooze. With a huge ice chest, a dutch oven, and all the food supplies, it was by far the heaviest raft, yet Cassidy was plowing ahead.

  I switched again with Dad, and doubled my effort at the oars, inspired by Cassidy’s example. If inspired is the right word for it.

  That evening at camp, after chowing down on a great barbecued chicken dinner that Willie made, everybody just kicked back. Everybody except Cassidy, that is. He sat down in full lotus right in front of Lisa, then swung up into a handstand, his legs still crossed. Then he started walking around on his hands! Finally, he cartwheeled over and did three back flips—one, two, three—and crashed into the dark river with a big splash.

  “Sweet!” Lisa cheered.

  Not to be outdone, I jumped up and did a backward hand-spring—my one gymnastics move—and landed on my butt.

  Lisa laughed. “You’re so lame!”

  I felt like a toad. I crawled to my tent and buried myself in my sleeping bag.

  “That Cassidy,” Dad said when he joined me, “is a show-off and out of control. And that’s a dangerous combination.”

  I didn’t say anything. I wrestled with my own mixed-up thoughts, while outside I could hear Cassidy running around howling like a coyote, free of self-doubt.

  The next morning we were on the river by ten o’clock. I asked Roger if I could ride with him and Lisa, and he said yes. Lisa smiled and it made me feel good all over.

  The river was swift here. Box elders and tamarack flicked by like light poles on the freeway. Swifts darted and spray flew. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky.

  We were coming up to Little Rock House Rapids. Roger said that with the high flow this year it could be a Class 3. Roger asked if I wanted to take over at the oars. “I think you can handle it, mate,” he said when I looked at him doubtfully.

  We switched places. “All right, now swing the raft around so you’re facing forward and can read the river,” Roger explained. Dad had been teaching me, but when it came to rapids, I still got butterflies in my stomach. “You want to find the main channel,” he continued. “See that smooth tongue where the water current slides into a V-shape between the waves?” He pointed and I could see where he meant. “You want to aim right for the point of that V.”

  “Okay,” I said through clenched teeth. I tugged at the oars and soon we slipped right into the V, as planned. The river was getting wilder and Roger had to shout so I could hear him.

  “Now turn the raft around and pull hard!” he commanded. “You want to move the raft faster than the current, matey. That way you can control where it goes, instead of the current controlling you. Lisa will keep a lookout for boulders.”

  I braced my legs and rowed so hard that I practically stood up with each pull. While Lisa yelled warnings, I adjusted my aim and rowed even harder. We were swept bouncing down the rapids, wobbling and sliding over the boiling water and between boulders as big as little houses.

  But when I looked back over my shoulder to check my position, there was a rock as big as a LARGE house.

  And we were headed straight for it.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  THE OUTLAW TRAIL

  As we got closer I could see that it was really just a cliff wall jutting into the river. I pulled back into the main current and Lisa cheered as we shot out the other end of Little Rock House Rapids.

  Or Not-So-Little Rock House Rapids, in my opinion. It was an epic ride.

  I was speechless, but proud. Lisa was cheering me, not Cassidy. And man, did that feel good! Sweet!

  “Good job, mate!” Roger said. I smiled, still speechless, my whole body shaking from more than the cold water soaking my skin.

  Lisa took over at the oars. She smiled at me and warmth spread through my body again. I was probably blushing, but I doubt she could tell with my sunburn.

  Soon we drifted down a quiet stretch of river. I glimpsed a fat catfish rising to the surface to nibble a dead dragonfly. I pointed it out to Lisa, but she wrinkled her nose. I noticed some mallards hiding in the cattails along the shore and shouted, “Hi, ducks!”

  That’s how good I felt.

  Lisa laughed and said, “You’re weird,” but it seemed like she meant it in a good way.

  I leaned back and looked up at the top edge of the canyon, towering high above us. Dad had said we were on the Tavaputs Plateau when we drove the twenty-five miles of bad road from the highway at the top of the plateau down to the put-in at Sand Wash. Up top we saw patches of evergreen forest and a small herd of Rocky Mountain elk, Utah’s state animal, grazing in a meadow. (Dad told me the Shawnee Indians called them “wapiti,” meaning “white rump.”) But the lower we got, the drier and harsher the landscape got, and the fewer the wild animals we saw.

  After a mile or so of silence, Roger launched into a lecture. Like my dad, he’s full of information about everything … and always happy to share it. Sometimes it’s interesting, but it can drive you crazy, too.

  He took off his red band
anna, soaked it in the river, and tied it back on his head. Water dripped down his face as he told us how, back in 1869, Major John Wesley Powell became the first white man to paddle the Green River. The major wrote in his journal that this canyon was “a region of the wildest desolation.” The name stuck.

  “He rowed a wooden boat,” Roger said, “and capsized it in Steer Ridge Rapids—which is coming up. And another time he smashed his boat to bits.” He let that sink in for a while. It didn’t add anything to my newfound, but still shaky confidence.

  “This canyon was carved from ancient seas,” he added. “In some places it’s deeper than the Grand Canyon.”

  I looked up again. Massive walls soared to the sky, making me feel small and alone, yet somehow filled with a sense of hugeness. How could that be?

  I didn’t know.

  We had a late lunch on a little pocket beach and I skipped a stone so well across the flat water that it almost reached the other side. Lisa didn’t see it but Cassidy said, “Not bad. For an amateur.”

  He picked up a good skipping stone, probably about to show me who was the real pro, when Willie hollered, “Time to hit the road, folks!”

  Cassidy fired his stone across the river, but no one saw it. I turned toward Lisa before it took its first skip.

  I climbed back into Roger and Lisa’s raft, after checking in with my dad to make sure it was okay with him. “As long as Roger doesn’t mind, kiddo,” he said. He told me how Roger had praised my handling of Little Rock House Rapids.

  I beamed and said, “See ya, Dad,” like maybe I wouldn’t see him for a long time.

  The river started picking up right away, through some very dry country, mountains in the distance. Soon we came to Steer Ridge Rapids—what Roger called a “read and run” rapids, meaning we didn’t have to stop to scout it out.

  Roger rowed. Lisa was on the bow, keeping an eye out for trouble. “That’s a nasty hole!” she shouted as we shot by it. I couldn’t help remembering what Roger had said about Major Powell and his capsized boat, but this was just what my dad called a “wave-train”: a fun bouncy ride down to smooth water again.

  I sat in back and enjoyed the ride. I could get used to this, I thought.

  Next was Jack Creek Rapids. Another “read and run” Class 3. Lots of big waves and a few deep holes. Lisa rowed this time and I called the shots from the bow. At the end we slapped high fives as we coasted into calm water.

  Roger took over and soon we pulled over to check out Rock Creek Ranch, the ruins of an old homestead. Cassidy was already there, scouting around.

  “Dude! What took you so long?” he asked when he saw me. But he turned away before I could think of a snappy answer.

  Dad came in last, long after the rest of us. He looked a little haggard, but he gave me a big smile and a half-hug and said, “What’s up, kiddo? How was it?”

  “Awesome!” I answered. And I meant it.

  We inspected a sagging log cabin, which had a couple of battered leather boots, lots of dusty antique bottles, and a rusted potbelly stove. Rusty tools and iron traps still hung from the walls. It was pretty cool, making us feel like we were in the real Wild West.

  It made me wonder who had lived down here in this lonesome place. Some homesteader dude.

  Outside, there were sagging fences and old rusted farm equipment scattered around. And a few tree skeletons stood in what had once been an orchard, now gone wild. Roger started talking again.

  “This ranch,” he said, “and McPherson’s downriver, were way stations for Butch Cassidy and the Wild Bunch. The Outlaw Trail ran right through here. The homesteaders sold fresh horses to the Wild Bunch when the posse was hot on their tail.”

  “So there’s trails up out of here?” Cassidy asked, chewing on a weed.

  “If you can find ’em,” Roger said. He peered up toward the cliff top. “But you wouldn’t make it far, mate. This here’s some of the wildest country in the West. Rattlers, scorpions, mountain lions. And the ghosts of the Wild Bunch haunting the dry gulches.” Deep laugh lines creased Roger’s face.

  Cassidy spat and walked off, kicking up dust with his Doc Martens. I watched Lisa watching him go. Then she turned to me and jabbed a sharp elbow into my ribs.

  “Geez!” I jumped back and rubbed my ribs.

  “You think Cassidy’s haunted by the ghosts of the Wild Bunch?” she asked.

  “I think he’s haunted by bashing a man in the head with a baseball bat.” It was out of my mouth before I could stop it. Great, me trying to be funny again.

  Sure enough, Lisa didn’t laugh. “I think his mind’s elsewhere,” she said.

  I kicked a dirt clod and didn’t know what to say.

  I went and laid down in the shade of a gnarly orchard tree and tried to take a nap. I might’ve snoozed a little—I saw visions of a posse riding in a cloud of dust, like from an old Hollywood Western—but I kept waking up.

  Tension in the air.

  Tension in my stomach.

  A half hour later, Cassidy still wasn’t back.

  Roger, and then my dad, started calling his name. It was time to go. It was past time to go, actually.

  “Why don’t you just leave him alone?” Lisa told them. “Give him a little space to calm down. He’s a teenager. Remember when you were a teenager, Dad?”

  “It’s time to hoist the anchors, lassie,” Roger said with a grin.

  “CA-A-A-S-S-S-I-I-D-D-YYY!” roared Wild Man Willie. Only his name echoed back.

  “We won’t make it to our next camp spot by dark if we don’t skedaddle now,” Dad said. His bony face tensed in the cliff shadows.

  “That darn kid,” said Willie, flapping dust off his pants with his felt hat.

  “I’ll look for him, mate,” Roger said.

  “We’ll all look for him,” Dad said.

  Except for Lisa, we all fanned out in the direction of the cliffs and started searching for Cassidy, calling his name over and over. I looked back. Lisa leaned against a fence-post, hugging herself.

  It was getting dark. A shadow fell over us as the sun disappeared beyond the ridge. A chill wind blew down the canyon, and, for some reason, my heart clenched like a fist.

  CHAPTER NINE

  WATER BABIES

  CA-A-A-S-S-S-I-I-D-D-YYY!” Willie howled again.

  And again only his name echoed back. We’d been looking for him for about half an hour. Our little side-canyon had grown dark and cold, and everybody was getting restless and a little scared and angry. Even Lisa.

  Willie was about to throw his hat into the river when we heard what sounded like a coyote. But the closer it got, the better we could hear it:

  “YIPPY-KI-YAY! YIPPY-KI-YO!”

  And here came Cassidy, whistling like he didn’t have a care in the world.

  “Where the devil have you been?” growled Willie.

  “We were about to send a posse out after you!” Roger said, trying to make a joke of it. But nobody was laughing.

  “It’s no joke,” Dad said. “Sign’s posted, we can’t camp here. And the next good spot is about two miles downriver—and we’ve lost the sun. Come on, man,” he said to Cassidy, “no more dilly-dallying. We can’t always be waiting on you. It’s time to boogaloo down Broadway.”

  Cassidy walked right up to Dad, glared at him, and said, “I’ll boogaloo YOU down Broadway, dude.”

  “Cassidy, get your rear in gear,” Willie growled.

  “Then get this skinny old man outta my face!” Cassidy spat. “If he wasn’t so slow at the oars, we’da been here and gone an hour ago. I was just checking out this sweet little canyon to see if I could find the Outlaw Trail.…”

  “Cassidy!” Willie cut in. “Zip it! We’ll talk about this later. Time waits for no man.”

  I was getting bent out of shape by Cassidy all over again. Did he think the whole world revolved around him? Geez!

  By the time we got back in the boats, it was late dusk and it was getting dark fast. I thought about what Cassidy had said
. Dad was kind of slow at the oars. But still, Cassidy shouldn’t have talked to him like that. It just added to the tension. We should be having fun, right? Not fighting about everything.

  An owl flew low overhead. White-ish, like a ghost. Maybe a barn owl. I read in a book somewhere that some people believe when an owl hoots or flies over you it means somebody’s going to die.

  Great.

  We finally pulled into a good camp spot as the first stars poked out in the narrow sky above the canyon. We hauled up our rafts and had to use our flashlights to unload, lug our gear to a flat spot in the trees, and set up our tents.

  We didn’t speak. No one spoke. Each person had their own thoughts and their own chores. There was wood to be gathered, a fire to be made, food to be prepped.

  After a tasty dinner of meat pies with peas and potatoes, we sat around the fire sipping hot cocoa and telling jokes. Everyone but Cassidy and my dad, that is. Cassidy had stalked off into the dark, and Dad sat alone by the river, looking up at the stars. The sky was thick with them now, and they flashed sharp and bright in the crystal air.

  Dad was a stargazer. He could tell you more than you needed to know about the constellations.

  “Hey, Dad,” I said, feeling kind of sorry for him because of how Cassidy had talked to him. Dad could be pretty annoying, but he could be fun sometimes, too.

  And anyway, he was my dad.

  “What’s up, kiddo?”

  “Want some hot cocoa?”

  Dad shrugged. The river flowed by, mirroring the Milky Way.

  We sat silently together for a few more minutes, then Dad got up and moved to a stump by the fire. I followed and Roger handed him a steaming cup of cocoa.

  “It’s a good night for scary stories,” Roger said.

  “Just so happens I know one, too.” Dad said.

  “Well then, mate, let’s hear it!”

  Dad stared into his mug for a while, as if he were waiting for it to tell him the story. “Well,” said Dad, “it’s an old Ute story. This is Indian country, you know. Has been for over a thousand years. First the Fremonts, then the Utes.”