Desolation Canyon

by Jonathan London

  “Just tell the story, Dad!” I said. Sometimes he drove me crazy!

  We all huddled closer to the fire. The shadows seemed to bend and huddle with us.

  “Well,” Dad said, “it’s about the water babies.”

  “What are water babies?” I asked.

  Dad sipped his hot cocoa and stroked his beard. “It’s kind of spooky,” he said, looking around at each of us. “Sure you want to hear it?”

  “Yes!” I blurted, way too loud. I scooted back next to the river; the heat of the fire made my sunburned face sting even more than it already did.

  “Long ago,” Dad said, pausing to sip his cocoa again, “the People were troubled, they were scared. Men kept disappearing. They’d go off on a hunting trip along the river—this river here—but they wouldn’t come back.” Dad put down his mug and warmed his hands over the fire.

  “Now every once in a while,” he said, “a hunter would come back after a long absence, but he’d be talking crazy. He’d babble and carry on and pull his hair, and the only thing you could understand was something about the water babies. ‘It’s the water babies!’ the crazy one would say. ‘In the river!’ And he’d babble on and on like the sound of the river itself.”

  Dad paused. The river babbled.

  “Then what happened?” Lisa asked. She was shivering, and I wanted to slip my arm around her, but didn’t dare. In the fire, dying flames leaped like ghosts and disappeared into the night.

  “Now the water babies,” Dad continued, “were tiny creatures, about the size of a man’s hand.” He spoke so quietly we all had to lean closer to hear him.

  “They had long black hair, longer than their bodies,” he said. “Their demented cries would make your blood boil.”

  He plucked the hawk feather from his hatband and used the tip of it to pick his teeth. Gross! Then he ran his tongue over his teeth and stuck the feather back in his hatband, and continued.

  “The water babies lived in the river, and when a hunter came too close—to spear a fish or get a drink—the water babies would leap up and scream! They were tiny, but insanely powerful. They’d screech like something from another world, then reach out and pull the hunter down, down, down into the river and drown him.”

  “Aaaaiiiiiyaaaahhhh!”

  A scream pierced the night, stopping my heart. Everyone went silent, frozen in fear. Then a hand grabbed my ankle with supernatural strength and dragged me, kicking and screaming, into the icy river.

  Of course, I knew it had to be Cassidy. But I felt like I was drowning anyway. I gulped water as I twisted and kicked, but the more I fought the worse I made it. I was being dragged down further and further under the water. My lungs screamed for air.

  I knew he’d let me go. Any time now. This was just another one of his “practical jokes,” as Willie had called them.

  But I wondered if Cassidy knew how long I could hold my breath.

  CHAPTER TEN

  THE BLUE SKY PEOPLE

  At last he let go and I shot to the surface.

  And inhaled half the night sky.

  “CASSIDY!” I gasped.

  And there he was. Flopping around in the shallows, clutching his belly and laughing.

  Everybody was laughing, except me and my dad. I must have been a funny sight, but I was too shook up to laugh, and too embarrassed. I crawled out and rolled on my back in the sand, coughing up river water and trying to catch my breath.

  “Cassidy, you’re too much for me,” Dad said as he stood up and headed for our tent.

  “Dude! Lighten up! Chill, man!” Cassidy stripped off his soaking T-shirt and snapped it at Dad’s back, missing by inches.

  The laughter stopped—except for Cassidy’s.

  “Cassidy,” Willie said, low and quiet. A warning, I guess. But Willie still had half a grin on his face. Sometimes he acted more like a big brother to his son than a father. But like Dad said, Cassidy’s a handful and Willie’s a single parent. What can you do with a kid that crazy?

  Still, the image of him snapping his T-shirt like a towel at Dad’s backside. It was so … disrespectful, so aggressive, it made my stomach hurt.

  Cassidy, still chuckling, flung his shirt over a branch and squatted next to the fire. I climbed to my feet, dripping, and sat as far away from him as I could and still feel the heat of the coals. I rubbed the goose bumps on my arms. Nobody said anything, we just sat and listened to the river muttering in its dark bed.

  It was hard to sleep. I tried to talk to Dad, but he still wasn’t talking.

  “Sorry, Dad,” I said. I kept trying to erase the image of Cassidy snapping his wet T-shirt at my dad, like some bully in the locker room.

  Dad was a storyteller. Maybe he could make a story out of all this.

  Or maybe I could, someday.

  To sleep, I thought of Lisa instead of Cassidy. But it didn’t help. I tossed and turned until I finally drifted off, like a broken branch floating down the Green River.

  In the morning I woke to a loud clang.

  I rubbed my eyes and looked around. Dad was gone. I lifted the tent flap and squinted out into the early morning sun as it burst through a V-notch in the lip of the canyon. A lizard scurried beneath a rock. Otherwise, nothing moved in the white glare.

  Then I heard voices. Loud voices. I crawled out of the tent, then tiptoed toward the kitchen area.

  Cassidy held a long-handled black skillet in his hand. His muscles bulged and twisted like ropes. Dad stood facing him, one foot on a big fallen limb.

  “I’m getting tired of your attitude, Cassidy,” Dad said. “Your bad attitude.”

  “Dude! I said get out of my face!”

  “It’s time to talk this out,” Dad said, barely controlling his anger.

  “Back off!” Cassidy banged the pan against the trunk of a tree. I jumped involuntarily.

  “You and your practical jokes,” Dad said. “Or are they jokes? You throw rocks at people, almost get Lisa bit by a snake, practically drown Aaron last night and—”

  “Yeah, dude,” Cassidy cut in, “and I wish it was you. I woulda drowned your skinny—”

  “Hey hey hey hey!” barked Willie. He was crawling out of his tent. “Sounds like a coupla roosters had a bad night. Cassidy? How many times do I have to tell ya to zip it?”

  Roger shuffled over, scratching his grizzled face. “Where’s the coffee? Hot java to cool down them early morning river jitters,” he said, and kicked the dead coals from last night’s fire. Everybody was up now, except for Lisa.

  “Me and Cassidy are just having a little chat about—”

  “Bull!” shouted Cassidy. “This jackass has been on my case ever since we hit the river! Who made him the boss man? He ain’t the law! ” He clanged the pan one more time, then let it drop to the ground with a bang.

  “Cassidy!” This time Willie boomed. He was clenching his fists and his face was turning red.

  Then I saw Lisa. She was half-hiding behind the cottonwood tree. In the leaf shadows she looked like a tree nymph from a fairy tale. I nodded, but she didn’t seem to notice. She just brushed the black hair from her dark eyes and stared intently at Cassidy’s every move.

  “Let’s brew us some coffee—” Roger started to say, but Cassidy cut him off with a machine-gun blast of swearwords.

  “Cool it!” Willie snapped. He was getting mad now. Really mad.

  “This could be a fun trip—” Dad started to say.

  “Yeah, crazy mad fun,” Cassidy interrupted, “if you weren’t here to ruin it!”

  “Dropping rocks on people’s heads is your idea of fun? Half-drowning them as a joke?”

  “No, dude, rowing in slow mo’ and acting like a jerk—!”

  “Kids! Kids!” Roger cut in. He tried to laugh, but there was nothing to laugh about.

  “This isn’t a joke!” Dad said, his eyes hard as stones.

  “Dude! You’re the joke!” Cassidy pointed at Dad. “Ha-ha!”

  “And you’re a joker with an attitude!” D
ad retorted. “A real macho man. All bravado and he-man antics, like a phony TV wrestler.”

  “Stand down, guys! Both of you!” Willie snapped. “You’re both out of line!”

  Veins popped out in Cassidy’s neck. He looked like he was going to explode.

  Dad just stood there trembling like a skinny river willow in a strong breeze. Willie came around the camp table toward them.

  Too late.

  In one swift movement, Cassidy faked left, then ducked and lifted one end of the limb Dad was half-standing on, up-ending him into the sand.

  Dad landed with a thunk. “Are you crazy?” he yelped.

  Cassidy couldn’t speak. Words seemed to press at his clenched lips to get out, and his face twisted with a dark, crazy anger. His eyes bulged into hard bullets as he knelt and wrestled the big limb up onto his shoulders. Then he stood and jerked it up over his head, beads of sweat popping out on his forehead.

  Lisa screamed, “Cassidy!” just as Willie lunged toward him.

  Dad rolled away just as Cassidy let out a blood-curdling yell that made the hair on my head stand up. I was shaking, unable to think or do anything.

  Willie leaped between Cassidy and my dad.

  Cassidy froze. His eyes darted around and snagged on Lisa. Suddenly all the pent-up hate and anger seemed to drain out of him. Maybe he realized, finally, what he was doing. He dropped the limb in the sand and ran off.

  The fist that was my heart unclenched and it felt like the first pure air in a long time filled my lungs. I let it out slowly.

  “Go soak your head in the river, Cassidy!” Willie shouted. “And cool off.”

  Dad climbed to his feet and dusted off his legs. He rubbed his hip and stretched his back. He looked shook-up, haggard, hollowed out. He stooped over and picked up his fallen hat, dusted it off, and placed it gingerly back on his head.

  “I could sure use a cup of coffee,” he said.

  We broke camp like zombies, going slowly through the motions. The sound of the river came back, along with the sound of the birds. All had seemed to fall to silence, watching the one-sided fight in the sand. The overgrown manboy bursting with some kind of dark rage that even he couldn’t understand. Nobody could understand. And the daunted, angry man rolling in the sand. My dad. Unable to do anything about it.

  We rowed till noon, all floating on our separate islands. Dad and I didn’t speak. I could see his mind was far away. We took turns at the oars and I tried to take my mind off things by looking for river otters and eagles and mountain lions along the high cliffs. Roger had said there were black bears in the hills, but we hadn’t seen any yet. I did see some large birds circling atop the thermals, but I couldn’t tell for sure if they were eagles or vultures.

  During lunch Roger tried to ease the tensions by telling a Ute creation story. Dad, who loves these stories and knows many, said he wasn’t hungry and walked off on his own. Cassidy peered after him and spat in the sand.

  But Roger, after mopping his face with his bandanna, continued. “First, I wanna say that the name Ute comes from Yutta, the Blue Sky People. That’s what the other tribes called ’em. They called themselves Nuche, the People.”

  “Just tell the story, Dad,” Lisa complained. Cassidy flicked a piece of bark at her, and grinned. She threw it back, staring daggers at him. “But shorter, okay?”

  Roger looked around to see if my dad was coming back. Cassidy rolled onto his back with a sigh, and flopped his arms out, as if we were being crucified by the sky.

  “Okay,” Roger said. He pulled his bandanna back around his head and took a sip from his canteen. “In the beginning, as the story goes, the earth was flat. Flat as my hand.” He held his hand palm up. “The Creator told Hawk to make a target. When Hawk had done what he was told, Creator notched an arrow in his bow and drew back on the bowstring. He pulled back with so much force that when he released the arrow, it glanced off Hawk’s target and plowed through the desert, gouging out deep gorges. And that, according to the Blue Sky People, is how Desolation Canyon came to be.”

  Willie started to say something but Dad was coming back and everybody grew quiet. Cassidy sat up and pulled back on an imaginary bow. Closing one eye, he took aim at my dad and released the imaginary arrow.

  “Pow! You’re dead.”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  THE DISAPPEARANCE

  That night Dad said he wanted to sleep out alone under the stars. Cassidy asked Lisa if she wanted to play cards, but she said no. We all went our separate ways. I wrote in my journal, but just about the canyon and the river, and what we had for dinner. Nothing about what was really going on, underneath.

  When I finally drifted off to sleep, Cassidy invaded my dreams. They swirled with the drama that seemed to be engulfing us all and pulling us down—like the raging river itself, or the Water Babies in the story.

  I woke in the middle of the night to what I thought was a loud crash. At some earlier point Dad had crawled back into our tent and was snoring away. When I looked out the tent flap, mine was the only head sticking out.

  I looked around. I saw a large dark shape, darker than the night. It was huge and hunched over, like a bear. Like a black bear.

  But it wasn’t moving. Was it just a boulder? Had I just been dreaming that I’d heard a loud crash?

  I clapped my hands to see if the black shape moved, but it didn’t, and the only growls I heard were the ones Dad was making. Must be a boulder.

  The next day the headwind hit us early and Dad and I had to sit facing each other, doubled up on the oars—him pulling, me pushing. My mind kept replaying images from yesterday—Cassidy hoisting the heavy limb, my dad sprawled in the sand, Lisa hiding behind a tree—and I wanted to say something, but we were straining so hard at the oars that we couldn’t speak.

  Even doubled up, we moved turtle-slow in that wind, and by lunchtime the other two rafts were far out of sight ahead of us. By the time we got to the pull-out, the others had already eaten lunch and were ready to head out again.

  “Change of plans!” Cassidy said, hopping onto the bow of our raft. “Dude,” he said to me, “join Roger. I’m rowing this rig. Your dad’s holding up the show, big time.”

  This struck me as a dangerous mix—like fire and gunpowder—but Dad just pulled his hat down tight and said grimly, “Okey-dokey. Aaron, go on and help Roger out, okay, kiddo?”

  I looked at him, my eyes pleading, Are you nuts? He just nodded. I snatched my gear and jumped ashore. Willie handed me a sandwich wrapped in foil and tossed one to Dad. I untied Roger’s raft and helped push it out, then Lisa and I hopped in together. I was going to help Roger row but Lisa got there before me.

  Roger tossed me a bag of gorp (my favorite mix of nuts and chocolate) and said, “Your dad and Cassidy have some issues to work out, mate.”

  I guess Roger still didn’t see Cassidy as a dangerous problem for all of us—at least, he wasn’t showing it if he did.

  Willie looked at Cassidy and my dad, shook his head, then untied the kitchen raft, gave it a shove, and hopped in. He was going solo.

  The wind got worse and worse. It roared down the canyon like a locomotive. It got so strong it actually started to push the river back upstream, blowing us backwards with each gust. The wind created waves that were five feet high and some gusts lifted the front of our raft clear into the air.

  “Gusts like this can flip a boat like a pancake,” Roger yelled. I had to sit in the bow just to hold it down, hanging on for dear life. Roger and Lisa rowed. I offered to spell her but she just shook her head and kept rowing, harder than ever.

  The last I saw of Dad’s boat, Cassidy was alone at the oars, his muscles bulging, his cap turned backwards. Guess he wouldn’t let Dad help him. Even without doubling up at the oars, he’d pulled about fifty yards ahead of the rest of us. Pretty soon they were out of sight around the next bend.

  I was drenched from the spray and freezing cold when Lisa finally let me spell her at the oars, opposite Roger. I rowed with al
l I had, and in no time I was dog-tired, too. But I wasn’t about to show it. I rowed stroke for stroke with Roger, but between strokes we slipped backwards in the wind.

  Finally Roger signaled Willie to eddy out. Thank God, I said to myself. We could rest where the current turned back on itself and died along the shore.

  “Gotta hold up till the wind drops!” Roger yelled. The wind tore his words away. Sand crusted his lips. He looked as wild and grizzled as a pirate.

  We lashed our boats together and hunkered down in the eddy next to shore. Our rafts sloshed around and bumped with each gust of wind.

  For an hour, maybe two, we stayed huddled like that, shivering with the cold. My right arm and knee were pressed against Lisa’s, though, and that at least kept my heart warm.

  Any attempt at talking and the words were ripped from our mouths. I thought of whispering something cool in Lisa’s ears, but I couldn’t think of anything.

  Suddenly the wind scurried something upriver toward us. It skimmed the surface, dancing across waves, and flipped over next to our raft.

  “Dad’s hat!” I yelled, fishing it out. The crown of his straw hat was crushed and stained a dark maroon. The feather was missing.

  “Blood,” Roger said, taking the hat from my hand and staring at it.

  My mind froze. My heart thundered. Roger stuffed Dad’s hat beneath a strap, and said, “Let’s move it! Go go go go!”

  Ropes flew and everybody scrambled to their places.

  I helped Roger row and Lisa held down the bow. We battled the wind but the current was faster now so we made better time. Plus adrenalin surged through me, flushing fatigue from my veins and sending shots of pure energy to my heart.

  We rowed and rowed, carving the water, curving through canyons of red sand. Still no sign of Dad’s boat.

  Nothing.

  Panic gnawed at me like a rat. Suddenly I leaped up and traded places with Lisa in the bow as we rounded the bend and there it was.