Desolation Canyon

by Jonathan London

  “We can’t stay here all night,” Willie said, climbing to his feet. “Cassidy might jump off that cliff again.” He flapped dust off his knees and stretched. I could hear his spine crack. “We need to get them both down to warmth or they could die of exposure. Then we’ve got to get them down the river for help.”

  It seemed like an impossible task, but we had to make the impossible possible. What choice did we have? None.

  I looked at Dad. He didn’t say anything. He was still out cold.

  Willie made another creosote torch and handed it to Lisa. He checked Dad’s pulse and even pulled his lids back and looked at his eyes.

  “Let’s get this show on the road,” he said.

  We wrestled Cassidy to his feet as gently as possible, propping him between me and Roger. But this time we kept a strong grip on him, ready for anything. Cassidy was shivering and delirious, so he didn’t put up a fight. Or maybe he’d learned his lesson.

  Willie crouched down, and with help from Lisa, managed to sling Dad over his shoulders. “Let’s vamoose,” he said.

  Lisa held up the torch and led the way. Willie trudged behind her. Behind him and my dad, Roger and I half-walked and half-dragged Cassidy between us. He went in and out of consciousness, muttering, swearing, then growing silent again.

  We inched along the winding path, in the flickering shadows of the torch and the slim light of a fingernail moon, afraid of slipping off the edge of the world.

  “Goo c-catch, dude,” Cassidy blurted out of the blue. He sounded drunk.

  Was he talking to me?

  “Almost went bye-bye.” He started giggling … or crying, I couldn’t tell which.

  We stopped to rest, but not for long. Willie wanted to keep going. Cassidy was slick as a fish with cold sweat, and never stopped his mumbling. Dad was still unconscious and his bandage was soaked through with blood. Willie unwound it and asked Roger if there was another one in the first aid kit.

  “Just one left, mate,” Roger said. “No more after this.” Then he took his bandanna off, doused it with water, and dabbed the blood from Dad’s cut. He then tipped some antiseptic onto the last bandage and wrapped it tightly around Dad’s head.

  “Thanks, pard,” said Willie, “you’re a pro.” Then, grunting like a bear, he heaved my dad to his shoulders again—without waiting for help from anybody—and started off back down the narrow path. Lisa leapt up and ran to squeeze ahead of them with the torch.

  Roger and I got Cassidy wedged between us and followed. We stumbled along and Roger started to sing quietly in a croaky voice. It sounded a bit like a sea shanty. In that moment, I was filled with a strange feeling for Roger, Willie, Lisa, Dad—even for Cassidy. I guess you’d call it tenderness. I was feeling tenderness for everybody. And suddenly I felt like crying.

  But I didn’t. The tears just dammed there, clogging my brain.

  We wound down and down. The path hadn’t seemed nearly this long on the way up. Of course we weren’t carrying any bodies then. Lisa’s torch slowly burned out, but it didn’t matter. We could see by the sliver of moon.

  The Spirit Trail was hidden now beyond the ridge, but I knew it was still there. I hoped Dad wouldn’t be walking along it before sunrise. We had to get help, but how?

  I heard the hoot of a desert owl. It rippled through my blood and made me shiver. I couldn’t wait for the darkness to end.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  RUNAWAY RAFT!

  The sun was just beginning to light the sky to a pale gray by the time we made it back to camp. I thought I’d sigh with relief but I felt like I didn’t have enough energy to even do that.

  Roger and I laid Cassidy out next to Dad on a sleeping bag by the fire pit, where a few embers still glowed beneath gray ash. Then we covered them both with another open sleeping bag and added some wood to the coals. We had to get them warmed up fast.

  I gazed down at Dad. Ugly purple bruises were starting to appear beneath his eyes. “That’s a bad sign,” Roger said. “Concussion’s worse than I thought.” The new—and last—bandage around Dad’s head was already bloody. It made him look like a wounded soldier.

  I walked to the river and slapped some freezing water on my face. Then Lisa and I gathered driftwood from up and down the bank. We brought back a pile and took turns chopping. Then we coaxed the almost dead fire back to life, while Roger and Willie attended to Dad and Cassidy.

  I was completely exhausted—we all were—but there was no time to sleep. I was also famished. I hadn’t eaten dinner last night and now hunger was stalking me like a wolf. I thought regretfully about the soup Lisa had offered to spoon-feed me, now spilled into the sand beside my tent.

  Willie filled the kettle and snuggled it right on some coals as the morning light slowly seeped back into the world.

  How were we all going to get out of this canyon alive?

  While the kettle heated, we made plans. Roger unfolded a map and spread it flat across a boulder. Here, where we were now, the canyon walls fell straight down to the river with almost no beaches or flat areas. But, according to the map, about twenty miles downriver the canyon opened wide.

  “Wide enough for a bush plane to land,” Willie said.

  “Now you’re talkin’, mate,” Roger said.

  A bush plane. I’d seen one, early in the trip, soaring high above the cliffs. The plan was to make the whole twenty miles downriver today to where, maybe, we could signal a bush plane to land.

  It sounded like a good plan. Daunting, but good.

  We wolfed down some gorp and coffee, pumped air into the rafts so they wouldn’t ride sluggishly in the water, then broke camp in record time. Like I said, we were all exhausted—running on caffeine and adrenaline—yet we were on the river in under an hour.

  Lisa went with Willie and Cassidy in the kitchen boat. I went with Roger and my dad, who was still out cold, stretched out in the bottom, wrapped in a tarp for warmth. I was starting to get scared. I mean, really scared. What if he slipped into a coma? What if he never woke up? What if we wrapped the boat or flipped over and his body got sucked down into a keeper hole.

  What if.

  Before we left the beach, we pulled Dad’s raft up and tied it to a stump—we’d have to retrieve it later somehow. No way could Lisa or I have handled his boat. Not through what was coming. According to Roger: “The worst rapids of the river!”

  Just what we needed.

  What we really needed was to signal a plane and get my dad and Cassidy to a hospital “pronto,” as Willie liked to say. But for the next twenty miles, all we could do was try to keep them as dry and comfortable as possible.

  Cassidy was conscious again. We could hear him laughing and yelling in the kitchen boat. Laughing? What could he be laughing about? He sounded like a crazy loon.

  The river was getting faster. It was great to be on it again, and for a moment I forgot about the terror of yesterday and last night.

  But just for a moment.

  Soon we hit Cascade, the first big rapid of the day.

  “Yee-haw! Ride ’em c-c-cow-ahh-baloney!” Cassidy howled up ahead. Seemed like pain just made him giddy, I guess. He had one arm waving in the air, like a cowboy riding a rodeo bull. A cowboy on crack, that is. I can’t imagine how that felt with a broken collarbone!

  Roger was rowing, and I was on the back of the boat, trying to enjoy the ride like Cassidy. There were five drops in Cascade, one after another, and we were rollicking down like on a roller coaster when I heard something. A plane!

  That’s when I made a big mistake: I looked up.

  Whoops! We hit a wave or a boulder and I bounced off the back of the raft, right into the white water!

  Not again! I thought as I was churned inside nature’s washing machine.

  But this time I knew what to do.

  Just as I started to gulp water, I popped to the surface and thrust my feet forward so I wouldn’t smash my head on a rock. I didn’t panic. I worked to keep my head above the waves, and before lon
g it almost felt like I was bodysurfing in the ocean back home—but on my back!

  Roger’s raft was only about ten feet in front of me, but I couldn’t swim toward it and still keep my feet in front of me. And Roger was too busy steering it to help me. I had to just float it out until we got to calmer waters.

  Adrenaline pumped through me as I raced downriver on my back, bouncing off boulders like a pinball. I didn’t always like wearing a life jacket, but I sure was glad I had it on now. Without it I’d be a goner.

  Up ahead I could see a large boulder and what looked a lot like a keeper hole below it! I was even closer to the boat now, so with the last of my strength, I made a mad dash for it. It was now or never. Roger couldn’t drop the oars to grab me, so I grabbed ahold of the frame, made one last wild kick with my legs, and thrust myself up and over the side of the raft.

  I was back in! Wet and lying on the bottom of the raft, but back in. And I had done it all by myself!

  Just as I was about to congratulate myself some more, I threw up. River water gushed out so hard it felt like I was heaving up the whole river.

  I was shaking with cold and the electric rush of excitement.

  “You shipshape, mate?” asked Roger.

  I sat up, nodding. Roger dropped one oar and slapped my back, then grabbed back ahold before we could spin out of control.

  I rinsed my mouth, and soon I felt pretty good again. Good about myself. Good about having some control over my own survival.

  Then I looked down on Dad, who was still unconscious, and suddenly I was shivering again.

  The water was calmer now, so I looked again to the sky, but there was no sign of the plane I’d heard. Gone.

  We were in a swift flat stretch between tall gray cliffs, but already I could hear the roar of what was to come. And it wasn’t a plane.

  Roger rowed us into an eddy so we could scout Three Fords Rapid, the biggest rapid of our trip.

  “In high water like this, Three Fords can be a Class 5 rapid,” Roger warned. “There are lots of big boulders with deep holes behind them. And if you mess up, it’s a half-mile swim out. A nasty swim.”

  There wasn’t room for Willie’s boat in our small eddy, so he pulled into an even smaller eddy upriver from us. Lisa waved. I waved back. Willie hopped out into waist-deep water and started hauling his raft into shore with the bowline.

  “Whoa!” he yelled as the tail end of his raft got sucked back into the current. The whole boat began to swing downriver, spinning out of the eddy, and even Willie couldn’t hold it.

  “Lisa!” he shouted. “Row!”

  Lisa jumped to the oars and dug a blade in, just as the line tore from Willie’s grip.

  With a sound like a gunshot, Lisa’s oar snapped between two boulders, and the river took the kitchen raft—with Lisa and Cassidy—away.

  “Runaway raft!” Willie bellowed.

  Lisa tried to row with her one oar, but the raft just spun in spirals. Willie scrambled over the rocky shoreline and jumped into our raft, just as Roger pulled out into the current. He was trying to catch them before they hit the rapids.

  But the runaway raft whipped right past us, a blur of blue rubber and black hair and flannel arms. They were out of reach and heading into the rapids with just one oar.

  Into the worst rapids on the river.

  We were already fifty yards behind them. Roger was rowing like a madman and I was kneeling in the bow, ready with the rescue line, Willie crouched beside me ready to jump. Lisa’s raft—with Cassidy helpless within it—was plowing toward the first huge drop.

  I clenched the rescue line. I can do this, I said to myself.

  I can do this.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  ROCK GARDEN

  Aaron!” Roger shouted. “Get the spare oar!” It was lashed to the side of the raft. I dropped the rescue line, stepped over my unconscious dad, and began to loosen the straps holding it. But I couldn’t get it free—it was snagged.

  Lisa! I thought. I have to do this right now!

  I forced my fingers to work harder and finally got the straps off it. I passed it forward to Willie, who held it over his shoulder like a spear.

  Ahead of us, Lisa’s raft was about to be funneled down the drop between two huge boulders when it got held up on one of them, thirty yards away.

  Twenty, ten, five … Lisa’s raft began to swing around the rock. She fought with her one oar, but the river was too strong. Just as she was about to be sucked down the rock-strewn current—what Willie had called a “rock garden”—he leapt like a wild man, holding the oar like a spear, and landed in the back of Lisa’s boat. They plunged over the drop and away from view.

  But there was the oar, snagged between two boulders! Willie must have dropped it. Maybe I could reach it. I flopped on my belly and leaned out so far over the water that I was sure I’d topple in again, but I was just able to snatch the oar at the last second and pull it in.

  There was no time to lose.

  We came crashing down behind them, maybe thirty feet back, right into a rock garden. Ahead of us, they were spinning wildly out of control, banging into rocks every few feet. Willie propped himself in the back of his raft, but he was clutching his shoulder like he was in serious pain.

  How am I going to get this oar to them? I thought. And how is Willie going to catch it if he hurt his shoulder?

  “THROW IT!” Willie shouted.

  What if I miss? What if I don’t miss but hit Willie or Cassidy or Lisa with the oar?

  Enough with the what ifs.

  I took a deep breath, cocked the oar back, and heaved it forward with all I had. It flew straight through the air just like a javelin …

  … and landed right on target!

  Willie snatched it out of the air with his giant hands and hooked it into the oarlock, then clutched his shoulder again! He really was hurt.

  Lisa yelled something at him and he moved aside so she could scoot back into the seat. Within seconds she was rowing like crazy.

  Then they disappeared down the next drop.

  We were about twenty feet behind them and the nose of our raft tipped down. It was like crashing down a waterfall.

  WHOOOOSH!

  “Hold on!” Roger yelled.

  “High side! High side!” Roger hollered, and I climbed up. With me clinging to the high side, the boat slid back down. Then I hopped back to the bow to watch for obstacles. Roger powered us through haystack waves eight feet tall, all the while dodging holes and bouncing off boulders.

  Right then I dubbed him Roger Dodger. From now on he was Roger Dodger as well as Roger the Rogue.

  And there was the kitchen boat on course, dancing down the river ahead of us—Lisa rowing like a wild woman, and Willie in the bow calling the shots.

  They whipped around boulders and holes, disappearing a few times, reemerging and disappearing again.

  Like Willie, I was in the bow, calling the shots. “Stay river right!”

  Finally, after the wildest ride of the trip, we all sailed out of danger and into calm waters again. I let out a whoop. Willie and Lisa whooped back.

  When we caught up to them, I stood up, soaking wet, and yelled, “Lisa! Are you alive?”

  “I am if you are!”

  “Good job rowing!” I yelled.

  “Good job throwing!” she yelled back.

  Lisa raised both hands, making victory signs, and gave me a grin as big as Texas. Then grabbed the oars again.

  And yes, I felt more alive than I had ever felt in my life.

  Maybe Cassidy had been right, I thought, about the power of danger.

  I think what he was talking about was overcoming it. And yes, overcoming it does fill you with, if not power, at least confidence.

  Cassidy. He was dead to the world again. He had come too close to that edge he’d talked about. I might be feeling super alive now, but I bet Cassidy was feeling closer to dead.

  If he was feeling anything at all.

  What about Dad? I�
�d almost forgotten about him during the time it took us to get through the rapids. Like Cassidy, he was still out cold. He was also soaking wet and looked like he’d been tossed around like a rag doll. But he was all in one piece. Thank God.

  I started to shiver again. I don’t know if it was from my wet clothes in the rising wind, or from seeing Dad there, still unconscious.

  I spelled Roger at the oars.

  “Thanks, mate,” he said, the pirate back in his voice and the twinkle back in his eye. “You saved the day, Aaron.”

  There was no time for the compliment to sink in, to celebrate. We had to get to where a plane could land before dark. And we still had a long way to go.

  Ahead of us, after a brief effort by Willie, Lisa was at the oars again. She was pulling in strong, smooth strokes. I tried to keep up with her, but it took all my strength. We hit one rapid after another, Roger barking out orders and warnings about boulders and holes. Spray climbed the steep rock walls and waves broke over us.

  Vultures circled high overhead, in the endless blue of the sky. I hoped they weren’t waiting for us.

  We were rolling along at a good clip when we smelled rotten eggs.

  “Must be Coal Creek Rapids,” Roger said. “Sulfur hot springs give it that lovely fragrance.” He stood up and made the eddy-out signal, and Lisa pulled into shore.

  “Better scout this one out, mate,” Roger said.

  Willie rubbed his shoulder, then tied their raft with extra care this time. Guess he didn’t want any more runaways.

  “How’s your shoulder, mate?” Roger asked.

  “Don’t worry about me, pard. Let’s get the real invalids to safety.”

  Then we scrambled up a rock path to where we had a good view of the rapids.

  “Howdy, slowpoke,” Lisa teased. “But that really was some throw back there, Aaron. You were pretty awesome.”

  This time the compliment took my breath away. I couldn’t even answer her.

  Fortunately, Willie butted in, slapping me on the back with his good arm, “Yep, Aaron’s a real hero all right.” A blush heated my face. Then he added that Lisa was a hero too, and went immediately back to business.