RiverTime

by Rae Renzi

“This sucks, Jack.” The sun had started to drift below the horizon, closing the long day. “I can’t do it. If we’re stuck here together, we should at least be friends.”

  Jack, looking like he’d been waiting all day for those words, joined her on the ledge to watch the sun set. It was a particularly surreal sky, filled with intense color, streaks of brilliant orange and hot pink playing against deep purple shot through with lines of pure gold. A trick of acoustics sent the sound of the river up to them, providing a musical background to her words.

  When Jack didn’t say anything, she started talking. “Here’s the thing, it seems to me that in light of all the evidence, we have to consider the possibility the flash flood carried us into a…a different dimension, an alternate universe.”

  Jack looked surprised, but he nodded as if he understood. That would make one of them—she was making this up on the fly.

  “And, well, because history can’t cross dimensions—everyone knows that—things that happen in the river dimension can’t really leave the river.”

  He looked at her, a frown of perplexity on his face.

  Casting about in the furthest reaches of her mind, drawing on numerous science fiction and fantasy novels she’d read, Casey plowed ahead. “So, even though our, um, tryst at the bathing pool really did happen here, when we leave the river dimension, it stays behind because it’s history. Law of the universe. Long story short? We’re in RiverTime. It’s like it never happened. So, whatever your complications are—and mine, too—everything’s okay.”

  He remained silent for a few moments. “I’m not sure I totally get what you’re saying, but I don’t have any trouble believing this is a different dimension,” he finally said ruefully. “RiverTime—what happens here stays here—I can go for that.”

  He reached over and squeezed her hand, then laced his fingers through hers.

  She didn’t pull her hand away.

  Chapter Sixteen

  “It’s been nine days.” Casey sidled up to Jack to pour clean water into the pan that served them as a sink.

  “Already?” Jack rinsed the coffeepot and handed it to Casey to put on the rock shelf.

  “Do you think they even know we’re missing?” A gust of wind caught the dishtowel over her shoulder and flapped it against Jack’s face.

  “Oh, yeah, they know,” he replied darkly, as he peeled away the towel and handed it back.

  “Were you by yourself?”

  “No. There were eight of us. I don’t know how many got thrown from the raft like I did—I hope no one. I was the only one riding the pontoon.”

  “That figures, you riding the pontoon.”

  Jack snorted. “Like you didn’t.”

  She flashed a grin, then got back to her point. “Well, not to be an alarmist, but we’re getting kind of low on food. Maybe we should come up with a plan.”

  Jack carried the washing basin to the side of the camp and tipped out the water. “Fishing poles. Plenty of wood for that. We only need string…there must be something we can use.” He spoke quickly, as if trying to sell her. “And there must be some more wild plants or roots we can eat.”

  “I was thinking more along the lines of whether or not we should consider hiking out of here, or signaling someone, or something, rather than doing the reality-TV thing.”

  “Climbing out…are we that desperate yet?”

  Casey studied him for a moment. “You like it here.”

  “I like being right here, right now. But running out of food would not be good. I’ll have to hone my hunter-gatherer skills.” He rubbed his hands together.

  Casey almost laughed out loud. “Well, I guess we can always eat snake. It’s not bad, and we know it’s abundant hereabouts. And there are those, ugh, dandelions.”

  Jack looked at her, his expression neutral. “Have you actually eaten snake?”

  “Of course. In Texas—where I went to school—it’s part of the regional cuisine. Tastes a lot like alligator.”

  “Alligator. You’re kidding, right?”

  “About having eaten snake or ’gator? Well, doesn’t matter really. I think our chances of finding an alligator here are relatively slim, but snake is a real possibility. Snake stew, snake pie, or how about snake-kabobs? Sound good?”

  Jack looked down at his feet, hands on his hips. “I’ll see if there’s some fishing line in the toolbox.”

  “Are you married?” Jack looked up from the carrot he held in his hand. They were preparing a dinner of the few remaining vegetables and some instant rice. The evening sun slanted across the terrace, lighting him from the side, tinting his brown hair fiery bronze and casting his face in a shadow.

  Casey hesitated a moment. “No. No, I’m not.”

  “But…?”

  “How do you do that? How do you know there’s something I’m not saying? It’s scary.”

  Jack plunked the finished ones in a pot at his feet. “Has anyone ever told you not to play poker?”

  “I can play poker. I’m even pretty good at it.”

  Silence. Scrape, scrape, thunk.

  “You’re not married, but…?”

  Casey sighed. “But I’m supposed to be getting engaged. Maybe.”

  Jack looked up from his task. “Supposed to be? Maybe? Think you can qualify that a little more? I mean, you don’t want to sound too certain.”

  “Yeah. There is that.”

  He brought the carrots over to Casey. “Engagement isn’t usually a conditional state. Seems like either he asked you and you said yes, or not. Which is it?”

  Jack’s words were casual, his eyes were not.

  “In Reed’s family, it isn’t like that. An engagement is sort of like a political agreement. You work out all the details first, see if you have a match, then you have an official occasion to announce and celebrate. We’re still at the working-out-details stage.”

  One of the stickier details was that Reed’s parents were not in the least happy with the prospect of Casey as a daughter-in-law.

  “Sounds romantic.”

  “Hmph.” Casey dumped water into a pot and eyed the newly peeled carrots. “Here, chop these into pieces about this big.” She put her thumb and finger about a half inch apart.

  “And do you have a match?” Jack dug into his pocket and produced his knife, which he opened with a flick of his wrist.

  Casey busied herself by lining up the few remaining potatoes from most desirable to least. Some of them had little green nubs starting to poke out. “He’s a fine man—smart, handsome, successful, socially prominent. My mom likes him a lot.”

  “That’s good. It’s good if your family likes the person you marry.” Jack sliced the carrot with much more attention than the task warranted. “It’s better, though, if you do.”

  “I do. I like him—a lot.”

  “But…?”

  But he doesn’t make my heart race the way you do.

  Casey twitched one shoulder. She picked up a potato that had started to sprout and held it up. “Maybe we should plant this. Start a potato patch.”

  Something in Jack’s face changed. His eyes, usually so guarded, became deep, dark and intensely focused on her.

  He put down his knife and shifted his gaze sideways, as if he were diving deep inside himself and didn’t want the sight of her to bring him back to the surface. He walked distractedly over to the ledge, his hands in his pockets, and stood looking out over the canyon.

  Casey continued to prepare dinner, shooting an occasional glance at him.

  She had a sudden insight—the perfect metaphor for her relationships with men was a little red wagon. In her relationship with Reed, she sat in the wagon and admired the passing scenery as Reed, maintaining a firm grip on the handle, pulled the wagon step-by-carefully-planned-step up a long upward-sloping incline. If Reed dropped the handle, the red wagon, by simple virtue of gravity, would roll backward to the bottom of the hill.

  Of course, she didn’t have a relationship with Jack, not really. Noneth
eless, she had a distinct feeling of sitting in the little red wagon, looking down a precipitous slope that dissolved into rolling hills, with Jack sitting in the wagon behind her, arms around her, holding the steering handle with her and whispering seductively, “Lean forward, just a little more. You’ll love it.”

  She looked over at him, still standing at the ledge. He whispered something.

  “Jack?”

  He turned around, hands still in his pocket, and gazed at her. “I just had an epiphany.”

  “And that was…?”

  “I love you.”

  The words melted and spread in Casey’s mind, like chocolate on a hot day—warm, delicious and, ultimately, messy.

  “Jack…”

  Jack looked at the sky and talked in a dreamy kind of way. “I never knew the difference between lust and love. I thought they were the same. But—”

  He stood there, a dopey smile on his face.

  A panicky feeling flooded her brain. She beat it back with a deep breath and tried to dredge up a modicum of rationality. It didn’t work. “But what?”

  He turned his wandering gaze in her direction. “But tonight…tonight it suddenly all lined up, and I saw what I’d been missing. It was you.”

  The little red wagon tipped forward crazily and headed down the slope.

  “Jack. This is crazy. You can’t say things like that.”

  He looked at her and tilted his head. “Why not?”

  “Because…I don’t know what to do.” About him, about Reed, about herself.

  He smiled. “You don’t have to do anything. Remember? We’re in RiverTime.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  “We could wait a few more days before we do this,” Jack suggested, sloshing through knee-high water.

  They had headed up the side stream to look for a place to climb out of the canyon. In the heat of the day, the cool water felt good.

  “We could.” Casey stopped to splash water on her neck. “But we may as well take the measure of our desperation sooner rather than later. What if there’s no way out of here?”

  “Worse, what if there is?”

  “Why don’t you want to go back? Is your life so bad?” She’d veered away from prison and gigolo explanations, had tried to recast Jack in something resembling an everyday life. Life could seem bad even for ordinary people. Her mom, for instance.

  He turned away and resumed walking, saying nothing for a few minutes. Casey assumed the topic was closed, but he surprised her.

  “There are parts of my life that are great. Perfect.” He gazed up at the canyon walls. “But there’s one part of my life that affects all the others. It’s tense and hard, and with me every minute of the day. It feels good to have a break from it. So yeah, I’m in no hurry to get back to that.” He glanced sideways at her. “And besides…”

  “Besides what?” She wasn’t sure she wanted to know, but she couldn’t help herself. Would he say it again? Say he loved her? The thought made her dizzy. Disoriented. It fractured everything she’d planned for her life.

  Silence for a few beats. “Nothing. That rock fall has possibilities, don’t you think?”

  Casey followed his gaze. One side of the stream was a sheer cliff. The other side looked as though some geological event had shaken the walls until they crumbled in large chunks and fell to the canyon floor, piling up in places almost to the top of the canyon.

  “Might. Especially if there are cracks and crevasses we can use for handholds.”

  She and Jack reached the bottom of the rock fall and she looked up.

  “Oh, wow, Jack, look.”

  On the tiny ledges poking out of the canyon wall were several bighorn sheep looking down on them curiously. When Jack and Casey started to climb up, the sheep, astounding in their balance and precision, leaped from ledge to ledge.

  The first third of the climb was strenuous. Casey’s hands and legs started to shake. Jack seemed to be doing somewhat better. They aimed for a ledge to the right of their path that looked wide enough for them to rest. Jack made it there first.

  “I don’t know about this, Case,” he called back to her. He peered around the corner of the ledge. “The trail…well, there is no trail. I’m not crazy about rock-climbing in this wind. The higher we go, the stronger it gets.”

  As if to punctuate his words, a gust whipped her hair across her eyes, blinding her for a moment. She grunted, pushed her hair back and pulled up to the next rock. Only a few more feet to go. She stretched for the next handhold.

  Finally she reached the beginning of the ledge, which was barely wide enough for her to ease her foot onto while leaning into the cliff wall.

  “I see what you mean.” She glanced down over her shoulder, and quickly looked away. She didn’t need to see how far down it was, she needed only to scoot a little farther along to the wide part of the ledge so she could rest.

  When she moved again, a sheep jumped away from the scree-covered slope above them. Dislodged debris tumbled down. Casey cringed into the wall as the first small stones bounced down around her.

  “Jack!” More rubble pelted her. She tried to duck, but there was no shelter above her, nothing to duck under.

  A large rock hit her left shoulder. She recoiled in pain, almost losing her balance. Another smashed onto her head. A white light exploded in her eyes, and darkness started closing in. Something warm dripped down the side of her face. She shook her head to clear her vision, but that only made her dizzier. Her fingers slid from the rock as awareness slipped away. Her last sensation was something clamping around her wrist.

  “I’m ahead now.” Jack’s voice came from a long distance away.

  “You’re…what?” Casey blinked, trying to orient. She was on her back, kind of, but felt squished. Her shoulder hurt like crazy, and her head throbbed. Jack’s face swam into fuzzy focus above her.

  Ah, Jack. Good. She smiled and let her eyes drift closed again.

  “Casey!” Something rattled her or, rather, shook her. It was her head that rattled. Her brain must be loose.

  She groaned and struggled to sit up but met immediate resistance. The squished feeling, she realized, was the result of Jack’s arms locked around her.

  “I saved your life. Again,” he said.

  Casey heard the words, tried to get them to make sense. Her eyes wandered around aimlessly. There was a lot of rock wall behind Jack, and a lot of sky in the other direction. Straight above her was Jack’s furry chin.

  The ledge. They were still on the ledge.

  “Thanks. What happened?”

  “You don’t remember?”

  “I remember seeing a bighorn sheep, that’s all.” Casey tried to get her wayward brain cells to regroup.

  “That sheep started a rock slide that almost took you with it. I caught you before you toppled.” He paused. “Scared the shit out of me.”

  “Can we go home now?” She didn’t want to talk about what had almost happened. What did happen was bad enough.

  Jack stroked her face. “Yeah, let’s go home.”

  The trip back seemed to take hours. Jack half carried her down the rockslide, because her shoulder hurt so badly that her left arm was useless. By the time they got back to camp, it was almost dark.

  “Hungry?” he asked.

  “Not really. I just want to go to sleep.”

  Jack parked her at the table while he moved her sleeping gear closer to the camp kitchen. After helping her settle onto her bed, he put some water on to heat.

  “Your shoulder isn’t broken, is it?” His eyes were warm with concern.

  “Hurts, but I think it’s okay.” Casey shrugged her shoulder in a circle. “My head feels broken, though.”

  Jack skimmed his fingers over the bump on her head. “You have a pretty impressive lump. I know it hurts, but I don’t think it’s a good idea to give you aspirin right now. Especially if you have a concussion or something.”

  Casey closed her eyes as he brushed her face with a warm washcloth.
He used his other hand to smooth her hair back, stroking it as if to brush away the pain with his fingers. His touch was so soothing, the night was so pleasant, and the stars were popping out one by one. She almost nodded off.

  “Casey!”

  Her eyes popped open. “What!”

  “Don’t close your eyes. You need to stay awake, at least for little while, okay?”

  “Why?” Casey whined.

  “I can’t exactly remember why. I only remember that when you get a serious bump on the head, sleep and aspirin are out. Okay?”

  “Yeah, okay.” She knew he was right. She even knew why, but she didn’t have the energy to explain.

  He eyed her dubiously, but eventually went back to making dinner.

  “I’m just so sleepy.”

  “Well, let’s think of something to talk about.” Jack poured instant soup into the water. “Let’s talk about fantasies.”

  “No way.” She did not want to even approach the topic of Jack’s fantasies. Not with a ten-foot pole. His realities were disturbing enough.

  Jack grinned evilly and sidled over to her. She eyed him warily. He picked up a small twig and, sitting beside her, dragged it very slowly up her thigh.

  “Don’t you want to hear my fantasies, Casey?” he whispered.

  “No, no, no, Jack. No, I do not think that would be a good idea.” Casey’s heart raced in spite of herself.

  Jack burst out laughing and walked back to the kitchen. “Not that kind of fantasy. More like, if you won the lottery tomorrow, what would you do with the money?”

  “Ohhh. Oh, okay. Let’s see.” She pondered for a minute, twirling a curl around her finger. “How much?”

  A dimple showed at the corner of his mouth. “Let’s say a million dollars. What would you do with a million dollars if someone gave it to you.”

  “Tax-free?”

  “Tax-free. It has to be something you do or get for yourself, not for someone else. Altruism is not allowed.”

  She ruminated, lining up her priorities. She was experienced at this kind of fantasy—she’d indulged in it for years. All she had to do was check her most recent update.