River Thunder

by Will Hobbs

  Star answered gently, “The rest of us have changed, Jessie. Think about it. We shouldn’t get stuck in the way we look at things—everything’s always changing.”

  “Maybe even Troy?” I said dubiously, to complete her thought.

  “Maybe we should consult The Book of Changes,” she whispered. “I brought it with me. It’s in my daypack.”

  Star pulled a bundle out of her daypack and opened it carefully. First she spread her blue silk scarf on the slickrock, then lit a small red candle. Next to the candle she set a leather-bound book. From a beaded buckskin pouch she removed three ancient-looking coins and held them loosely in her hand.

  Star had found her new oracle, this book of ancient Chinese wisdom, in the bookstore where I worked. It had gradually replaced her timeworn tarot cards. Tossing the coins six times could result in any of sixty-four different readings. The way I’d come to understand it, the reading you threw was supposed to give you insight into dealing with your present situation.

  “Are you ready, Jessie?” she asked.

  I nodded. With the candlelight flickering on the girders behind her, Star began to throw the coins. She recorded the tallies of heads and tails in a little notebook. Star truly believes that the pattern that results from the six throws isn’t accidental. She believes it’s a sign, an expression of “synchronicity.” Star is very stubborn about not believing in “mere chance.” I’m not so sure, but I couldn’t see any harm in it.

  When she was all done with her calculations, and had turned hopefully to the reading she’d thrown, she looked dismayed. “What is it?” I asked.

  “ ‘DECAY,’ ” she replied. “I never got this reading before.”

  “Sounds awful, but appropriate. What else does it say?”

  “ ‘MAKE GOOD AGAIN THAT WHICH HAS BEEN SPOILED.’ ”

  My heart skipped a beat. Troy had even used the word “spoiled.” That’s what he’d said—“I spoiled it.”

  “Read it to me,” I urged.

  “Here goes: ‘What has been spoiled as a result of human misdeeds can be restored with healing intention and honest efforts. We must begin anew. We must not shrink from toil and danger.”

  Every word went pouring through me. Out of sixty-four possible readings, how was it that Star happened to throw this one at this moment?

  Quietly Star put the book away. “Jessie, it might be wrong not to let somebody have their chance to make good. ‘Make good again that which has been spoiled’ works both ways.”

  “I don’t know, Star, I just don’t know.” Now I was more confused than ever. “Let’s sleep on it.”

  We went back to the car for our ground pads and bags, and slept right there under the bridge. I slept fitfully at best. Maybe I was the only one who could row the other boat, or have half a chance of rowing it, but why did it have to be so much about me? Troy said he “wanted to make it up to me.” I kept asking myself if that rang true. What did he want from me?

  In the morning, I awoke to the song of the canyon wren, that delicate, cascading waterfall of innocence.

  Star was still asleep. I slipped out of my bag, went to the edge of the cliff, and sat down. I listened to the sound of the river echoing up the canyon walls. Again and again, like an invitation, came the call of the wren. The morning light was so golden, I just started crying.

  Then Star was at my side. She put her arm around my shoulder.

  “I’m muddled,” I told her. “Totally muddled.”

  We drove back to the trading post, ate breakfast at the café, and stalled for time. Star let me be. I kept trying to see into Troy’s heart. I kept trying to remember everything he’d said at dinner, every nuance of his voice and facial expression. Star’s reading from her book had such a hold on me. “What has been spoiled as a result of human misdeeds can be restored with healing intention and honest efforts.”

  I wanted to believe that. My father likes to say that it’s up to each of us “to listen to the better angels of our nature.” I wondered, Is Troy really trying to do that?

  I couldn’t call and talk it over with my father. He was in South America with my stepmom, maybe in the rain forest already. He was finally getting the chance to go back and visit the people he’d studied for his dissertation so many years before.

  “Let’s try to reach Adam,” I said to Star. “I want to talk to him about this.”

  The phone was outside, by the gas station. I asked the operator for a listing for Discovery Unlimited in Silverton, Colorado. A girl answered; she sounded about my age. She said she’d send somebody to go find him. A few minutes later, it was Adam’s voice saying hello.

  Adam was flabbergasted. “You’re kidding,” he kept saying. “Troy did that? He’s got a private permit? You’d row the other raft? Pug was in boot camp? Rita made it all the way from New York?”

  He kept saying he was blown away, and I’m sure he was.

  “But what would you do, Adam? Would you do it?”

  “Hey, I’m the wrong guy to be asking. You know me … the Canyon, are you kidding? You know what I’d do! In fact, it’s only a six- or seven-hour drive from here—maybe I should quit right now and come join you! I got a car; I drove out here from Kansas!”

  “Don’t do that,” I said. “That’s not why I called.”

  “I won’t, I was just talking. I’m so lucky to be working here, I’d never do something that stupid. Look, Jessie, you have to make your own decision.”

  “But what about Troy?” I asked. “Would you trust him?”

  Adam hesitated. “Personally …? I guess I might give him another chance, but then again, if he weren’t dangling the Grand Canyon in front of my nose, I’m not sure I would!”

  “Well, thanks, Ninja. I wish we’d stayed in better touch. Give me your prediction, Adam. What am I going to do?”

  “Not fair!”

  “Tell me, anyway.”

  “You want to row the Canyon, Jessie.”

  Chapter

  5

  Troy was lounging in the boatman’s seat on one of the rafts when I got there. He was bare-chested, sipping a soda, flipping through the waterproof mile-by-mile map, keeping his mouth shut. Somehow he sensed that the less said, the better.

  The rental company from Flagstaff had already come and gone. Postponing my decision, I let my eyes run over the equipment. The rafts were beautiful, dark gray sixteen-footers with bright yellow bumper stripes around the middle of the tubes, and they were outfitted to perfection. Both rafts even had solar shower bags lashed on the back, to be heated by the sun as we floated downstream. The details were impressive. Every life jacket was equipped with a short-handled knife in a hard plastic scabbard over the chest, where you could get at it in a second in an emergency.

  I sat through the ranger’s slide show and orientation lecture in the Park Service trailer still thinking I was making up my mind.

  The ranger started in with Major John Wesley Powell’s historic first run of the Grand Canyon in 1869. As he talked on, telling us all the Park Service rules and regulations, my mind drifted. I was having an imaginary conversation with my father. He was saying, “You’re going to be a senior in just a few months, and then you’ll be flying the nest.” My father had been saying that a lot lately. “I think you should use your own good judgment,” he went on. He’d been saying that a lot, too.

  What good judgment?

  Back at the ramp again, I was in a daze. Even as I was strapping down our dry bags at the back of the raft, I was treating it like a rehearsal. The ramp was crowded with people rigging boats again, and it was hot, much too hot. I kept hearing snatches of conversation about the high water and the big rapids. The gist was, they were going to be worse than usual, especially Crystal and Lava.

  There was a rumor going around that the Bureau of Reclamation, or Wreck-the-Nation as some were calling it, had misjudged the rate of the runoff from the snowmelt in the Rockies, and that we’d be looking at flows even higher than the 42,000 cubic feet per second we wer
e looking at right now. I wished I could remember what the numbers were last fall when we’d run the Canyon.

  I was getting knee-knocking, stomach-ripping afraid.

  Teetering with indecision, I looked up and saw Troy right in front of me, his intense blue eyes sympathetic and warm. “Jessie,” he said quietly, so no one else could hear. “You really don’t have to do this if you don’t want to.”

  He could tell how pitiful I was, I was sure of it. “I know that,” I muttered, and I wondered if he was enjoying this.

  Troy stroked his chin and looked away. “It’s going to be rough water, from everything I’m hearing. Tougher than last time, if that’s possible.” Then he looked back at me with undisguised doubt.

  Now that it had come down to it, and the Canyon had become a whole lot more real than he remembered, he didn’t think I could row it. Maybe he’d staged all of this to prove a point, to exact some kind of petty revenge. I had no idea what he was really thinking.

  “I just want you to know,” he added earnestly, “it’s your decision.”

  I didn’t know if I could row it either, but if somebody’s going to tell me I can’t do something, I’ll break every bone in my body proving them wrong.

  With a glance I saw Rita and Pug up in front of Troy’s raft, quiet as church mice and all ready to go, trying not to look at me directly. Pug had already stowed the bowline. They both knew the trip was a no-go without me.

  Star was calmly sitting on the sand and waiting. I knew she was with me either way. Unfortunately I couldn’t share her philosophical acceptance that whatever I decided would work out for the best.

  Forget about Troy, I told myself, and his reverse-psychology mind game, if that’s what he’s playing. This is about me and the Canyon.

  I sat down next to Star in the sand, took a long look downstream, took a deep breath. Managing a smile, I said, “We must not shrink from toil and danger.”

  A few seconds later she was untying the bowline from the steel cable running across the ramp, and I was sitting on the boatman’s seat, the padded top of the big cooler. Star was wrapping the rope around her elbow and making a tidy bundle. Now she was tucking it under the chicken line where it ran around the front of the raft.

  Star jumped in the raft. I realized she was looking at me as if she was seeing a ghost with oars.

  I started pulling for the current. “I’ll make a beautiful corpse,” I wisecracked.

  Star touched the crystal at her neck. “Don’t ever say that,” she pleaded, and turned to face the oncoming riffles.

  Chapter

  6

  “Calm down,” I whispered to myself. “Settle down.” I tucked the oars under my knees so the blades would stay up in the air, took a long drink of water, looked around. The cliffs of Marble Canyon were angling up and out of the earth on both sides. A fisherman waved from the right, Star waved back. Swallows were knifing the air above us and skimming the water ahead.

  The river was narrowing into a run of whitewater, which Troy was about to enter. “Paria Riffle,” Star announced, reading from our waterproof mile-by-mile guide. “It’s rated as a 1 on the 10-scale.”

  I pointed the bow of the raft straight down the glassy green tongue of water that led into the riffle, and rode it down into the chop of the whitewater. We were soaked by the tailwaves down at the end, even though I had maneuvered with the oars to take them head-on.

  The water was so cold. “How’s that for refreshing?” I shouted.

  Star was reaching for the bail bucket. “That was only a 1!”

  I dug with the oars to pull away from a huge slab of rock sticking out of the river. I kept us off the rock, but in a few seconds the raft was caught in a big boiling eddy that captured us and shot us back upstream.

  Pull, I told myself. Pull! The raft seemed so heavy. I looked around, trying to figure out where all the weight was coming from. The aluminum rowing frame itself, with the folding table that made the passenger deck across the front, didn’t look that heavy. All those metal army boxes full of canned food suspended underneath the deck must be a lot of the weight. When I added in the huge fresh-food cooler I was sitting on and the big tarped load behind me, I began to get the picture. Inside the tarp, we’d stowed our dry bags full of clothes and personal stuff; and underneath them, a twenty-pound propane bottle, two propane stoves and a lantern, even a pickle barrel full of charcoal.

  Troy was carrying as much, including the dry-ice frozen cooler he was sitting on and the huge aluminum kitchen box. His army boxes included two that were marked HUMAN WASTE.

  We slipped back into the current. Star was distressed over how hard I’d had to work to get out of a little eddy, but she said encouragingly, “Good thing you’re in such good shape from skiing and mountain biking.”

  “I’ll get the hang of it,” I promised her. “One or two strokes a little earlier and that eddy wouldn’t have grabbed us.”

  I checked my right palm. It already had a sore spot. One mile down, two hundred and twenty-four miles to go. My hands were going to blister badly. I wished I had brought gloves.

  Within a few minutes the walls of Marble Canyon were several hundred feet high and growing. Up ahead on the left, Troy had pulled out onto a beach of white sand. He was tying up as Rita and Pug were having a footrace down to the lagoon at the far end of the beach.

  By the time Star and I touched shore they’d run all the way back, and were panting and laughing. “Lunch-time!” Rita gasped. “But first I need a little hydrotherapy!” She ran off the top of the beach, jumped, and cannonballed into the backwater pool where we’d pulled out.

  Pug was looking up and down the sparkling green river, then up the canyon walls to the blue, blue sky, and grinning. Troy was standing back quietly, taking in the four of us and the Canyon. He was pretty pleased with himself. I walked past him, looking for something to tie to. As I walked by, he said, “Back on the river, Jessie!”

  For want of anything better to say, I answered, “Here we are.”

  “I’ll get the table off your raft,” Troy offered.

  Troy? I thought. Troy’s going to do it himself?

  “Out of my way, everybody!” Rita shouted. Water was still pouring off her bathing suit and she was shaking water out of her short black hair like a wet puppy. “I’m the cook—stand by for orders! Man, if my friends could see me now. They have no conception. No conception! Jessie, you weren’t sure about doing this trip? Are you crazy?”

  “Pretty nice,” I said. “We’re back.”

  “Hey, this is a brand-new day in paradise, and it’s hot this time! And you should see these menus! Man, you’re never going to eat like this in your life! Everybody, wash your hands in the big Colorado, like the ranger said, before you even think about getting near this table to help or eat. Like the man said, dysentery is hardly delightful. Soap’s in the kitchen box! Go, go!”

  Star and I took the shock treatment of full immersion in the river. The T-shirts we’d pulled over our bathing suits would keep us cool as they dried.

  “Not over the sand, Troy!” Rita shouted. “The man said wash your hands in the big Colorado, shampoo in the big Colorado, pee in the big Colorado!”

  I was curious to see if Troy was going to stand corrected. It didn’t come naturally, I remembered. He smiled good-naturedly and recited, “ ‘Twelve thousand people have to use these beaches every season.’ ”

  Star and I helped to lay out the bread, rye and whole wheat, the cheeses, Swiss and cheddar, the cold cuts, roast beef and turkey. There were tomatoes, lettuce, sprouts, avocados, carrot sticks—Troy’s caterers had even anticipated vegetarians—and there were pickles, choices of fresh fruit, chips, and cookies.

  “I asked for meals for seven,” Troy commented with a touch of his pride showing, “just to make sure we wouldn’t starve.”

  Never one to run from the sight of food, Pug was already building an enormous sandwich while stuffing a handful of potato chips into his mouth. “Feed me and I’ll love y
ou forever,” he crooned to no one in particular. “I’ll get some sodas out of the drag bag. Who needs one?”

  “Eat by the river,” Rita ordered. “Hey, Star, you shoulda cut your hair short, like mine. Much easier. Maybe I can braid it for you later.”

  “That’s the best way to take care of this hair,” Star agreed. “Keep it out of the way.”

  “Sign me up,” Pug joined in, rubbing the half-inch fuzz on his skull. “I can’t do a thing with my hair.”

  Troy was looking like he’d love to join in, but he held back.

  Rita tried to encircle Pug’s bicep with her hand. Of course her hand didn’t reach halfway around. “Go put your shirt on—we’re impressed already with your bis and your pecs and your abs. Hey, Big Fella, you’re lobstering. What kind of sunscreen you using?”

  “Tanning oil,” he admitted.

  “You can use cooking oil if you run out! Do you as much good!”

  Star and I were cracking up, and Troy had his hand over his mouth.

  “Who wants to wrestle?” Rita hollered, cookies in both hands. “I’ll take all comers. Gotta warn you, though, any illegal holds on this chick and I’ll bite your ear off! Feed it to the crocodiles!”

  “I’ll pass,” Troy said.

  “Good. Any weirdness out of last year’s captain—this year’s banker—we’ll have both his ears!”

  Excellent, Rita reminding Troy of the terms. She has her ways.

  “I think Rita’s due for some more hydrotherapy,” Troy commented playfully. “Pug, should we?”

  Pug looked at Troy and seemed to recall they were old buddies. Then he sized up Rita. Rita has a slim build, but she’s strong—she has broad shoulders, same as I do. “I’m pretty attached to my ears,” Pug said slowly.

  From upstream came the sound of a motor, and soon one of those monster rigs appeared—a huge elongated donut with big torpedo-shaped outrigger pontoons on either side. The boatman, a young guy with a long ponytail, slowed the motor as they came by. The passengers, a dozen or so men, were drinking beer. We could hear everything they were saying. “Look, those are lawn chairs they got tied to the back of their rafts!” “Hey, Bruce, how come we don’t have any?” “What do we have we can trade for lawn chairs?” “What do we have we can trade for their women?”