River Thunder

by Will Hobbs

  I looked immediately to Star. For a second, she was even wondering the same thing.

  “Of course n-not,” I stammered. “He must have got it off the Internet—the World Wide Web.”

  “You’re kidding—World Wide? You put all this personal stuff out to the world? All about your dad and your stepmom getting married, about Star, about your mom dying when you were a kid, about your hopes and dreams? About our Grand Canyon trip last fall?”

  My eyes returned to the page. I felt light-headed. She was right. Here was my life story, even the parts I hadn’t lived yet, like the mountain bike race I was training for. I could even see where I’d written, “I’d give anything for a second chance at the Grand Canyon.”

  “It’s just a form of self-expression,” I said lamely. “All kinds of kids do it.”

  “I’ve heard about it, but I’ve never actually seen anyone’s home page before,” Rita said. “Takes deep pockets to have one, from what I hear.”

  “Hey, it’s free, Rita—at least for me it was. My dad’s hooked up at home because of the university.”

  “So you just send this stuff out into the world, and you don’t even know who’s picking up on it? You even gave your location. You say here, you live near Boulder, Colorado. I mean, I don’t even have a computer, but if I did—”

  “I was just sitting in my room typing this stuff,” I said. “It was like writing a poem or something. And when you write a poem, it’s nice to have an audience. The audience seemed so vague, and so friendly …”

  “So Troy must have taken this off the World Wide Net, or whatever you call it. That means he was looking for you. Maybe he looked up the rest of us, too, to see if we had a home page, but I kind of doubt it. See? What did I tell you? He still has a thing about you, a weird thing.”

  Chapter

  14

  Star is always on the lookout for signs. As we were eating supper, and the river turned suddenly from emerald green to red, she glanced at me significantly. I knew what she was thinking. The river was telling us something.

  “It hasn’t been raining,” Troy said. “Not even a cloud in the sky. So how’d the red sand get in the river?”

  “Maybe it’s been raining way up the Little Colorado,” I suggested. “I’ve seen it on a map—it’s more than a hundred miles long.”

  Adam was stroking his chin. “Dunno, could be blood.”

  Pug was pondering that possibility, almost fondly. Star said, “Red is the Colorado’s natural color. The Spanish named it the Red River. So the natural color is a good sign.”

  Our redhead pointed his index finger aloft with a philosophical flourish. “Socrates would ask, ‘Is the natural always good?’ ”

  “Of course it is,” Star maintained.

  “An asteroid five miles in diameter strikes the earth. Ka-boom! Ninety percent of the species on earth go extinct.”

  “It’s good in the long run.”

  “And how about when it’s not dinosaurs but the human race we’re talking about?”

  They went on, but I wasn’t listening anymore. All I could think about was Troy and my home page. Rita was serving the triple-chocolate cake she’d baked in the Dutch oven, but I hardly remembered to taste the chocolate, I had so much on my mind.

  At last everyone went to their sleeping areas in the tammies, including Troy. I had some questions I wanted to ask him, so once again I walked to his little area by moonlight. Only this time I wasn’t tipsy, and this time I wasn’t feeling sorry for him.

  His diamond stud was sparkling in the moonlight; he was resting on his pillow, just like before. Delighted to see me, not really surprised. He patted his ground cloth next to him. It was obvious he assumed I’d fallen back under his spell. When he took a better look at my troubled face and saw I was holding up a piece of paper, his face clouded. “What’s the matter?” he asked. “Is something wrong, Jessie?”

  “I don’t want you to go blaming Rita for giving this to me. She found it by accident. I just want to know what you were doing with my home page, Troy.”

  “Please, sit down.” He sat up while pointing me to his lawn chair, which had a towel thrown over the back.

  “I think you should explain this,” I said. My voice sounded high-pitched and emotional. I told myself to settle down.

  He shrugged. “I got it off the Web, what do you think?”

  “Why? How?”

  “I just typed in your name one day. I was curious, that’s all.”

  “It couldn’t have been that easy. How did you find me?”

  “University of Colorado at Boulder—I knew your dad worked there. And bingo—there you were.”

  “But why? Why were you looking for me?”

  “I just wondered how you were doing, what you were doing. And suddenly there you were, right on my screen. It was a lot easier than dialing you up on the phone.”

  “I would have hung up on you.”

  “That’s what I was afraid of.”

  “So, was that really you I saw in Boulder?”

  He looked startled. “What are you talking about?”

  Was he feigning surprise? I was watching closely, but I couldn’t tell. “At the bike race,” I said. “I thought I saw you in the crowd near the bottom of the mountain.”

  “Impossible. I was in California.”

  “You’re telling the truth?”

  “Of course I am. You said on your page that you were training for a race—so, how’d you do?”

  I hesitated, trying to read him. “I won it.”

  “That doesn’t surprise me. You’re golden, Jessie. You know, maybe you could have a future in mountain-bike racing. I’ve been following the pros in the mags. Some of them are making in the high six figures—nearly a million a year. Women, too.”

  “I knew that,” I said. “But that’s not what we’re talking about. We’re talking about you having this in your ammo can. Nobody else’s home page, just mine.”

  “Hey, nobody else had a home page.”

  I wondered if he knew that for a fact. “Star does,” I said, which wasn’t true.

  He shrugged. “Not that I could find.”

  “It’s like you were spying on me through the computer, Troy.”

  “I wouldn’t call it that, Jessie. But while we’re on the subject, you shouldn’t put so much information about yourself on there. You never know who’s downloading you.”

  “You’re giving me advice?” My voice was getting shrill.

  He backpedaled. “Look, Jessie, to be perfectly honest—”

  “I hate it when people say, ‘To be perfectly honest.’ It makes me suspect the opposite.”

  “Look, you said in there that you’d give anything for a second chance at the Canyon. That’s where I got this whole idea.”

  This time I knew he was telling the truth. I’d done this to myself.

  “Then this whole thing is about me? This whole trip?”

  “Sure it is. I mean, I like the rest of these guys well enough, but not enough to do all of this for them. This whole thing, it’s for you.”

  “You see this as a present, a really big present?”

  “That’s right. Except the high-water part. I didn’t know that was going to be part of the package.”

  “And you’re part of the package?”

  “I hoped to be, obviously.”

  “Why didn’t you buy me a foreign country while you were at it?”

  “You’d rather take the Canyon any day.” Now he was smiling.

  “What about other girls? Why didn’t you take some other girl down the Canyon?”

  “Other girls? Been there, done that. Other girls aren’t you, that shouldn’t be so hard to explain. I missed you, I wanted to be with you.”

  “No strings attached, supposedly.”

  “That’s right. Just give me a chance, that’s all I’m asking.”

  “I can’t believe the trouble you went through to arrange this, and then you talk about ‘no strings.’ I still c
an’t believe the letter you wrote, when you were pretending to be Al.”

  “What about it?”

  “Like, ‘all of us bought into the alternate reality Troy created.’ Like, ‘Troy was able to unite us as adversaries to the program, especially the girls.’ ”

  “Oh, that. I admit, it’s embarrassing. But I knew it had to sound like Al. The ‘alternate reality’ bit, that’s a phrase my therapist always uses.”

  “To describe your schemes, I’m sure, which are mostly fantasy.”

  “I guess you could say that. But I’m working on it, Jessie, I really am. It’s not like I’m happy with the way I am. I’m out of school and basically nowhere, and I’m trying to get a sense of where my life is going.”

  I was confused. He’d worked me around to feeling sympathy for him once again. I didn’t know what to say next or how to end this.

  “Let’s just run the river together,” he said, as if reading my mind. “See what happens. Just give me a chance.”

  “Okay,” I said. “Just tell the truth from here on out, okay?”

  “Got it. Good luck in Granite tomorrow morning.”

  We were scouting when Canyon Magic tied up and joined us. Granite was steep, fast, explosive. I was thinking that a run down the tongue and close to the wall looked too dicey. I was trying to picture a far-left run. If I could use the Scoot and drop the raft just downstream of a certain boulder, high left in the rapid … That first drop would be steep and sudden, but after that …

  It gave me a big boost of confidence when Kit started describing the same run to one of their other boatmen. This time we learned all of their names. Troy and I shook hands with Ray, who turned out to be Navajo; Pack, with the powerful chest and thick mustache; Gail, the willowy lady with the yellow scarf; Tom, with the full beard; and Juke the swamper, in training on the gear boat. Ray asked, “You hear about the speed run?”

  We wagged our heads.

  “Three professional boatmen are on the river right now doing a solo trip in a dory. They’re out to set a speed record. They left Lee’s Ferry about eleven last night.”

  Troy’s jaw dropped. “Wait a minute—at night?”

  “Marble Canyon in the moonlight,” Tom put in. “These guys know the Canyon so well, they could almost do it blindfolded.”

  Pack laughed. “They know the Canyon, all right, but the rapids are all different at these levels. Those guys are really hanging it out there.”

  “Which ones will they scout?” I asked.

  Ray had a glint in his eye. “Word is they aren’t scouting anything.”

  “For real?”

  “This is for real. They want to shave off every minute possible. The radio said a helicopter spotted ’em at eight this morning at Mile 61 already, the Little Colorado. They’re gonna set a record if they don’t hit a rock or something. The radio said to keep an eye out for them today.”

  “What’s the red in the river?” Troy asked.

  Pack pulled on his mustache. “Weird deal. They say the river’s been chewing through the concrete lining of the spillway tunnels that run through the cliffs around the sides of the dam. Now the river’s starting to chew on the sandstone. That’s what’s making the red.”

  “Spooky,” I said.

  “Exactly,” Kit agreed, motioning her people back to the boats.

  Everybody ran Granite a little differently. Fighting off the waves close to the wall, Troy had the most excitement. One wave hit him from the side and washed him clean overboard. Rita told me about it afterward. At the time, she didn’t even know he wasn’t rowing. In the heat of the action, she turned around to check on him and found he wasn’t there. A second later he hauled himself aboard with a combination of his tremendous upper-body strength and a wave lifting him up. He grabbed hold of the oars and met the worst of the waves just in time.

  Next came Hermit Rapid, and it came up quick. At the scout, all the boatmen, including Juke the swamper, decided they wanted no part of the wave train. It was just too big. All the professional boatmen were going to try to cheat Hermit on the left with a downstream ferry. Troy looked grim. He said to me, “I remember telling you to quit practicing that thing. I was a total dope.”

  I said, “I think we’re both going to make it, Troy.”

  Troy ran a couple of boats behind me. I had a huge run, from center to left, down the route I’d planned. I’d just eddied back upstream alongside the tailwaves when Troy started down. Rita and Pug were keeping real low.

  Troy was taking the big center run, appearing on the tops of the waves, pushing hard to get over them, disappearing in the troughs. Climbing the tallest wave, the fifth, he was having trouble. It looked like he was stalling out. “Go!” I yelled. We saw a good portion of the bottom of his raft as it was pitched in the air by a wave from the side.

  But it didn’t go over.

  “Squeaked,” Troy called as he caught up to us.

  “It sure looked like you had gravity going against you,” Adam remarked.

  Troy’s eyes were huge. He clapped Pug on the shoulder. “Here’s our antigravity device. My main man threw himself on the high side, at just the crucial moment.”

  “Un-believable!” Rita declared. “That was huge! Hermit’s history! Bring on Crystal!”

  Chapter

  15

  Crystal … Crystal … Crystal. The name kept announcing itself like a drumbeat from the dark corner of my mind where fear originates.

  Crystal. The guidebook said there wasn’t even a rapid here until December 1966. A low-pressure system stalled out over the North Rim and dropped thirteen inches of rain over a period of only thirty-six hours. A mudflow of unimaginable proportions carried thousands of boulders in tumbling suspension, as if they were pieces of gravel, all the way down the steeps of Crystal Creek and smack into the Colorado.

  Crystal. We turned a corner and heard its resounding Thunder carrying up the river like a deep-throated growl. As we drew closer, it became a continual apocalyptic roar. From below the river’s horizon line, where the river angled right and disappeared, nothing could be seen except spitters jetting high into the air.

  We tied the Wren and the Gun at a little landing in the flooded tamarisks. Rita handed Troy a bottle of water. He brushed her arm aside. “Drink it,” she insisted. “Remember what the ranger said—a liter an hour. You haven’t been drinking nearly enough.”

  “Let’s rest the ranger,” Troy snapped. “I’m just not a person who drinks a lot of water.”

  She pushed it on him again. “It’s not like it’s a matter of choice.”

  “I’m drinking pop.”

  “You need to drink water, too, Troy.”

  For a second I thought he was going to take her head off. Then he took the water bottle she was handing him and drained the whole thing, spilling only a little bit on the blond-red stubble on his chin.

  He wiped his mouth and said sarcastically, “Thanks for sharing.”

  “You’re welcome,” Rita told him.

  Pug didn’t know if he was looking at a happy ending or the beginning of a shoving match, and I didn’t either. Canyon Magic’s boatmen were already climbing a scouting hill; Troy and I hustled to catch up with them. Our passengers started down the partly flooded trail through the tamarisks that Canyon Magic’s passengers were using to get down to the edge of the rapid itself.

  “Take a look at that, Jessie,” Troy said under his breath as he stopped dead in the trail in front of me.

  I turned to look at the rapid. What I saw made me feel like I’d been punched in the stomach. Barely downstream of the tongue, where the river was pinched to its narrowest, it funneled into a hole that seemed too big and too explosive to be real. Pure foaming, roaring, recirculating energy.

  The passengers swarming on the boulder field, only yards from the hole, looked like pygmies compared to the furious white background behind them. The hole looked almost as wide as the river. The recirculating wave it produced on its downstream side looked like it
could be three stories tall.

  We caught up with the boatmen on top of the hill. “I don’t believe it,” Tom was saying.

  Ray said, “You go in that hole, it’d be like walking into a helicopter rotor.”

  “Okay, okay,” Kit said. “We know it’s horrendous. Is there a run?”

  “Nothing on the left,” Tom said. “The hole starts at the cliff over there and includes all of the center and most of the right. There’s only that strip of water on this shore—if you could only get to it and stay on it.”

  “But when you pull hard-right at the top,” Gail put in, “that lateral wave coming off the right shore is stronger than it’s ever been. It’s like a fence. If you can’t break through it, it will funnel you real quick right to the hole—”

  “We better go down and scout from the shore,” Kit said, “right beside the hole. We need to figure out if we can break through that lateral wave and reach that strip of safe water.”

  Troy and I followed at their heels. We crossed tiny Crystal Creek and hopped from boulder to boulder through the delta of rubble that had pinched the Colorado into such a narrow and treacherous slot. I could only imagine the size of the submerged boulders out in the river that were creating this hole as the river plunged over them and recoiled in that monstrous standing wave.

  When we got close, it was difficult to hear over the Thunder. The boatmen were having to virtually shout at each other to be heard. I was astounded by the speed of the river coming down the tongue, how steeply the tongue was dropping.

  I ran upstream of the hole, past the passengers milling around in the heat and taking pictures, to the beginning of the lateral wave the boatmen had been talking about. Within ten feet of the shore, the wave was already six feet high and starting to curl back upstream. It grew quickly higher and more violent in its fifty- or sixty-foot run as it angled, straight as an arrow, downstream to the hole.

  Kit, I realized, had joined me. I was about to speak to her, but suddenly people were yelling. I didn’t have any idea what they were yelling about, but then I saw them pointing past us upstream. Over the roar of the rapid I hadn’t even heard the motor rig coming, but now I saw it looming right there at the top of the rapid.