River Thunder

by Will Hobbs

  It was one of those thirty-seven-footers. In the last relatively flat water at the top of the rapid, the motorman was turning the boat around, cocking it upstream toward our shore. I thought, It’s kind of late to change your mind. “What’s he doing?” I asked Kit.

  “Turnaround move,” she said. “Watch.”

  “How come he didn’t scout?”

  “The big rigs rarely do. For them, it’s cake.”

  The motorman gunned the motor as he let the raft drift over the brink of the rapid down the steep incline of the tongue. He was keeping the bow cocked toward us. I could see what he was doing now: driving upstream, toward the right shore, against the current. He had his legs braced real wide.

  The passengers, wearing yellow slickers under their life jackets, were sitting as low as they could possibly get, their backs against coolers and bags. Some of them were hanging on with death grips and others were looking at us and pumping their fists like they were on a ride at an amusement park.

  The engine was screaming, but the raft wasn’t gaining any ground against the current. As it swept past us and up against the lateral wave, I saw a few of the passengers’ eyes getting big. They were realizing something was wrong.

  “He’s too far out there,” Kit said. “He’s in big trouble.”

  We heard the boatman screaming for everybody to hang on.

  The lateral wave, breaking left, shot the big motor rig straight into the hole. On impact, the boatman was thrown to the deck.

  The raft turned sideways in the hole, shot to the hole’s downstream margin underneath the monumental breaking wave, then surfed back across the hole to its upstream end. The big outrigger tube on the upstream side looked like it would be sucked under, but as that was happening the boiling action of the hole spun the raft downstream and up onto the wave.

  Thrashed by the recoiling power of the wave, the rig seemed certain to flip end over end, but it lost momentum and fell back into the hole. Suddenly it shot up onto the wave once more, fell back into the hole again. When it seemed this might go on forever, a downstream surge lifted the entire rig up and slopped it over the curling right-hand shoulder of the wave.

  They were free. I saw the boatman struggle to his feet and point the raft to the right. He still had a quarter mile or more of whitewater to run.

  “Did you see anybody get thrown off that raft?” Kit asked.

  I shook my head.

  “Cake no more! It’s a wonder they all hung on.”

  Kit signaled for the Canyon Magic boatmen to come up to where we were and away from all the passengers. Troy was with them. I saw Rita behind, among the crowd. She noticed I was looking her way and drew a line across her throat with her finger.

  “Now what do we think?” Kit asked the boatmen.

  I thought they were going to tell her they didn’t want any part of it.

  “We know how strong the current is,” Gail began, “—and how fast.”

  “With a strong downstream ferry,” Pack said with conviction, “we won’t be out in that current. That’s where our small boats have the advantage. I believe we can crack the lateral right here by the shore.”

  “Or a bump run,” Ray suggested. “Keep your butt to the right shore all the way down, I mean practically on the shore. Keep taking shallow strokes, make sure you don’t pop an oar on a rock.”

  Troy and I were exchanging glances but saying nothing.

  “What the hey?” Juke said, pointing upstream. “Check this out.”

  Here came another boat that wasn’t going to scout Crystal. This one wasn’t a raft at all, but a real boat, a small broad-beamed wooden boat with a high-pitched, pointed bow and stern. Shimmering in the heat, it seemed a beautiful apparition, painted brightly in emerald green with a red stripe around the gunwales. “The speed run!” Ray cried.

  The dark-haired boatman was standing up for his look from the river. Never for an instant did he or his two passengers glance our way. They were all business reading the water.

  “Watch the dory, everybody,” Kit said. “We can learn a lot from his run.”

  With one more look downstream, the boatman sat down, cocked the stern toward the right shore, and began to row. Downstream ferry, I realized. He’s gonna build on the speed of the river and blast through the lateral just a few feet away from where we’re standing.

  The boatman came sailing off the top of the tongue, rowing for all he was worth. At first I thought he looked good, but then it started to seem like he was a little too far out in the river. He had too far yet to come toward shore, with the river pushing furiously toward the center.

  When the boatman hit that lateral wave with his stern, he was maybe twenty feet away from shore. The wave out there was already tall and pushing hard to the hole. The dory rose up on it but didn’t have enough momentum to go over the top. The wave surfed the dory sideways and slung it into the maw of the hole.

  I saw the boatman pivot the boat at the last second in order to meet the towering white wall head-on. He did meet it head-on. The dory was engulfed in an instant, pitched back and over. Bodies were flying—the flip had been instantaneous.

  “Keep an eye on those guys!” Kit yelled. Tom and Pack bounded downstream, leaping from boulder to boulder along the edge of the debris field, down to the corner where they’d be able to see farther downstream.

  Five minutes later Pack and Tom were back. All out of breath, Pack reported, “We saw the three of them right their dory, midstream. Slick trick. Climbed out of the water, leaned back on those flip lines—over she came. The speed run is still in business. Three maniacs bound for glory.”

  Kit said, “Okay, guys, we know what we’re looking at if we run. I’ve gotta bring up the word ‘portage,’ though we’ve never done it before. Crystal’s never looked like this before. Safety has to come first. We know what a portage will mean—tons of gear to herk through the boulder field. We’d camp up by the boats tonight as best we could. We’d be back on the water sometime tomorrow afternoon. Or have we learned enough to think we could pull it off?”

  “I still like that bump run,” Ray maintained.

  “If we portage,” Pack said, “it’s almost certain we’ll have injuries among the passengers with all that carrying over the boulders. As we all know, most injuries occur onshore. I’m sure this won’t surprise anybody, but I’m not as hot on the downstream ferry after watching the dory run. I like Ray’s bump run idea. Start practically on the shore, keep your stern on the shore, keep pulling with shallow strokes, just don’t pop an oar.”

  Tom pulled on his beard. “I can see it. I’m sure there’s a run here. Just hug the right bank. Kit, it’s your call, you’re the trip leader.”

  Suddenly it got real quiet. Some eyes were on Kit, some were on the ground. Then Kit said, “The trip’s better off if we think we can run Crystal and avoid a twenty-four-hour ordeal here. Personally, I think we have the experience to do it, and I like the bump run, too.”

  They all liked their chances, or said they did, even Juke the swamper.

  Suddenly Kit turned to us. “Now what about our friends? Nary a peep out of you two …” She laughed. “I hope it’s not out of respect for your elders.”

  Troy spoke up. “I like the bump run,” he said, then joked, “That’s my style—nothing fancy.”

  Now their eyes were on me. “I’m n-not sure,” I stammered. “I might want to portage.”

  Chapter

  16

  Canyon Magic was getting ready to run, and we were going to stay put so we could learn whatever we could. In all the confusion, I really hadn’t said good-bye.

  Kit said they’d wait below Crystal for half an hour. Probably they’d be around the bend and unable to see what we’d decided. If we didn’t show up within half an hour, she was going to figure we were portaging, and they’d continue downriver.

  It wasn’t long before we saw the first raft start to drift downstream. The peroxide streak signaled it was Ray. My mouth felt stuffed with c
otton, it had been so long since I’d had a drink of water.

  “Here goes,” Rita said nervously as Ray began drifting down the shallows, keeping his stern within a raft length of shore. I saw how gingerly he was managing that downstream oar. Quick, shallow strokes. Now he was picking up speed, starting over the brink into the riffles and bumping over the rocks barely under the surface. He kept his stern pointed at the shore, kept taking quick strokes. For a moment he hung up on a rock, and his passengers lurched but hung on. The raft started to swivel around out of position; then it floated off the rock. A few more quick strokes and Ray was back in position.

  I glanced upstream. The boatman with the big beard was bumping over the edge. Tom.

  Ray, close to us now, was drifting with his stern over the drowned tammies, just as they’d planned. The lateral was coming up and now he was pulling for the shore with all he was worth.

  At the crucial moment, right in front of us, Ray smacked clear through the lateral. He was free. No chance the hole could catch him now. The rest of the rapid was his: fend off the waves and ride it for all it was worth. Rita sent them off with a cheer.

  Tom timed his strokes perfectly down through the steep shallows, careful not to dig with that right-hand oar, then pulled hard and broke the wave close to the shore.

  “Made that look easy,” I heard Troy say. We sent up another cheer, and I started visualizing the bump run for myself.

  Pack came bumping down, and suddenly a rock spun his boat clear around. His stern was pointing toward the middle of the river. All he could do now was push to try to get back to shore.

  Pushing was ineffective against that current, even for a boatman as powerful as Pack. By the time he pivoted the boat around and began to pull again, he was being swept into the maelstrom. I held my breath. It took only a few heartbeats for him to get there. Once he hit the hole and met the crushing white wall of water, it was almost like an explosion.

  “Flip!” Rita yelled. I saw the black bottom of Pack’s raft and I saw swimmers. The raft surfed around in the hole two or three times; somehow it suddenly flipped back upright. It surfed back and forth, pilotless and without passengers, and then it kicked out the right-hand side of the hole. I caught a glimpse downstream of heads and life jackets in whitewater.

  Right in front of me now, Gail was pulling with all the strength her tall frame could generate. She made it.

  Next came Juke the swamper, all alone in his raft, a fierce expression on his face. He rowed delicately, then hard, and he made it, too.

  Kit was running sweep. She was halfway down the bumps when her right oar flew past her face. Her oar blade had caught a rock. It took her only a couple of seconds to jam the oar back into position in the oarlock, but it was time she didn’t have.

  The current had her now. While her passengers kept glancing toward the hole, Kit was fighting for all she was worth to get back toward the shore.

  The downward tilt of the current was just too extreme to row against—a moment later Kit was shooting toward river-center, and knew she’d lost the fight. “Oh no!” I cried.

  Kit left off pulling and jockeyed for position as she went into the hole.

  She shot across the hole and into the towering white wall head-on. It must have looked like rowing into the teeth of a tidal wave. Though the raft weighed a ton or more, full of gear and people and half filled with water, the wave exploded on it and flipped it in an instant as if it weighed nothing. My eyes were locked on Kit. Bodies went flying, including hers. I saw her dark hair and blue life jacket plunge headfirst into the hole, and then I couldn’t see anything but the raft surfing bottom side up in the hole.

  I could see her passengers flushed out downstream, all three of them, but I couldn’t see Kit. “Where’s Kit?” I screamed.

  It had to be thirty or forty seconds, maybe even longer, from the time she went under until the time she broke the surface downstream from the hole.

  The six of us looked at each other and couldn’t speak. Not even Adam, not even Rita.

  “I gotta get some water to drink,” I said. “Let’s go back to the boats.”

  When we got there, Troy said, “Okay, we got about twenty-five minutes.”

  “Think fast, Funhogs,” Adam managed.

  “Jessie?” Troy said impatiently. “What’s it gonna be?”

  “A third of them flipped,” I said. “And they’re pros.”

  Troy’s face looked bony and drawn. He looked like he was suffering from starvation. His eyes were blazing like he’d escaped from an asylum.

  “Their swamper didn’t flip,” Troy insisted. “He had two flips up to here. You had one, I had one.”

  I said nothing. But I was thinking, What does that have to do with Crystal?

  “Just watch out for that one rock Pack spun around on, don’t get your oars too deep. You’ll be fine.”

  “You actually want to run this, Troy?”

  “Hey, I don’t wanna run it, I’m gonna run it.”

  Rita and Pug looked at each other, and they looked sick.

  “How come?” I pleaded. “Why don’t we portage?”

  His eyes showed no vestige of their practiced calm. They were skittering around wildly. “Because it’s too much work, and it’s probably a hundred and fifteen degrees out here.”

  “Full moon tonight. What’s work?”

  “Because I think I can run it, okay? Because it roasted me last year. Because if I do it, I’ll like the way that’ll feel, okay? Where’s your confidence, Jessie?”

  “Please, Troy.”

  “Let’s just do it, okay? I’m positive we can do it!”

  I didn’t know what to think. I tried out the possibility that he was right. Maybe we could do it, and then we wouldn’t lose touch with Canyon Magic. I knew I didn’t want to fight. If I fought and won, Troy might fall apart in the heat during the portage. It was only Day Seven—seven more to come, counting takeout day. If we could get past Crystal, the pressure would be off. Get Troy riled up now, no telling what could happen.

  I stalled. “I have to go down and scout it once more.”

  Star was at my elbow. “You want company, Jessie?”

  “I better look at it by myself,” I told her. “Really concentrate.”

  Back where I’d stood with Kit, I kept replaying all their bump runs in my mind. Even the ones who’d come through the bumps okay, I kept seeing them pulling with all their might to break the wave in front of me. Whether Kit could have done it, if she hadn’t popped an oar, I’d never know.

  But I didn’t think I could.

  I started thinking about the dory run—the downstream ferry. Use the current to build up speed … hit this fence wave with lots of momentum, not just rely on my strength …

  I was grasping at straws. Was it possible?

  Suddenly I knew I was going to try it. I even felt a surge of confidence that may have been blind hope. The dory could have cut sooner, I thought. Maybe they would have if they’d scouted. I picked out a boulder on the shore to use as my marker and made a little cairn of rocks on top of it so I couldn’t mistake it from out on the river. The problem was, I was going to have to take the raft through a small pourover to stay on my line.

  Afraid I had taken too much time, I hustled up the trail through the tammie jungle. Around a corner I came across Rita, pitched over at the waist and holding her stomach. “Rita,” I said, “what’s wrong?”

  She wiped her hand across her mouth and then turned around to look at me. “What’s wrong? Jessie, I’m barfin’ my brains out over here.”

  “You?”

  She sat down and started crying. “Jessie, I got this feeling I’m gonna die out there. I just can’t get it together. I’m scared out of my mind.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I just thought you were—you know—fearless.”

  “Yeah, well, I’m sorry to ruin my image, but this is too much, even for me. Do you think we can survive this thing? I mean, you’ve seen what it does.…”
r />   I sat down next to her and dared to put my arm across her back. I knew Rita wasn’t someone you held like a baby, even if she was crying. “We’ll be okay, Rita, we’ll be okay,” I said, not believing a word of it.

  “Just don’t tell anybody, okay?” She took a couple of deep breaths. “Don’t tell anybody I came unglued. Especially not that I’ve been down here ralphing all over the trail.”

  “I won’t.”

  She took a couple more deep breaths, threw her head back, and closed her eyes. Wherever Rita went for strength, she withdrew what was left of her reserves. “Okay,” she said.

  We began to walk up the trail. We caught sight of Star up ahead, on top of a huge flat boulder, doing slow-motion Tai Chi exercises. Her delicate arms lifting slowly, extending out in front of her, fingers pointing up. With her knees bent, holding her position, she was slowly turning full circle.

  “She’s centering herself,” I said.

  “I hope it works,” Rita responded without a trace of sarcasm. “You really think you can run this, Jessie?”

  “I think I found a way. I wouldn’t try it if I didn’t think I had a good chance.”

  “Well, so does my driver. You guys have nerves of steel.”

  “Don’t I wish,” I said.

  Chapter

  17

  I got out the foot pump and forced some more air into the tubes. I heard Troy saying he wanted to go first. Drinking down my water bottle, I nodded my agreement. I sure didn’t want to. One of those old gladiator movies came to mind: “We who are about to die salute you.” I caught a glimpse of Star wrapping the bowline into a neat bundle. Focus, I told myself. I kept visualizing my run.

  Star was mumbling something over and over like a mantra. I asked her what she was saying. “Fear is the mind-killer,” she replied. She didn’t look centered at all.

  “Think positive,” it was my turn to say.

  Troy was ready. Grim nods from his passengers signaled their tacit agreement to this madness. Troy nodded back and pulled into the current. Twenty feet offshore, he spun the raft around and started pulling back, getting into position for his bump run. Pug and Rita were already in battle positions.