River Thunder

by Will Hobbs

  In the morning, as we were getting ready for the big hike, Troy told us he wasn’t going. I had a feeling this was going to be the peak experience of the entire trip. Everybody, I think, was feeling the same way. No scary rapids to run, just a day in paradise to enjoy being together. I felt sure that a “senseless act of beauty” would do Troy a lot of good. I wondered if I was the reason he didn’t want to go.

  Rita pleaded with him—Pug, Star, Adam, too. I knew I couldn’t. But Troy held out. “I just want to kick back,” he said with a big smile. “It’s too hot. Go have a good time. It’s all right. It’s what I want to do.”

  We started up the switchbacks behind camp that had been cut to circumvent the impassible lower gorge of Tapeats Creek. I was last in line. I kept looking back over my shoulder at Troy, way down there by the boats. I was wondering if he was having another one of his headaches this morning. I thought about how alone he looked, about how many times he must have been left alone in his life, at boarding schools, at camp, with strangers while his parents were in Europe. No wonder he didn’t want to go back alone to his place by the beach.

  It was hot, so hot. It could have been a hundred and ten. The trail rejoined Tapeats Creek at last, and we plunged into an ice-cold pool. Hiking along the creek now, we could jump in whenever we dried off and started overheating. Pug and Star were hiking together up in the front, then Rita and Adam, jabbering away, and then came me, trailing a bit and all absorbed in my thoughts.

  When we could see that the trail was going to leave the stream and switchback its way into the sky, we took a plunge in the last pool and had a long rest. A bright swallowtail butterfly passed through while we were there; so did a hummingbird. Just below the pool, on the edge of the fast water, the slate-gray bird we call the dipper back home was bobbing up and down on a mossy rock. I hoped it would swim underwater for us.

  Adam pointed out some wild watercress, which we ate. “Not bad,” Pug decided.

  “Shall we?” Rita asked, eyeing the switchbacks above.

  One last plunge in the pool, and then we attacked the scorching, oxygen-deprived, boulder-strewn climb.

  “ ‘The steep and thorny way to heaven,’ ” Adam gasped, halfway up.

  “Where’s that from?” I managed. “I’ve heard it before.”

  “Willie the Shake. Shakespeare!”

  During the last switchback, heaven indeed came into view, the most remarkable spectacle I’d ever laid eyes on. A quarter mile away, higher still than where we stood, Thunder River burst from twin caves in the cliffs and fell in streaming white torrents onto a layer of bedrock, and again into an oasis of cottonwoods. Everything the spray from the falls touched was blessed with greenery.

  The five of us stood there panting and feeling absolutely on top of the world.

  “That darn Troy,” Rita muttered. “I knew he should’ve come.”

  Pug said, “I shoulda carried him up here.”

  Adam took a long drink from his water bottle. “He’s missing the big enchilada, all right.”

  Star’s interpretation: “His heart isn’t right for it, yet.”

  A couple of minutes later, nearing the oasis, we were walking along a wide ledge under a tall cliff. Ten feet away from the trail, on a boulder perched above the abyss, an odd sight caught our eye. Someone had stacked rocks atop the boulder, three large, especially beautiful rocks that composed an elegant, gravity-defying vertical sculpture. I fancied the stones as a trio of acrobats dancing a vertical ballet, the bottommost member pirouetting on tiptoes. A wisp of wind, it seemed, or the slightest touch would send them tumbling.

  Star was entranced. “Balance,” she whispered.

  Up the trail we flew, drawn to the big trees and the foot of the falls’ final plunge. It was cool there, cooler still in the spray of the falls. Here we discovered another signature balancing act in stone, but on a smaller scale. “I love this,” Star said.

  “It doesn’t take much to make her happy,” Adam observed. “A few rocks, properly placed, will suffice.”

  About a minute later, Rita yelled, “Check this guy out.” She was pointing straight into the sky, almost, at a skinny young guy with a ponytail. Somehow a hiker had climbed to the bedrock slope between the lower and upper falls. He had his head back and his arms out wide, as if he were about to lift off and fly.

  Adam said, “There’s our Druid, I betcha. The Stonehenge dude.”

  “Looks like a hippie to me,” Pug said.

  Of course Adam couldn’t be content without trying to climb up there, too. And the rest of us, lacking sense and wanting to seize the moment, followed along. My personal excuse was overcoming my fear of heights.

  “Nice place you got here,” Adam told the rock artist as we approached along a seam that cut across the slickrock.

  “La última,” he replied with a wave to the grandeur spread out below. He had a wispy beard on his chin and a simple leather bootlace choker around his neck with two yellow-and-blue trade beads. His name, we soon learned, was Joe. He had a tattoo just above his ankle, a tattoo of a dancing turtle playing the tambourine.

  Star asked, “Are you the Balancer?”

  “That’s my trademark,” he replied. “Did you like them?”

  All of us could see that Star was reaching for words wonderful enough. “They were … beautiful,” she said finally.

  “Why do you do it?” Pug wanted to know.

  He stroked his chin. “I enjoy working with the forces of nature.”

  Adam was loving this. “What are they paying you out here for your line of work?”

  “Deep satisfaction.”

  “Is that by the hour or by the job?”

  “Definitely by the job. You can’t count the hours. I find it relaxing and—pardon the pun—balancing.”

  I sneaked a glance at Star. He’d just said the magic word, and I could see it, like Cupid’s arrow, landing directly in her heart.

  Rita wasn’t paying attention. “Are you here by yourself? What’s the deal?”

  “I’m making a circle route of the Four Corners states, counterclockwise. I started out at Window Rock, Arizona. I’ve been all through northern New Mexico and along the Continental Divide in southwestern Colorado, the canyonlands in Utah, and now I’m on my way to closing the circle at Window Rock this fall.”

  I asked, “You don’t mean hiking, do you? Surely you’re not doing all that on foot?”

  “Hiking, sure. It’s the only way to really see anything.”

  Rita had her hands on her hips. “So how long has this taken you?”

  “A year and a half so far.”

  Pug asked, “You rich or something?”

  The Balancer liked that one. He chuckled. “No, but I got some nuts and raisins, if you’re hungry.”

  “Holy cow,” Rita said. “This guy’s too much. You got any shoes?”

  He motioned up above. “I left ’em up by the cave.”

  “Wait a minute. You aren’t telling us you’ve been higher than this.”

  “Sure. I’ve been inside the cave. Wanna see it?”

  Twenty minutes later, to my chagrin, I was following our shoeless guide and the rest of our band into the darkness of the cave, with the river thundering below. With a glance behind, back toward the blinding sunlight, all I could see was water jetting into the sky and a pair of ravens tumbling past the mouth of the cave.

  “Don’t slip,” I heard Rita say up in front of me.

  “You do and you’re into the history books,” Adam answered cheerfully.

  “There’s a ledge here,” I heard Joe call back. “It’s not very wide, but it’s wide enough. You have to let your eyes get adjusted to the light. There’s more light than you think.”

  The farther I went, the more confidence I felt coming into my limbs. No twitching nerves, no sewing-machine leg, which is usually what happened to me over sheer exposure. Maybe it helped that it was so dark and I couldn’t really see down. Strange to think I hadn’t even known this Joe before
, and yet I was trusting him with my life.

  “Why are we doing this?” I asked, giddy with this first victory over a primal fear.

  “Because we’re crazy,” Pug replied.

  Chapter

  21

  Joe needed to cross the Colorado to begin the last leg of his circle trek. He told us he’d been hoping to hitch a ride with a raft party and have them drop him off down the river at Havasu Creek. He’d take a week hiking out the Havasu Creek trail, allowing plenty of time to hang around the waterfalls and visit the Supai Indian village.

  From all sides, we told him, “Grab your backpack,” “Love to have you,” “Got plenty of food.”

  We felt tickled hiking back to camp with a new friend under our wing. Even Pug liked Shoeless Joe, as he’d dubbed him, which surprised me a little.

  When we laid eyes on the Colorado again, from high above our camp, it looked different. A lot redder than before, yet it hadn’t rained. I thought the river looked bigger and sounded louder as it rushed down Tapeats Creek Rapid.

  But our boats were tied up to the tammies and Troy was down there on a lawn chair in the shade. Everything looked fine.

  As we walked into camp, Pug made straight for Troy. “You shoulda seen it, buddy. It was unbelievable.”

  Troy said wearily, “There’s a picture in the mile-by-mile.”

  Pug tried to rebound. “There was this cave where Thunder River shoots out of the cliff, and we all hiked back in there. Incredible, man, just incredible. This here’s Shoeless Joe—he needs a ride down to Havasu Creek.”

  Troy’s eyes went to Joe’s feet. Joe was wearing hiking boots. Other than acting a little nonplussed, Troy didn’t really acknowledge Joe even though he was standing right there.

  I noticed Troy wasn’t looking at me. He didn’t want to look at me.

  Adam was taking a long look at Troy as if studying a patient. Troy did look pale for someone so suntanned, and awfully fatigued for someone who’d sat in camp all day. On top of that, he was sweating profusely, which was new for him despite all the heat we’d been through. “Have you been having headaches?” Adam asked him.

  “Buzz off, Adam. Save the doctor act for the girls.”

  “Seriously,” Adam said, and put his hand to Troy’s forehead. “You feel clammy, man.”

  Troy took Adam’s hand away.

  Adam persisted. “Any faintness? Muscle cramps? Have you been drinking lots of water? Cooling down in the river?”

  Suddenly Rita was in Troy’s face. “I told you, Troy. I’ve been tellin’ you all the way down from Lee’s Ferry.”

  “Back off,” he warned her, and Rita stepped back.

  “Step back, everybody,” Pug ordered. “Give Troy some room.”

  With no trace of his usual jokes, Adam said to Troy, “I think you’ve got heat exhaustion. And heat exhaustion can lead to heatstroke real fast—if you don’t drink a lot of fluids and get some salts into you right away, you’re going to be in big trouble, my friend. Heatstroke can kill you. You collapse and an hour later you can be dead. Am I getting through to you? This is serious.”

  Troy considered it for a second, then waved him off. “I got some news that might be unhealthy for you guys, too. It’s been a circus around here while you’ve been frolicking around with Clueless Joe or whatever this guy’s name is. First, a helicopter comes by and drops a note—the river’s going up to 92,000.”

  I gasped. That number sounded like the end of the world. What were Upset and Lava going to look like?

  Everybody was reeling. Only Joe had no sense of what the number meant. He seemed more nervous about how Troy was acting than about the river.

  “The water kept coming up … I kept having to retie the boats. All these groups kept coming by to get water out of the creek. It was a zoo around here. A rowed trip, three different motor trips … one of the motor guys told me that a lot of trips started getting canceled a couple days after we left Lee’s Ferry—commercial and private. There aren’t many people coming down behind us. So, if I have a headache, you might understand there’s a reason. This whole trip is blown.”

  He finally looked at me. I couldn’t tell if he was simply disgusted about everything or if he wanted to strangle me.

  “Just leave me alone, okay?” he said, waving us all off.

  Adam and Rita went for a walk way downstream along the rapid, while Star and Joe disappeared among the cottonwoods up Tapeats Creek. As Pug watched Star go, he looked a little lost, and I could understand. Even though he’d been slow at first to notice what was happening, he was getting the idea. He pulled up a chair alongside Troy.

  I didn’t have anywhere to go, so I hung out on my boat. I thought about trying out sleeping on the front deck tonight, like Kit did. It would be a lot cooler being over the water than anywhere onshore.

  Troy and Pug were lounging in the kitchen area, with their backs to the river. This isn’t doing Pug any good, I thought, whatever Troy’s putting in his head.

  I realized I should know what they were saying. Our safety might depend on it. Quietly, I stepped off the boat and sat at the base of the tammies where I could just barely hear what they were saying.

  At first it was about the Bureau of Wreck-the-Nation. Troy was furious at them. Then they talked about Lava Falls, how big it was going to be. “So what’s going to happen to us in Lava?” Pug asked.

  “Simple,” Troy said. “It’s going to eat us alive.”

  “Can we portage it?”

  “I asked two different boatmen. They said no. Cliffs on the right, some kind of springs and sawgrass on the left. They said don’t even think about it—just get Lava over with.”

  After a silence, Pug said, “So how’s it going with Jessie?”

  Troy groaned. “It’s a disaster. I don’t know what she expects from me. Nothing I do is good enough for her.”

  “She’s got an independent streak a mile long.”

  “That’s one way of putting it.”

  “Save me from chicks like that,” Pug was saying, like he was some big man of the world.

  “No gratitude, that’s for sure. But I’ve been doing a lot of thinking today, and I’m going to shake things up a little around here.”

  I strained to hear.

  “Like what?” Pug asked. “What’re you going to do?”

  Troy just laughed. “Don’t want to spoil it for you. You’ll find out soon enough.”

  That was all I could take. Heart pounding, I crept back to my boat, grabbed a throw-cushion for a pillow, and lay down on the deck. I replayed how all of this had begun, back at Lee’s Ferry. How wrong I’d been to go along under the circumstances. Of course it was going to end badly.

  People stayed away a long time, waiting for Troy to cool down. By the time they came back, it was getting to be twilight. Star was incandescent, she was so taken with Joe. I could see Pug watching the two of them together. It was easy to see how happy Star was. Pug looked sick about it.

  Joe was chopping vegetables for fajitas, Rita was barking out orders, Adam was getting his jokes rolling, and I was doing everything I could to stay busy, hoping for the best. Troy and Pug were still visiting quietly on their lawn chairs, watching the dark clouds that were beginning to build down the Canyon. Troy was taking a few sips from a water bottle, but didn’t look much better to me.

  The wind was starting to blow the tammies around. It was coming from downriver, where the first bolt of lightning now appeared. Thunder came rumbling upriver. I recalled how quickly a Grand Canyon storm can come up.

  We were running out of daylight, and running out of time before the storm was going to hit us. I got the lantern going. Everybody scattered to put up tents except Joe and Star, who both stayed in the kitchen. Joe said he had a little bivouac tent that didn’t take any time to set up.

  A bolt of lightning suddenly exploded with a searing snap not very far downstream. It took only about three seconds for the thunder to rumble upstream, more powerful even than the roar of Tapea
ts Creek Rapid.

  The lantern ran out of gas, so we ate dinner by flashlights and lightning strobes as we eyed the pitch-black sky nervously. In the end the storm steered around us with only a few spatters of rain. It was so late nobody had the stamina to start boiling water and stay up to do dishes. We threw the dirty dishes in the bail bucket labeled SLOP and called it good.

  “Mañana,” Adam declared.

  The near-storm hadn’t done much to cool us off; it had only contributed humidity to the heat. I told Star I was going to try out sleeping on the raft.

  “On 92,000 c.f.s.?” she asked, wide-eyed. “You’re going to sleep on the boat?”

  “I’ve checked our knots, it’s tied up tight. I figure it’ll float the same as on lower water. I just want to try it.”

  Falling asleep at the end of a Grand Canyon day is never a problem. I was always so exhausted, it never took more than a couple of minutes. This time, with the monotonous rocking motion of the raft, it could have taken less.

  It wasn’t restful sleep. The repetitive motion of the raft kept me rowing in my dreams. I kept facing impossible situations—gigantic holes and standing waves, rocks and more rocks.

  At one point the motion underlying my restless sleep changed, and it felt different through the layers of my subconscious. I felt choppy water, I felt current.

  I lifted my head and looked around. It was the middle of the night. A little past full, the moon had cleared the rim and was lighting up the canyon walls and the surface of the river with ghostly clarity. Something was wrong, I realized. I was at least fifty feet offshore.

  I looked again and saw Troy on the shore, holding the end of my bowline in his hands. He was standing there, just holding on to the end of the rope. What was he doing? My boat wasn’t tied!

  Wildly, I cast around to catch my bearings. My raft was on the margin between the eddy and the fast water at the brink of Tapeats Creek Rapid. Was he doing this on purpose? Was he about to let go of the rope?

  I could jump on the oars if he let go, I told myself in desperation, but the raft would be swept down the right side of the rapid amid an impossible jumble of rocks and holes.