by Nevada Barr
For a moment they sat, Jenny savoring the stripe of gold thirty yards above, where the last ray of sun struck color from the stone, the impossible depths below, and the warmth radiating from Anna’s shoulder.
Anna was fixated on something else. “What’s that?” she demanded suddenly.
Jenny dragged her attention from the glories of nature. Obviously Anna was not sharing in the exalted experience. “What’s what?” Jenny asked.
“There.” Anna stood and pointed toward the end of the pool to where the slot began.
Getting to her feet, Jenny tried to see in the growing gloom.
“Under the water. A shape,” Anna insisted, still pointing.
It was easy to get spooked by the twisted earth and sinister darkness of the water; easy to imagine leviathans of the deep—albeit skinny leviathans—reaching up with skeletal claws or fins or whatever leviathans reached with. Jenny’s mouth was full of warm reassuring words. She swallowed them. There was a shape beneath the mirror-still water. A pale rectangle with a dark oval in the middle of it. Unless monsters of the deep wore T-shirts with logos on them, it was either lost laundry or a dead body.
Jenny stripped off shirt, shorts, and sandals. Just in case, she had forgone her old-lady panties that protected her skin from her uniform shorts and tossed aside her workmanlike brassiere. For Anna—just in case—she’d donned matching red bikini and bra with oodles of lace and industrial-strength underwire. She hoped Anna was appreciating the view.
“I’m going to check it out,” she said. “Wait here.” She didn’t inform her that this might turn into a body recovery. The poor thing had enough grisly images, without her adding to them. Maybe it was just a T-shirt or a plastic bag.
Catching up the rope near the frayed knots where it was tied around the boulder, Jenny lowered herself the few yards down the sheer rock face and into the water.
“Yikes,” she squeaked, hanging on to the rope.
“What?” Hands on knees, pigtail swinging, Anna looked over the edge.
“I forgot how cold the water can be in these slot canyons,” she admitted. “It’s so deep and gets zero sunlight.”
Needing to generate body heat, she let go of the rope and swam toward the unidentified floating object. From where she’d entered the water to the body—and it was a body—was no more than forty feet, not enough to get the blood flowing. Six inches beneath the surface of the water was a back and a head covered in dark hair long enough to halo out around the skull like seaweed. The drowned man added to Jenny’s chill.
Kicking powerfully with her legs and sculling with her right arm, Jenny grasped a handful of T-shirt. The wet cloth rucked up and her knuckles brushed bare skin. She emitted a horrid little gulping sound she hoped Anna didn’t hear. What the backs of her fingers brushed didn’t feel like skin. Eight seasons on the lake, Jenny had seen her share of drowned people; two were little kids. This was the first time she had ever touched one. She didn’t know what she’d expected a dead body would feel like, rubber maybe, or cold skin, maybe like a chicken breast out of the refrigerator. She hadn’t expected it would feel exactly like a dead body, a body a thousand times deader than a cold dead chicken.
“Someone’s drowned,” she called to Anna. “A man, I think. The water is so cold I’m afraid to leave him. He might sink or something.” Holding the corpse out to one side, she swam back toward Anna with a one-armed frog stroke. Jenny had her lifeguard’s license. High school summers were spent on a white wooden tower blowing a silver whistle at obnoxious children. She knew how to rescue a swimmer: arm under the shoulder, backstroke, the swimmer towed along, nose and mouth clear of the water, but there was no way in hell she was going to hug a dead body snuggled up to her best red lingerie.
The corpse tugged back. Again Jenny squeaked. Above, the light had gone gray; below was liquid darkness. The air in between was thick with permanent shadows. Given the setting, the cold, and the corpse, Jenny was beginning to believe in things she would have mocked when she was high and dry with Anna. It was in her mind to leave the dead to care for the dead and let go when Anna called, “Are you okay?”
Jenny looked to where she stood, rope in one hand, all one hundred and ten pounds of her ready to come to the rescue.
“I’m okay,” Jenny assured her quickly, hoping the fact she was becoming less okay by the minute didn’t bleed into her tone. “I think the—it—got caught on something.”
“What could it possibly catch on?” Anna asked. “This is a slither slot in a rock.”
Pointy bones, Jenny thought, lake zombies wanting to feed on warm human flesh, soggy vampires. What she said was “Could be anything. Flash floods wash entire trees down. Rusted-out truck bodies, shed roofs. You name it.”
Kicking and tugging jostled the corpse a foot or two farther. Something from below touched her foot. The corpse began a slow roll; a shoulder, an ear, the bloated face came free of the water, gray eyes open and glassy, followed by an arm that slid across the chest to flop in the water, splashing like a fish. The second arm loomed up from the dark and a hand drifted palm up and jellyfish-like. Then a third arm floated up beside it.
“God damn!” Jenny yelled, let go of the body, and put a couple of yards between herself and it.
“Holy moly,” Anna called from her elevated vantage point. “It’s two people stuck together. Maybe one was trying to save the other and they both drowned.”
More likely one was trying to climb out over the other and they both drowned, Jenny thought. There came a splash. Jenny turned back to see Anna, fully clothed, in long pants and long-sleeved shirt, disappear under the water at the base of the sheer wall that blocked this side of the canyon from where the boat was moored. The rope was still swinging when Anna resurfaced, sputtering, and began swimming toward her and the corpses.
“The water’s too cold,” Jenny cried. “Go back. I can do this.”
“Many hands make light work,” Anna said as she stopped to tread water near Jenny.
Despite the cold and the dead, Jenny laughed. Or, more likely, because of the cold and the dead she needed to laugh. “One day you must introduce me to whoever taught you to talk.” Before she could lose her courage in front of Anna, she said, “Grab a handful of something on your corpse and I’ll grab mine. They’re too heavy to try to hoist out of here, and it’s not like they’re going to get any deader. We can tow them back and slip the rope through their belts or whatever. That should keep them afloat until the rangers get here. Law enforcement gets all the good assignments: domestic violence, knife fights, body recoveries.”
Anna maneuvered through the water with a dexterity and confidence that encouraged Jenny. The woman could swim. Her long braid seemed to swim as well, coiling like a copperhead snake beneath the water. Near the corpses’ heads, Anna stopped, treading water. Jenny watched her lips firm up and her eyes narrow. Then she quickly reached out and took a handful of hair in her left hand.
“Bravo!” Jenny said. Grabbing “her” corpse by the wrist—the part of its anatomy that was closest—she said, “Take it slow. We don’t want to get tangled up with one of these unfortunate citizens and pulled under.”
Anna said nothing but swam behind and to the left of Jenny, combining the sidestroke and frog stroke so she could pull her burden and stay afloat.
Jenny arrived at the sandstone wall first. Though she hadn’t exerted herself unduly, cold water and the touch of the dead sapped her strength. She turned to grab the rope they’d descended to hang on to until Anna reached her.
There was no rope.
THIRTY-TWO
Jenny pushed back from the wall, treading water. It had to be there. The rope must have caught on something when Anna let go of it. Sheer, clean, the rock face kept no secrets, no cracks where a rope could hide, no knobs where it could hang up, no fingernail grip for hope. The rope had been there and now the rope was gone.
Old, worn, the knots frayed: They must have given way. The rope fell into the water and sank.
Anna gasped up beside her. Pushing the corpse, she wrangled it past Jenny toward where its companion bobbed just below the water surface at the base of the wall.
“The rope’s gone,” Jenny said evenly, her arms making pale fishy sweeps as she stayed afloat. In the seconds it had taken to search the rock face, the seriousness of their situation settled into her brain. If they did not find a way to get out of the water, hypothermia would set in. Their bodies would start to shut down from the cold. Soon, they would be unable to swim.
That must have been how the two men had died. Probably they had braced themselves up in the rocks until they were too exhausted to maintain the necessary tension. Then they fell into the water, the cold shut them down, and they drowned.
“No rope? Well, that’s a drag,” Anna said. She was exerting too much energy keeping her head above water. Using mostly her right arm to scull.
“Did your shoulder go out again?” Jenny asked.
“No. It just hurts,” Anna replied.
For a moment, both of them looked up the sheer rock to the top of the sandstone block, gray now against the fading light.
“We are in a world of hurt, aren’t we?” Anna asked.
“Help,” they yelled in unison.
The slot sent back a muffled echo that struck Jenny’s ears as mocking. The canyon walls were smooth and vertical or, worse, leaned in, affording not even the smallest ledge on which they could perch in the warm night air, not a fingerhold they could cling to to keep their heads out of the water. Not that a handhold mattered. Stopping movement would only hasten hypothermia. Their fingers would slip off and they would drown.
“You said there was a rope at the far end of the slot. The one left behind so people can climb out after the canyon gets too wide for shimmying,” Anna suggested. “We’ll climb out that way.”
“I said there was a rope there last season,” Jenny amended.
“It’ll still be there.”
“We’d be out, but we’d be nowhere. No food, no water, no shoes, and me in my underpants.” Jenny’s teeth were beginning to chatter, and, despite Anna’s bravado, the hollow pitch of her voice let Jenny know with what horror she contemplated a return to a place that had very nearly claimed her life.
“We’ll be warm,” Anna said firmly.
Anna had never done the slot canyons of Utah and Arizona. This one was not the easiest by a long shot. Jenny had her doubts whether Anna could make it during the daylight with a healed shoulder. She knew at night, without protective gear, it would be suicide for them to attempt it.
“We really can’t get out the slot,” Jenny said gently. “If we stay here the rangers will find us.” Anna made a noise that sounded a lot like “Hah!”
“Come on, I can get us out of the water until the cavalry arrives with hot beverages and thermal blankets.” Jenny struck out for the far end of the rectangular pool to where the slot made a black line from the water up sixty feet to the rim. There, she waited for Anna to catch up. By the way Anna moved through the water it looked as if not only were pain and cold sapping her strength, but the long pants were dragging her down.
“Here’s what we have to do,” Jenny said when Anna was beside her. “I’m going to show you. Do what I do, okay?”
Anna nodded.
Jenny paddled into the knife cut. The canyon walls were a little over three feet apart. Turning, she faced Anna. “Okay,” she said. “You kind of wedge yourself between the two walls.” She pushed a hand out to each side, palm on the sandstone. “Put your hands like this and push as if you’re trying to shove the walls farther apart. Okay?”
Anna nodded and spread her arms out, palms on opposite sides of the narrow channel.
“Now do the same thing with your feet under the water. Put the ball of one foot on one wall, the ball of the other on the opposite wall. It’s awkward, but you can do it. Okay? My feet are pretty much doing the same thing as my hands. Now I’m going to lift myself out of the water by pushing up with my feet and inching up my hands. Here goes.”
It was harder than Jenny had thought it would be, and she had swimmer’s shoulders and legs made strong by years of holding herself upright as her boat pounded over rough water. In a couple of minutes she was free of the ribbon of lake, her body forming an upright X between the cliffs, toes and fingers splayed like a tree frog’s.
Immediately, the desert heat began taking the feel of death from her skin. Given enough time it would warm her blood from reptilian levels to that of a mammal. “See? Out and warm. Nothing to it. Now you try.”
“Have you ever done this before?” Anna asked.
“I’ve seen it done,” Jenny said, trying to make it sound as if Anna were in good hands.
“In a cartoon?” Anna asked.
“In a video,” Jenny admitted.
“My sister and I used to do it. We’d climb up the door frame between the kitchen and the living room.”
“Then you’re going to be an ace,” Jenny said.
“I was four,” Anna said. “My technique is bound to be rusty.”
The water had gone black with evening. Anna’s face and arms showed a fish-belly gray. Jenny doubted the latter was a trick of the light. Anna’s blood was probably withdrawing from her extremities to keep the all-important internal organs alive and functioning. “We don’t have to get way up,” Jenny said encouragingly, “just out of the water.”
A gentle plinking, the sound gravel makes when falling into water, caught Jenny’s ear. “Shh!” she hissed at Anna. Beneath her the smaller woman ceased to splash, seeming to understand implicitly when shushed not to say “What?” at the top of her voice. Jenny listened with such hope she could picture every pore in her skin opening, every ganglion gangling after the illusive spatter. When the silence grew so deep she could hear the rocks aging, she gave it up. “Thought I heard something,” she told Anna. “Aural hallucination.”
Anna put a hand on each of the walls. Slender long fingers, small palms, and delicate wrists: Anna was too fragile for this. Jenny wished she could reach down and pluck her bodily up, but there was no way she could help without falling back into the water.
“That’s my girl,” she said encouragingly. “Are your feet wedged out?”
“Yes,” Anna said.
“Okay, scooch up.” It was almost physically painful watching the woman she adored inching up the stone, left arm not extended as far as the right and left shoulder lower as she tried to protect the ball joint. This soon after the injury there was a danger of the shoulder dislocating again. Jenny would not think about that.
In the time it took Anna to clear the water, Jenny cursed herself for ever having brought Anna to the slot, ever having gotten into the water to show off, ever having lured Anna to follow with the enticement of genuine corpses.
“Atta girl!” she said when Anna made it.
Both of them spraddled out, face-to-face, dripping, in a crack, would have made Jenny laugh at another time. Now the only positive emotion in her breast was gratitude that Anna was clear of the heat-sapping water. The pants she wore were heavy with water, and her long braid dripped a steady stream back into the lake.
“You’d be warmer with your clothes off,” Jenny blurted out, her recent ulterior motives making her awkward.
“I’ll take off my pants if you’ll unbutton them for me,” Anna said.
Jenny did laugh then. “Point taken.”
“Behind me, the walls get too close together to make this work,” Jenny said. “The slot has to be narrow enough we can brace our backs against one side and our feet against the other. Any narrower than this and we’d lose our leverage. Watch me. Most of my weight is on my hands and right foot. Now, I bring my left over to where my right foot is. A twist and a prayer and bingo, I’ve made myself into a flesh-and-bone bridge between the walls. See, wedged in with the muscles of my thighs, feet pushing that side, my back pushing this side. Hands free.” Shaking blood and feeling back into her arms and hands, she said, �
��Think you can do that?”
Anna made no reply but began her contortions. She was forcing herself to use her left shoulder. Barely aware she was doing so, Jenny strained her arms toward Anna trying to help. Then Anna was within her reach. Braced tightly in the crack by the soles of her feet and the small of her back, Jenny was secure enough to catch hold of Anna’s right bicep. “Let me take the weight. You’re almost there. Back to the wall. I got you. Both feet on the other side.” It surprised Jenny how supple Anna was. What she lacked in strength she made up for in agility. With less of a struggle than it had caused Jenny, Anna unkinked the leg beneath her and moved her right foot to the opposite wall alongside her left.
Both hands on one wall, both feet on the other, Anna twisted until she could slam her back flat against the wall. There was a wet sucking sound. Anna shrieked and started to slide. Grabbing the collar of her shirt, Jenny held her in place. “Straighten your legs,” she said with a degree of calmness she would congratulate herself on should they survive. “Push out. I’ve got you. Shoulders back. Steady.”
Anna got herself wedged tight again, soles of her feet on one cliff, shoulders and back on the other. Her legs were not as long as Jenny’s. It would be harder for her to keep up the tension. Jenny wished she’d pushed farther, gotten Anna to a place where the walls were a little closer. That was water under the knees now, crying over spilt blood.
Anna’s face was sheened with sweat and her lips a thin gray line.
“Shoulder went out? Did your shoulder pop out?” Jenny demanded.
“No. I think it started to,” Anna managed. “I could feel the bone slide, but I’m pretty sure it went back.” Gingerly, she raised her left arm. Her face was bleak with remembered pain. The arm rotated. There was no new onslaught of trauma to her already pale cheeks. “Yeah. It went back,” she said. “I feel like a puppet that wasn’t put together very well.”
Jenny managed a nod and looked away to hide the panic in her eyes.
