Joe Stevens Mocks a Llama

by David D Hammons

  “Wouldn’t that explode if it hit a rock?” Amy asked as we reached the hill, grunting with effort as we descended toward the water.

  “Yeah. That’s what makes it more fun. Ultra-extreme whitewater rafting!”

  “Let’s just stick with getting the boat in the water before we switch to explosives, Joe,” Freddy advised as the guide yelled at us to shut up and lower the raft into the water’s edge.

  “Okay,” the guide said, looking at us with his thick arms crossed, “The front is the toughest, most demanding position, next to the very back, which is where I will be sitting. So who wants to sit in front?”

  The water rushed a chocolate milk brown, spraying white where it raced over rocks smooth as glass. Further down the river I saw where the rapids got really intense and I could feel a sudden foreboding rising within those standing around me.

  It was the feeling you get right before jumping off a diving board. Or the feeling you get just before your plane takes off. You suddenly think, maybe this wasn’t such a good idea.

  Of course, that’s what everyone else was probably thinking. So I threw my hand in the air as quick as I could and said, “I’ll sit in front!” before anyone moved.

  When I turned back to see that no one else had volunteered to join me in the raft’s side-by-side nose positions, I added, “Freddy wants to sit in the front too.”

  “Wait, what?” Freddy asked.

  “Great, get in,” the guide said, throwing us paddles. I caught mine. Freddy fumbled his paddle and, in an attempt to juggle it to his hands, tripped and fell face-first into the back of the raft.

  “That’s the spirit,” the guide said and lifted Freddy by his life jacket, tossing him into the front right seat.

  “You can throw me in too, if you like,” I said. The guide did not comply, however, so I was forced to simply climb aboard, helping Freddy get secured in the seat opposite me.

  “How dangerous did you say this was?” Freddy asked as he shoved his foot into the holds, just like we’d practiced on dry land.

  “My cousin drowned on this river a few years ago,” Louis said, taking position dead center in the raft.

  “Really?”

  “Yes. He loved rafting. But he also loved doing it in the rain. Don’t worry, Freddy, my friend. I have a camera. I will record everything as it happens. Good for your family if you drown, hehe.”

  “Wait, wait…”

  By then the Scots had gotten in, and the Indians were secured in the back.

  “Did you just say your cousin drowned here?” Amy asked.

  “I think that’s what he said,” Freddy said, breathing fast enough I thought a panic attack might be coming.

  “Don’t worry; I have a camera,” Louis said, laughing as the guide shouted, “Here we go!” and shoved the raft into the rushing waters, hopping aboard at the last second.

  The camera caught for posterity and YouTube Freddy’s screaming reaction to the nose of the raft plunging beneath the water and washing half the boat into the Peruvian river.

  “Yahoo!” I yelled and came above the water spitting out the part of the river that went down my throat, plunging my paddle into the water with a vigorous stroke.

  Everyone else was to match the stroke of the two in front. That’s what made it a hard position – everyone else depended on the nose being good at paddling. Otherwise the whole rhythm of the strokes, and the raft’s direction, would be thrown off and we’d be unable to maneuver around the rocks and shallows. Had the raft been filled with hydrogen, this problem would have been amplified. But thankfully we only had good old heavy oxygen keeping us afloat.

  “Forward now team!” the guide commanded, yelling over the sound of the rapids.

  “Forward Freddy,” I said, pressing paddle to water and ensuring that Freddy did the same. Shaking water from his eyes, Freddy did so.

  “Together! Forward! Together, forward now team!”

  In the few strokes of initially striking the water, Freddy and I worked to get in sync. The paddles were short and the water quick, but with our feet properly hooked in the loops set at the raft’s nose we could lean near parallel with the river, halfway out over the water’s surface, to get a good stroke.

  It was this kind of twisting motion, kissing the water with each press of the paddle, that allowed me to see the entirety of the raft. Near falling into the water, I looked up and saw Grant grinning down at me. He was sitting in the position behind me, with Amy in the seat behind Freddy.

  “You keep going like that, Joe, we’ll get this,” Grant said as we sloshed over a few white-capped rocks in a shallow turn.

  “I think I’m getting the hang of this,” Amy said, watching Freddy and matching his motions.

  “Getting the hang of what?” the guide asked.

  “Of the rafting. I think I’ve got it.”

  “You’ve got nothing. We just went past the portage point. Now we’re starting.”

  Just then, we completed the shallow turn and leveled out with what looked like a milkshake in the process of being made, brown and white waters churning on and on in the snaking, roaring current.

  “Forward now team!” the guide roared.

  Stroke-stroke-stroke we dove into the fray. The water rose and fell and lifted the raft into the air and plunged us down hard enough I thought we were cresting an ocean wave. With this first real rapid the entire raft was engulfed in the chilly water.

  “Backward now!” the guide called as we cleared the first rapid and approached another. The current was taking us right for a large boulder set beside a shallow portion of the river. “Backward!”

  By stroking backwards, the guide maneuvered us against the current and around the boulder, rocking the raft like a toy in a child’s bathtub when we hit the swift current that sprayed against the boulder.

  “Forward now team!” the guide commanded as we once more plowed forward, Freddy and I leaning into our strokes.

  “Show me some leg, Joe, hehe,” Louis said as I leaned into another stroke, my shorts riding up my thighs and showing the camera exactly how lacking in color my hairy skin was.

  Instead of lowering my shorts or showing embarrassed color in my face, I slapped my thigh and shouted, “You film much more I’ll charge you for it.”

  “I know some people who’d pay good money for that, hehe.”

  Not the response I was expecting.

  “Forward!” the guide shouted as we hit another patch of particularly hectic rapids.

  By now we were all giggling our heads off, Louis especially so, and roaring with delight with each white-capped rock formation and turn. At one point the raft started spinning, but that was just the guide messing with us and punishing the Indians in the back for not paddling. Even Amy had stopped screaming with fright and joined Freddy and I in cheering the rapids.

  Splashing and rolling and paddling and laughing, we came across another turn still chuckling like four year olds. Only now Louis was not laughing. He was clutching his camera and moving his feet to get a better hold.

  “Joe…” Freddy said, diverting my attention away from our fat hostel owner, who seemed now distracted with trying to get the camera to look down Amy’s shirt. He got away with this, because everyone else was looking forward at the meat grinder ahead.

  Boulders bigger than the one we’d passed earlier now spanned the river three across, with what looked like a mountain’s worth of glossy stones and embankments. The roaring rapids reminded me less of a river and more like the Atlantic Ocean during hurricane season.

  “Joe…” Freddy said.

  “Forward now team!” the guide called before the raging waters completely drowned his words.

  Amy shrieked as we hit the first rapid. Or maybe that was Freddy. Or maybe me.

  Our paddles struck water and we rolled side to side, half the raft descending and rising in chaotic pulsations. At one point I couldn’t reach the water with my paddle and was looking down at Freddy as the raft took a rapid so sharply I sw
ore we were floating on its side.

  It was after this jolting reversal, my side slamming back into the rapids, that we struck a ramp-like rapid that plunged near the entire raft underwater, the nose slamming into the rocks at the river’s bottom. An instant later the raft shot out of the water. Like a whale leaping into the air we flew above the water and came crashing down, rolling everyone against each other and knocking Freddy forward. He bounced off the raft’s nose once then was catapulted out of the boat and into the water.

  “Freddy!” I shouted, reaching out to grab him.

  “He fell out!” Amy declared.

  “I know. I got it on film too!” Louis also declared.

  “Turn back and get him. Freddy are you okay!” I shouted, searching for my friend in the water.

  “I hit my head! I was doing fine till I hit my head!” Freddy proclaimed from where he bobbed in the surface of the water, “You’d have fallen out too if it was you on that side!”

  We had reached a lull in the rapids, then, and I was able to see Freddy swimming against the swift but level current to try and reach the raft.

  “Can you swim to us?” Grant asked.

  “I can try.”

  “Here, reach for my paddle,” I said leaning out to the side where Freddy was swimming, holding my paddle handle-out for him to grab. The current, however, was swiftly driving us away from Freddy and he wasn’t able to make up the distance no matter how hard he swam.

  “Just think, Freddy, if we were in Egypt right now you’d only have to worry about crocodiles!” I said, still reaching.

  “And tear gas,” Grant added.

  “Don’t forget the rpgs!” Freddy said through strokes.

  “Ready, team!” the guide suddenly shouted.

  “Hold on, we haven’t picked up Freddy yet,” I said.

  “No time.” The guide pointed, and I could see that the lull in rapids was just the eye of this storm. We were headed toward another gauntlet.

  “Freddy! Swim!”

  “Ready for forward, team!”

  “I’m trying!” Freddy insisted

  “Swim, Freddy, swim! Swim like I have tacos!”

  “That only works on you, Joe!”

  “Then I have an original copy of the US Constitution.”

  “Why would you take that on a raft!”

  “Forward now team!” the guide shouted.

  “Well, that’s it. Hold this for me, Grant?”

  “What?” Grant asked as I handed him my paddle.

  Before the raft could reach the rapids I stood up, put my hands out like an Olympic swimmer, and did a back flip off the side of the raft. I am, of course, terrible at such things and landed head-first into the water with a loud smack.

  I popped out of the water not far from Freddy, the raft rapidly gaining distance, and said, “Ow.”

  “What the heck did you do that for!” Freddy shouted.

  “If we go down we go down together, buddy!”

  “You’re an idiot.”

  “Hey Joe!” I heard Louis call from the raft, “Don’t worry. I have the key to your room so I can make sure and sell your stuff when you drown.”

  “Thanks Louis!” I called back.

  “We should have gone to Egypt!” Freddy screamed as we and the raft ahead of us plunged into the rapids.

  Splashing and waving and crashing into each other, Freddy and I bounced back-to-back amidst the glossy stones and river bottom. I felt like a goldfish flushed down a toilet and twice only surfaced when my lifejacket lifted me above the surf.

  “I’m a dolphin!” was all I could think of saying, hoping that someone might laugh at my final words. It seemed like a wiser decision than just shouting “Ahhhh!” like Freddy was. He can be very uncreative when faced with imminent death.

  It seemed like an hour we were fighting against the rapids and current, swimming and grabbing hold of each other’s lifejackets for support until finally we realized that we were out of the fray and simply drifting along the surface of the water.

  I don’t think Freddy opened his eyes until we both bumped into the side of the raft, each of us bobbing up and down like driftwood.

  “It’s okay,” Louis said, pointing the camera down at Freddy and I as he exited the raft, standing on the shore above us, “Your stuff probably wasn’t worth that much anyway, hehe.”

  “Congratulations. You didn’t die,” the guide said, ignoring us as he hoisted the raft singlehandedly up onto the shore, “You should probably get out of the water.”

  “Whoa,” I said, “Freddy. Freddy, wake up. Everything’s in color. And I think your dog is missing.”

  “Want to go to Egypt,” Freddy mumbled.

  “We’re not in Egypt, Freddy.”

  “You’re not in Kansas either,” Grant said with a laugh, “But you don’t want to be either place. You want to be right here.”

  “What do you mean they’re not in Kansas? Is that an expression?” Amy asked.

  “Don’t know. Something an American said once.”

  With those words, Grant helped Freddy and I out of the water and up the shallow embankment. Grunting with effort, Freddy somehow walking bow-legged, we crested the hill. Seeing what lay on the other side I suddenly had the image of a rainbow bursting through the horizon and ending at this point, an invisible choir of angels crying out in harmony as a little guy in a green hat went chuckling along past the pot of gold that dazzled before my eyes.

  We’d stopped at a distillery.

  “It’s a winery!” Grant said, correcting my initial thought. Either way, I hooted with joy as we all bustled soaking wet into the dusty picnic tables shaded beneath hanging grape vines. The winery had apparently been expecting us, as a smiling Peruvian man greeted our river-soaked party with chill-fogged glasses.

  “It’s brandy?” I asked, examining the contents of the glasses set before us.

  “It’s pisco!” Louis exclaimed, slapping us all on the back as we gathered about the table and had a toast. We’d survived. We’d made it to the winery. And I’d just discovered that pisco is delicious!

  Two toasts later and everyone else concluded that pisco was, indeed, delicious. The drink is a Peruvian brandy, made from the grapes that grew around us, and was clear as vodka but sweet as rum with a kick like tequila.

  At the winery we had chicken stew and some fried chicken dish Louis called chicharones. Rice dishes and more pisco were passed around with vigor, and then we ordered a savory pork rice spread and more pisco, then some shrimp and more pisco, Finally we toasted our triumph at not drowning with a chilled pisco before the quickly setting sun.

  Louis drove us back, then, and I don’t remember the traffic being as bad. Grant and Amy shared more tales of their travels and Freddy and I shared our own. When we got back to Lima, Freddy, Grant, Amy and I got a twelve pack of some terrible Peruvian beer and shared it with all the other new friends we made that night hanging out in the hostel.

  At some point Louis lost his pants. I don’t remember how, or where his shirt went for that matter. All I remember is that he walked past me, scratching his enormous belly button, and asked, “So, who’s going to Caral tomorrow?”

  I guess I said, “Freddy and I.”

  “Good. We leave early. I’ll wake you up, hehe.”

  “Wa’d he say?” Freddy asked as Louis stumbled to his room.

  “Caral,” I replied.

  “Wussat?”

  “Dunno.”

  Chapter 5

  Caral is an ancient city that is considered a cradle of civilization to the peoples of the western hemisphere and one of the oldest archeological sites in the world. But I didn’t know that in the morning. All I knew was my tiny pillow was insanely comfortable and the enormously fat man shaking me awake was the worst human being on the face of the earth.

  “Wake up, Joe Stevens, we are going to Caral now,” Louis said.

  “Joe’s not here,” I replied.

  “Of course Joe is here. Look, it’s Joe!” />
  “Not here.”

  “Joe is here! And Joe is about to come to Caral. Hooray for Joe!” Louis said and placed my head between his two meaty hands and planted a greasy kiss on my forehead. “Hehe!”

  The only thing that would have made me fly out of the bed and into the wall faster would have been if Louis were covered in peanut butter, a very disturbing image that in no way decelerated my stumbling flight from the bed.

  Apparently Freddy had heard about what exactly Caral was while chatting with Grant the night before, and decided that he really wanted to go. Since I had apparently been less than eager to get out of bed after our late-night entertainment with the Scots and other hostel members, Freddy had solicited Louis’s help in waking me.

  Freddy claimed he didn’t know Louis was going to kiss me. But Freddy says a lot of things.

  Not only did I not remember what all Freddy said after that, but I do not remember going willingly into the kitchen for breakfast. Perhaps it was the fuzzy hangover tongue, making the coffee extra terrible, that made me muffle my words, but I definitely don’t remember saying that I wanted to go to Caral.

  I suppose in retrospect I probably said yes, that I would go. But it was Freddy’s energetic insistence that we go that forced me to climb into the back of Louis’s crummy SUV and sit in the most uncomfortable seat imaginable.

  “Are Grant and Amy at least coming?” I asked, gradually gaining my wits as Louis drove into Lima traffic.

  “I sent Louis in after him,” Freddy said, trying to connect his seat belt. The strap, however, was connected to the ceiling and not to the seat, and just kind of sat there on his lap when he buckled it. This made Freddy grimace as he tossed it aside. “Louis said he’d go wake Grant and bring him down.”

  “So why are they not here?”

  “Grant chased Louis out of his room with a knife.”

  “Should have brought a knife.”

  Instead of Grant and Amy, the people sitting in front of us in the SUV were two fat Argentinean girls who didn’t speak English, along with a middle-aged woman and her seven year old daughter. Louis was sitting up front with the middle-aged mother, flirting with her while he drove.