River Run

by Toni Dwiggins

  It was crowded in there.

  Neely and Justin and Edgar formed something of a wall themselves, hovering in front of the person on the sand. Edgar cradled the camera.

  Pete was kneeling over the survivor, checking vitals. A first-aid kit lay open beside him.

  I set mine down, superfluous.

  I got a glimpse of a dark green life vest, and legs clad in nylon pants, and feet wearing blue water shoes. The pants were torn at the knees and one cargo pocket was nearly ripped off. Take a trip through the river, scrape yourself on rocks, haul yourself up this pebbly beach, it's hard on the pants. The pants were dry, I took note, which meant this guy had been out of the water for awhile. Given that the raft was found early this morning, he probably spent the night here. Lucky for him the alcove was somewhat protected from the elements. And that nighttime temps, on the river, were in the high fifties.

  I shifted, and saw Pete undoing the vest buckles and pushing the edges aside. The material was ripped in a couple of spots.

  Pete unbuttoned the man's shirt to examine his chest.

  When he'd finished, he glanced up at us. “Abrasions and contusions. No obvious broken ribs. Broken hand. Otherwise, he seems stable. Unconscious, but his breathing is steady. My biggest concern is concussion.”

  “He was conscious enough to yell for help,” Neely's pilot said.

  The tall man stood at the back of the alcove, slouching against the rock face. He wore river shorts and the HGP tee-shirt and ball cap but I identified him primarily by the bushy ponytail I'd glimpsed through the helicopter window. Appropriately, he wore aviator shades.

  Neely said, “Wes, Cassie, Walter, you all finally meet. Say hello.”

  The pilot lifted a hand. “Wes Hawthorne, at your service.”

  Before Walter or I could react, Neely added, “Yeah, yeah—another Hawthorne. He's my cousin. He's the one who first got me together with the Grand Canyon.” She winked. “He's a boatman too. If it's transport, you name it, he does it.”

  We said our hellos and then Walter asked, “Wes, how did you hear him yelling, from the chopper?”

  “I went for a stroll. Had to take a leak.”

  “Anything else?” Neely gave Wes a close look. “You're on the job.”

  He grinned. “You ever see me toking on the job, cousin?”

  “I'm sure I never will.”

  I thought, okay, the HGP pilot smokes weed. But not on the job.

  Pete stood and reached for his radio. “I'm going to call in an evac.” He added, to Neely, “No filming the victim.”

  “Then how about the evac?”

  He said, over his shoulder, “Do you ever stop?”

  “Don't know the word.”

  But she gave a thumbs-down to Edgar and his camera.

  As the ranger moved out of the alcove I got a clear view of the man on the sand. My first thought was, he's the guy listed on the participant list, in his fifties. The trip leader. The man's hair, encrusted with sand, was a dark granitic gray with a white skunk line, thick as a mane. His face at the moment looked ageless, scraped and abraded and bruised.

  Walter said, “Reid Lassen?”

  Yeah, that was the name on the permit.

  The sleeves of Lassen's river shirt were buttoned at the elbows and his forearms were bruised and scraped, as was his left hand, but it was his right hand that made me wince. It was palm up, and the palm near the base of the thumb was swollen blue and purple, like an eggplant, and the pointer finger was bent at the wrong angle. His chest was badly bruised. Aside from the damage, Lassen looked fit and sinewy, clearly an outdoorsman. Fit enough to survive a traumatic ride down the river.

  His chest rose and fell, evenly.

  Neely said, “Lucky man.”

  “Luckier than the others,” Justin said.

  I figured the investigative journalist had taken notice of the unused vests in the raft and put two and two together.

  Walter suddenly moved, bumping me, edging around Edgar, coming to kneel beside Lassen's head. At first I thought Walter had noticed some change in the man's breathing and was preparing to do CPR.

  But he just knelt and stared.

  I said, “Walter? Is Lassen...okay?”

  Walter muttered, “This isn't Reid Lassen.”

  I didn't get it. “Well the others on the permit were younger than this guy looks. And one was a woman.”

  “I mean,” Walter said, “the permit ID is wrong.”

  “So Pete got the name wrong, but who else could this be but one of the people from our raft?”

  “The name on the permit is wrong.”

  I still didn't get it.

  Walter was frowning. “I thought he was dead.”

  “Who?”

  And finally Walter looked up at me. “I've told you about him.” Walter looked as though he might cry. Or laugh. “This is Reid Darnay.”

  I thought, holy shit.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  SHE WAS COLD.

  Thirsty.

  Dry scratchy tongue. Too big tongue. Filling her mouth.

  She hurt. The floor was hard, on her back. Back hurting.

  It was dark. Where was her phone? She tried to ask but her mouth was full of thistles.

  She tried to scream.

  SHE WOKE UP.

  It was dark and cold and her back hurt and she was thirsty.

  Where was this? She tried to ask but she made no sound. Her mouth was too full. Her throat hurt. She tried to swallow but she choked.

  She lay gasping.

  She was on her back. On the hard floor. She tried to move. Pain. Back. Head. She tried to scream.

  WAS SHE SLEEPING? IT was so dark. She opened her eyes wide. Still dark.

  Cold. Thirsty. Pain. She was afraid to move.

  A long time passed.

  Where was her phone? She reached out and touched something thistly. She tried to scream. Jerked her hand away. What was that?

  She lay gasping.

  Don't move. Don't touch it.

  But her throat hurt so bad. So thirsty. Where was her water bottle? Wasn't there a water bottle?

  A long time passed.

  She reached out again and touched the thistly thing and jerked away.

  Oh shit oh shit oh shit oh shit.

  It was here in the dark with her. All thistly. She suddenly knew what it was. A wild boar. She'd seen one once. Where? In the muddy creek that came into her river. It was big and dangerous and it had thistles. But how could one of those be in here with her?

  Where was here?

  Oh shit oh shit oh shit.

  Get out. Get up and run and get out.

  She twisted her shoulders to lift up and her back hurt but she didn't care she had to move, get out of here, so she twisted more and pushed a foot against the hard floor, and then pain in her ankle.

  She fell back. Gasping.

  Her ankle her ankle. She had to get out of here, but her ankle. It was wrong. It felt squishy and swollen. Like her tongue.

  She jerked her head and screamed.

  There was light now, a flashing light behind her eyes. Her head was pain. Pain everywhere, in the back and in the front, pain worse than the dark.

  She sank away.

  COLD. THIRSTY. PAIN.

  She yelled for help. Her voice died in the place where she was. Maybe she hadn't yelled. Maybe her brain wasn't working. She didn't know. She didn't know.

  Was she dying?

  SHE LAY IN THE DARK, eyes open.

  Scared and cold and thirsty and hurting. But don't freak out. Don't move. Moving hurt more. But if she didn't move, how was she going to get out of here?

  A long time passed.

  She would move her hand.

  But don't touch the thistly boar! Wait. Was there a boar? How could there be a boar?

  Just in case, she only moved her hand to her face. And she screamed. There was something on her face. A mask. Her hand cramped and her fingers clawed and the mask crackled. Like stepping-on-insects crac
kling.

  Oh shit oh shit oh shit.

  She yanked her hand away and grabbed it with her other hand and pressed them both against her chest, holding herself in place.

  Crying now.

  Help.

  Please please please please please.

  GET A GRIP, BECCA.

  Who said that?

  She yelled who's there? And she heard her own voice, weak and scratchy but she could make noise. She yelled again. There was no answer.

  Who said get a grip?

  Who was Becca?

  She was cold and thirsty and hurting. But she had to move. Get away. Away from the wild boar. No no no, there couldn't be a boar. Not alive. A dead boar? She'd felt the thistles. Oh shit. She had to get away but she shouldn't move, should she?

  Oh shit oh shit oh shit oh shit.

  Get a grip, Becca.

  Who said that? She screamed it out. Who's there who's there who's there?

  Nobody answered.

  There was something on her face. It tickled. She remembered the insects crackling. She needed to get them off.

  She found her hands on her chest, her fingers digging into her shirt. It was soft and nubby. Her sweatshirt. But she was still cold. The skin on her face tickled. She lifted her hand and touched her face, the crackling mask. She found a spot, just under her eye, where it was damp. She'd been crying. She got the mask wet. She tried to wipe it off. Now her fingers were sticky. She touched her tongue.

  She gagged.

  She knew that taste. It wasn't insects.

  It was blood.

  SHE DIDN'T PASS OUT this time.

  She didn't touch anything else. She lay stiff. Holding it together.

  Think.

  There was blood on her face—dried blood—and that was why her head hurt. She'd hit her head. She'd given herself a concussion. That's why she was confused. She didn't know how she hit her head. Or how bad it was. Or how to move to get away. Or where she was.

  Oh shit oh shit oh shit.

  She sucked in a deep breath. Then another. Then another. Get calm.

  Breathe breathe breathe breathe.

  Okay, doing it.

  Her back and ankle hurt too. So maybe she fell. That would explain it. Fell where? From where?

  Oh shit.

  Breathe.

  Doing it.

  Okay, where was here? It was cold and dark and the floor was hard. Like concrete? Was she in jail? On the concrete floor? She been in a jail once, she remembered that. But she didn't lie on the floor. There was a bed. And there was light. There was no light at all here. Was she in a room with a concrete floor and no windows and a closed door? But even a closed door would let in some light, underneath. Unless the room was in a bigger place.

  Did somebody put her here?

  Maybe she didn't hurt herself falling, maybe somebody hurt her.

  She wanted to scream.

  But maybe she shouldn't. Maybe her jailer would come back.

  SHE'D SLEPT AGAIN.

  And now when she came back to herself, she was still cold and thirsty and hurting and in the prickly and gross dark. And she didn't know where she was and she didn't know what happened to her.

  But she did know one thing.

  She was Becca.

  CHAPTER SIX

  WES FLEW US IN THE yellow bird up toward the South Rim.

  Neely rode shotgun in front, next to Wes. Edgar and Justin took the second-row seats. Walter and I were in the third row.

  Nobody spoke. It was noisy in the chopper. We all wore miked headsets in order to converse over the noise. But nobody spoke.

  Walter looked out his window.

  I figured he was focusing on the long view, on the past, on Reid Lassen AKA Reid Darnay.

  Or maybe he was just taking in the spectacular view.

  It was nothing if not spectacular. The river gorge rose a mile high and widened into stair-stepped cliffs and buttes and fins and temples of rock. The colors were muted in the late morning sun, slightly washed out, but even muted the red and purple and vermilion and orange and green and tan and chocolate brown were a mineral paintbox.

  All of a sudden the right-hand wall looked close enough to touch.

  Good thing Wes Hawthorne knew how to handle this bird.

  Neely twisted in her seat. “Walter?”

  Her voice came tinny through my headphones.

  Walter put a hand to his headset. He'd heard. He abandoned the view out the window and looked at Neely.

  She said, “Small world, huh? That guy.”

  After a long moment Walter answered. “Beyond.”

  “Back from the dead.” Neely gave a short laugh. “Zombie apocalypse, huh?”

  Walter snapped, “That's enough.”

  Neely whispered, “Sorry,” and faced forward.

  I was keeping an eye on Walter. First time I'd seen him be anything but amiable—or enthusiastic—with Neely.

  Back on the beach, after the initial shock at Walter's identification of the survivor, everybody had treated Walter with a certain care. Before anyone could press him for details he'd given a bare-bones explanation. I was in grad school with Reid Darnay—the name I knew him by. Several years ago I'd heard he died. I'm glad that was wrong.

  I could have filled in a little more of that grim story but it wasn't mine to tell.

  Neely hadn't questioned Walter further. That impressed me. When the medevac chopper came, and the medics strapped their patient onto a stretcher, and Pete and Justin helped the two medics ferry the stretcher back to the upper beach, Walter trailing in some distress, Neely hadn't asked for footage. Maybe her restraint was what led Pete to give her permission to film the chopper lifting off, its prop wash stirring the eddy, rocking the abandoned raft. She continued filming as Walter sampled the silty shoreline, and I gathered pebbles and chips of Tapeats at the base of the cliff.

  And then Walter and I joined the HGP crew and we boarded Wes's chopper.

  Pete stayed behind to await one of his team, who would drive the raft downriver to the nearest take-out point.

  As we'd lifted off from our beach I thought I glimpsed ledgy brown rock upriver. Tapeats Sandstone? I'd be able to ID it and trace its course on the geologic map back in our lab. But I'd wanted to see it in the field. So I'd asked Wes if we could follow the river a ways, to get a look at the geology. He'd laughed and said the Park Service would have his head and his license if he flew any longer than necessary along the corridor.

  Now, rising well above the river, I gave up on spotting Tapeats and instead admired the curvaceous course of the blue-green water, of the walls that caged it, of the side canyons that dumped rockslides into it, forming those formidable rapids. From up here, they appeared simply as froth.

  And as we rose, the river itself looked puny, like a tamed thing.

  I turned my attention to the canyon walls, watching one rock layer disappear and the next come into view as we climbed up through time.

  Neely's voice came in my headset. “Cassie, you're on the job. How old is that big red layer?”

  The Redwall Limestone. I answered, “About three hundred and forty million.”

  “That number makes me dizzy,” she said.

  Yeah. It happens. Rock-shock.

  The chopper was a time machine, peeling off millions of geological years in human-time seconds. By the time I'd answered Neely, her cousin had lifted us another hundred million, to the yellow-gray Toroweap Formation, two hundred and seventy-three million years old. And then we rose to the final layer, the grayish-white Kaibab Limestone, the youngster, only around two hundred and seventy million years young, the rock of the plateau, up top, the rock of the rim.

  “Geologically speaking,” I added, “a million years is chump change.”

  At the rim, Wes banked and headed south-southeast above the forested high plateau. And then the time scale changed to the eye-blink as Grand Canyon Village came into view.

  The village was a sprawl of shops and hotels and dormito
ries and trailers and campgrounds and historic buildings and museums, of roads and cars and shuttle buses, of cafes and ice-cream shops, of maintenance sheds and office complexes, of dog kennels and horse stables. This was a full-service village with its own medical clinic and jail.

  As we banked again to head for the heliport I took one last look at the maw of the Canyon, dumbfounding every time I saw it anew.

  One's jaw dropped. Always.

  One needed to treat this place with respect. With preparation. Wearing one's life vest when traveling the river that carved the canyon.

  Luckily, Reid Lassen had worn his PFD. And survived.

  I figured that trip leader Reid Lassen, who lived in nearby Flagstaff, had run this river before. He'd not only know the river—he'd know the rocks. Because Reid Lassen, back when Walter knew him, was a geologist.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  “IT'S TIME TO TALK ABOUT Reid,” I said.

  Walter did not reply.

  We'd been at work for an hour or so, after a quick lunch of Southwest Chicken sandwiches from the local deli, and we'd made a solid start.

  I had a firm ID on the chips from the zipper baggie—Tapeats Sandstone. I'd compared a chip to a sample of known Tapeats, from a collection the Park Service maintained.

  Ranger Molina had a keen eye.

  What I didn't have was a match to the Tapeats chips I'd gathered at the beach. Under the comparison scope, the beach chip and the baggie chip were similar, but similar didn't pinpoint that beach as the site where the baggie chips had been collected. Similar didn't say, here's where the incident occurred, here's a starting point for the search team. As Pete surmised, the raft had likely come from someplace upriver.

  We needed to find out where.

  Next, I'd move on to a deeper examination of the baggie chips, but this was a good moment for a break.

  I turned to examine Walter.

  He was kneeling on the floor beside the laminate-pine coffee table, peering through his hand lens. He'd laid out the bow line in loops, the most workable way to examine the nylon weave. When he found a grain, he'd pluck it and move to his microscope. He'd been back and forth several times.