River Run

by Toni Dwiggins

  Jeff Lassen looked away.

  Walter prodded. “So he did rejoin the family?”

  “When it suits him. He flits in and out. He told me he's honored I called the place Devil's Nose. That was a childhood saying of his, and I used it when I built the lodge, hoping he'd turn up one day. By the time he did...” She shrugged.

  “I can understand your hurt.”

  “Don't play friend with me, Walter. Just because Reid screwed us both over.”

  Walter said, voice tight, “Fair enough.”

  Charlotte said, “Anybody else needs the john, now's the time. Because you'll be leaving real soon.”

  Edgar put up his hand.

  “You can leave the camera here,” she said.

  Edgar set the camera on the silvery table beside Charlotte and then headed to the back of the great room.

  I glanced at Neely. She gave me a nod. Ground rule still in force. Reid's death was still off limits. On film.

  An awkward silence fell.

  To break it, I pointed to the photo and asked, “Does your daughter work here at the lodge?”

  “No,” she said, “Becca's over at the Grand Canyon.”

  Wes got up from his seat on the couch and came over to look at the photo. He picked it up. He turned to Charlotte. “Becca's your daughter?”

  Charlotte said, in some surprise, “You know her?”

  “Yeah. But her name's Becca Warren.”

  “That's her father's name. Warren.”

  “She never told me her mother's name. Your name. The Lassen name.” He took off his ball cap. “Wow.”

  Neely said, “Small world.”

  Not really, I thought. The Lassen place wasn't all that far from Grand Canyon. Wes was a chopper pilot and boatman there. Becca was a... What? I asked, “What does she do there?”

  “She works at ranger headquarters.” Charlotte added bluntly, “Office assistant.”

  “She's a wannabe ranger,” Jeff said.

  “She's starting the schooling next fall,” Wes snapped.

  Charlotte regarded Wes more closely. “Are you two an item?”

  He actually blushed. “Is she here?”

  “Why would you think so?”

  “She left me a note, about a week ago. She said she was going home.” Wes looked around the great room. “So, this is home.”

  “Now and then. Something you should know, Wes. Becca's got a wild streak. She goes her own way.”

  I thought I detected a note of pride in Charlotte's voice.

  “Something you should know, Wes,” Jeff put in. “Becca always gets a pass.”

  “Muzzle it, Jeff,” his mother said.

  Wes took out his phone and dialed and waited, and waited, and then called another number and got an answer and said, “Becca around?” He listened. He hung up. He looked at Charlotte. “Her roommate says she went home.”

  Jeff said, “Flaky Becca.”

  “She goes her own way,” Charlotte repeated. “When that camera guy's done, take your turns, then you all go your own way. I've got varmints waiting.”

  Wes didn't budge. “You sure she's not here?”

  “You calling me a liar?”

  “She could be out there.” Jeff pointed at the window, outside. “I know where she likes to hang.”

  Charlotte shook her head—but Jeff was already heading for the door, with Wes on his heels.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  WE STARED DOWN INTO the hole in the ground.

  This is where Becca likes to hang?

  I had thought—when we caravanned away from the lodge, after the rest of us used the facility—that Jeff and Charlotte Lassen, leading the way in the white lodge van, were taking us to a treehouse or a fort or a cave in the side of that cliff bordering the Lassen land. I'd had my own getaway hideout as a kid, a boulder-and-log fort. I had my own pain-in-the-butt brother, although mine's younger. So I understood the need for a girl to get away from her jerk brother, to have her own place.

  But this?

  The hole plunged down deep enough that I could not see the bottom. The only obvious way to achieve the bottom was via the rope ladder that dangled down the whitish rock wall. Gypsum, I hazarded.

  The mouth of the hole was about fifteen feet in diameter. Roomy. It was fringed with spindly calf-high cheatgrass and bald patches of bare soil. Whitish soil—weathered gypsum, I hazarded. I fought the urge to kneel and take a sample. I fought the urge to do anything that might set off mother and son Lassen, who seemed to be walking separate edgy paths.

  Charlotte hadn't wanted to go hunting Becca out here. And yet, she wouldn't let her erratic son take us without her. Jeff was swollen with importance, leading the hunt for his sister.

  Wes shouted, “Becca!” But he stood well back from the rim.

  Jeff said, “She might not hear you. There's a lot of tunnel down there. And side tunnels. And caves. And drop-holes.” He grinned at Wes. “You'd have to go down.”

  We all looked at Wes. This was his hunt, at heart. I wondered if Becca had ever told him about Uncle Reid, with whom she'd bonded. Certainly couldn't have introduced them. Because four days ago down at the beach in the heart of the Canyon, it was Wes who found the unconscious Reid. And Wes had shown no signs of recognition.

  I wondered if Becca had heard about her uncle's rafting accident, before she left ranger headquarters to head home. If she'd headed home. If she'd told Wes the truth, in that note.

  Then again, as her mom said, Becca goes her own way.

  Someplace where she didn't hear about the incident on the river?

  Down this hole? For days?

  “You'd have to go down,” Jeff repeated, to Wes.

  Wes was sweating.

  “Unless you're scared to.”

  I snapped, “He's a chopper pilot and a Grand Canyon boatman and if he's not a caver, what's it to you?”

  “Fine.” Jeff grinned. “I'll be the hero.”

  Wes made a move toward the rim but Walter put a hand on his arm, and Edgar and Justin and Neely closed ranks, and Charlotte said, dismissively, “Let Jeff play hero.”

  I could not see Jeff's reaction because he turned and stalked over to the Lassen van, and when he returned with flashlight in hand his face was set.

  As Jeff Lassen expertly descended the rope ladder, the only words spoken up top were when Justin asked permission for Edgar to film, and Charlotte replied, “Lassens don't do documentaries,” and Justin said he just wanted footage of the terrain, and Charlotte replied, “It's a damned hole in the ground,” and Justin said, “It's a karst landform.”

  She stared at him.

  “Your salt valley. Water dissolves evaporites and creates subsurface fissures.” Justin nodded at the hole. “It's a sinkhole.”

  Yup, I thought—impressed yet again—it's in his binder. In Charlotte's vocabulary too, surely? The Devil's Nose Lodge was built on karst topography, and Becca had a hideaway in its bowels, and Charlotte led a group of valley citizens who complained about deep injection into the rock layers causing earthquakes...and Charlotte had never come across the term karst? She struck me as pretty smart.

  Like her brother.

  Then again, unlike her brother, she wasn't a geologist.

  She moved her implacable gaze from Justin back to the hole in the ground.

  Nothing more was said until Jeff's buzz-cut head appeared at the rim, until Jeff climbed out and said, “Didn't find her.”

  Charlotte turned toward the vehicles. “Then we're done here.”

  Jeff extended the flashlight to Wes. “Unless you want to have a go. Satisfy yourself. She's got freeze-dried food and water bottles and a sleeping bag and all kinds of shit. You could wait for her.”

  Wes said, “Fuck off, Jeff.”

  “Or we could go look at the other place Becca likes to hang.” Jeff added, “Good place for you to play hero.”

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  AGAIN WE CARAVANNED, this time bouncing along a rutted and narrow dirt road, and
this time Wes drove the SUV so aggressively that he left no margin for error—if erratic Jeff should slam on the brakes.

  Jeff didn't. Jeff drove with skill. His van. Wouldn't want Wes slamming into it.

  The road now curled up to the end of the long cliff face that walled the valley, that walled the Lassen land. Here was the canyon where the Dolores River ran. Up ahead was the brine plant. But our road was on the other side of the river and it quickly found its way to an offshoot canyon, a much narrower canyon.

  The van ahead slowed as the road began to climb and, mercifully, Wes slowed as well.

  We entered a spindly forest patched with brush and spring grasses and bushy tamarisk and stands of cottonwood. Down in the vee of the canyon, a pretty greenish river bubbled along. I craned my neck to follow the river's course out of our little canyon, down to where it met the Dolores, the queen waterway around here.

  When I turned to face forward, I saw the Lassen van come to a stop.

  Wes pulled our SUV up tight behind the van.

  Everybody piled out.

  We followed the Lassens through a cottonwood clump and came upon a little shed on the river bank. It was clad in corrugated metal, with a peaked roof. There were no windows.

  Ugly, as Lassen buildings went.

  A yellow Private Property No Trespassing sign was nailed to a cottonwood beside the shed. Jeff picked up a rock and broke it in half, and I saw that it was one of those preposterous hide-a-key fake rocks. He pulled out a key. Preposterous, but effective. Jeff unlocked the padlock on the shed door.

  “The boathouse,” he said, with a smirk.

  Yeah, I got it, the shed sat on a kink in the river where the water was placid. Good access. Just uphill from the shed, the canyon walls closed in.

  We all crowded to get a look inside the boathouse. A kayak and paddles hung on wall pegs. A small plastic bin sat on the metal floor. Nothing else. No Becca, napping before a river run. Or worse.

  “All right,” Charlotte said, “kayak's here, she's not, we're done here.”

  “What about the tandem and the life vests?” Jeff asked. “They're not here.”

  Charlotte gave her son a long-suffering look. “Then I expect she drove her truck here at some point and picked them up and went back to the Canyon.”

  “What tandem?” Wes asked. “I've never seen it. At the Canyon.”

  Jeff answered, sourly, “Uncle Reid bought it, when he came back to us. So he and Becca could boat this river together.”

  Charlotte repeated, “Then she took it to the Canyon. To kayak with Reid there.”

  Walter said, “Reid's in no condition to kayak with anybody anywhere.”

  The bottom line was that we had no idea when Becca came and got the double kayak, and if she'd planned to go rafting with her uncle before or after his trip with his fishing buddies. Or maybe she'd planned to kayak with Wes, and hadn't gotten around to telling him. Why not? Becca goes her own way, on her own timetable.

  Edgar spoke up. “Should we report this to the police?”

  Charlotte said, “Report a missing kayak?”

  Edgar reddened. “Report a missing person.”

  “Be my guest. But the cops'll call me, because I'm her mother, and I'll tell them what I've been telling you all. It's Becca. She doesn't report in.”

  Edgar said, “Okay.”

  I said, “Wes, anywhere else she might have gone?”

  “She likes road trips and hiking and canyoneering and...there's a shitload of places.”

  “So go look at those,” Charlotte said. “We're done here.” She said, to her son, “Lock up.” And she set off.

  We followed her and waited at the vehicles for Jeff to catch up. He appeared several minutes later, complaining that the damned hide-a-key broke. “Add it to the maintenance list,” Charlotte snapped. “Let's go.”

  The road was too narrow to turn around here, as Jeff explained, so we'd have to caravan farther upcanyon to the place where we could turn around.

  As we proceeded, the road climbed more steeply and the canyon walls closed in and the view was of red sandstone, a view I appreciated, but I couldn't help wondering where the cliffs would allow that turnaround Jeff promised. It took several more twists and turns but indeed Jeff knew his road and we came to a gap in the cliff face that gave onto a wide clearing near the river. It was a turnaround, as promised.

  But we didn't turn around.

  Both vehicles stopped.

  There, on the riverbank, was a kayak.

  We piled out and approached the boat, Wes shouting for Becca.

  There was no answer. Becca was nowhere in sight, but she—or someone—had clearly set up this kayak ready to launch. It was a rubberized inflatable craft with two seats and two black paddles and two lime-green PFDs in its belly.

  Wes turned on Charlotte. “What the hell?”

  She sighed. “It's Becca. So she set this up to boat with Reid. And he didn't show. Or whatever. And she left it, thinking they'd come back soon. Or whatever.”

  “You're going with that?”

  Charlotte jerked a thumb at a yellow Private Property No Trespassing sign nailed to a cottonwood, a twin to the sign by the shed. “We get kids, we get drunks, we get crazed river-freaks. And Becca should know better than to leave the raft. But this is what my daughter does.”

  “And you, as her mother? This is what you do? Shrug it off?”

  “I don't lose sleep.”

  Wes snapped, “Maybe you should.”

  Charlotte's face went hard.

  “I'm going to look.” Wes started downriver, along the bank.

  Jeff called after him, “You won't get far.”

  Wes didn't. We watched as his path along the bank met the enclosing sandstone cliff. He turned and came back and headed upcanyon, not far, cliffing-out. Shouting her name.

  Nothing. Not even an echo.

  When he returned, Jeff said, “You're looking in the wrong place.”

  Wes looked to the river. We all understood. On the water. On the bottom, I suddenly thought, chilled.

  “No,” Wes said. “Neither kayak is on the river.”

  “So she took a swim,” Jeff said.

  Wes glanced at the unused vests.

  “There's calm spots—don't need a vest. Rock ledges and sandy spots, easy in, easy out.”

  Wes looked to Jeff. “You've been on this river?”

  “Once. Enough for me.”

  “Too gnarly?”

  “Too Becca.”

  Wes turned away from the river.

  Charlotte said, icily, “Shrugging it off, Wes?”

  “No,” he said, icier, “I'm looking for a spotter.”

  He was looking at me. It struck me—on the chopper ride I'd said that I'd done some kayaking. But never on a whitewater river. This river, right here, looked tame. There was no telling how it looked farther down, where the red-rock cliffs closed in. Not tame? Not too gnarly, in spots, according to Jeff. Jeff, now grinning at us. I didn't trust him. Didn't trust either Lassen. But I did trust Wes. Boatman on the Colorado River in the Grand Canyon. Anything he couldn't handle, here?

  He bent to the kayak and grabbed the two vests. Put one on. Held the other out. For a spotter. To look for Becca.

  Becca of the lime-green Dachshund barrette.

  I said, “I can do it.”

  Walter opened his mouth to object, or to volunteer, but before he could voice an opinion I went to the kayak and took the vest.

  You don't go onto the river without your PFD.

  Any river.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  THE LAST I SAW OF THE others was Lassens and HGP lined up on the shore like ducks, craning to watch, and Walter moving along the bank as if to keep pace with us.

  But of course he couldn't.

  The water took us around a bend and I fixed my attention where it belonged, on the river ahead.

  This wasn't the broad and muscular Colorado.

  Rather, it was a lean and sinewy watercou
rse wending its way among a jumble of rocks and boulders, and whatever impediments might have stopped us had been pushed aside in some past high-water flow or flood. Right now the river was tame enough. The green-brown water was veined with white—foamy stringers where the currents ran, running like schools of silvery fish.

  “You spotting?” Wes said, behind me.

  I was spotting. I held my paddle at the ready should Wes tell me to paddle left or paddle right, but otherwise I'd been instructed to focus on watching for Becca. I looked into the water and saw a muddy rocky bottom sprouting grasses, I looked to the right and saw the red cliff shouldering the river, and I looked to the left and saw a few tamarisks hairing the shrinking bank. I spotted and saw no sign of life.

  The kayak bounced over some bump in the river and water sprayed up and over the bow and wetted my knees.

  No worries. I hadn't planned on kayaking today but I wore quick-dry nylon shirt and pants and trail-running shoes with mesh uppers, my standard warm-weather hiking clothes—serviceable for river running. Wes was entirely dressed for it, in T-shirt and shorts and river shoes, standard boatman/pilot outdoorsy wear, I guessed. Good enough for hiking up to the fossil site. Better for river running.

  It struck me as strange that Becca had never mentioned her Uncle Reid, who bought her a tandem kayak, to her boatman boyfriend.

  I didn't have time to dwell on that because the kayak suddenly picked up speed. The river was dropping. The left-hand bank had disappeared. Red cliff took its place. We slotted through a fast trough of water. Up ahead I saw what had to be a drop-off, because beyond that small horizon the river disappeared.

  I clutched my paddle, ready to help steer, but Wes was silent so I continued spotting, and without incident we knifed smoothly over the drop-off.