River Thunder Read online

  A few seconds later a helicopter marked NPS appeared.

  The helicopter hovered several hundred feet above, and we saw a guy wearing a Park Service uniform, goggles, and an orange helmet lean out of the passenger window and take a good look at us.

  Then he dropped something out of his window, right into camp.

  It was a bag of rice, with a note inside. The note read, “63,000 RELEASED THIS MORNING. CAMP HIGH. BE CAREFUL.”

  “Holy cow,” Rita said. “Is this a joke or something?”

  Troy muttered grimly, “They didn’t look very much like comedians.”

  “Look,” Pug said, pointing at the beach where we’d tied up the boats. The boats were floating fifteen feet offshore. We looked around at each other, and not a word further was spoken, not even a curse. Our fear was rising as fast as the water.

  ALSO AVAILABLE IN LAUREL-LEAF BOOKS:

  DOWNRIVER, Will Hobbs

  DEATHWATCH, Robb White

  THE BROKEN BLADE, William Durbin

  A BONE FROM A DRY SEA, Peter Dickinson

  PROPHECY ROCK, Rob MacGregor

  HAWK MOON, Rob MacGregor

  THE CROSSING, Gary Paulsen

  THE WINTER ROOM, Gary Paulsen

  SNOW BOUND, Harry Mazer

  TWELVE SHOTS: OUTSTANDING SHORT STORIES

  ABOUT GUNS, edited by Harry Mazer

  Published by

  Dell Laurel-Leaf

  an imprint of

  Random House Children’s Books

  a division of

  Random House, Inc.

  1540 Broadway

  New York, New York 10036

  Copyright © 1997 by Will Hobbs

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the Publisher, except where permitted by law. For information address Delacorte Press, 1540 Broadway, New York, New York 10036.

  The trademark Laurel-Leaf Library® is registered in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.

  The trademark Dell® is registered in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.

  Check out Will Hobbs’s Web site!

  www.WillHobbsAuthor.com

  Visit us on the Web! www.randomhouse.com

  Educators and librarians, for a variety of teaching tools, visit us at www.randomhouse.com/teachers

  eISBN: 978-0-307-54433-9

  RL: 6.0

  Reprinted by arrangement with Delacorte Press

  v3.1_r1

  to Jean

  who hears the wren around the bend

  and always wants to go again

  Contents

  Cover

  Other Books by This Author

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Author’s Note

  About the Author

  Chapter

  1

  “We’re here, Jessie! Can you believe it?”

  We drove down a steep grade, rounded a corner, and suddenly there it was, my river of dreams, coursing through the desert like a streaming emerald jewel.

  It was almost too good to be true. Tomorrow we’d rig rafts and start once more down the Colorado River.

  Down Marble Canyon and into the Grand Canyon.

  Star and I had the windows rolled down. Our hair was flying and our spirits soaring as we pulled into the parking lot in the asphalt-melting heat of early June.

  “We’re actually back at Lee’s Ferry, Jessie.”

  “I know,” I replied, already buzzing with adrenaline. “And this time, Star, the trip’s gonna be legal.”

  The launch ramp immediately below the lot was a mob scene. People were milling around, trucks were unloading mountains of gear, and guides for the river companies were handing life jackets to tourists as they stepped from buses. Star and I got out of the car, stretched, and started looking for Al and Adam, or a van that said DISCOVERY UNLIMITED.

  I realized more than a little sheepishly that we might be looking for the same van we’d “borrowed” last October. Meeting up with Al, the owner of Discovery Unlimited, was going to be a little strange. We ditched out on him last time, when he was getting ready to take us on the San Juan River, and we pirated the Grand Canyon with his rafts instead.

  Hearing from Al had been a complete surprise to Star and me, especially when we realized he was inviting us to come along on his counselors’ training trip down the Grand Canyon. His letter explained that we’d be interns, some kind of resource people for the new counselors, just for this one trip. We weren’t exactly sure what being interns meant, but we knew we wanted to go.

  And one of our old cohorts was going to be with us! Adam had somehow talked Al into hiring him onto his regular summer staff, so it would be the three of us back together again.

  Meeting up with Adam was going to be delicious—we knew that Al hadn’t told him we were coming. In the letter, Al said to keep it a surprise. We kept scanning the parking lot and the ramp. “Where’s our redheaded Ninja?” Star muttered impatiently.

  Right then we heard our names shouted and looked to see, emerging from the mob scene, not Adam and Al, but a guy and a girl who were familiar yet not instantly recognizable.

  Star and I did a simultaneous double take. Sure enough, it was Rita and Pug, the Thief of Brooklyn and the Big Fella. They were running toward us.

  Rita, hyper as ever, was outrunning Pug. I realized what was different about her—her dark hair was cut short and bouncy. Pug looked different too: leaner, older. He was wearing a green baseball cap with the word CASE on it. He had a huge smile on his face, as if Rita and Star and I were his long-lost best friends. I was thinking, What in the world is he doing here? Does he think we all have amnesia?

  “Holy cow!” Rita hollered. “I don’t believe this.”

  It was so good to hear Rita’s New York accent, even to have her face practically in mine. But I was short-circuited by the thought that Al had invited her and Pug, in addition to Star and me, to join his counselors for their training trip.

  Especially Pug.

  The Big Fella was pointing at our rear fender. “I like your bumper stickers.”

  On the spot, I should have said that I couldn’t believe we were even having this conversation. Had Pug forgotten that we’d split into two camps last time, and that he and his partner Troy were on the other side? He seemed genuinely happy to see us. Like a big puppy dog, I thought—all innocence five minutes after leaving a big deposit in the middle of the kitchen floor.

  “Guess whose sticker is which,” Star invited him.

  Pug scratched his two-day whiskers, then took off his baseball cap and ran his hand over his head, about a month grown out from a crew cut. “Let’s see …,” he began slowly. “ ‘PRACTICE RANDOM ACTS OF KINDNESS AND SENSELESS ACTS OF BEAUTY’—that would have to be you, Star. And ‘VISUALIZE WHIRLED PEAS’—well, that’s Jessie!”

  “I coulda told you that in a second,” Rita blurted out impatientl
y. “Hey, guys, I’m still trying to figure this out. Pug didn’t know I was going to be here, I didn’t know he was, and now you guys show up in this beat-up old VW—”

  “It’s not beat-up,” I objected, “it’s a classic. They don’t even make these anymore.”

  Rita threw her head back and laughed, then gave the tire a kick and proclaimed, “Piece of junk!”

  Star acted hurt. “Hey, that’s Ladybug! You’ll hurt her feelings.” Star’s crescent moon and star earrings jingled musically below her double-pierced ears.

  “So you two arrived together somehow—where from?”

  “From Colorado,” I explained. “Star went home to Boulder with me after the Grand Canyon.”

  “You’re kiddin’. This is like a storybook or something. Star, you were like, homeless, right? Abandoned at some church shelter? Living on the streets?”

  I was getting such a kick out of seeing Rita again. She always did have a way of getting right to the point.

  Star reached out her arm and hugged me. “Not anymore!”

  I said, “Not only that, my dad and my stepmom adopted her. It’s all legal and everything. Meet my sister.”

  “Rhaat onnn!” Pug thundered.

  “You’re looking lean and mean,” I said to Pug. “You must’ve lost twenty pounds.”

  The Big Fella was beaming. “Yes, ma’am. Twenty-five pounds. At boot camp, near Tulsa.”

  “Boot camp!”

  “Yes, ma’am, been to hell and lived to tell. It was a cross between prison and basic training. Got out six weeks ago. Been working for a landscaper since then—keeps me in shape.”

  “Enough!” Rita objected. “Hey, guys, we’re fryin’ our brains out here. It’s a hundred-and-something, you know. Grab your suits—let’s go jump in the river!”

  We changed in the bathrooms, then ran down the ramp together, weaving our way through all the people and equipment. Rita led us to the river at a gap between a long line of rowed rafts and the gigantic pontoon rafts with motors. The rowed rafts, in comparison, looked like toys.

  The Colorado was higher than I remembered, but with the river as wide as it was here, it didn’t seem menacing. I did a quick mental calculation to try to guess the effect of more water in the big rapids. They’d be tougher, I imagined, but I didn’t give it much thought since I wasn’t going to be rowing. It was probably unrealistic to keep hoping I’d get even a few minutes on the oars now and again.

  Rita bellied into the river and the rest of us followed. I wasn’t prepared for the utter shock of the freezing green water, but instantly I remembered it was coming out of the bottom of Lake Powell, the immense reservoir behind Glen Canyon Dam, which was only fifteen miles upstream. I came up gasping and screaming with the rest of them, and we headed for the nearest shade, a cluster of feathery scrub trees called tamarisks, at the downstream end of the launch ramp.

  It was time to figure out what was going on here.

  Chapter

  2

  “Keep your eye out for Al,” Rita ordered. “If I’m gonna cook for sixteen people, I want to see what kind of menus he’s got.”

  “Is that what he signed you on for?” I asked. I was thinking, I hope Al and his counselors are partial to garlic, lots of garlic.

  “Head cook, that’s me. Fortunately I had just enough savings for the airline ticket and the bus from Flagstaff—I’ve been working at Pizza Hut evenings and weekends all year. Al said everything would be covered once I got here.”

  “I came up short,” Pug told us. “I had to beg some cash from my mother. She knew how much this meant to me.”

  Rita had her beady eyes on me like a cat ready to pounce. “So where’d you get your gas money, Jessie? Your dad’s a rich professor, right?”

  “Professors aren’t rich,” I protested. “They hardly make more than high-school teachers. Besides, we had our own gas money. Star’s got a job at a nursing home, and she’s been selling some of her beadwork jewelry, too; I’ve been serving up cappuccinos and lattes at a bookstore espresso stand in Boulder.”

  “Espresso stand … sounds pretty upscale to me. Hey, Big Fella, what did Al sign you on for?”

  “Said they needed a big, strong guy.”

  I had the vague feeling that something didn’t compute, but it passed.

  “Probably they needed a head case,” Rita quipped. “Check out his hat.”

  Pug took it off, twirled it around his finger. “ ‘Case’ makes backhoes, Rita. Ever heard of backhoes?”

  “Heard of garden hoes, ladies’ hose …”

  Just then two of the big motor rigs started down the river with fifteen or more passengers on a raft. Everyone was cheering. As we watched them pass, we started to compare notes on the letters we’d gotten from Al. Al wrote each of us that Discovery Unlimited had one permit for a two-week trip in the Grand Canyon, and that he was going to use it to help train his counselors, including Adam. He told each of us that he wanted to give his new counselors the benefit of our experiences on the infamous River Pirates trip.

  The thing was, we’d each thought we were the only ones being invited, like we’d been especially chosen. We were all puzzled why Al didn’t say in his letters that he was inviting more of us back.

  “Maybe it was because it was all on such short notice,” I suggested. “He didn’t know if anybody could really come, and he didn’t want us to get our hopes up for a reunion.”

  Pug had a mischievous grin on his face. “Maybe he thought we’d start plotting against him.”

  Rita threw him an elbow. “Don’t even think about it! If we do good, we might get real jobs. Anyway, my letter said Al was going to be away from base camp until the Grand Canyon trip—just leave a message on his answering machine if I could come. And don’t tell Adam, it said. Al wanted to surprise him. I guess we never knew old Al was such a fun-loving guy.”

  “Not the way I remember it,” Pug observed with a smirk.

  A cluster of six rowed rafts was starting down the river, three passengers per raft. I was thrilled to see that one of the rafts was rowed by a woman.

  Rita looked at Star and me suddenly. “So what did Al tell you guys he needed you for?”

  “He wanted us to explain to his counselors what it’s like from a kid’s point of view in his program.”

  “That’s it? Adam could have done that for him, and he’s already hired Adam on for the summer.”

  “No, there was more to it,” I admitted. I was squirming. This was going to be embarrassing. “It has to do with Troy.”

  “Oh, him,” Rita snapped. “I noticed nobody mentioned his name before this.”

  “Al said he realized that ditching out on Discovery Unlimited was Troy’s idea in the first place, but that all of us bought into the ‘alternate reality’ that Troy created. He wants us to teach his counselors … let’s see if I can remember how he put this … ‘how Troy was able to unite us as adversaries to the program, especially the girls.’ ”

  “I see what he’s getting at. I remember the way Troy would stare at everybody, especially you, with his baby blues.”

  “Don’t remind me,” I groaned. “He had us all around his finger at one time or another.”

  Pug came to my defense. “I know what Jessie felt like. I woulda marched into hell if Troy told me to.”

  “This is a crock,” Rita said. “Jessie shouldn’t have to tell girl stuff to Al’s counselors. What’s so new about any of it, anyhow? Cute guy pulls cute chick’s chain—end of story.”

  I reddened, and not from the heat.

  Rita waved her arm dismissively. “I say, let’s go down the river and have a blast. Who wants to keep talking about Troy? He was just a spoiled rich kid on a power trip.”

  “Amen,” I agreed.

  “Hey, but what about Freddy?” Rita exclaimed. “The way everybody’s showing up, shouldn’t we be looking around for him, too? Now, if Al needed somebody to teach his counselors a thing or two about the wilderness, Freddy would be the one.” />
  “I can answer that,” Star piped up. “Jessie and I got a card from Freddy this spring. He got into a training program up in Montana for fighting big forest fires. He’s going to be a Hotshot for the Forest Service.”

  “I’d love to see him,” I added, “but I can’t picture him giving up the Hotshots. That was his dream.”

  Rita sprang to her feet, full of nervous energy. “So where are those guys? In the letter, it said ‘Be there by five for dinner.’ It’s five.”

  While we were talking, we’d seen almost all the rafts launch and start down the river. We got up and walked over to a rowed raft that said RIVER RANGER along the side. No one was around, so I got in and sat on the ranger’s seat and tried my hands on the oars.

  “You coulda rowed Upset,” Rita declared.

  “I’d like to think so,” I said. I was a little surprised she remembered. Just when I was primed to row my first big rapid, they’d caught us. Having committed, and then suddenly losing the chance to row a piece of really big water … it left me in limbo. All winter long, back at home, I was rowing whitewater in my sleep, dealing with crashing waves, rocks, and bottomless holes. The dreams would go on for hours. Sometimes I’d go to school the next day exhausted from “virtual rowing.”

  The river had stayed with me every day since we’d been caught and flown out. At home, in school, skiing, training on my mountain bike—there wasn’t a day went by that I hadn’t flashed on the Canyon. There was so much more to it than the whitewater, which was amazing enough. I kept remembering the vastness, the changing light, the cascading song of the canyon wren. The Grand Canyon had seeped into my soul.

  We took another plunge in the river. Streaming water, we started up the ramp. Just then I spotted him—a guy getting out of a new Land Rover. He was tall and blond, long-legged, buffed, totally tanned. This guy was a real styler: sunglasses, muscle T-shirt, running shorts, river sandals.

  “Wait a minute,” I said. “That’s Troy.”

  Chapter

  3

  Rita had her hands on her hips. “Give me a break! Al invited you?”