River Thunder Page 4

  “Bozos!” Rita shouted with her considerable lung power.

  Boy, did that get them stirred up. But the boatman gunned his motor, and they were gone. I realized we’d never see them again. Those trips do the Canyon in a week. We weren’t taking out until our fourteenth day.

  Pug broke out a fishing pole. Star started doing her Tai Chi exercises down on the end of the beach. I stuck close to the raft and did some stretching. On Pug’s second cast, a fish struck. “Hookup!” he cried. His pole was bent almost double. Rita, Troy, and I ran to see. “Here, troutie, big troutie,” Pug crooned. “Keep him?” he asked Rita anxiously.

  “Only one,” she ruled. “For hors d’oeuvres. We got prawns for the entrée. I’m already starting to thaw them out.”

  “As you wish.”

  I went to studying the mile-by-mile guide. The first rapid to come up would be Badger Creek Rapid at Mile 8. It was rated a 5 at high water, which was listed as anything over 35,000 cubic feet per second.

  “Mind if we compare notes?”

  I must have looked a little startled. It was Troy standing next to me, with his mile-by-mile in his hand. I nodded.

  He sat next to me, not too close. “We haven’t talked,” he said.

  “I know,” I told him. “It’s not that easy.”

  “I understand,” he said. “We can take our time. But we really should compare notes. We’re going to need to work together running the rapids.”

  “I know.”

  “I think we should probably scout Badger. It’s a 7.”

  “That’s at lower water,” I said. “It’s a 5 at this level. It must be tougher at lower water levels because more rocks are showing.”

  “I should have figured that out,” he said. “I saw there were four rating numbers for each rapid, but I didn’t take the time to figure out what that was all about. The numbers we want are the ones for high water, right?”

  I nodded. “I’d still like to scout Badger,” I told him. “Remember, this is practically new for me.”

  “But you were a natural with the oars.”

  “A few hours ago, you didn’t seem so confident about me.”

  Troy ran his hand through his wavy blond hair and looked away. It seemed like such a practiced gesture to me. He was drop-dead handsome and he knew it. He looked back, catching my eyes briefly. “I didn’t mean anything back there. It just came out wrong. I’ve forgotten how to talk with you, Jessie.”

  “Let’s just talk about the river,” I said. “I wish I knew what the water level was last October so I had some basis for comparison.”

  “I can tell you that. There was a graph on the bulletin board at the ramp. It was running around 15,000 c.f.s. when we were here last October.”

  Then he asked me, like I was worth asking, “Do you think everything will be easier at higher water?” He looked doubtful. He knew better, but he was working on being democratic, I supposed.

  “I wouldn’t mind that. Especially at Crystal. Let’s check.” I paged through my guide. “Here’s four in a row that get worse at higher levels.”

  “Crystal’s a 10 at all water levels, and so is Lava.”

  An awkward silence ensued. We’d run out of things to talk about, that quick. “I nearly forgot,” he said finally, relieved at some sudden thought. “I brought something for you.”

  From the back pocket of his shorts he grabbed a pair of vinyl gloves and handed them to me. They weighed almost nothing. “Try ’em on,” he urged. “They’ll keep you from getting blisters. Great grip—even when they’re wet.”

  “Thanks,” I said. “That’s really thoughtful. But what about you? You got a pair?”

  “I brought those for you.” He showed me his hands. They were all covered with calluses. “I did some rowing this spring in the Sierras. I could’ve used a pair of these when I started, believe me.”

  “So you’re an ace boatman already. No fair.”

  He flashed me that killer smile. “Just face your danger and pull away, Jessie.”

  I was wondering if his advice applied off the river as well. “I’ll try to remember that,” I said.

  “Just follow me stroke-for-stroke.”

  “I’ll try.”

  “Well, let’s go have some fun in Badger.” He hesitated. “Jessie,” he added softly, “it means a lot to me that you came.”

  Instant intimacy. The old Troy. “I almost didn’t,” I told him.

  “I know. But you’re here. That’s all that counts.”

  It took us only a couple of miles to float under the bridge and down to where we could hear the “canyon tape hiss,” as Adam had described the first sound of a rapid downstream. By then the walls of Marble Canyon had soared to six or seven hundred feet. As we drifted closer, the sound got louder and louder, and turned into terrifyingly ominous River Thunder.

  Chapter

  7

  My heart felt like bombs going off in my chest. Badger Creek Rapid! I must be insane, I told myself, to think I could jump on a raft and row the Grand Canyon. My mouth was so dry. I asked Star for my water bottle and she passed it back.

  “That’s better,” I mumbled. I adjusted my visor and checked my life jacket again. Think positive, I scolded myself. Concentrate.

  A minute later Troy went over the horizon line. They were no more than a hundred and fifty feet in front of us, and they completely disappeared. I stood up one last time so that I could see the smooth, glassy tongue of current, where we needed to be. Miss it on either side and we’d flip in the giant pourovers. With short push strokes, I nudged the raft toward the brink of the rapid. Finally came the moment when we could see over the edge. I had identified the correct entry. We were picking up speed, so much speed, and heading straight down the tongue, right on the current line.

  “Hang on tight,” I shouted to Star as we dropped down, down, and then sailed up and onto an enormous green wave like an ocean wave, translucent like an emerald and blending to white at the crest.

  It was whitewater from then on, a tumult of crashing waves as we rocketed down the rapid. At one point I let my right oar get too deep, and it shot forward out of my hand. Tucking the left one under my knee, I reached as far forward as I could and grabbed the right oar by its grip. Shallower strokes! I told myself. I kept positioning to face the biggest of the waves breaking from the right, then the left, then the right again.

  In my peripheral vision, the rapid was all a blur, a white blur. I was focused straight ahead now on the tailwaves. We took them head-on, each one, and roller-coastered over the top of each tailwave in succession. Suddenly I noticed Troy’s raft. Those guys were all on their feet and cheering for us, including Troy. “Yee-haw!” I heard Rita shout as she waved her hat. Star stood up and screamed back, “We did it!”

  No matter what happened downriver, this was pure magic. I remembered how much I was in love with moving water. What a feeling, taking a raft through a rapid. There’s just nothing like it. I wanted more and more, and I was definitely going to have my chance. One rapid down, a hundred and fifty-nine to go.

  That first night we camped above Soap Creek Rapid. Rita took charge of figuring out all the kitchen equipment, delegated culinary assignments and, when the moment came, announced her world-class dinner by banging on the propane bottle with the crescent wrench even though we were all right in front of her. Pug was especially proud of his trout hors d’oeuvres, which he carefully arranged on a platter with fresh lime. “Your presentation is artful,” Star complimented him. “You’ve created something beautiful here, Pug.”

  The Big Fella was speechless. A shy nod in Star’s direction was all he could muster. After supper, Star brought out some aloe vera for his sunburn and helped rub it on his back and shoulders. Pug was grateful for the soft, human touch. Afterward Star asked if Troy or I had sore muscles, and massaged us with one of her aromatherapy oils that she uses at the nursing home. I wondered if she’d chosen lavender with Troy in mind, or me, or both of us. She’d mentioned once that lav
ender has a calming effect on the Alzheimer’s patients.

  Rita, watching all this, announced that we were going to have a “ceremony.”

  “What kind?” we wanted to know. Rita told us mysteriously to wait and it would be revealed. She walked up and down the beach collecting driftwood, and then built a fire in the fire pan. When the fire was going good, she issued each of us a small stick. “This is last year,” she said, holding up her stick. “It’s history. We’re starting from scratch. Okay, guys? Like we washed up on a desert island together. I just can’t handle it otherwise. Everything will always be too complicated, know what I mean? Let bygones be bygones. I really think it’s our best shot.”

  I wondered, Is this profound or is this crazy? Is it a really good idea or a really bad idea?

  I looked around. The others thought it was a good idea, including Star, but then, she loves ceremonies in general. Troy, I could tell, was thrilled.

  “We won’t even think about last time,” Rita elaborated. “It’s like we got amnesia.” She threw her stick into the fire. I thought, Good thing Rita doesn’t have a license to practice psychiatry. Pug’s and Star’s sticks hit the flames simultaneously. Troy, with a glance my way, added his.

  This was crazy, but forgiveness and lavender were in the air. “Make good again that which has been spoiled,” I could hear Star thinking. Maybe this was the way to do that. I tossed my little stick into the fire and gave my heart over to the enterprise. Up in flames went my preconceptions and grudges, or at least I pledged not to dwell on them.

  Troy looked at me with unmistakable fondness, as if a magic wand had restored our salad days.

  It’s the luck of Troy Larsen again, I thought, and then I chastised myself for thinking negatively. The key to survival on this trip has to be Stay Positive.

  After successfully running Soap Creek Rapid the next morning, we entered a long, peaceful stretch where the cliffs pressed close and the river ran unfathomably deep. “What should we name our raft?” Star asked.

  I looked around at the soaring walls. “Senseless Acts of Beauty?”

  Just then, a canyon wren volunteered its own suggestion. We looked at each other meaningfully, and said the name at the same time: “The Canyon Wren.”

  “Synchronicity,” I declared.

  “There are no accidents,” Star proclaimed. “Troy!” she called. “Do you guys have a name for your boat?”

  They conferred. “Rental,” Troy called back. “Rental Boat.”

  Rita hit him with the throw-rope bag.

  “Hired Gun,” Pug suggested. “We could call it the Gun for short.”

  “Guy-name,” Rita protested, but she was outvoted. The names stuck. The Gun and the Wren floated through a few riffles and a few minor rapids, bobbing in the fast-moving current. As the walls kept rising, Star read to me out of the mile-by-mile guide about the rock layers. I’d made up my mind to learn something about the Canyon this time, not simply gawk at it.

  Star had on her dreamcatcher earrings today, and had pulled her wavy reddish brown hair back with a beaded barrette. Not a hat person, she’d found a brightly colored river bandanna for the trip, one that had a sun visor built right in. She looked radiant, and ready for anything.

  Just then I heard it again, the River Thunder.

  “House Rock Rapid. We’ll be stopping to scout, so get ready to land us, Star.”

  “The guide says it’s rated a 7 above 35,000 cubic feet per second.”

  As we were beaching on the right, a professional outfit of rowed boats similar to ours had just finished their scout and was pulling out into the current. We tied up and ran along the scouting trail to a ledge just in time to watch them run. Their rafts were all yellow and a couple of feet longer than ours. Five of them carried three passengers each in addition to gear, while the sixth carried gear only. The name of the company, emblazoned in big black letters on each raft, was CANYON MAGIC.

  The first to run, I could see, was going to be a woman who looked like she couldn’t be any bigger than me. She had dark hair and a beat-up straw hat, and she was standing up in the raft now to get her last look.

  What she was seeing had already rendered me numb. House Rock Rapid wasn’t going to be straightforward at all—it was on a turn. The debris field of boulders that had been swept out of the side canyon on our right, during some monumental flash flood, had narrowed the river and forced it to turn a sharp dogleg here.

  The main current, pushing left, led into giant waves along the cliff. The waves in turn led to two enormous holes at the foot of the rapid where the river was pouring over shallow underwater boulders and reversing viciously upstream. Either of those holes would swallow a boat.

  The woman leading Canyon Magic’s run did something that utterly surprised me. I’d expected her to float out onto the tongue, then point the front of her raft downstream and cock it toward the left shore, so she could pull away from the cliff. Instead she suddenly spun her boat and pointed her stern toward the right, at a forty-five-degree angle. Then she pulled, and pulled, and pulled again, with clean, deep strokes, looking over her right shoulder all the while. She was going so fast, adding her strokes to the speed of the current, that she broke completely off the tongue.

  With her speed, she plowed through the shoulder of a big wave underneath a boulder and shot into the ribbon of safe, green water on the right, at least twenty feet away from all the violent whitewater. She was sitting so pretty, in fact, that she pulled her oar blades out of the water and coasted the rest of the rapid, well out of reach of the wave train and those two monstrous holes at the bottom!

  I quickly looked upstream and caught glimpses of the next three rafts, all rowing downstream like she had. One of the boatmen, I noticed, had a flashy, peroxided streak in his jet-black hair. The fifth boat, rowed by a tall woman wearing a yellow scarf, made the same move but not quite as soon as the others had, and ended up on the edge of the wave train. She had to struggle to keep out of the huge holes at the bottom of the rapid.

  The last to run, the boat carrying only gear, ran it the way Troy and I were used to, the only way we knew how. He cocked the front of his boat toward the danger, the left side of the rapid in this case, and pulled for all he was worth. He battled to get out of the big whitewater the whole way through, and barely escaped the holes on their shoulders.

  “Man, that’s fast,” Pug was saying. “The whole thing doesn’t take forty seconds.”

  “Troy,” I said. “Did you see what those first five did? That was amazing!”

  His arms were folded across his chest, and he was staring at the rapid with full-battle concentration. “Rowed backwards,” he said, seemingly unimpressed.

  Not exactly backwards, I thought. Stern first, yes, but they were rowing hard to the right, not straight downstream.

  Pug snorted, then hawked a missile at a lizard on the rocks below. It missed. “Only one that had a decent ride was the last one,” he said. “The rest took all the fun out of it. Only time they even got wet was early.”

  “Just think positive,” Troy told me, with an ironic glance at Star.

  Rita looked at the rapid, pantomimed terror, then looked back to Troy. “So what’s my godlike boatman going to do? Do it like the big guys?”

  “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it,” he said. “I’m sticking with what I know works. What are you going to do, Jessie?”

  “Throw up,” I replied.

  Chapter

  8

  “Visualize,” Star whispered to me, as we were riding the eddy back upstream. “Visualize a perfect run.”

  “It’s going to go fast,” I muttered.

  “Slow it down in your mind.”

  Good idea, I thought. I took a deep breath.

  Ahead of me, Troy was pulling out of the eddy and into the current to begin his run of House Rock.

  “I’ve got it visualized, Star. Face my danger, pull away. Like Troy said, do what we know how to do.”

  “You’re going to hav
e a perfect run,” she guaranteed me. “Don’t worry.”

  I pulled into the current about fifteen seconds after Troy did. Now he was standing up and looking over the edge of the horizon line. I had about fifteen seconds before I would be at the same spot. For a few heartbeats I entertained the idea of trying the Canyon Magic trick, stern downstream. I tried to picture rowing downstream while looking over my shoulder.

  I knew exactly what it would feel like: like rowing backward over Niagara Falls. No, I’d rather see where I’m going, thank you.

  I stood up to do my river scout. I could see the tongue of the rapid leading down over the edge of the first drop, then pushing left toward the dogleg. To the right, well downstream, I could see that ribbon of calm water where the Canyon Magic boatmen had ended up.

  The River Thunder turned up like a jet taking off. I sat back down and started floating onto the tongue, just like I had in Badger and Soap. “Visualize whirled peas!” I yelled. Through the first drop, I kept the boat straight, then pivoted and started pulling. I braced my feet so I’d be able to row with my legs and my entire body, not just my arms and back.

  It became quickly apparent I was rowing against some basic law of physics. Even though I was rowing my guts out, the current had hold of me and, like a slingshot, was shooting me straight into the whitewater in the dogleg corner.

  We smacked head-on into the waves. They battered us from both sides. The worst ones, big enough to flip us, were recoiling off the cliff wall on our left. I adjusted to face them with the bow, and all the time we were shooting through a succession of mountains and troughs of surging whitewater. We were so far left now, we were only a boat-length or two from the cliff.

  I got in two or three good strokes, still trying to pull to the right, but time had run out. We came over the top of a wave and I was looking straight down into a huge recirculating cauldron of whitewater. I barely had time, with all the strength I could muster, to pivot the bow downstream. We had to take the hole straight on, not sideways, to have any chance.