In the Heart of the Canyon (9 page)

But Peter wasn’t listening. Ten feet away, Dixie was applying Chap-Stick. She rubbed her lips together, then tucked the ChapStick back into the pocket of her shorts. Peter licked his own lips. They were dry. Would it be out of line to ask to borrow her ChapStick?

You are so lame, he told himself.

Look. ChapStick. Right in your own pocket.

It was the saddest thought he’d had all day.

T
he rapids continued that afternoon in quick succession, with little time in between for even so much as a sip of water. Above them, great gaping cavities dotted the mammoth Redwall; at one point, they spotted a mother bighorn nudging her kid across the rocky debris fan.

Amy, paddling in the back of Abo’s boat, regretted that her camera was packed away in her day bag. She would have liked to get a picture of the baby sheep. She also would have liked a granola bar or something. Her blood sugar was low, and she was feeling shaky. Which made sense, as she hadn’t eaten lunch. Not because of any sand in the chicken salad, but because of the on-and-off tightening in her stomach. It had begun that morning, shortly after breakfast. Pain? Not really, but it came on quickly, her belly suddenly knotting up, her neck feeling flushed and under pressure, as though she were straining to blow up a balloon. She wasn’t sure if she’d ever felt this way before or not. She feared what would happen if things got worse, but then the pain mysteriously stopped just as quickly as it started.

Gas, probably, she’d thought. But then it kept happening, two, maybe three more times over the course of the morning. So that by noon, she’d lost her appetite, and now, in the middle of the afternoon, she was paying the price.

Finally they reached a calmer stretch, and she was able to open her day bag and find a roll of Mentos.

As their boats floated serenely between the soaring canyon walls, Abo brought out a book of Indian lore and began to read. Amy listened for a few minutes, but with the sun so hot, she found her thoughts wandering. Here she was, floating down the Colorado River with a bunch of total strangers, people who knew absolutely nothing about
her. She could be anyone, in their eyes: class president, debate champion, winner of the science fair. She could have had the lead in the school play this past spring. She could have placed first in the all-state choral competition. Nobody would know.

Except her mother, of course. Amy glanced across the boat, where her mother was listening to Abo with rapt attention. Her mother was really bugging her, even more than she had anticipated. There was simply too much togetherness down here—
What boat shall we ride in
, and
Where shall we set up our tent
, and
Come sit with me
. Was this going to continue the whole trip?

Because truthfully, she was thinking it might be nice, one of these nights, to go off and camp by herself. Not far, just far enough so she could feel as though she were alone beneath the stars, on her own instead of being safely tucked into bed right there beside her mother. She wanted to sit by herself and write in her journal late into the night without her mother lying there wondering what she was writing about.

And what would she be writing about? High school. Her friends. Her nonfriends. The awful parties she’d made an effort to go to last fall, the ones her mother urged upon her but which turned out to be ugly scenes that Amy had tried to forget, with girls taking their shirts off and guys pouring beer on each other and cops coming and kids running off into the darkness and the few who remained and insisted on sobriety nevertheless getting alcohol tickets for blowing .01. Only once did she herself drink, on Halloween.

Best not to go there. Truly.

Amy knew that if her mother had any inkling of what was going on at those parties, she never would have pushed Amy to go; but Amy didn’t want to tell her, for fear of getting other kids in trouble. These were popular kids, with popular parents, and Amy knew her mother would be on the phone quicker than hello, and then she would be even further ostracized at school. And so she began lying, telling her mother she was going to the parties, which made her mother happy, but then simply going to a coffee place, returning only after midnight.

“How was it?” her mother would ask eagerly from bed, setting down her book.

“Good.”

“Tell me about it!”

“I’m too tired,” Amy would say.

She was not too young to appreciate the irony that here she was, lying to her mother about going to the very parties that all the other kids were lying about
not
going to. And it hadn’t helped her lose any weight, either, drinking all that cocoa.

A sudden burst of laughter erupted from Dixie’s boat, bringing her back to the moment. She craned her neck and gazed up at the towering walls. High above, two caves had formed right next to each other, like dark empty eye sockets. That was another thing she wanted to write about, this trip and where she was and what it looked like, the colors of the rock, orange and pink and green and gray, and how she felt bad weighing down the boat so much, and how she liked the guides, especially JT and Abo; and Ruth, who was so calm even when she fell and hurt her leg; and how every time she said something to Peter, she got the feeling he was looking straight through her, as though she weren’t even there, which she wasn’t, because why would a single guy in his late twenties want anything to do with a girl like her?

All this, Amy wanted to write.

Without her mother looking over her shoulder.

Up ahead, the river veered to the right. Abo packed away his book, and as they rounded the bend, they all heard the roar of another rapid.

“Party’s over,” said Abo. “Last rapid of the day. Pick up your paddles. Get to work. Quit lollygagging. Sam!”

“What!”

“What do you do if I say ‘right turn’?”

“Paddle backward!”

“Okay then,” said Abo, his voice dropping to its storytelling calm, as though this rapid were nothing much to worry about. “Let’s go forward.”

And they ran that last rapid of the day as experts, with Abo’s serenity infecting them all—even the boat itself—as they glided as one unit straight down the middle of the rapid, right through the petticoat, a
neat slice of a run, with only her knees taking an inconsequential splash.

That night there was music. After the dishes were washed, after JT rebandaged Ruth’s leg and found the hydrocortisone for Lena’s eczema and the Tylenol for Mark’s headache and a couple of Ace bandages for the swelling in Amy’s ankles—after all this, Dixie brought out her guitar. Somehow she’d gone off and bathed without anyone noticing; her hair was combed straight back in wet ridges, and she’d tied her sarong around her hips. Now, with the light beginning to fade, she knelt in the sand and began tuning and plucking. Her repertoire was sixties folk—good sing-along music for all ages, she’d found in her five short years as a guide.

Tentatively people joined in. Mark, it turned out, had a fine baritone, coupled with a strong memory; he could think of songs and lyrics when everyone else drew a blank. Susan hummed. On the other side of the circle, Amy hugged her knees. Hot air continued to fan them from the cliffs above, and soon the moon rose above the rim, washing them in its clear white light.

Perhaps it was the opening chords of an old Kingston Trio song that inspired Lloyd; maybe it was simply the seduction of moonlight. In any case, he stood up and held out his hand to Ruth. Mistaking his intent, she told him she didn’t want to go to bed yet, but he persisted, and finally she rose stiff-legged to follow him to an open space in the sand, where he slipped his hand around the small of her back and drew her close, a lanky old man supporting a wobbly old woman, and together they shuffled in the sand to the soft strums of Dixie’s guitar.

JT
had hoped for an early start the next morning, but Ruth’s bandage had come loose in the night, and her wound was still raw and weeping. JT and Dixie washed it with boiled water, while Ruth looked on, grouchy that she was requiring so much attention.

“You have other things to do!” she exclaimed. “Let me take care of this! It’s just a cut!”

Just a cut? He wished. Ruth’s skin was thin, mottled with spidery veins. Wearing medical exam gloves, he dabbed on antibiotic ointment, spreading it all over the cut and up and down her leg. Dixie placed a large square of sterile gauze on it, JT taped it in place, and then they wrapped Ruth’s entire lower leg first in stretchy gauze and finally in an Ace bandage.

“We’ve only got four squares of this gauze left, you know,” Dixie said.

“How many rolls of stretchy gauze?”

“Six.”

“Shit. Well, ration it. I want you to wear your rain pants today,” JT told Ruth as he helped her up, “so that it stays dry.”

“Oh fine,” sighed Ruth.

“Can you put your weight on it?”

“Of course I can!”

JT and Dixie both waited, watching. Ruth planted her foot in the sand and bore her weight upon it. She looked at them triumphantly. “You see? It’s fine.”

It was nine o’clock before they finally glided out into the current. JT found his line of bubbles and let the river carry them along. They were in the shade, and the air was cool. For the next hour, they floated
through quiet water, three tiny boats dwarfed by terra-cotta walls. Lush greenery cascaded down the cliffs in places. Sometimes the canyon walls were bleached and striated; other times they were deep red and streaked with black. Sometimes the rim was visible; other times it vanished as the cliffs folded in upon them.