Lay-ups and Long Shots (5 page)

Jamie McEwan

Jamie McEwan lives in Connecticut with his wife, the celebrated Sandra Boynton, and their four children. He is the author of six books for children, including the Scrubs series for Darby Creek (
Willy the Scrub
,
Whitewater Scrubs
,
Rufus the Scrub Does
Not
Wear a Tutu
, and
Scrubs Forever
).

Although Jamie was mediocre at best on the usual school teams—football, soccer, baseball—he was lucky enough to discover a couple of more compatible sports. Captain of his high school and college wrestling teams, Jamie was also a two-time Olympian in whitewater canoe slalom, winning a bronze medal in singles in 1972 and returning twenty years later to place fourth with doubles partner Lecky Haller. He has paddled the rivers of seventeen different countries around the world. And only once did he lose his shorts.

by

Jamie McEwan

First of all, to help you understand this story better, I want to describe the shorts.

Not that there was anything terribly special about the shorts. They were my dad’s old soccer shorts, red, with double white stripes down the sides and a white
M
on one thigh. He had worn them back when he was a college soccer star. The red was pretty faded, and they had lost their string, and the elastic was a little stretched out, and they were big on me. But I liked them. My dad had played varsity games in those shorts. He had scored goals. I thought it was kind of cool to wear those baggy old things around.

I hadn’t started the day wearing them. I was hanging around the house on this summer Saturday morning in jeans and a T-shirt when the phone rang. It was my friend, Justin Hardy. Justin was a quiet guy, two grades ahead of me, who spent most of his free time playing his Les Paul guitar. But we did have one thing in common.

“Hey, Ted,” said Justin, “you know that rain yesterday?”

“Yeah?” I hadn’t been outside yet. I looked out the window at yesterday’s clouds being blown to pieces. Bright blue sky showed through the gaps.

“It brought the Pagan way up,” said Justin.

“Oh, yeah?”

“You want to run it?”

“Maybe.” I had kayaked the Pagan River before, and I knew it would be fun. But I was feeling lazy. And I also knew it was a long walk from the road to get to the good part—a long walk if you were lugging a kayak, that is.

“Come on, Ted,” said Justin. “Jodie’s in. And my cousin wants to watch us do it. You met her—Melissa. She’s never seen us kayak.”

I remembered Melissa, all right: my height, brown hair, brown eyes, nice smile.

“Uh . . . yeah. Sure, why not?”

Nobody kayaks in jeans. I changed into those shorts I told you about, grabbed my paddle and helmet and life jacket and sprayskirt, and dragged my boat from the garage onto the lawn. I was waiting there when Justin and Melissa and our friend Jodie drove up.

The Pagan River was running browner and higher than I’d ever seen it. I was a little nervous at first, especially since I didn’t have exactly the right boat for it. The only kayaks we had were what they call “play boats,” made for river surfing and doing tricks. They look more like big plastic potato chips than like kayaks—potato chips with bubbles in the middle, where the deck is high enough to fit your knees under.

It wasn’t long before I mostly got over being nervous. We were careful. We would paddle one rapid at a time, then get out to look over the next one. This made it easy for Melissa, who was on foot, to keep up.

There was no path, so she was scrambling along the bank, ducking under branches, hopping from rock to rock. Some people would have been annoyed, or bored, or both, but no, she was into it, clapping and cheering us on in the harder rapids. She was wearing hiking boots, and khaki shorts, and a flannel shirt with the sleeves cut off, and she looked pretty great.

Near the end of the run we came to the biggest rapid, the one we called “Barbed Wire,” because of a stretch of old fence along the shore. We got out of our kayaks and climbed up the bank to take a look. The water slid over a smooth, wide ledge of stone, fell at about a forty-five degree angle, then kicked up into a couple of good-sized waves as it flowed into the deep pool below. It was a good drop, though pretty straightforward.

But I saw another possibility. “Hey, look,” I said, pointing. “The water’s high enough, you could take that route on the left.”

“Straight into the shore,” said Jodie.

“No, you make a big turn, then down that sort of ramp, there.”

“Maybe,” said Jodie. “I like the straight way. Direct. That’s the kind of girl I am.”

We laughed. Jodie was short, and muscular, and athletic, and yes, pretty direct.

Justin and Melissa and I watched as Jodie launched herself off the drop, disappeared for a moment into the big wave at the bottom, and then surfaced in the slower water.

“Yee-ha!” shouted Jodie, raising her paddle over her head.

“My turn,” said Justin as he fitted himself into his kayak. And then over he went, too, down the drop, through the wave, into the pool below.

“They make it look easy,” Melissa said to me.

“Yeah. It is pretty easy.”

“Are you going to try that other way?”

I hadn’t planned to, until she asked. But she sounded so hopeful.

“Sure. I don’t want you to get bored,” I said.

“All right!” she said, nodding.

I was feeling happy and excited as I slid into the cockpit of my kayak and snapped on my sprayskirt. I didn’t say, “Okay, watch this!” as I pushed off into the current. I was thinking it, though.

It’s hard to say why I wanted to impress Melissa. She was Justin’s age, two years older than I was. And she was only visiting for a week or two. So I didn’t have the slightest thought that I was going to go out with her or anything. But, well, I just did, I wanted to impress her. I wanted to do something different. Something just a little bit daring.

I’d never had anybody to impress before, kayaking. It didn’t do any good to try to impress Jodie; she was a lot better than I was.

I gave Melissa a casual little wave as I started across. Then I tried to forget all about her. I tried to concentrate on the job at hand.

I was heading across the narrow river, aiming almost at the opposite bank. I got myself on the jet of current that was flowing that way and let it carry me with it. Easy enough. But then the current slowed down and doubled back on itself, turning almost 180 degrees. I took a big back stroke that spun me around, too.

As I turned I could feel the back of my boat go underwater. I could feel this because it changed the way the rest of the boat felt; it made the bow rise and wobble. But this didn’t matter—I thought—because I was sure the stern would pop up again in a moment, and I would go merrily on my way.

But the stern didn’t pop up. In fact, it went further down. And then my bow sank, too.

I couldn’t understand it. Somehow my whole boat was sinking. At first I thought my sprayskirt must have popped off. But no—there was no water in the boat. My legs were still dry.

And yet now I had water flowing right over my head! I couldn’t sink any more because I was stuck to the bottom of the river! Although there was no impact, I’d stopped moving. I was pasted against the bedrock like a leaf on a stone, held motionless while the river was flowing up my back and over my head, forcing me forward against the deck of my boat. When I resisted, pushing myself upright again, I could see through the spray flying over me, and I could breathe. I could see Melissa on the bank across from me. But it was a big effort to push myself back against the current. When I leaned forward again, to rest my back, my head went completely underwater.

This was bad.

I threw my weight back and forth, trying to dislodge the boat. Nothing.

I tried to plant my paddle on the rock, to push myself free. No way.

Okay. I’d tried Plan A, I’d tried Plan B—now what should I do?

It came to me in a flash: PANIC! Now I was going to panic, that’s what I was going to do! I reached forward, tore off my sprayskirt, and wrenched myself out of the kayak, bruising myself in my hurry. I was out of there.

Now that I was loose, the water swept me away. I bumped down over the rest of the ledge, and then I was swimming.

Gasping and spluttering, I headed toward shore. Something was tangled in my feet, making it hard to swim. I could see Justin and Jodie, downstream. Melissa was running down to the water’s edge. I got to where the water was calm; I started to stand up—and then I sat down again, as low as I could get.

My shorts! Where were my darned shorts?

I threw my paddle onto shore, ducked underwater, and reached down with both hands. I found that my shorts had been pulled all the way down to where they’d been stopped by my sandals. By one sandal, really. And so, while Melissa asked, over and over, “Are you okay? Are you okay?” I thrashed around in the shallows, trying to untangle my shorts and get my other foot through and pull them up again. I was sure glad the water was muddy.

Finally I got my shorts on again. And the boat floated loose; Justin and Jodie retrieved it, undamaged. And I still had my paddle. And I had my shorts back on. I was all right, apart from a couple of minor scrapes and bruises. No harm done.

At least, no physical harm.

“What were you doing, there, in the pool?” asked Justin. He’d just dragged my boat through the bushes back up to where I was standing, shaking the water out of my ears.

“Nothing,” I said.

“No, really, what were you doing? It looked like you were fighting with something underwater.”

“Nothing,” repeated Melissa. I glanced at her. She wasn’t smiling. Not even a little bit.

Justin gave both of us a funny look, but he didn’t ask again. He turned away and walked back to his kayak.

Now Melissa allowed herself to smile. And laugh. I looked down at my feet. I could feel my face turning red.

“Hey, Ted,” said Melissa. “Like you promised— I wasn’t bored!”

That made me laugh, too. “Neither was I,” I confessed.

End of story.

Oh—I gave the shorts back to my dad.

I make sure I wear shorts with a drawstring, now, when I go kayaking.

And I don’t forget to tie them on.

Max Elliot Anderson

Max Elliot Anderson grew up as a reluctant reader. After surveying the market, he sensed the need for action-adventures and mysteries for readers ages eight to thirteen, especially boys.

Anderson has produced, directed, or shot over five hundred national television commercials for True Value Hardware Stores. He also won a best cinematographer award for the film
Pilgrim’s Progress
.

Using his extensive experience in the production of motion pictures, videos, and television commercials, Anderson brings visual excitement and heart-pounding action to his stories. His unique characters, setting, and plot have led some young readers to compare reading one of Mr. Anderson’s seven published books to being inside an exciting or scary movie.