In the Heart of the Canyon (18 page)

“We always carry Cipro.”

“Why didn’t you tell me this before?”

“Because,” she began, “because,” but she couldn’t come up with a reason.

JT sighed. “Okay. So. Have you taken one yet?”

“I can’t find it.”

JT dropped his head. Ruth didn’t think such melodrama was necessary.

“I’m sure it’s around somewhere,” she said. “I’ll check with Lloyd.”

“What are we looking for? A prescription bottle?”

“A blue pillbox. About this long, with separate compartments for each day of the week.”

“Any chance Lloyd might have lost it?”

It was his emphasis on the word “lost.” Obviously he knew. She looked into his clear, blue eyes, then looked away.

“Does everyone know?” she asked evenly.

“Some might. Ruth,” he said, “I wish you’d said something.”

“The people back in the office might not have let us come.”

“But you could have said something to me, once the trip was under way.”

“I’m sorry,” said Ruth. “Don’t be mad.”

JT sighed. “I’m not mad. I’m just worried about your leg. And if we have to evacuate you, we’ll have to evacuate Lloyd too,” he said.

The word was sharp, sudden, unexpected. Evacuate? This wasn’t a rattlesnake bite or a broken bone—it was merely a cut, a cut that would heal if she could only find the Cipro.

“Don’t say that word,” she said angrily.

“Ruth,” he said, “I have to do what’s right.”

“But you can’t evacuate us! That wouldn’t be right! It’s our last trip! Do you know what it would do to Lloyd? Do you know? It would kill him,” she said. “One helicopter ride, that’s all it would take to erase everything.”

“But your leg,” he said. “If it gets worse—”

“It’s not going to get worse,” she said. “Well find the Cipro, and it’ll get better. Stop thinking like that.”

“He needs you to be well,” said JT.

“He needs to stay on the river!”

“At the expense of your leg?”

“You’re not listening,” she said. “My leg is going to be fine.”

JT ran his fingers through his hair, and despite her anger, she felt a maternal protectiveness toward him. Of course he was worried. Of course he would be thinking about an evacuation. But he didn’t know what it was like to be old, to be facing death square in the face, constantly aware of every event possibly being your last: your last Christmas, last time on an airplane, last trip down the river.

She didn’t fault him for not knowing this, but she wasn’t going to allow the word “evacuate” to be spoken in any form down here in the canyon. Not in her tent, anyway. She scooted toward the door flap, then motioned for JT to go ahead of her.

“Help me up,” she said. He gave her his hand, and she pulled herself up. The light was pink; golden dust flecked the air. Down toward the river, where they had set up the kitchen, people stood at the prep table, chopping vegetables. JT led her to a log, where she sat while he went and got the first aid kit, along with a pan of hot water.

“We’ve had a good marriage, JT,” she said when he returned. “We’ve been good to each other.”

JT knelt and pulled on a pair of gloves. “Well,” he said, wringing out a washcloth, “not many people can say that.”

“And I know what lies ahead.” She winced as he dabbed at her leg. “I know it’s not going to be pretty. I read the books. I go to the support groups. Sometimes I wish he’d just have a heart attack in the night.”

JT looked into Ruth’s eyes. They were gray and lashless, but she had penciled a thin line across her upper lid and darkened her eyebrows; and he wondered if there was any other woman he knew, any friend, any lover, or any family member, who would take the time to do this on the river, at her age.

“This trip is our last hurrah, JT,” said Ruth. “I don’t care if they have to amputate my leg when we get out. Just let us stay on the river.”

Quietly, JT wrapped the last of the bartered gauze around her lower leg. Her skin was mottled blue-gray in places, like abstract tattoos, so dry and wrinkled that he could have gathered up handfuls of extra skin.

Around and around the leg he went with the gauze: thick, clean, and white, protection from all things terrible.

D
ude. Have another marg,” said Abo. JT climbed into his boat and took the mug that Abo handed him. The sun had already vanished behind the walls of dark schist, but its heat would linger in the rocks all through the night. Suddenly he found himself exhausted, drained of the usual exhilaration that fueled his trips. He didn’t want to be a guide right now. He didn’t want to be responsible for everyone and everything. He didn’t want to try and figure out how high the water would be running at Crystal tomorrow morning. He didn’t want to think about where they would camp tomorrow night, whether to try and nab a spot at Lower Bass or go on and squeeze in a stop at Shinumo Creek and then take whatever he could get below Shinumo. He didn’t want to think about what they were going to do with the dog at these popular places or how he was going to accommodate Mitchell’s driving desire to hike every fucking side canyon; and had he really noticed the water pump leaking as Mark pumped, and did he have the extra part to repair it if it went out on him?

Most of all, he didn’t want to think about what would happen if they didn’t find the little blue pillbox.

JT leaned back and closed his eyes. “Where’d the ladies go?”

Abo pointed upstream, where the hikers were setting up their own camp.

“Who’s the girl?”

“Friend of mine.”

“Same friend who sent you the bathing cap?”

“Different friend.”

“You’ve got a lot of friends, Abo,” Dixie said.

Abo grinned.

“Just don’t forget you’re on for dinner tonight,” JT reminded him.

“I’m not going anywhere,” Abo protested.

“Not right now, he’s not,” Dixie told JT.

“Hey.
You
wouldn’t sleep with me,” said Abo.

“Neither would I,” said JT.

“Are you going to marry that guy in Tucson?” Abo asked Dixie. “It really hurts my feelings, you know. Guy’s not even a river rat.”

“I
like him,” JT told Dixie. “If you need someone to walk you down the aisle, you know who to ask.”

“I would never,
ever
recover, babe,” Abo said.

“Oh yes you would,” said Dixie. “You already have.” And as if to prove her point, she wedged herself behind him and began to knead his shoulders. Abo groaned and hung his head.

“JT, you look way too depressed for someone in the Inner Gorge,” Dixie said.

JT settled back with a long sigh. “Someday, I’m going to fork out the big bucks and come down as a passenger,” he said. “When the guides are fixing dinner, I’m going to sit and meditate. I’m going to write in a journal. I’m going to lie down in the back of an oar boat and ask the guide if these are sedimentary or metamorphic rocks.”

“You’d be bored shitless,” said Abo.

“Maybe it’s getting time for me to be bored shitless.”

“Don’t talk like that,” Dixie said. “Not when we’ve got the Big Ones tomorrow morning.”

“Speaking of which,” said JT. “Who’ll take Ruth and Lloyd?”

“You will,” said Dixie. “And you’re going to cheat in Hermit too. Give them a fun, safe run down the right. By the way, I call Amy for the front. What?” she demanded as Abo swung his head around to cast her a shaming look. “Are we going to tiptoe around the fact that she’s a big girl, and it’ll help to have a lot of weight in the front?”

“I get Amy,” said JT.

“Why you?”

“Because I’m the Trip Leader. Ow,” he said as Dixie cuffed him.

“Which reminds me, I’m supposed to tell you Amy’s been having stomach problems,” Abo told JT.

“Says who?”

“Says Peter. Doesn’t seem viral, or else we all would have gotten it by now. In any case, she doesn’t want anyone else to know about it.”

“Keep an eye on her, then,” said JT. “Probably heat related.”

“How’s Ruth’s leg?” asked Dixie.

JT told them what he had seen. He also told them about the missing Cipro. And because he was tired of carrying everything on his own shoulders, he told them about Lloyd’s condition, which really surprised no one, because they had all witnessed several instances of Lloyd’s forgetfulness, and it was an easy conclusion to draw. Still, both Abo and Dixie, like JT, wished that Ruth had disclosed it on the medical forms.

“What a trip,” sighed Abo. “Think there’s something about the number one twenty-five?”

“Don’t even go there,” JT said.

D
ownstream a bit, over margaritas, Susan was telling Jill about her divorce.

“Out of the blue,” she said. “He didn’t love me anymore. In fact he never loved me. He didn’t want marriage counseling. He was filing papers the next day. Fifteen years,” she said. “Just like that. Up in smoke.”

“Was it another woman?”

“Of course. Though he denied it at the time. They always do. Then he married her.”

“Are they still married?”

“Oh, they’re a happy little Brady Bunch,” said Susan. “They have a big happy house in Boston and go to Maine every summer.”

Jill was about to ask Susan if she herself had a romantic interest, when a shadow loomed behind them. It was Mark. Quickly she drained her margarita.

“Have you seen the boys?” he asked.

“I thought you had them.”

“I went to shave,” said Mark. “When I came back, they were gone.”

Jill untangled her legs and stood up slowly. The canyon walls tilted one way, then another. She reached out to Mark, to steady herself.

Mark sniffed her mug and frowned.

“Mark,” she scoffed, “I had like half a mug.” Which was not true; she and Susan had each consumed one back at the kitchen and taken a second downriver. She cleared her throat. “Sam!” she called, her voice rattly. “Matthew!”

“I thought you didn’t like alcohol,” said Mark.

“Well, sometimes I do. Boys!”

“How much has she had?” Mark asked Susan.

“Not too much, really,” Susan said.

“Well, they can’t have gone very far,” Jill said, trudging through the sand. “Did you check our tent?”

“Why would they be in our tent?”

“I don’t know, Mark, maybe just because it’s there?” Indeed, when they got to the tent, they heard hushed voices coming from inside.

“You go,” Matthew was saying.

“No, you.”

“They’ll notice me. They won’t notice you.”

“I don’t feel so good,” said Sam, and Jill and Mark heard that pregnant silence that precedes the surge.

“Not on Mom’s pillow!”

Mark cleared his throat, and Jill squatted to unzip the tent flap. She immediately smelled vomit and backed away. Mark finished unzipping things, and there was Matthew sitting cross-legged with the two mugs. Sam retched again.

“Oh, for Pete’s sake,” said Mark.

“It was Sam’s idea,” said Matthew.

“How much has he had?”

Matthew began to cry.

“Stop it,” said Mark. “Is that Mom’s sleeping bag?”

“No,” sniffed Matthew. “Maybe.”

“Get up, Sam,” said Jill. She reached in and wiggled Sam’s foot.

“What were you thinking?” Mark said. “I told you boys no. What on earth got into you two? Hasn’t there been enough excitement for one day?”

“It was Sam’s idea.”

“So? You’re older. You’re responsible for him. What, I can’t go down and shave without keeping an eye on the two of you?”

Jill reached underneath Sam’s arms and hauled him out of the tent. She propped him in the sand, struggling to keep him upright. The boy’s eyes were half closed, and he mumbled something.

“What?” asked Mark.

“I said I’m sorry!” cried Sam.

“What’s the problem?” said JT, joining them.

“Sam and Matthew got into the margs,” Jill sighed.

“‘Margs’?” Mark asked Jill. “Up on the lingo, aren’t we?”

“We told them no,” Jill said to JT, “but then Mark went down to the river to shave.”

“It doesn’t take much when you’re that size,” said JT. “Sam! Sam buddy!”

“Hey,” said Sam, struggling to keep his eyes open.

“How much did you drink, Sam!?”

“I don’t know,” said Sam.

“Stand up.” JT helped Sam to his feet, and Sam took two steps. “I’m fine,” he said, and then he sat down again.

JT sighed. “Let’s get a little coffee going. I’m sorry about this.”

“It’s not your fault,” said Mark. “These boys. I just don’t know.”

“They’re kids,” said JT. “I’ve seen much worse.”

Something about this comment caused Mark to bristle. “Actually, that doesn’t really comfort me a whole lot,” he said. “And I do think it’s your fault, frankly.”

“Mark,” Jill said.

“You guys must have underage kids all the time on these trips,” Mark said. “Haven’t you figured out a way of monitoring things?”

“He was dealing with Ruth’s leg,” Jill said.

“Abo wasn’t,” said Mark. “Dixie wasn’t.”

“I think I’ll get the coffee going,” JT said.

“I’m just accepting his apology,” said Mark when JT was gone.

“You’re being a jerk, Mark.”

“The boys are twelve and thirteen!”

“I know how old our children are.”

“There’s research now that says if you drink when you’re that young, you’re more likely to have problems later.”

“It was one time, Mark.”

“Which can change your whole brain chemistry.”

Briefly Jill had the sickening feeling that because of this, the boys would in fact turn into alcoholics.

Before she could figure out what to say, Peter and Amy approached
them. Amy had on a large blue T-shirt with a high school swim team logo. Jill herself didn’t mind them coming over, but she knew that Mark would think it snoopy and rude. He would assume that they came to judge. And she would hear about it from him later.

Glances flickered: grim, helpless, empathetic.

“Everyone does something like this at least once,” Peter finally offered.

This did not console Mark. “Are you Mormon?” he asked Peter.

“No, sir,” said Peter.

“Then it doesn’t matter what you did,” said Mark. “Mormons aren’t everyone.”

“Mark, please,” said Jill.

“Come on, Sam,” said Mark, pulling the boy to his feet. Sam’s arm was long and skinny, and his ribs showed. “A dunk in the water will help. You too, Matthew.”