Willing Hostage

by Marlys Millhiser

  Rain fell like a fourth wall to close them in with the fire. The shallow cavern filled with the smell of wood smoke. Goodyear, who looked as if he’d just been rescued from a clothes dryer, crawled onto their crowded bed and stared at them with amazement.

  Glade had her half-undressed when a human voice outside yelled, “Up here! This way.”

  Chapter Thirty-two

  Glade jumped into his jeans, ran through a stream of profanity worthy of Mr. Blum, and zipped his fly with one hand while reaching for his revolver with the other.

  If he wasn’t trying to wake up, he was pretty fast on his feet, Leah thought, putting herself back together in a rush.

  The man who ran into the cavern stopped with one foot still in the air when he saw them and the revolver. “Oh.”

  “You startled us.” Glade tried to smile.

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t know anybody else was at the Hole.” He stood dripping and confused. “I’ve got a party coming up to get out of the rain, but we’ll set up tents below.” He took a step backward.

  “No, that’s all right. I just brought this for target practice and”—the revolver disappeared—“and you startled us,” Glade repeated lamely. “There’s plenty of room and it’s bad out there.”

  The intruder still looked nervous and glanced over his shoulder as voices sounded on the trail. “Well, if we can share your fire, you can share our dinner. I’m Dave Randolf.…”

  “Glade Wyndham.” The two men shook hands through the smoke of the fire. “And this is Leah.”

  “How do you do, Mrs. Wyndham.” Dave Randolf looked blessedly normal.

  The cavern was suddenly crowded with people. Bleary-eyed with exhaustion, smoke, and suddenly doused desire, she managed to count fourteen, fifteen with Dave. Almost half of them were women and they all stood barely out of the rain staring at Leah and Glade as if they’d just discovered gate-crashers at a party. One expression on fifteen faces.…

  Some of the men carried rocks, others Styrofoam coolers. One woman balanced three heads of lettuce and several others had round packages wrapped in aluminum foil. The gals wore floppy, dripping hats. Purses hung from their wrists.

  “Won’t you come in?” Leah said, trying desperately to adjust from Neanderthal back to civilization.

  Dave Randolf made embarrassed introductions, while his party dripped the floor to mud. “We were going to barbecue dinner here and wait out the storm.”

  “Sounds good.” Glade found a shirt to cover his gallbladder scar.

  Leah ran her fingers through her hair and realized her bra was still un-hooked under her blouse.

  “But if you—”

  “No. That’s fine. You’re welcome. We just got off the river ourselves.” Glade gestured toward the fire and the women moved to it as if they were one to comb out wet hair and apply lipstick while the men dug a pit in the cavern floor, heaped it with wood and rocks, and started another fire. Literally everyone chewed gum.

  The ladies left Leah the space of her sleeping bag and regarded her with suspicion. Two Styrofoam coolers yielded pop-top cans of Dr. Pepper.

  The level of suspicion in the crowded cavern hit the scarlet-for-danger point when Leah refused the Dr. Pepper and tipped the bottle of Maalox. She felt as if she’d just passed through a time warp.

  Glade sat beside her with his pop can and smiled at the circle. “Medicine. My … wife has an ulcer and she went in the drink at Little Joe.”

  The assembly went silent, even to the last man at the pit, and suspicion turned to sympathy. One of the women moved to Leah’s sleeping bag. “Did you really? It must have been awful.”

  “Is that where you got the bump on your nose and your head? I thought we’d all die there.…”

  “Will you be all right?”

  “How did you ever get out of that alive?”

  Leah smiled at the general din and had another slug of Maalox. Soon everyone was retelling the hazards and their fears of the Yampa River.

  “Mormons,” Glade whispered in her ear. He raised his can of Dr. Pepper. “Otherwise this would be Coke or Coors.”

  The afternoon wore on and about wore Leah out. Pop-top rings littered the cavern floor.

  “It’s high time you spent a weekend at home with me, says I. (The kids don’t even know what he looks like.) ‘No,’ says the river rat, ‘you need to get away. Let me take you on a float trip.’ Float!”

  “Rayleen, I was down this river three weeks ago and got a sunburn. I can’t help the weather,” Dave said.

  “Shut up, I’m not talking to you. So I had my hair done, bought two new pairs of slacks and … well, look at me!” Rayleen was plump and pretty even with her ruined hair. “‘Bring your swim suit,’ says he, ‘and get a tan while floating through the wonders of the canyon. See the wild animals on shore.’ You know what I’ve seen? Exactly one dead sheep—domestic.”

  “Yeah, I wanted to take the kids and go to Disneyland.”

  “And I wanted to go see my folks.”

  “What kind of a line did you get, Leah?”

  “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”

  The pit began to give off delicious odors. Leah slept sitting up, for brief intervals.

  “I didn’t see your boat down on the beach.” Dave sat beside Glade.

  “I moved it up behind some trees. Didn’t want it washed away. The river’s so wild.”

  “I know. I’m worried about getting this herd out safely. Most of them have never run a river. Did you notice that there aren’t any commercial trippers out? This time of year they’re usually thick.”

  “I noticed that. What does it mean?” Glade’s exhaustion began to show in the straining sound of his throat.

  “It means the patrol has closed the river and we didn’t get the word. It’s probably sitting home in my mailbox right now. Yours, too.”

  Couples argued. Glade grinned into his Dr. Pepper. Leah longed for peace and rest. Somebody broke out a bag of peanuts and soon shells were added to the pop-top rings on the floor.

  “Do you have any children?” the woman who sat next to Leah asked.

  “No, we’re not … I mean we don’t.”

  “I’m Cindy.” Cindy had short frosted hair that would have been cute if the Yampa hadn’t been at it. Now she looked like an aging bedraggled pixy. “How long have you been married?”

  Leah tried to focus. “Glade, how long have we been married?”

  “Ahhh … three days.”

  “Hey, they’re newlyweds!”

  “No wonder we startled you,” Dave said and seemed to relax a little.

  Rayleen jumped to her feet as Goodyear emerged from behind the dwindling stack of fire wood. “What is that?”

  “It’s just our cat.”

  “That’s a cat? You’re taking a cat down the river?”

  “See? I told you it was a stupid thing to do,” Leah said to Glade, trying to sound married.

  Goodyear had licked the plush pile of his fur back to order and apparently felt himself presentable.

  Eventually the pit yielded whole cooked chickens, corn-bread, and baked potatoes. Rayleen moved around with a bowl of tossed salad.

  “For your ulcer.” Dave handed her a paper cup of milk. He offered a long prayer thanking God for the food and permitting them to stay alive on the Yampa, while Leah’s mouth watered agony.

  “To a long happy marriage,” Cindy toasted with milk.

  “I don’t believe this,” Leah whispered to Glade.

  Before they finished, the rain stopped and they carried their paper plates outside to watch the sun come out.

  Leah forgot to eat. The Mormon couples stopped their arguments.

  Hundreds of narrow waterfalls cascaded off high canyon rims. Sun lit rainbows in the spray of each one, clear, bright reds and lavenders and pinks and so many.… The sound of the brilliant dancing water almost drowned out the river below.

  Sandy cliff walls that Leah had seen only through dreary rain came alive with spa
rkle. The heavy green of pine contrasted wherever possible. And the air had a freshness that gave Leah the tingles. “Now this, this I could say grace for,” she thought.

  “What does this remind you of?” Dave asked with a sigh.

  “Reminds me that my dishwasher’s on the fritz at home,” Rayleen answered.

  Waterfalls and rainbows lasted only minutes and then vanished without trace. Leah wondered if she’d really seen them.

  “Okay, let’s all clean up the cave and leave these honeymooners alone,” Dave said finally. “We’ll set up camp below for the night.”

  Paper plates and cups made the fire roar. Rayleen disappeared with a sack of litter and Dave stopped on his way out. “There were two guys asking about a man and a woman this morning before we left Deer Lodge Park.” He looked from Glade to Leah uneasily. “They described you two.”

  “What did they look like?” Glade described Brian and Charlie.

  “No. They weren’t like that. They looked … unhealthy somehow. They kept poking around an old pickup down in the trees. They weren’t dressed like river boaters or tourists. They’re hard to remember … one had a lot of hair with some gray in it. The other had his combed back and he had a bigger nose. I can see them but I can’t … their eyes looked.…” Dave sighed and shook his head.

  “Looked like what?” Leah flopped onto her sleeping bag.

  “Their eyes looked … familiar … I don’t know.…” He glanced at Glade. “Just thought I’d mention it.” He left quickly.

  “He’s talking about the goons we saw in the restaurant.” Leah stared at the fire.

  “I know.” Glade brought out the revolver and a bottle of oil and a rag. “I know.”

  Leah stepped out of the green outhouse and squinted at morning sunlight reflecting off the sandstone wall across the river. She hugged the torn jacket around her, wishing the sun would hurry to the bottom of the canyon.

  The trash barrels spilled over in the wake of the Mormons. Goodyear’s tail waved on top of one as he upended in trash.

  “Listen, fatso, you’re heavy enough.” She pulled the tail and the cat connected to it emerged with claws extended.

  Leah carried him down to the beach while he finished off a piece of bacon.

  The Mormons sat on two boats with giant pontoon wiener-like tubes on each side, a long oar at each end, pieces of wood lashed between for floors already awash, and piles of gear roped in the center. No wonder they could carry all that food.

  Floppy hats and heads bowed over bright orange life jackets as Dave finished a prayer, shouting over the incessant noise of the Yampa. “And, Lord, please safeguard us from the hazards of the river and guide us in safety through Warm Springs. Amen.”

  “Hi, Leah.” Rayleen’s smile was cold. “What is Warm Springs?” she asked her husband.

  “Just look at the sunshine Good day. Be thankful for sun,” he answered.

  The boats bobbed at their tethers like broncos at a rodeo.

  “Good luck,” Dave said to Leah. “Watch out for suck holes.”

  The men on shore cast off from the heavy poles in the sand and waded out knee-deep in water to jump onto the pontoons.

  The river carried the fifteen Mormons and the last of civilization from her life with a speed that made Leah wince.

  “Think we’ll ever get back to the United States of America, kitty?” She carried him up the trail to the campground and turned to watch sun light the excited Yampa River, turn its spray to millions of shimmering crystals.

  In the cavern Glade Wyndham slept like a baby on his stomach. “Hey, the CIA, FBI, and the entire goon squad are coming up the path with machine guns raised.” She dropped the cat on Glade’s head. “James Bond, where are you when I need you?”

  “I don’t think I’d be able to describe those two goons, either,” Leah said over a granola and bouillon breakfast.

  “You’ll know them both when you see them.” He appeared tense now that he’d awakened fully.

  “What’s Warm Springs?” she asked nervously as they carried duffels down to the beach. “Dave mentioned it this morning.”

  “As I remember, it’s a rock slide area that spilled over into the river.”

  “And a suck hole? Dave said to watch for them, too.”

  Glade dropped his duffels on the sand and stared at the water. “Leah, I have the feeling that the river will be the least of our worries today.”

  She sat on the warm sand to retie a tennis shoe. “Where are the papers?”

  Glade pulled up his shirt to expose the black plastic packet taped to his chest.

  “It doesn’t look very thick. What are these papers?”

  “A series of letters relieving Enveco of the necessity to put the land back to rights after shale is mined, and tacitly agreeing that this fact shouldn’t be publicized. It’s impossible anyway.”

  “Why not just bury the debris back again?”

  “By the time oil is extracted, the rock will have expanded and it’ll be too much to rebury.”

  “So they’ll dump it in canyons?”

  “And leave it in mammoth piles where they found it. Rain will wash the heavy saline content from the exposed rock into rivers. Those rivers will become like the oceans and worse. It’ll be very expensive to process the water for human use … what water’ll be left.”

  “And the deal with Welker and Swords?”

  “An agreement to investigate and make public the contents of these letters.”

  “And if they don’t keep that agreement?”

  “Norton, that reporter from the Denver Post will be at the campground at Split Mountain Ramp where we get off the river. He’ll be camping there with his family. If it looks like a cross I’ll give him the high sign. He’s a conservationist and has a good friend at the Washington Post. Cal’s son, Jerry, has a key to a bank box in Denver containing a Xerox copy of these letters plus one of the study we did for Enveco. If I give the sign to Norton, he’ll call Jerry and the story will hit both papers simultaneously in three days. So, you see, Leah, it’s not like I’m going into this blindly.”

  He tightened the ropes that held their gear to the beached rubber boat and explained that he, Norton, and his friend Ben had made this trip last fall when Glade had hidden the papers secretly, telling his comrades nothing.

  He’d called Norton from Craig before he was picked up by the State Patrol and again from the restaurant there when Leah had seen him making a second phone call.

  “Won’t they be watching Jerry? They were all watching Cal, I know.”

  “By the time we hit Split Mountain Ramp everybody will be interested in only us. The dogs will have been called off Jerry.”

  “Why the three-day delay?”

  “To give us time to disappear until things have cooled.”

  Leah picked up an unwilling Siamese. His fur was hot with sun. The river’s roar was soothing, compared to what lay ahead of them.

  “What’s the matter?” He ran a finger across tears on her cheeks. But more kept coming.

  “You big boob.” She leaned over Goodyear to kiss hard lips. “They aren’t going to let us disappear. Once they’ve got those papers, even if they don’t know about Norton, they aren’t going to let you live to tell this story … they can’t. Where could you hide from the CIA anyway, even if you got out of the country?”

  “I hid all winter. I’ve got friends.”

  “But they did find you. Welker told me everyone was waiting for you to use your supposedly secret bank account.”

  “I have a place to go and I’ll take you with me.” He pulled her back on the hot sand and Goodyear leapt away with a hiss.

  “You won’t live that long, Glade Wyndham. I probably won’t either. If the Yampa doesn’t get us, they will … and who will care?” She pressed a wet cheek against the scratchy beard. “No one will give up a blender today for air and water tomorrow, you blaring idiot.”

  Glade Wyndham made love to Leah on the beach of Hardings Hole �
� leisurely … as if death could not be waiting for them around a bend in the river … patiently … as if Split Mountain Ramp was the last thing on his mind.

  The gritty sand semed to cool under the shade of their bodies, began to feel as silken as satin sheets.…

  “Leah, you know now, don’t you? Why you wanted to come with me instead of staying with them in Steamboat Springs?”

  The plastic that enveloped the Enveco papers rubbed stickily against her skin.

  Chapter Thirty-three

  Leah carried the doom feeling with her through the first two rapids, but was soon perfecting her technique for surviving a swollen Yampa.

  “If I’m going down, it’ll be fighting,” she thought and felt a pride she knew to be foolish.

  What else could she do?

  But the rhythmical, unmistakable clapping of helicopter blades over the river’s din drowned her newfound courage.

  “Keeping track of our progress,” Glade yelled behind her.

  “Who?”

  “Who knows? It’s everybody against Harper and Wyndham right now,” he told her exultantly. Why didn’t he fear danger as she did?

  Hundreds of feet above them a narrow slice of sky shimmered between sandstone cliffs, and a noisy bug of human making clapped warning directly over them. Leah watched it until it was time to climb back onto the rim as white water churned ahead.

  “You’re getting the hang of it,” Glade said when it was over.

  Leah had time to let a snarling cat out of the duffel before he said, “Mantle Ranch, coming up.”

  The helicopter moved on and disappeared. The river widened, slowed, and quieted.

  “This spread runs in and out of the canyon for miles. There’s access by road here. Keep quiet now and pray that we can slip through.”

  Sun burned through her blouse and tangled wet hair, raised color and detail from the vegetation and rocks on shore and lent glitter to sky and water.

  Two giant birds, funeral gray with black necks and formal white collars shot from the shoreline to walk across the water. Making a honking clatter, they spread magnificent wings, then lifted to join the sky.

  “Canada geese,” Glade whispered and she heard the click of his revolver.