“It wasn’t no accident.” They all heard a voice ring out from behind them.
Everyone looked around. A guy named Ron was at the bar—Rooster, everyone called him, because he had long, straggly hair, a pockmarked face, and a pointy chin. He was a balloon operator for one of the sightseeing companies in Aspen that took tourists up for a view of the valley. Rooster was in his fifties, a heavy drinker, who was always running his mouth off somewhere. No one cared for him much.
“What are you talking about?” Rudy shifted around.
“Just that it wasn’t no accident,” Rooster said again. His eyes were bright and kind of intense, either from the beer or with mischief, and he sat there, looking at them, seeming kind of pleased. “All I’m saying.”
“What do you mean, it ‘wasn’t no accident’?” John Booth said, mocking Rooster’s grammar. “What the hell was it then?”
“Not for me to say.” Rooster shrugged. “Just that he wasn’t alone.”
“Wasn’t alone …” John shook his head and rolled his eyes. “And you know this, how, Rooster …?”
“’Cause I was up there. This morning. Just after light. And I seen it. I seen what happened.”
There was silence. “You got something on your mind, Rooster, better let it rip,” said Rudy, shifting around in his chair.
For a moment, Rooster puffed out his chest like he was about to. The guy was always a weird duck. He always said he’d been a roadie for the rock group Boston; clearly they’d invited him to the party room one too many times. He didn’t have a whole lot of friends and mostly hung out alone. Dani had seen him drunk once or twice and it wasn’t a pretty sight. He’d been let go from his job by the owner of the tour company, but one of the operators had quit and it was summer, so apparently he was back on a temporary basis. Mostly, she just felt sorry for him.
“We’re waiting, dude …” Rudy tapped his finger. Rudy was large and had had a couple, and was known to have a short fuse. It had been a long day, and they had all lost a friend. It wouldn’t take much for him to let it go. “Now would be the time …”
“All I’m saying is, you didn’t see what I saw.” Ron backed down. He glanced around, looking for a way to get himself out of trouble. “He just wasn’t alone out there, that’s all.” He sat there, bouncing a leg against the barstool, as if thinking, maybe this wasn’t the smartest thing.
“You’re saying someone did this? So who was with him?” John Booth pressed.
Rooster saw that he was sliding headfirst into a mess. He cleared his throat, and stammered a second, evading the question.
“Ron …?” Dani pitched in, seeing he had gotten all nervous. “It’s okay. What did you see …?”
“Nothing,” Rooster finally said. His eyes hung, seeming both shot down and defeated, and they seemed to settle on Dani’s with a kind of contrite, regretful smile. “Nothing more to say.” He raised his glass to Rudy and John. “I’m sorry for your loss.”
“C’mon, Rudy, that’s the end of it …” John Booth pulled his friend back around by the arm. “Just Rooster being Rooster. Sit back down and have a wing. We’ve all had a bunch to drink.”
“I ain’t drunk,” Rooster chimed in again. “Been clean for fifteen days now. It’s ginger ale. See …?” He held up his drink. “Anyway—to your friend.” He tilted his glass.
“To Trey …” Rudy nodded grudgingly, turning back around. Under his breath, he muttered, “Asshole.”
“I think you’re right,” Dani said to Geoff, sensing the shift in the mood. “Time for me to move along.” She went into her jeans pocket and came out with a couple of twenties.
“No way,” John Booth and Alexi seemed to say as one. They pushed her money back. “Your money’s not good here. Not after what you had to do today.”
“Thanks,” she said.
“You want to stay with me?” Geoff asked. “It’s a long way back.”
“I’m fine,” she said. She put her hand lightly on his thigh and smiled. “Thanks. But don’t worry about me. I’ll be fine. Besides, Blu will get me back.” Blu was her three-year-old yellow Lab, who went with Dani everywhere. She stood up and said, “It’s a work night, everyone, or at least it is for somebody out there … Time for me to get back home.”
CHAPTER FIVE
Blu got up from snoozing in the back as Dani climbed into her Subaru wagon. “C’mon, Blu, baby …” He stepped up to front, wagging his tail happily. “You’re shotgun, dude. Time to get me back home.”
Carbondale was thirty miles northwest up Route 82, and there were always a bunch of cops out at night. And Geoff was right, she’d probably had had one more than she should. She turned on a CD, a local cover band named Wet Spring. She made the turn onto Main and then went on through the rotary, heading onto 82. She settled in for the forty-minute ride.
Sure, accidents always happened, she knew. And that was likely what it was. John Booth was probably right, he could have been trying out some old spins or flips. He could have been going down backward. There was so much beautiful water, he could have easily hit his head a million ways, with no helmet. You pitch into a rock, or get sucked under by an eddy or thrown by a hole. Anything could happen on the river. They all knew the risks. Trey more than any of them.
Dani sighed. “What did it really matter anyway, right, Blu?” How Trey died. He wasn’t wearing a helmet. It’s a lesson for them all. He was dead.
That’s all.
Around the turnoff for Snowmass, she winced at the thought of Allie and Petey having to suddenly go it alone. To have their world ripped from them. Just like that. Like soldiers in the war, talking one minute, who drive over an IED. One day you’ve got a beautiful family and the sky is blue and the whitewater is rushing. The next day you’re gone.
Her mind flashed back to Rooster: You didn’t see what I saw, that’s all.
That Ron was a hard one to like. An even harder one to put stock in and believe. But what he had said seemed to stay with Dani. It wasn’t no accident?
Well, if it wasn’t an accident, what the hell was it then? Was there another rider out there? Did someone else ram into him, and cause him to spill? Or did someone come out from the shore? There was that rock bed down there by the Cradle.
She tried to imagine Rooster in the air gliding by. Then she let out a sigh of disappointment, suddenly realizing he was totally full of shit. There was no way to see the Slaughterhouse Falls run from anywhere near where the balloons went up in Aspen. Even on a perfect day like yesterday. It was at least a couple of miles away. Whoever had said it was right: the guy was basically a quarter short of a dollar between the ears. And always starting trouble.
Rooster being Rooster again.
That was all.
Wet Spring was singing their hit, “Misunderstood,” which she’d seen them do a couple of times, and Dani couldn’t stop herself from singing along. Blu had his front paws on the divider and his hind legs in the backseat.
From there it was another fifteen minutes to Carbondale. She pulled off Route 82 and into town, which mostly dark now—nothing much happening here after ten P.M.—and turned onto Colorado Street and into her apartment complex: eight attached units facing Mount Sopris. She shared it with Patti, who worked at the yoga clinic, but Patti was away in L.A. doing some certification seminar. Her neighbor’s calico cat, Cici, was slinking out on the lawn. She never strayed very far and sometimes walked along the fence that separated their decks when Dani was drinking her morning coffee or doing her sun salutations. And who, defying conventional wisdom, Blu seemed to get along with rather well.
“Hey, baby.” Dani bent down and picked her up. Cici was purring. “How was your day? Mine was pretty terrible.”
The door opened and Dawn stuck her head out. “Oh, Dani, sorry, she must’ve snuck out. We’ve been calling her.”
“No worries,” Dani said, handing the cat over. “I never mind a visit from my friend.”
“We’ve got a zin open.” Dawn was a massage thera
pist who worked at the St. Regis, and her boyfriend, Jerry, was a chef at the hotel, too. “You and Blu want to come over? Watch Jon Stewart?”
“Thanks,” Dani said, “but I’ve had enough. Rough day.”
“I know. We heard. So horrible. Did you know him?”
Dani shrugged, opening the door for Blu to go inside. “A little. More a while back than now.”
“You’re sure you don’t want that glass of wine? It’s a good one.”
“Thanks, Dawn. I think I’ll just crash. We’ll do it another time.”
“I understand.” Dawn smiled. “Let me know if we can do anything for you, okay?”
“Thanks, doll. I will,” Dani said back.
Inside, she peeled off the shell she’d had on since this morning and stepped out of her jeans. She threw herself down on the couch and took out the scrunchie from her ponytail and shook out her hair. She massaged her neck a little and blew out a weary blast of air.
Yes. Rough day.
She got up to make herself a cup of tea. Her cell phone vibrated on the counter. Part of her felt like she didn’t even want to look who it was. She already knew who it was anyway. Geoff, making sure she’d made it home. He was a gentleman like that. Part of her just wanted to take a long shower and go to bed and wake up and better things would happen tomorrow. She listened to the buzzing a third time.
She looked at the screen and saw a name she couldn’t place at first. Ronald Kessler.
Who the hell was that? Probably some marketing call. She was about to just let it go to voice mail when curiosity got the better of her and she just answered. “Hello?”
“Dani?”
By the time she put it together who it was he’d already told her. “It’s Ron.”
“Ron?”
“Rooster.”
“Jesus, Rooster … Ron, how’d you get my number?”
“I had it once. Remember, you recommended some customers to us a year or two back.”
“Oh, yeah, right.” It struck her as a little creepy that Rooster had kept her in his phone all this time. “Listen, Ron, it’s a little late and I’m just getting ready—” There was a lot of noise in the background.
“I know it’s late, Dani. I don’t mean to bother you,” he said. “There was just something I had to say. About what happened back there at the bar.”
“Look, we all had a little too much to drink …” In a weird way Dani always had a soft spot for Rooster. In the same way you might feel sorry for a stray cat. The guy was an outcast. But he didn’t mean anybody harm. John Booth was probably right, he’d just taken one too many hits of something back in the day. “But Rudy was right, Ron. Trey had a wife and kid, and you can’t just go around riling people up making accusations that you can’t support.”
“I wasn’t making anything up. And I wasn’t lying. About what I said I saw out there this morning.”
He hesitated just like he had at the bar. She put on the kettle for her tea.
“Ron, if you’ve got something to say, just say it. Or else take it to Chief Dunn.” She knew Rooster knew Wade. Wade was once his sponsor in AA, and that didn’t go so well. Rooster had slipped several times and had a reputation of not being honest in the program. “And just so we’re real here, you can’t even see that part of the river from where the balloons go up. You know that better than anyone.”
“I can’t take it to Chief Dunn. There are some things between us. I know he thinks I’m a few of bricks short of a wall. Everyone does. And maybe I am. Plus, I wasn’t supposed to be where I was out over the river earlier. I was the only one up today and this nice couple, they handed me a hundred-dollar bill to stay up there a while longer and let it drift. That’s why I’m calling you.”
Dani started to grow impatient. “Me?”
“You can take it to Chief Dunn, Dani. He’d want to know this.”
“Ron, please …” Dani put in the tea bag and poured water into the mug. “It’s been a rough day for everyone. And I’m getting ready for bed. So what is it you saw?”
“All I can say is, your friend wasn’t alone out there on that river.”
“I know, that’s what you’ve been saying. Look—”
“He was wearing a red windbreaker, right?”
That took her by surprise. He was.
“And his kayak was blue …?”
Dani didn’t answer, but her hesitation seemed to give Rooster the sense that he’d struck something with that.
“So I’m not so crazy after all, am I? I didn’t know it at the time, but it had to be him, right?”
“So who was out there with him, Ron?” Dani’s attention was suddenly aroused. “Ron, it’s crazy in there. You still at the Nugget?”
“How about you meet me at the balloon field in the morning.” Near the Aspen Industrial Park where the balloons went up from. “I got a ride at seven and we’ll be all tethered back by eight thirty.”
Dani didn’t have a tour in the morning. And, yes, she could take it to Wade. Whatever Ron claimed he saw. He did have the color of Trey’s kayak right, and what he was wearing.
“Will you be there?”
“All right, I’ll be there,” Dani said. She suddenly felt the hairs on her arms stand on edge. She didn’t even like the idea of being alone with him.
“I know he was a friend of yours, Dani. But you were always a fair person to me. Not like some.”
“Yes. I know that, Ron.”
“So I’ll see you at eight thirty, then. After my ride.”
“Okay.”
“And Dani …”
“Yes.”
“I don’t care what anyone thinks, I wasn’t drunk. I wasn’t drunk tonight and I surely wasn’t this morning, either. You believe me, right?”
“Yes, I believe you.” Before she’d left the bar, she checked with Skip, the bartender. To be sure. Rooster had been drinking ginger ale.
CHAPTER SIX
The sun came up slowly over the mountains the next morning, covering the Aspen Valley in streaks of yellow and rose, as the four balloons rose majestically into the sky.
It was a picture-perfect dawn, light dappling the moss, peaks bathed in glinting sunlight. Ron revved the burner with heat, the blue flame shooting into the envelope with a loud hiss, sending the balloon higher.
On board, the four passengers oohed.
“Take a look over there,” Ron directed them. “That’s Aspen Mountain there shrouded in shadow, and as we get up, you can see those two peaks to the west, those are the Maroon Bells, two of over fifty-three mountains in Colorado that are over fourteen thousand feet.”
In his basket was some big-shot financial dude from Connecticut, who was trying to work it out that he and his bundled-up trophy wife could get a private, trying to buy off the launch manager. But it didn’t work out. And a middle-aged couple from Japan, equipped with the requisite camera and one, long fucking lens, Ron admired. At five hundred feet, the four balloons cut a beautiful path across the morning sky, each of them a colorful design of reds, yellows, and greens.
By seven, they were at six hundred feet, the maximum elevation today because of the winds, and Ron cut off the burner, cooling the air.
The view was amazing.
“Wave hi to your mates over there,” Ron said, pointing to the closest companion balloon, maybe a hundred yards away. The Japanese couple waved and the husband aimed his gargantuan lens. The financier and his wife were bickering about where they were going to have lunch later, the burger at Ajax Grille or sushi at Matsuhisa.
Suddenly Ron felt a thud from above. The whole basket rocked back and forth. Everyone looked up. “What the hell was that?” the financial guy asked, his wife clearly a little spooked and not happy in the first place to be sharing the ride with the Japanese couple.
“Don’t know,” Ron said. “Maybe we hit a thermal. It’s kind of like a wind inversion. There’s a breeze today.” He checked out the other balloons to gauge his relative height and noticed he had descended sl
ightly. He opened the valve and shot a blast of flame hissing into the balloon, momentarily lifting it to where it was before. “I think we’re okay. So check out that river to the northwest out there.” He pointed. “That’s—”
The basket wobbled again. He noticed them losing more altitude. Air was definitely leaking from somewhere. He may have to bring this baby down. Then suddenly he heard a tearing sound from above them. The basket lurched again, swaying. Everyone grabbed the sides. Ron shot more heat in, but nothing seemed to be happening. Except that they were losing air.
And altitude.
“Is everything all right?” the financier’s wife asked, looking a little edgy.
Ron looked above and kept pumping as much heat as he could into the envelope. “Don’t really know.”
A call came in on the radio. Steve, in the next balloon. “Ron, you got something wrong on your right side. You’re definitely losing your pitch. Can you see it? You better get yourself down. Pronto.”
“I hear ya,” Ron replied. “Exactly what I’m doing, Sorry, folks, seems to be some kind of malfunction up there. I’m going to have to take her down. Shouldn’t be a problem.” He kept pumping in as much heat as the balloon would take. But still they kept coming down.
“Cole! Cole!” he radioed in to the company attendant at the landing field. “Something’s wrong with the balloon. We’re leaking air. I’m coming back. Now.
“Nothing to worry about,” he said supportively to his passengers, who were now clearly anxious. “We’ve got a malfunction in the canvas. But I’ll get you down. These babies are fit to—”
Suddenly he heard another tear. They all heard it this time. Phhfft. “What the Sam Hill …”
The basket lurched again, this time terrifyingly. Then there was a deep groan emanating from above, hot air leaking out, colder air coming in.
The balloon swaying and collapsing.
Over the radio he heard, “Ron, you’ve got a full-scale implosion going on! I can see it. Get your ass down as fast as you can.”
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