“Dad!” Jack screamed, but the words were sucked back into his mouth as the roar filled his ears and pounded through his head. Steven hung on while the crest of the flash flood washed past him, battering him with mud and water. Sputtering, he came up for air while Jack reached down to grab his father’s hands. Just then a large cedar branch hit the edge of the rock outcropping. It ricocheted upward, with the splintery bottom of the branch slashing Steven across his fingers and the top flying up to smack Jack at the base of his skull.
Everything went dark. Jack could hear sounds. Someone was shouting, “Hold him,” and he felt himself grabbed around the chest. With tremendous effort he opened his eyes to see his father’s bleeding fingers slip from the edge of the rocks. “Take care of Jack,” Steven seemed to be shouting, and then he was gone. Jack wanted to say something to his father, something important, wanted to see if he was still there, but golden lights kept flashing through the blackness in front of his eyes, blurring all that mattered.
He felt himself laid roughly onto his back. Everything whirled around in his head like the blades of a giant mixer—the roar of rushing water, the coldness of the rock beneath him, Ethan bending over him. Slowly, words began to form inside him; to Ethan, he said, “Tell my dad—”
Ethan just shook his head.
“Gone?”
“He’ll be OK.” But the look on Ethan’s face contradicted him.
“Dad—I’ve got to—help him!” Jack tried to roll himself off the ledge, but Ethan’s grip was as tight as a vise.
“He’s OK. He had this big branch that he was holding onto, and he just floated away like he caught some raft or something. Don’t worry about your dad.”
“You’re lying,” Jack said weakly, and then he had to roll over again because he was throwing up.
A huge boulder smacked into the wall with an impact that sounded like a thunderclap, causing Jack to jerk up. “My head—” he groaned. He could feel the blood pound through his skull with every beat of his heart. He’d never felt pain like this before. Nothing else existed except his head and the pain that shot through him and the nausea and the cold of the rock that was beginning to numb his skin.
“Hey, I told you to quit moving. You’ve got to lie still. You got yourself hit. Let me see how bad. I’m going to turn your head, just a little.”
Sparks of pain shot through Jack’s skull as Ethan, tried to gently lift him. Crying out, he saw whirls of light explode in front of his eyes.
“Sorry, Jack. I won’t do that again.”
“Bad?” Jack asked. He couldn’t believe how hard it was to move his lips. Things inside his head were slowing down, as though his brain were dragging though quicksand.
Ethan shook his head. “I don’t know. You’re bleeding. There’s a cut. Right here.” Ethan pointed to the base of his own skull.
“Cut?” Why would he have a cut? Jack tried to remember, but thoughts were dropping away from him like leaves in a storm. They kept flying off, and he couldn’t follow them.
Ethan’s long hair stuck against his forehead and his neck, and his T-shirt plastered his body. “I gotta think,” he kept telling Jack. “Gotta think what to do.”
The words made no sense. Jack felt cold, so cold. Shivers wrenched his body, shaking his teeth. When he looked up, he saw two Ethans rummaging through Jack’s backpack, but sometimes they melted together into one Ethan, and then there were two of them again, tearing open a large plastic bag to pull out a sweatshirt. “I’m afraid to lift you,” Ethan said, spreading the shirt on top of Jack. “Once I got whacked on the head like that playing football, and they said I had to lie still but not go to sleep.”
“But I’m sleepy,” Jack murmured drowsily.
“No, don’t!” Squatting beside him, Ethan said, “We’ll talk. I’ll say something, and you say something back.”
“Ghost Dance,” Jack murmured weakly, and with tremendous effort he was able to speak the rest of the words. “It made another white man go away. My dad.” A deep sadness filled his chest, but he could no longer remember what he felt so sad about.
Protests began to pour out of Ethan’s mouth the way the water was pouring down the canyon. “No!” he shouted. “The stuff about the Ghost Dance getting rid of white people—that’s all garbage. Listen, you know why I said we’d dance the Ghost Dance? There’s another part to it. It was supposed to bring dead Indians back to life. The Shoshone really believed in that when they danced it a hundred years ago.”
Jack frowned, having trouble understanding what Ethan was saying. When he squinted, Ethan was still double. Both Ethans looked like they were crying.
“I didn’t believe any of it—I knew it was all garbage—but I kept wishing the magic would work just once to bring back my mother and father. I was five when they died. I hardly remember them.”
Jack’s lips tried to shape the words, but his lips wouldn’t twist right. “Did—” he managed to say.
“Did it work? Maybe.”
Jack wanted to bend his fingers. He couldn’t—they were too cold.
“These last two nights, my parents came to me in dreams. They told me I should quit being so mad. But you kept making me mad, Jack.” Ethan pulled a dry sweatshirt out of his own pack and spread it across Jack’s legs. “Look, as soon as the water goes down, I’ll get you out of here. Don’t go to sleep! Jack—I want you to say something. Keep talking at me, man. Say a word. Any word.”
“Aperture,” Jack mumbled.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
Jack couldn’t think what it meant—it was the only word that had stumbled into his mind. It had something to do with cameras, maybe. The spinning of his brain was so violent, and the back of his skull hurt so much that each syllable dug into him like a dentist’s drill.
The two Ethans began to rub Jack’s arms, hard. “Listen, here’s my word. Fort Washakie. That’s where I live on the reservation. Now it’s your turn. Say something else.”
“Sorry,” Jack wanted to apologize, but the word got stuck behind his teeth, his chattering teeth. Sleep reached out to him with icy arms. Did he hear far-away thunder? No, it was Indian drums. If his lips hadn’t been so stiff with cold, he’d have smiled, because the warriors were coming to dance just for him.
The first warrior rode toward him on a tall horse. No, it wasn’t a warrior, it was his father, Steven, on Hal. Jack wanted to run to him, but Steven vanished slowly into the mist.
“Bring him back,” Jack tried to shout to Ethan, but when he opened his eyes, he knew why his father had disappeared. Ethan was making magic again. Raising the same cedar branch that had hurt Jack on the back of his head and smashed Steven’s fingers, Ethan slapped it hard against the rock wall behind him. Again and again he smacked it, limb against rock, until the wood splintered and broke into pieces.
Now the real warriors came, their faces painted into frightening masks. All of them rode white horses, ghost horses, and all in a row they galloped toward Jack until they ran over the top of him, but they didn’t hurt him. Their headdresses were made of feathers so bright they burned the backs of Jack’s eyes. “Please bring back my father,” he begged them. When he tried to get on his knees to beg, strong arms pushed him back down.
Then he smelled it. Cedar smoke. When he opened his eyes, the smoke stung them, but he could see that once more Ethan was working his magic. Ethan held flame in his fingers, flame that pushed against the green, wet foliage of the broken cedar branch. It didn’t burn, even though Ethan blew on it; it just smoked into a cloud that covered Jack and hid the ghost horses. He knew that was supposed to happen—the smoke would hide them and they would disappear, only to reappear when the Shoshone danced the Ghost Dance.
Next came a lone Shoshone woman riding a sleek white mare that reared in front of Jack. He was afraid the horse’s hoofs would crash down and break his skull just as the mustang had nearly crushed Ashley. Then his heart soared, because he knew this horse. It was Wild Spirit.
Stars pa
int Wild Spirit’s track,
They light a path through the velvet sky,
And a woman rides her back.
He could see stars painting a track through the velvet sky, but they were orange stars, sparks that flew up from the cedar branch Ethan waved as he muttered, “Can’t get the stupid thing to burn.”
And then a man and a woman came toward Jack. At first he thought the woman was Vivian Swallow, because she was dressed in white elk-skin beaded with bright patterns, the kind Vivian had worn. But when she got close, Jack didn’t recognize the woman or the man with her. He saw that their faces had no color. They were pale as—ghosts.
Jack tried to talk to them, but they reached out toward Ethan. He thought he heard them say, “Ethan,” but then he realized that it was he, Jack, who was speaking the name.
“I’m right here,” Ethan said. “But Jack, I gotta get you out of here. I can’t get a fire started and you’re breathing funny and your skin is white as a ghost. We’ve been here over an hour. I think you’re getting that—what do you call it—hypothermia.”
I saw your mother and father, Jack wanted to tell him. They were here, trying to touch you.
“The water level is lower,” Ethan was saying, “so I think—maybe—we can make it.” Ethan looked worried. “Can you hear me, Jack?”
Jack’s lips formed “yes.”
“I’ll blow up all these plastic bags like balloons and stick ’em in the backpacks. That’ll make them like life preservers. It might work.”
Jack drifted into his dreams again until he felt himself lifted roughly by Ethan.
“I’m trying to get this sweatshirt on you. Jeez, can’t you help at all? Jack, I need you to wake up!”
Jack felt his left arm seized and jammed through the sleeve of the sweatshirt. Then his right arm. The jolt cleared his head a little.
“Open your eyes,” Ethan ordered. “Look at me! I’m gonna jump into the water and then I’ll pull you off this ledge, hear?
You gotta hang your arms around my neck so I can carry you. You gotta hold on.”
“OK,” Jack whispered around the throbbing inside his head.
He heard a splash. Then he felt himself dragged by the hands until he toppled over the edge of the rock ledge. The shock of water spluttering into his mouth sent him into a fit of coughing. “Why’d you do that?” he demanded of Ethan.
“Good! You’re talking. Give me your hands, and don’t fight me.” Ethan slung Jack across his back, pulling Jack’s wrists forward so that his arms draped across Ethan’s shoulders. “Hang on.”
One inflated backpack floated in front of Ethan, the other swung out behind Jack. Like the backpacks, Jack was floating, too, belly down, in the swollen Virgin River, his head leaning against Ethan’s. This time his dreams were sweet and comforting. No more ghosts. Ethan’s grunts and yells sometimes penetrated the dreams, as Ethan floundered, stepping into a hole or tripping on a submerged rock. Once Ethan jerked Jack’s wrist forward and said, “Is your watch waterproof? If it’s telling the right time, we’ve been slogging along like this for more than an hour. The current helps. It’s pushing us forward.”
“Are you swimming?” Jack asked drowsily.
“No, you jerk, I’m walking. How could I swim with you on my back? Anyway, I don’t know how to swim.”
“Really?” That surprising bit of information worked its way into Jack’s consciousness. “Are you saving my life?” he asked next.
“Yeah, man, you got it,” Ethan panted. “Like in the Ghost Dance, I’m bringing a dead person back to life.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Up ahead!” Ethan cried. “I see people! Jack—we made it!”
“Cold,” Jack mumbled.
“I know. So am I, and my back’s killing me. Look, I need you to try to walk. The water’s not so deep here, and you’re heavy. Come on, move your legs. Right. Left. Right.”
Rocks bumped against the sides of Jack’s sneakers when Ethan stood him upright. As the canyon walls opened wider, the water level had gone down so that it was no more than waist deep. Placing as much weight on his feet as he could, Jack tried to stand, but his legs wouldn’t hold him. They felt like two poles of ice that were no longer legs. His whole body had become stone. Ahead of him, he could see a kaleidoscope of colors in the distance, flashing lights that were as bright as red and blue suns.
“Hey! Over here!” Ethan shouted. He gave a loud, trilling Indian cry and waved an arm.
“Here,” Jack whispered.
There was an eruption of what sounded like applause. Lifting his head, Jack saw dozens of people lined along the walkway that led to the mouth of The Narrows, people in yellow plastic ponchos and ranger uniforms. It was still hard for him to put sights and sounds together; it was as if images had been broken into pieces and scattered on the ground. But a voice—his mother’s voice—pierced his consciousness.
“Jack! Jack! Are you all right?”
In his haze, Jack saw his mother’s pale face, saw her arms reach for him, but two medics grabbed him first and began to carry him quickly to the riverbank. Another medic approached Ethan, but Jack could hear him say, “I made it all the way down. I can walk the rest of the way.”
Water churned around Jack and then he saw rocks and the steps that led to the top of the trail. More people, more colors, more sounds fell on him like raindrops. “Mom?” he asked weakly.
“I’m right here. I’m right beside you,” Olivia cried. Her voice sounded near and far at the same time, as if she were speaking inside a bubble. Was she crying? Jack tried to put the pieces together, but they came out all wrong, like a Picasso painting he’d seen in a book at school.
“Dad—where?”
He felt his mother’s hand rest lightly against his cheek. “He’s all right, Jack. He’s in an ambulance.”
“Ambulance?” Once again, nausea rose in Jack’s throat in a wave that almost choked him.
“He’s banged up, but he’s OK. He broke some fingers. Jack—where do you hurt?”
“My head.”
The two medics had him on a stretcher now, but they were moving too fast for Jack to see anything except a blur of tall cliffs and some unknown people’s midriffs.
“You’re going to have to step back, ma’am,” he heard one of the medics say. “We’ve got to get an IV into him. Ned, his body temp’s way too low.
Get that heated blanket on him, and fast.”
“Mom—” Jack croaked.
“I’m right here. Ashley’s here, too. And Summer. Everything will be all right now. You’re going to go to the hospital. You’re safe.”
“Ethan—” Jack swallowed, trying to get the words out. “He saved me.”
His mother’s face appeared in the sky over him. He couldn’t really make it out except that her curly hair caught the sun like tiny shining spirals. “I know,” he heard her say. “I know.” And then Jack’s lids drooped, and he drifted once more into darkness.
When he opened his eyes, he was in a pale green room with a tiny window that showed nothing but a square of blue sky. A clear tube snaked out of his wrist, and the sheets underneath him felt scratchy against his skin. Blinking, he slowly looked around. His mother dozed in an orange vinyl chair, her head bent to one side and her lips slightly parted. Beside her, with two fingers curved in metal splints, sat his dad, and to his right Jack saw Summer, Ashley, and Ethan hunched in three smaller chairs, watching what sounded like the Simpsons coming from a television hanging on a wall. He was in a hospital. Jack blinked again.
“Well, look who finally decided to join us,” his father said.
His mother jolted upright. Leaning over, she kissed his forehead and smiled. Jack had never seen his mother look so old; dark half-moons smudged the skin beneath her eyes, and her face was as pale as a bleached sheet. The fine wrinkles around her mouth seemed deeper, as if worry had carved them. “Honey, how do you feel?” she asked softly. “How’s your head?”
“My head?” Jack reached u
p and gingerly touched the back of his neck. He could still feel a dull throb. “It hurts. What happened?”
“What happened?” Ashley squeaked. She was on her feet, clamoring on the other side of Jack’s bed. “You about scared us all to death. Mom and me and Summer were over at the Chloride Canyon ’cause Summer figured out what was wrong with the ghost horses. I mean, she told Mom and then Mom checked and sure enough, that was the reason.”
“She did?” Jack began, but Ashley could not be stopped. A torrent of words as fast as the water in The Narrows spilled out of her mouth.
“And then one of the guys comes roaring up in his pickup and tells Mom that he heard there was a flash flood at Zion, and didn’t she say that her family was hiking up there today? Man, you should have seen her, Jack. Mom drove about a hundred miles an hour. We must have made it from the Chloride Canyon to the park in ten minutes!”
“Ashley, I did not go a hundred miles an hour! Maybe it seemed that way—” Olivia blushed. “Well, yes, I was speeding, but no more than ten miles over the limit. Honest!”
“Uh-huh.” Ashley grinned. “And then Mom jumps out of the car and runs all the way up the trail, and Summer and I tried, but we couldn’t keep up ’cause Mom kept running. When we finally caught up with her, Mom was trying to go into the river, but the rangers wouldn’t let her because they said it was too dangerous, and it wouldn’t help anybody if she drowned. And then later Dad came floating down, but you and Ethan were still gone, and—”
“Whoa, Ashley, slow down. Jack’s had a concussion, you know,” Steven told her, smiling. A dark bruise was beginning to form on Steven’s brow right above his eye, and a gauze-and-adhesive bandage circled his forearm. He walked over and settled on the edge of the hospital bed, then with his good hand lightly touched the top of Jack’s head.
“I’m so glad you’re OK, Dad. When you got swept away….” Suddenly, Jack couldn’t finish. Shadowy pictures of what had happened came and went through him, like a deck of cards with pictures being flipped behind his eyelids. Yet one image burned as if his mind had been branded, and that was of his father, arms flailing, snatched away by a wall of churning water. His dad could have died. They all could have.
Ghost Horses Page 9