River Thunder

by Will Hobbs

  When Troy and I found our own place to stand, a little ways off from Canyon Magic, I finally looked downstream to see what the roar was all about. “Omigosh,” I whispered to Troy. “It’s so huge, and so long.”

  As if to accentuate the natural drama of the place, the dark walls of the Inner Gorge began their menacing rise from the foot of the rapid.

  Troy pointed. “There’s a center run down the left side of that huge tongue. Take a look at the size of the waves down there on the right, especially against the wall!”

  I brought my eyes back to the brink of the rapid. The key feature along the brink was a boulder that had to be the size of a dump truck. A quarter of the way into the river from the left shore, it was all submerged except for its long crown showing like a whale’s back. The hole on the boulder’s downstream side was the nastiest we’d seen yet.

  If I could row off the tongue and catch the downstream edge of that big hole without dropping into it …

  “How are you guys doing?” asked a woman’s voice. It was the woman with the straw hat. I’d been right back at House Rock—she wasn’t any bigger than me. Brown eyes, dark skin, most likely in her late twenties, real outgoing.

  Simultaneously Troy answered, “Doing good,” and I answered, “Somewhat overwhelmed at the moment.”

  “My name’s Kit,” she said, and we introduced ourselves.

  “Only the two boats?”

  “That’s us,” I replied.

  “Your sixteen-footers are so maneuverable. Ours carry so much weight … normally it’s hard for the river to turn them over, but these aren’t normal times.”

  Troy said, “We saw a lot of helicopters yesterday, when we were at the Little Colorado. Any idea what’s going on?”

  “We’ve got a two-way radio. The Park Service was evacuating all the passengers and crew from a commercial trip—a motor rig flipped in that new hole in Nankoweap.”

  “Must’ve happened right behind us.”

  She nodded. “Nanko’s always been a nothing. But we’re looking at 70,000 cubic feet per second right now, and the river’s rewriting the book. We’re not paying any attention to the ratings of the rapids. Like Mile 36—another nothing, but it’s a death trap at these levels.”

  I could feel Troy’s anger rising before he spoke. “Seventy thousand! Those guys at the dam ought to be hung up by their thumbs.”

  “I hear you, but at the same time, the guides who are down here for this wouldn’t trade it for the world. This is the real Colorado, not the one the dam has been holding in check all these years. You won’t catch us smiling—too much responsibility—but secretly we’re kind of glad to be here!”

  “Interesting.”

  “Say, we should get going, but you guys are welcome to sandwich between our rafts if you’d like. Don’t mean to dampen your wilderness experience, but you might want to consider it.”

  “Sure we’ll run with you,” I said. “Thanks for the cover. Can you tell us if we’ll be able to find any camps down in the gorge?”

  “Cremation shouldn’t be flooded—there’s all kinds of high ground there. It comes up on the left shortly before Mile 86. Cremation is the last camp before Phantom Ranch. There’s a separate small camp on the downstream end.”

  “We’ll take it,” I said. “Thanks for that, too.”

  As we returned to the boats, Pug asked anxiously, “What’s the drill, Troy?”

  “Runnin’ with Canyon Magic. They’re going to cover us.”

  “My mother thanks them,” Adam squealed from the front of our boat.

  “Tighten the cinches on your life jacket,” I told him. “And keep low.”

  “I’ll keep my head down, like a victim of the guillotine. I wasn’t planning on watching. I have a plan, wanna see it?”

  He unclipped the bail bucket and put it over his head.

  “Adam, remember, if you’re washed away from the boat, stay on your back and fend off rocks and stuff with your feet. If you get caught up by a rope, remember you’ve got that knife clipped on your life jacket.”

  His voice came muffled from inside the bucket. “Yes, and remember to breathe air, not water. What else? First pants, then shoes. Lastly, always carry a litter bag in your car—if it gets full, you can always toss it out the window.”

  “Where’d you learn that?”

  “In Crystal, last year,” he replied, clipping the bail bucket back on its carabiner. “But we aren’t going to talk about that.”

  “Definitely not. Now, if we swamp with water, I’ll need you to bail that weight out of the boat so I can keep rowing. But don’t bail until I say bail. Just keep hanging on. It’s more important to keep you in the raft.”

  Troy motioned me over with a flip of his head. “Whatcha gonna do, Jessie?”

  “My ‘thing,’ ” I said. I said it apprehensively. I was afraid of how he might react.

  “I’m glad one of us has a plan.” Troy didn’t look too good.

  “C’mon, you got one.”

  He seemed so unsure of himself all of a sudden. “Have a good run,” I told him. “Keep your sunny side up.”

  A couple of minutes later, Troy pushed off to follow Canyon Magic’s third raft, which was rowed by the young boatman with the earring and headband. His was the raft carrying gear only, no passengers. The Hired Gun followed him upstream to the head of the eddy.

  In turn, we followed Troy. A couple of strong strokes and the Canyon Wren was into the current and off to the races. My tongue all of a sudden felt dry as a stick of beef jerky. I realized I’d forgotten to get a drink of water at the shore, the way I usually did. Now Star was offering it, but if I stopped rowing, even for a few seconds, I’d lose my position behind Troy and mess up the tall lady with the scarf who was rowing behind me.

  Kit was leading the whole parade. I felt so much more secure for knowing she was personally looking out for us, at least on this one. I took a couple of deep breaths, tuned out the River Thunder as best I could, and tried to visualize my run as I kept pushing on the oars. I was keeping the bow pointed directly downstream so I had a clear view of what the three Canyon Magic boats in front were going to do.

  Kit was getting close to the brink. Now she stood for her last look. She was to the right of the whale’s back and left of center on the river. Now she sat down, very deliberately, and cocked the boat with the stern downstream. She started to pull, and within a half dozen strokes she’d angled off hard to the left.

  And disappeared over the edge.

  All I could see beyond the horizon line were rooster tails spitting up from below, everywhere across the brink except at the center, where the tongue would be.

  To my surprise, the second boatman wasn’t going to follow Kit’s lead and use the Scoot. He pushed frontward over the edge, down what must be the left side of the tongue.

  The young guy with the earring did the same thing.

  Troy, fifty yards ahead of me, stood up to scout.

  I should’ve been right behind Kit, I realized. I could have copied where and when she made her cut. Now I was going to be completely on my own, trying to pick my spot and time my move.

  Should I just follow Troy?

  I caught a glimpse of Star’s and Adam’s eyes turned around to look at mine. I kept focused on the horizon line, and the whale’s back, and kept jockeying for position. I remembered what the big current had done to me in House Rock. I had to get off the tongue.

  Troy dropped from sight.

  I stood up to see what I could see. I couldn’t see anything quite yet. Keep your nerve … you’ve still got a few seconds.

  At last I could see down the tongue, and saw it bending to the right and into all the worst water. On my left, I could see the gargantuan hole boiling in the lee of the whale’s back. It was recirculating so viciously, it might not release a boat after a flip. Cut too sharp, Jessie, and you’ll drop the raft right into that keeper.

  I sat down, spun the stern downstream, and started rowing with the curre
nt, hard to the left. We were building up speed, lots of speed.

  We smacked through the big lateral wave pouring off the whale’s back. Over my shoulder, I had an eye on the downstream edge of the hole.

  Stop pulling for a second or you’ll row yourself right into the hole.

  Okay, row!

  We were arrested for just a second by the boiling edge of the recirculating water. Good! I pivoted the raft, taking advantage of the braking action of the turbulence. It wasn’t strong enough to pull us back into the big hole, but it would allow me to rest for a second, pull a few strokes to the left, and line up for the rest of the rapid.

  “Flip!” Adam yelled.

  I thought he was talking about us. But we weren’t in any danger at the moment.

  He was pointing downstream, way over to the right. “Troy!” he yelled. “He just went over.”

  I caught a glimpse downstream of the black underside of Troy’s raft. I was back in the current now, shooting down the left center of Hance among big rolling waves, where I’d hoped we’d be. I had the bow pointed downstream, and all I had to do was keep making adjustments without getting my blades too deep.

  “Bail!” I hollered. “Bail!”

  Chapter

  12

  Cremation camp was aptly named. We were nine miles into the Inner Gorge and surrounded by its furnace-black, bristling walls. In no way resembling the sheer, clean cliffs of Marble Canyon, these walls were fractured into a million knife edges, and so steep it was impossible to see up and out to all the slopes and cliffs above.

  The river here was narrow and unimaginably deep. No River Thunder to be heard, only the rush and gurgle from the interplay of current and whirlpools. The wavy green streamers offshore were the tops of feathery tamarisks drowned along the former waterline.

  Rita appeared and announced that we had been invited by Canyon Magic to join them for hors d’oeuvres and also for dinner. “Well, did you accept?” Pug asked.

  Rita went bug-eyed. “Are you crazy? After that flip, you think I wanna cook? Let’s get going!”

  For a minute, we thought that Troy was going to pass. Understandably enough, he was still brooding. He was sitting on a lawn chair, reading the mile-by-mile guide, undoubtedly dwelling on the prospect of the four Big Drops we had to face in the next day or two: Horn Creek, Granite, Hermit, and especially Crystal.

  “Aliens,” he muttered. “What have they got that we haven’t got?”

  “Beer!” Pug told him. “Troy, they have beer. After what we’ve been through—”

  “Talked me into it,” Troy said good-naturedly, with a measure of reluctance still showing.

  We trooped over to the other camp. It did feel strange to suddenly be among twenty-one people we didn’t know.

  It was also highly embarrassing for me. Their passengers—mostly fit-looking people in their forties and fifties—started swarming all over me like I was a rock star or something. Some of them had apparently seen my run in Hance, and the ones who hadn’t obviously had heard all about it. Before I knew what was happening I was being handed a beer, a plate full of hors d’oeuvres, and a truckload of adulation. “Who are you?” “Where are you from?” “How did you do that?” “How long have you been rowing?” “How old are you?”

  I saw Kit’s straw hat from the corner of my eye. She had a grin on her face. I was trying to answer as calmly and as quietly as I could, picking the ones I’d answer—not my age—and playing it all down. I knew that Troy, though he was half facing away, was hearing all of this.

  I confessed right away to my flip on our second day. “Where?” “How?” They wanted to know everything, especially the women did.

  Though they were sneaking glances at Troy, they seemed to know you don’t walk up to somebody who’s flipped in the last couple of hours and ask all about it.

  I was keeping my voice low and looking around for a way to get away. Troy was sucking on a beer less than twenty feet away and glancing occasionally at me. He and Pug were in the company of three of Canyon Magic’s boatmen—the Indian guy with the flashy streak in his hair, the young guy with the earring, and an older, barrel-chested guy with a mustache and loose-fitting white cotton trousers.

  The three professional boatmen were keeping an eye on my situation, and seemed to be quietly amused by it. A fourth, with a full, dark beard and wearing a turquoise T-shirt with stylized black lizards, was visiting with a cluster of their customers. The boatmen, I noticed, weren’t drinking—only the customers.

  A huge gust of wind suddenly came up and blew paper plates around, and sand in everyone’s beer, including mine.

  Pug was gesticulating wildly, ostensibly comparing notes with the young boatman who’d also flipped in Hance. Another gust of wind came up and blew a life jacket, down at their boats, into the water. The boatman with the lizard T-shirt ran down the beach to grab it.

  Somebody yelled something about a tent, and I was suddenly saved from the little mob around me. A couple of people were pointing. I did a huge double-take when I saw what they were pointing at. Floating upstream on the eddy in a perfectly upright position was a yellow dome tent.

  “Whose tent?” Kit yelled, and one of the tourists shouted, “Where’s my camera?”

  Nobody seemed to know whose tent it was, but virtually every one of those commercial passengers, as well as the boatman in the cotton trousers, went sprinting for their cameras. In half a minute most of them were back, followed by the others. Everybody was cheering and generally going crazy at the odd sight of the tent out on the river. On all sides, shutters were whirring. Somebody yelled, “What’s the brand name? Whoever gets the best picture can sell it to their catalog! Bet you anything it’ll wind up on the cover!”

  The tent was cooperating admirably with the photographers. It floated all the way up to the head of the eddy before it went down in a big boil, never to be seen again.

  Then the guides got serious about figuring out whose tent it was.

  Unfortunately it was Troy’s. He announced, “I thought we’d try it out for a raft,” but his joke sank like the tent. Then he said, “I’d rather sleep out, anyway.”

  It wasn’t Troy’s day. A couple of minutes after that, he slipped back to our camp.

  I watched him go, and I set aside the beer in my hand. I knew better than to go after him. Suddenly I didn’t feel like celebrating, and I sure didn’t want to get tipsy and start saying stupid things around these people.

  Kit had been watching me and pulled me away from all the commotion. She gave me a can of cold fruit juice and invited me onto her raft. She said it was where she entertained and also where she slept. “Too bad about your friend,” she said. “Sometimes egos bruise easily on the river. There’s so much at stake.”

  “He’ll be all right,” I said, unconvinced. I thanked her for helping us.

  “I’m sorry you got mobbed just now. I should have seen it coming. They tend to treat us like celebrities sometimes, especially the women guides. It amazes some people that women can row whitewater. I tell them it isn’t as exceptional as they think it is. So how old are you, Jessie?”

  “Almost seventeen.”

  “Good for you. I was seventeen when I started rowing in California, on the Kern. The Kern was my neighborhood river—I grew up in Bakersfield. After that I did some professional guiding on Idaho rivers, but of course I kept hearing about the Grand—”

  “How long have you been working down here?”

  “Seven seasons. I got my degree in geology from Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff—goes perfect with all the interpretation we do for our passengers. Around twenty percent of the rowing guides down here now are women.”

  “How many times have you rowed the Canyon?”

  “This is my thirty-first trip. I’m down here four to five months out of the year. For me, the Canyon is the real world, not the other way around. It’s an unbelievable amount of work, but the people you work with are absolutely the greatest—so supportive. My imag
e of heaven is the circular Grand Canyon. You get to the end and you’re back at the beginning.”

  She read me like a book. She said, “You love it down here, don’t you?”

  “I really do,” I told her.

  “It shows. Where did you learn your downstream ferry?”

  “What’s that?”

  “The move you and I both used in Hance.”

  I smiled. “So that’s what you call it! I learned it from watching you in House Rock. I’d never seen it before.”

  “That’s remarkable! That’s a big-time move, a big-water move, and most of the private runners who come here from smaller rivers don’t bring it with them.”

  By the time we ate, it was by the light of the nearly full moon. Troy didn’t show. As we were finishing our dessert, the camp was suddenly invaded by mice. They were getting into everything, even running up the propane hoses onto the tables. People were shrieking and laughing and trying to chase them away. The guide with the lizard T-shirt and the big beard was saying it was because the beaches are used so heavily. People drop little bits of food on the ground, and the mouse population explodes. “Bad news for us,” he said, “but great for the snakes and the ringtails.”

  Someone asked what a ringtail was. “Picture a small, slender raccoon—ringtails are in that family. They’ve got a catlike face, huge eyes for night vision, oversized ears, and enormous tails that have alternating black and white rings. Prospectors in the Canyon used to domesticate ’em to mouse their cabins.”

  Not ten minutes later, as if on cue, two ringtails appeared out of the tamarisks. They were much more interested in the garbage bucket at the edge of the kitchen than they were in the mice. The guide removed the bucket, but the ringtails stayed to perform. They played in the tammies, whisking their tails, chasing each other from branch to branch like squirrels.

  I looked around at all the people and watched them enjoying the wildlife show. Pug and Star were sitting together whispering, almost like they were a couple, and Rita and Adam were laughing about something. It occurred to me that the Big Fella had a whale-sized crush on Star, and that the Thief of Brooklyn and the former Ninja were also enjoying each other’s company.