In the Heart of the Canyon (16 page)

“Stay to the left as far as you dare!” JT shouted. On the footbridge ahead of them, hikers were waving their arms and pointing to the dog, who was being carried toward the cliffs. And then, just when it looked as though he was going to slam straight into the ancient wall of pre-Cambrian rock, the invisible current swirled just enough to the right to carry him down under the footbridge.

“Go right!” JT shouted, but it was pretty much beyond their control at this point. JT thought he knew every river-foot of this canyon, but he’d forgotten that just beyond the footbridge, the canyon wall dropped off suddenly to a flat area beyond. Please, he thought, please let there be a nice little eddy. Please let the eddy snag the dog. Please let us all end up on this second beach with its access to the Bright Angel Trail and those nice hikers waiting back up at the boat beach.

But whatever eddy might have existed did not do its job, and the dog continued floating straight down the middle of the river, stick in mouth.

“Switch!” yelled Dixie, and with lightning speed they traded places. JT grabbed the oars but remained on his feet to put the full weight of his torso into each push, because if they didn’t catch up to the dog by the end of this second beach, they would have Pipe Creek Rapid to contend with. It wasn’t a big rapid, but it was big enough to threaten a dog without a life jacket.

The beach zoomed past. A little island zoomed past. And then the river carried them around a bend, and he could hear the lower frequency of the rapid.

They skittered through the waves, Dixie standing at the helm, shifting to keep her balance. He knew there was a strong eddy coming up at the bottom on the right, so he rowed as hard as he could to stay left, and he was wondering how far down this damn river he was going to go in search of the dog—was he some kind of Ahab or Colonel Kurtz?—when he looked to the right and there, being gently carried upstream in the eddy, was Blender.

JT had just enough time to pull into the small camp below the eddy. Once they hit shore, he yanked free a sleeping pad, tossed it into the water, flopped on top of it, and paddled out to get the dog—who, after all of this, still held the stick clenched in his teeth. His nostrils flared, and his dark eyes regarded JT with an immense sense of calm, as though JT were completely, unquestionably in tune with him, about things in general but specifically about this sixteen-inch stick, which was, as JT must know, the be-all and end-all of life itself; so that when JT grabbed hold of the dog’s bandanna and paddled back to the beach and the dog felt solid ground under his feet, he did not run about and sniff, or dance for JT’s approval, but rather sat himself upon the sand, head high, stick in mouth, proud of a job well done.

Within a short time the other boats arrived. First out was Sam, who threw himself upon the dog. Jill and Mark followed, looking anxious. Matthew remained in the boat. Slowly the others disembarked and straggled onto the cobbly beach.

“If you’re wondering, he’s in time-out,” Mark declared.

“Who?” asked JT.

“Matthew! For throwing the stick!”

JT looked over at Dixie’s boat, where Matthew sat with his back to them.

“You don’t need to do that,” said JT.

“By golly,” said Mark, “he can’t keep himself out of trouble.”

“He did what any kid would do,” said JT, who hated to see people punished (unless by his own doing) on one of his trips. Still, he didn’t like to go against parents’ directives, either.

“Mark wouldn’t want to miss an opportunity to discipline his kid, though,” Jill remarked. She tilted her head and began violently detangling her hair with her fingers.

JT’s skin prickled; worse than anything was siding with a wife.

Peter came up, followed by Dixie.

“Is this trip jinxed?” she demanded. “Did we piss off Odwalla?”

“Who’s Odwalla?” asked Evelyn.

“The river goddess,” Dixie informed her, as matter-of-factly as a nun.
Who made the earth? God made the earth
. “Like, what did we do wrong to deserve this?”

Abo looked down, scratched the back of his neck. “It’s just a dog, Dixie.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“You act like he’s Darth Vader.”

“Well,
sorry
if I’m not thrilled to have the dog along for the rest of the trip,” said Dixie. “I told you guys. I told you. Nobody ever listens to me.” She stalked back to her boat, waded in a few feet, and squatted.

“Why is Dixie upset?” Jill asked JT.

JT ran his hands through his hair and didn’t answer. Because frankly it didn’t make a lot of sense to him, what she had against this dog.

Just then, Ruth, dressed head to toe in the beige microfiber that had become her uniform for this trip, came limping across the sand. She knelt on her good leg, and the dog sensed her and came trotting over and sat, panting, so that Ruth could pat him.

“Lloyd,” Ruth called, over her shoulder. “Look who survived.”

Lloyd was bent over his day bag. “I’d be fine if I could find my keys,” he replied.

“Come on, guys,” said JT to the group. “Lets fix lunch.”

But Mitchell shook out his map. “I think,” he began, “if you can make it up over this ledge, you can connect with Bright Angel.”

JT assumed Mitchell was confused about something, and he didn’t want to take the time to understand his confusion. He ignored Mitchell and headed for the boats to haul out the lunch supplies.

“Do you want me to go?” Mitchell offered, traipsing behind.

“Huh?”

“The dog—someone’s going to take him back up to Phantom, right?”

JT stared at the man. A grizzly half-inch stubble had grown in, and his clay-colored shirt hung untucked over his dark swim trunks. JT repositioned his visor. “Say what?”

“Well, look,” said Mitchell, shaking the map out.

JT squinted at Mitchell—or rather, at Mitchell’s large dark sunglasses. “You can’t get to Phantom from here.”

“Sure you can,” said Mitchell. “See,” and he pointed to some dense contour lines on the map.

But JT didn’t take his eyes off Mitchell’s sunglasses. “Mitchell, are you second-guessing me?”

“I’m just consulting a map is all.”

“Well, consult all you want,” said JT. “There’s no way to get to Phantom from here.”

“Then what do you propose to do with the dog?”

“That’s easy,” said JT. “The dog’s on for the duration.”

Mitchell expelled a little puff of air.

“That’s right,” said JT, as though needing to convince himself as well. “I’m certainly not going to make one of us hike him out at Havasu.”

“What about Hermit?”

JT didn’t answer. Theoretically, it would be possible for someone to hike him out at Hermit Creek, but the likelihood of finding a willing hiker now seemed all too remote. Besides, chasing the dog on this last jaunt from Phantom through Pipe Creek had crystallized something in
him, and he didn’t like to think of it in terms of ownership, but that’s what it was when you came right down to it: the now-clear assumption that the dog was his and would be his, not just now but long after this trip was over. He saw himself putting up a new fence in his backyard, Colin’s old sandbox a good place to dig.

“A response would be in order,” said Mitchell.

Realizing that they were halfway through their journey and that it was time to level with Mitchell, JT drew him aside. For once, he took off his own glasses, because even though the bright noonday sun burned his retinas, he wanted Mitchell to look straight into his eyes.

“What do you have against me, anyway?” Mitchell began. “You’ve had it in for me from the start. Are you going to spell it out or just keep pissing me off?”

“Shut up, Mitchell,” said JT.

To his surprise, Mitchell fell silent.

“Okay now,” JT said, “you’ve got two options, Mitchell. One, you can stay with us, or two, you can find another trip for the next seven days. That’s pretty simple, don’t you think, Mitchell? Now I suspect the last thing you want to do at this point is take any advice from me, but I’m your Trip Leader, and that’s my job, and so I’m going to advise you to choose option number one and stick with us. And you know why? Because if you don’t, you’re going to look back on this as the biggest missed opportunity of your life. Because it’s not about the dog, Mitchell. It’s about learning to let go.”

Mitchell folded his arms over his broad chest. His forearms were furred with silvery hairs, which glinted in parallel lines, as though combed.

“And if you stay with us, I promise you two things,” JT went on. “Number one, forget about the allergies. Lena’s not going to go into anaphylactic shock, unless she cuddles up with the dog, which I don’t think she’s inclined to do.”

Mitchell spat into the sand.

“Stay with me, Mitchell,” JT warned, “because here comes promise number two: I guarantee you that book you’re writing is going to be a
hell of a lot better
with
a dog than
without
. Are you with me here? Think about the opportunities, Mitchell. What would John Wesley Powell have done? You think he would have ditched the dog?”

The riddle briefly tempered Mitchell’s fury.

“Hardly a question you really have to ask,” JT said. “Now grow up, Mitchell, and let yourself have some fun. Don’t take this trip so seriously. Kid around. Be nice. People want to like you, Mitchell. They really do.”

It was one of the toughest and longest lectures JT had ever given one of his passengers, more words than he’d said at one time in he couldn’t remember how long, and it would not have surprised him if, when the next group of boats came down, Mitchell and Lena invited themselves on board and huffed good-bye, good riddance, once and for all, to JT and crew. But JT didn’t wait around to see what Mitchell was going to do. They were two miles below Phantom Ranch on Day Six of their trip. He had a dog, a wounded geriatric, an Alzheimer’s patient, a morbidly obese teenager, Cain and Abel—and now a pathological copilot he might have just incensed beyond hope. It was at least 115 degrees. He had lunch to prepare and bandages to change; he was responsible for making sure twelve people kept themselves well-enough hydrated so as not to collapse in this heat. He’d done what he could to send the dog on his way, but the dog was here to stay.

As he’d just told Mitchell, it would make for a much better story someday.

W
hile JT was off with Mitchell and everyone else was fussing over the dog, Evelyn uncapped her Nalgene and allowed herself four small sips of water.

As of today, Evelyn had started rationing. Yes, she’d heard JT’s mandate about everyone drinking enough, but she was confident that she knew her own personal homeostasis well enough to gauge the minimum amount of water necessary to keep herself hydrated without having to suffer a full bladder. JT was recommending a liter every four hours; Evelyn decided she could halve that amount without running any health risks.

It was the simplest of equations:

And so today she’d made it from breakfast to lunch on just half a liter. Not being in such intense pain, she found it easier to go. And to check for dehydration, she pressed her thumb to the inside of her forearm, making sure that her flesh bounced back readily. It did. She congratulated herself on her methodology.

Apart from her Problem, though, Evelyn was having a fine time on the trip. She’d seen a peregrine falcon and a California condor, a flock
of wild turkeys and too many hawks to keep track of. She’d seen bighorn sheep grazing by the side of the river and funny little mice with big ears scurrying across the sand at dawn. She’d memorized all the layers of rock.

Best of all, she was making friends. Last night, for instance, Jill had invited her to eat with the family, and she’d spent the whole time telling them about her research, which they listened to more closely than her students ever did. The guides in particular were very nice, especially the way they answered her questions so patiently.
Does it ever snow down here? How did that rock get out in the middle of the river? Why did the Anasazi build the granaries so high? What are they going to do about all that nuisance tamarisk? How do you know when the water levels are going to rise? Is the dam really going to burst someday?

She made sure to take copious notes, writing in her journal at the end of each afternoon while the others drank. (That was the one thing about this trip that she disapproved of, the amount of alcohol consumed, and not just by the passengers but by the guides themselves, because shouldn’t they be watching out for the rest of them? Weren’t they the designated drivers?) Julian would be interested in hearing about the size of the trout; he liked to fish. And her friends over in the botany department would want details about the flora and fauna. She kept a numerical log of each day’s photos too, so she would know just where a particular photo was taken—she didn’t want to be one of those people who came back from vacation with a lot of pretty pictures and nothing informative to say about them!