In the Heart of the Canyon (25 page)

Still: she’d been eighteen. Sam was twelve. And JT should have checked with them first. She felt that wobbly feeling again. If they had any chance to stop Sam, they would have to decide quickly.

“What do
you
think?” she asked Mark. She felt shy doing this, as though it were their first major decision together. Their house, their friends, their whole life in Salt Lake City seemed very, very far away.

“It’s just that there isn’t a lot of room for miscalculation,” Mark said. “Dixie? Is this safe?”

Dixie had no qualms. “JT wouldn’t take just anyone up there,” she told Jill and Mark. “He’s been watching Sam the whole trip. Sam’s a coordinated kid. He’ll be fine. And JT’s done it a million times. He knows this spot like the back of his hand.” She paused to wave at Sam. “Of course, it’s up to you and Mark. But I’d trust JT.”

That was the thing, Jill thought. You had to trust the guides. You had to trust them when they told you
not
to do something; but you also had to trust them when they gave you the go-ahead—not just because it was safe in their eyes, but because they knew you’d be better off for having done it.

“I think it’s okay, then,” said Mark.

“I think it’s okay too,” she said. And she found his hand and squeezed it.

Everybody was looking up now. JT had stepped back, and Sam stood poised at the edge of the lip. Jill waved to him. He wrung his hands at his side. She thought of changing her mind. Then Sam took a small step back and leapt straight out.

A collective gasp rose from the group.

Sam flailed in the air before hitting the water dead smack in the middle of the pool. The impact sealed in upon itself. The surface foamed; ripples rolled swiftly to the edges of the basin and then back in upon themselves. And then, five feet from the bull’s-eye, the water broke and Sam’s head popped up, his eyes wide with shock as he sculled about in a moment of disorientation before spotting the group
on the nearby ledge. He swam toward them, and Dixie leaned over and extended an arm.

“Come on up quick, so JT can jump!” and she hoisted the boy up onto the ledge. His teeth chattered as he huddled against Dixie, and Jill had the good sense not to put her arms around him at this time. They all craned their necks again, and there went JT, falling in a half-seated position, hitting the water thuddishly in the exact same spot as Sam. Within seconds his head emerged and he gave it a shake, and with three strong breaststrokes he swam to the edge of the rock, where both Dixie and Sam extended their arms.

“So what’d you think, kiddo?” said JT, water dripping from his baggy shorts. It was clear he viewed Sam as a member of an exclusive club now.

“It was pretty cool,” said Sam nonchalantly. “Didn’t you want to go, Matthew?”

“No,” said Matthew. “I don’t like heights.” And Jill was flabbergasted at this level of maturity in her son, that he wouldn’t try to go just because his younger brother had gone.

“Grab your water bottles, gang,” JT called out. “Fun’s over. Keep up the pace. We still have some river miles to make when we get back.”

“Were you scared?” Mark asked Sam as they headed down the trail.

“Nope.”

“What was JT saying up there?”

“He was telling me to hold on to the family jewels,” Sam said, with dignity and pride.

Jill had to think a moment, to figure out the meaning.

“And did you?” Mark asked Sam, man to man.

“Yup.”

“Good,” said Mark, tousling the boy’s head.

Up ahead, Susan, Evelyn, and Mitchell stayed close together. Jill sensed they were talking about her and Mark and their decision to let Sam jump. She could understand Evelyn and Mitchell being quick to condemn, but she was a little mystified by Susan. After all that wine they’d drunk together, she thought they were in agreement on most
issues. She felt a little betrayed, like she did whenever Mark voted Republican.

The hell with them, she thought. They don’t know Sam like we do.

“Were we crazy?” she asked Mark as they ducked through the leafy thicket of wild grape.

“Nah,” said Mark. “Sam was great.”

Jill smiled. “He was, wasn’t he?”

“It meant a lot to him. If we made him come down, think how humiliated he’d have been. You can’t do that to your kid. Not on the river. Not at age twelve.”

“You can if it’s a mile high.”

“But it wasn’t.”

“No, it wasn’t. I really went by what Dixie said,” said Jill, feeling a weight suddenly lifting. “I figured if JT thought it was safe, then it was safe. But I don’t think some of the others felt that way.”

“That’s their problem, then,” Mark declared, and it gave her a thrill to hear him say that. If they’d not been in such a rush to get back, if they’d not been in such a heavily used area, Jill would have grabbed her husband’s hand and dragged him off behind a tree for the quickest fuck in the history of their marriage.

As it was, she had to wait until after dinner that evening, when JT got out his book of poetry and read to them all, and Jill and Mark were able to slip away unnoticed. Years later she would still be able to recall kneeling in the sand, Mark’s fingers fluttering on her skin, the tacky warmth of his neck, the black river moving soundlessly in the night as they lay down together.

I
n Susan’s view, it was the remoteness of their location that made Jill and Mark’s decision so imprudent. What if the boy had cracked his head open? It wasn’t like they were at a city park, with a hospital just down the road.

“I personally don’t think even JT should have jumped,” Evelyn confided as they headed down the trail. “He’s our Trip Leader. What if he got hurt? Where would we be then?”

“Up shit creek,” Mitchell declared. “He could have jeopardized the trip for everyone. Gotta remember, we’re paying two hundred fifty bucks a day. That’s a lot of money to waste just waiting around for a helicopter.”

“Maybe Jill and Mark weren’t thinking clearly,” said Susan. “They haven’t been speaking much. Maybe neither one of them wanted to call the shot.”

“But it’s the first thing you learn in wilderness school,” Evelyn said indignantly. “You don’t take unnecessary risks. And how was JT so sure that things hadn’t changed since the last jump? What if there was a boulder he didn’t know about? What if Sam was off by a couple of inches?”

Mitchell grumbled his agreement, and he and Evelyn continued to imagine worst-case scenarios as they continued down the trail. Susan herself wondered what she would say at happy hour tonight. She really didn’t feel like going off to drink wine with Jill, because she was afraid she wouldn’t be able to keep her mouth shut.
What kind of a mother are you, letting your son jump off a cliff, miles from nowhere?

For once, Susan felt like she was on the same side as the Mother Bitch.

Peter and Amy tromped along the trail, Amy in front, Peter behind.

“I should have jumped,” Peter kept saying. “Why didn’t I jump?”

“Would you shut up?”

“I would have been fine. Sam did it. Sam was fine. It was my only opportunity. I’ll never be back here. Hey!” he exclaimed as a branch snapped back in his face.

“Sorry.”

“This is why I hate hiking,” Peter said. “I’m always getting hit with branches. That and poison ivy. Is there poison ivy here, do you think?”

“I don’t know.”

They went twenty, thirty steps in silence.

“I wonder what’s for dinner,” Peter said. “Do you know what’s for dinner?”

Amy shuddered. “I have like
no
appetite.”

“You’re really a world-class whiner, you know? Have you always been this much of a whiner?”

“It’s the heat,” said Amy. “I’d rather just drink beer. How many beers do you have left?”

“Five.”

“Five each or five total?”

“Each.”

“Good.”

“I hope you’re planning on reimbursing me, when we get back to civilization.”

“My mother will,” said Amy. “She’s so happy I’m drinking beer with you, she’ll pay you double.”

“She didn’t look too happy the last time I checked.”

“When was that?”

“When Sam jumped.”

“Oh, you mean how she looked like this?” Amy turned around and pursed her lips fiercely. “Probably she thought Sam shouldn’t jump. My mother can be very critical of other mothers’ decisions.”

Peter was so hungry he was beginning to feel a little light-headed. He peered among the giant grape leaves for real live grapes.

“My mother would have loved for me to jump,” he said. The leaves were as big as dinner plates, and neon green. There were no grapes, though. “She probably would have pushed me.”

“Shut up.”

“She would. My mothers mean.”

“She’s lonely, from what you tell me.”

“And that’s my fault?”

“Just water her flowers,” sighed Amy. “Sit with her. Drink a glass of lemonade. That’s probably all she wants.”

“Like you’re going to be so nice to your mother when she’s old. I’m going to come and chew your ass off then,” said Peter, “and remind you of how judgmental you were of me, once upon a time.”

“You won’t even remember me two weeks after this trip.”

“I’ll remember you. You think I’m Lloyd?”

“Lloyd’s so sweet,” said Amy. “We should save our money and do this trip next year, with Ruth and Lloyd. Without my mother, of course.”

“Or Mitchell.”

“Especially not Mitchell.”

They climbed out onto a ledge that overlooked the mouth of Havasu. Down in the fjordlike inlet, plump rubber rafts jostled against one another. Just outside the mouth, the candy-colored waters of Havasu melted into the brackish Colorado.

“Speak of the devil,” said Amy—for down in JT’s boat, there was Mitchell, fumbling with his shorts. Amy took out her camera and snapped a picture just as Mitchell arced back slightly.

“Mitchell’s not going to want to go anywhere, not after he sees our pictures posted all over the net,” Peter said.

“Can he sue?”

“For what?”

“Invasion of privacy?”

“You
he could sue,” said Peter. “Not me.”

JT couldn’t help but notice the new alliances that night. Mitchell and Lena were eating dinner with Susan and Evelyn. Mark and Jill sat
comfortably braced, back to back; and it didn’t escape JT’s notice that for much of the time their hands were interlaced. He was amused, later, when they snuck off during Poetry Hour. He just hoped they knew to watch out for snakes, because there was a big mean one that lived around here, fat from mice.

He made sure they were back before everyone broke up to go to bed.

Two more nights, he told himself as he prepared for sleep. He lay back on his mat, letting the wisp of a breeze cool the bare skin of his belly and the undersides of his arms. He dropped his hand down to the dog below and fingered the rubbery flesh of his ear.

“I suppose you’re too spoiled to sleep in one of those crates,” he murmured. “Probably have to sleep in a man’s bed, don’t you? Whether he’s got a girlfriend or not. Yeah,” he said, “well, we’ll see about that.”

O
n the morning they’d be running Lava, JT brewed the coffee twice as strong. While the grounds were settling, he got out his sewing kit and mended one of the straps on his life jacket. He clipped his fingernails and washed his face well. Finally, he dug through his dry bag and got out his Lucky Lava shorts, which thus far had taken him safely down Lava Falls 124 times.

When the coffee was ready, he brought three steaming mugs down to the boats. Dixie wrapped her sheet around her shoulders and blew on the coffee. Abo sat like a bullfrog, blinking.

“Rise and shine,” JT said. “Its Judgment Day.”

He didn’t have to tell them, for they’d dreamt of it as they tossed and turned in their boats that night. Lava Falls, Mile 179, rated ten on a scale of ten. Lava, with a sharp drop-off at the top followed by the Ledge Hole, which could suck you straight down into the center of the earth.

Dixie took a sip of coffee and winced.

“And take these.” JT handed them some vitamins.