Lava Falls Read online

  Marylou widened her eyes theatrically, as in, she couldn’t believe Paige was actually saying that, but then she burst out laughing. Paige laughed too.

  “It probably was because of my singing,” Marylou said once they quieted. “I mean, Dad is depressed. You know that. He’s always been depressed. I’m not. I don’t want to pretend that I am.”

  “But what about . . . I mean . . . that woman . . .”

  “That lasted about three weeks.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah, really. Of course, really.”

  “So why don’t—”

  “We get back together?”

  “Yeah. I guess. I mean, he made a mistake.”

  Marylou sighed. How many details do you share with your daughter about her father’s abandonment? The truth was, Marylou might have forgiven him if it hadn’t been for that first conversation, the one in which he told her about his new girlfriend.

  “Just leave,” Marylou had said after his initial confession, once she had the gist. “I don’t want any details.”

  “But we’ve been together for twenty-three years.” He actually said that to her, as if it were his right to cash in on what he considered an ongoing intimacy. He wanted to share. Didn’t she want to know?

  She did not. Besides, she already knew what he’d say. Something about this woman finally making him happy, how he couldn’t turn his back on that. He had a duty to himself. This was his one shot. He might have used words like that.

  But more than anything, she didn’t need to hear more from him because she had her own burst of insight in that moment, despite her rightful rage. Maybe it was the rage that triggered the epiphany. What she saw then was that he’d abandoned her years ago. He’d been in a primary relationship with his depression all this time, not with her. His breaking up with the girlfriend just three weeks later only proved her point.

  She loved Joe. She did. And she experienced his absence as an anguish.

  But she also loved getting to know herself again, herself not in the service of trying to make someone else happy, someone who would never be happy.

  Marylou brushed Paige’s bangs off her forehead. “I’m done, honey. I’m done with your father.”

  “So you left him?”

  “No. You know that’s not how it went. He broke all trust. He acted more foolishly than I can forget, even if I could forgive. But mostly, you’re right, I’m a singer, I love life, even when it hurts like hell, and he doesn’t. Call me shallow, I—”

  “You’re not shallow.”

  “Well, your dad thinks I am. That if I’m not mortally depressed like him, I don’t see clearly what’s happening in the world. I see it.”

  They both let a long silence go by. Paige realized that she’d adopted her dad’s criticism, and she also realized that it wasn’t fair. Maybe her mom was one of those people who escaped the rot. Who remained intact, body and soul, in desperate times.

  “Is it okay if I sleep here with you tonight?”

  “Of course it is.”

  Paige snuggled up next to her mom. Last night she’d slept on a tarp out in the open. The moon glaring. This was much nicer.

  “Sing the one about the moon.”

  Marylou raised her head and gave her daughter a look of exaggerated disbelief.

  So Paige started singing on her own. It’s that old devil moon, that you stole from the sky.

  It only took one line and Marylou joined in. Their two voices, Marylou’s alto and Paige’s soprano, fluttered over the silent camp as they sang through all the verses. The rest of the women listened, the full moon beaming in the windows of their tents.

  Josie couldn’t sleep. It was nice hearing Marylou and her kid sing together. They must have made up. Sweet. But she felt uneasy, twitchy. Surely the prospect of running Crystal in the morning wasn’t causing the imbalance. She’d never capsized there again, not in all the runs she’d done since the one with her dad twenty-five years ago.

  But that stretch of river commanded her respect, always. She crawled out of the tent and slid into her flip flips. The moon flooded their beach with a light like polished wedding gown satin, elegant and formal. Josie shivered with a strange, strong feeling, almost like a premonition, as if she were on the brink of something important.

  Maybe it was just the eeriness of the river corridor devoid of other travelers. They’d encountered even fewer than Josie had expected. For a few years after the collapse of the National Park Service permit system, which regulated how many boaters could be on the water, the river became one big party, with thousands celebrating the open access, or so she’d heard. Josie had stayed away, not wanting to see the place getting trashed. But then everything quieted way down again, as fewer and fewer people had the resources or appetite for nonessential adventure, as mere survival became the number one goal for most Americans.

  Josie credited Marylou for wanting to do this trip anyway, for a kind of clear-sighted insistence on connecting to this iconic American landscape, at a time when America hurt so badly. Josie was grateful to be here now, especially now.

  She walked along the shore until she came to the path leading up to the scouting location. She climbed quickly and felt immediate relief from her uneasiness once she attained a good view of Crystal Rapid. She sat on a rock and meditated on the monster waves, silver in the moonlight, letting herself drift into a river zone. Her father liked to say that moonlight was the best illumination for seeing, truly seeing, the detail in a river current. The hard light of the sun cast too many shadows, bounced off the high places. The soft light of the moon captured the visual nuances. Even so, she’d have to come back up to the scouting location again in the morning because the configuration of waves and holes changed almost hourly depending on how much water they were releasing or withholding from the Glen Canyon Dam. The quiet wild of the spot was perfect for now. She allowed herself memories of that trip with her dad, just sixteen years old, writhing underwater at this very place in the river, his words that night in the firelight over canned beef stew. She had to admit: he’d given her the gift of a unique kind of joy.

  “Hey.”

  Josie startled so hard she almost fell off her rock. That girl Brynn stood just down the trail, her pale hair luminous in the moonlight. Josie hadn’t heard anyone’s tread on the rocky path.

  “Sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you. We’re camped just below, in the willow. An unpleasant little camp, but Howard didn’t want to crowd you guys again.”

  “It would have been fine.”

  “Mind if I sit?”

  Josie gestured at the surrounding rocks, indicating a range of choices, and Brynn sat on one, saying, “It’s too bright to sleep.”

  Josie nodded.

  “One of the others told me you’re a professional river guide.”

  Josie nodded again. She noted an impatience in Brynn, a carefully managed one, as if she were trying to get at something important but bided her time.

  “I’m kind of afraid of doing Crystal in the morning,” Brynn said. They both looked down at the silvery sparkles on the raging froth below. “It’s supposed to be one of the most dangerous.”

  Josie didn’t know if she should respond as a guide did to a client, with an honest and calm assessment of the challenges, or as one relative stranger to another, with a shrug. She was leaning toward a brief version of the former—pointing out the two holes, one on the left and one on the right, perfectly visible in the light of the full moon, and telling how you had to thread between them, a tricky maneuver that required skill, but was doable—when she saw something odd.

  A boat approached Crystal Rapid. The dusky yellow raft spun gently in the glassy black water, a picture of perfect serenity. Only it was midnight. There ought not be any craft on the river.

  Josie stared harder, tried to bring the scene into crisper focus. The rubber oar boat was a deeper yellow than either of their two boats, more egg yolk than sunshine. There were dry bags and a cooler lashed to the metal
frame. But there were no people on board. No crew. Not even a single rower at the oars. No one. She heard Brynn catch her breath.

  “A ghost boat,” Josie whispered. She’d learned the term from her dad, but she’d never seen one.

  “Oh my god.” Brynn moved closer to the edge to get a better look.

  The dark yellow disc of a boat slipped into the silken tongue of the rapid. It seemed to hang there for a moment, to pause as if it had will of its own, and in that atom of time, Josie was in the wooden rowboat, just a girl, about to be baptized. She remembered perfectly her first experiences of that blissful intersection between safety and danger, the deep satisfaction in attaining the skills needed to occupy that slim territory of ecstasy. They were skills everyone needed, especially now, and maybe that was why she’d said yes to Marylou. It was what she could do: show a small group of women, using the metaphor of the river, how to navigate the dramatic changes in the courses of our intertwined lives. She couldn’t wait to tell her dad about how she was finding the Colorado River corridor now. He’d be eager to hear.

  Josie and Brynn watched the unmanned boat make a perfect run through the rapid, sliding between the holes, shooting out the foot, and dancing on downstream.

  “Are they dead?” Brynn asked.

  “Could be. Or maybe they hiked out. Hard to say.”

  “Guides usually know about other parties on the river,” Brynn said.

  Josie wondered how Brynn would know that. She’d said she was a novice, hadn’t ever been here, didn’t know anything about the Grand Canyon or the Colorado River. The two women made eye contact and held each other’s gazes, as if assessing trust. Brynn looked away first.

  “Not anymore,” Josie said. “Anyway, I’m not guiding this trip. We’re just a group of friends. Loosely connected.”

  Brynn nodded and stood looking down at Crystal, one fist on her hip, too much intelligence in her gaze to be who she said she was. Brynn had knowledge. Knowledge of the canyon.

  “That’s some crazy shit,” she said, nodding downstream where the ghost boat had disappeared. “See you on the river.”

  In the morning, all three boats slid artfully through Crystal and whooshed on downstream, running the string of rapids called the Gems. After that, the women lost track of Howard and Brynn and didn’t see them at all for the next few days as they flew through Fossil, Specter, Deubendorff, Tapeats, and Upset rapids. Laurie was disappointed because, as she put it to herself, it was always nice to have a man on the horizon.

  Lava Falls was the last major challenge of the trip. As they washed toward that chaotic maelstrom, tears of fear filled Paige’s eyes. The boom and bellow of the rapid could be heard long before any visual clues could be discerned. The auditory input was terrifying. Lava Falls was reported to be giant, and its voice confirmed this reputation.

  The roar grew louder and louder as they approached. When Josie announced the necessity of pulling over to scout the rapid, Paige thought she’d faint from the delay. Couldn’t they just go? Just run the freaking monster and get it over with? Both boats pulled onto a tiny patch of sand just above the deafening roar. Even from here, all that could be seen was flat, undisturbed water. That was because they were above the lip of the rapid, the place where the riverbed dropped precipitously, causing the liquid riot in the first place. Josie, Kara, and Marylou climbed the hillside to assess the route through the treachery. Paige stayed in the boat, guzzling water from a bottle. Water was life. And she wanted to live.

  Then she had an idea. If there were a trail up to the scouting location, then it ought to be possible to simply hike around Lava Falls! They could pick her up below.

  When the three women returned, ominously silent, and jumped into the boats, Paige began climbing out.

  “Do you have to pee?” Josie asked, obviously annoyed to have her concentration broken.

  “I’m walking around the rapid.”

  “Not possible.”

  “Come on, sweetie,” her mom said, grabbing her wrist and yanking her back into the boat.

  Paige wanted more than anything to say no, to refuse, to throw a tantrum. But she’d already done that a few nights ago, acted the fool, and she couldn’t do it again. She glanced at Kara, who said, “Hold on tight. You’ll be fine.”

  The two boats—one piloted by Josie, with Laurie and Maeve as passengers, and the other piloted by Marylou, with Kara and Paige—shoved off. As they drifted back out into the river’s main current, Paige squeezed her eyes shut and imagined Kara holding a giant fire hose, her entire body shaking with the intensity of the water pressure, spraying the upper windows of a burning house. Kara knew how to rescue people. She did. Kara said she’d be fine.

  In a spurt of courage, Paige decided to do this with her eyes open. She looked around, marveling at how slow they were moving now, knowing that very soon the face of the river would change from peaceful to violent. Thirty seconds. Twenty. Ten. She glanced at the northern riverbank, wondering if there was a trail, and that’s when she noticed a wide dry gully, littered with red gravel and black cinders. Walking down the gully toward the river she saw, she’s certain she saw, although god knows she might well have been hallucinating from fear, two women. Each wore a pack on her back and a rifle slung across her chest. The guns looked crude and unfamiliar, a strange innovation from another time. Their pants and shirts were torn and filthy. The sole on one of the girl’s boots flapped loose. They held hands as they stumbled forward through the rocks, looking both grim and beatific. Yes, it had to be an hallucination. One tripped on a rock and fell to a knee. Her shoulders buckled, but her friend grabbed her under the armpits and hoisted her. Why did they keep holding hands in such rough terrain?

  Paige turned and shouted at Kara, to be heard over the thunder of the river, wanting her to look up the gully. She flailed wildly with her arm, pointing. Kara did glance, briefly, but then looked away because she was much more interested in the flight of a snowy egret sailing right above their heads in the downstream draft. Kara smiled.

  Again Paige tried to get her to see the women, and again Kara looked, but obviously saw nothing. She scowled a little, not wanting to be distracted from watching the lovely bird. She craned her neck and followed the egret’s flight until it was nothing more than a white speck before disappearing altogether.

  Paige stared up the gully, waiting for the mirage of the two traveling women to evaporate. She didn’t actually want to die, and seeing this vision, shimmering in the heat of day, convinced her that she had in fact already died. Or was on the brink of death, already entering an in-between realm.

  The thunderous din intensified, overtook all of her senses. Now she could see the spray shooting above the waterline just ahead, but still not the giant waves beyond the drop-off. She gripped the boat straps so hard her knuckles hurt. Both her mom and Kara appeared to have entered zones of deep concentration. Fucking shit, her mom was brave! At the oars, about to steer this yellow rubber raft through one of America’s fiercest stretches of water. Paige wanted to tell her mom she loved her. She wanted Kara to notice her. She wanted another drink of water. She wanted, wanted, wanted.

  Kara knew that fear was a healthy response to adversity. She wasn’t immune to it, as many of her friends assumed because of the work she did. She was terrified on every fire. And that was a good thing: fear called up the deep cellular attentiveness needed to do her job.

  So she also knew that her lack of fear this morning approaching Lava Falls was not normal and it occurred to her that she should be worried. Worried about the absence of jitters, dread, alarm. Fear fueled the precision response necessary in calamities, and who knew what Lava Falls would deliver? She knew jackshit about running rivers, and here she was about to tackle one of the craziest waterways anywhere, and she blithely felt nothing but a floaty elation. Nearly invincible. So much joy.

  They went first.

  Moments before sliding into Lava Falls, Kara smiled at the sky. No, not the sky. She tracked a snowy egret, its bri
ght yellow feet pointed in perfect dancer form behind its flight, the fluff of feathers in the wind off its neck, the white wings in crisp aerial perfection against the blue. Kara flew with the bird.

  “Here we go!” Marylou sang out.

  Kara looked back at Josie at the helm of the other raft, queuing up for its run, and gripped the purple straps holding down the dry bags.

  A hole to the left, Josie had said, and then immediately one to the right, and Marylou had to thread the oar boat, using just these two long partially flattened sticks, as if it were possible to steer in that furious wet tumult between the two.

  After the raft slid along the polished jade water and into the V of the tongue, the waves pounded over their heads, fully submerging the raft and all three passengers. They plunged into the hole, swallowed by green water, bubbles fizzing everywhere, plugging their mouths. They sunk, going down into the forever deep flow. The raft bucked hard. The back end heaved up, collapsing the two ends together like a sandwich before popping open again. A lateral wave smashed across the deck of the boat, ripping Kara’s hands from the straps and knocking her back against the cooler. The boat spun a full 360 degrees as another massive wave slammed into their faces.

  Wait. The next wave lapped at the portside tube. They spun gently in the eddy below the rapid. Just like that. All three passengers were still on board. One of the oars rocked in its oarlock, attached to the boat, but not in Marylou’s grip. Kara reached into the river and grabbed the handle, passed it to Marylou. They’d made it through Lava Falls.

  Josie! The thought sprung in full glory like Athena from Zeus’s head! Oh, the hyperbole of love, but Kara didn’t care.

  She turned to watch the other boat make its run. Josie rowed through expertly, as Laurie and Maeve shrieked with glee. As if this were fun. Of course it was fun! They too went completely underwater but resurfaced quickly. They heehawed their way out the bottom of the rapid, sliding into a spot in the gentle eddy right next to their companions’ boat. Marylou and Josie each raised an oar over her head and tapped the tips of the blades, as if they were toasting with champagne glasses. Everyone laughed, and laughed hard, at surviving the biggest rapid of the canyon.