In the Heart of the Canyon (12 page)

I
t was still dark the next morning when a noise from the kitchen startled JT awake. He sat up. Often the ringtail cats came scrounging for food in the night, and he didn’t want to face a mess this morning. Taking care not to step on the dog, who lay curled in the well of his boat, he strapped on his headlamp and hopped off his boat onto the damp sand. The wide expanse of beach was pale against the dark blur of water, rock, and thicket. JT wedged his feet into his flip-flops and headed toward the kitchen, wondering why the dog hadn’t sensed anything.

But instead of a ringtail, he saw a human form bent over the kitchen supply boxes.

“Lloyd,” whispered JT. “What do you need?”

Startled, Lloyd raised his arm, as if to strike.

“Lloyd, it’s JT,” he said gently. “What are you looking for?”

“Somebody took my stethoscope!”

“Stethoscope?”

“Somebody stole it,” said Lloyd.

“What makes you think that?”

“Because,” said Lloyd. “Because.”

JT waited patiently.

“I’m going to find out who took it,” said Lloyd. “And when I do …”

JT glanced around the campsite for signs of Ruth but saw no other movement. “Lloyd,” he said. “Where did you sleep last night?”

Lloyd scanned the darkness surrounding them. “I think,” he said, “I think it’s this way,” and he trudged off toward a blurry shape on the sand.

“Ruth,” JT said in a hoarse whisper.

A head popped up from the lump.

“I
told
you we were right here!” Lloyd said to JT. “You didn’t have to wake her.”

“Lloyd, what are you doing up?” Ruth asked groggily, feeling about for her glasses.

“Somebody stole my stethoscope,” Lloyd said.

“You didn’t bring your stethoscope, Lloyd,” said Ruth.

“Yes I did!” shouted Lloyd.

“Ssshhhh!” Ruth tried to stand, but her leg must have hurt because she sat back down. “We’ll find your stethoscope in the morning,” she told him. “Come lie down, Lloyd. It’s too early to get up. I’m so sorry,” she said to JT.

“No problem,” said JT.

“You’ll go back to sleep, won’t you?”

JT looked at the sky. “Nope. Time to make coffee.”

“My goodness,” said Ruth.

“When it’s light, I want to check your leg again,” said JT.

“Oh, pooh,” said Ruth. “It’s fine.”

“Goddamn hundred-dollar piece of equipment,” said Lloyd.

“Get some rest,” JT whispered, and as he walked away, he could hear Ruth scolding Lloyd. “You have to tell me when you get up in the night! You can’t just walk off like that!”

Returning to the kitchen area, JT clicked the light stick and the stove
whumped
up into a hot blue circle of flame under the pot. The confusion over the stethoscope only confirmed what JT had begun to suspect after three days of Lloyd losing his day bag and forgetting everyone’s name and wondering where the dog had come from. It didn’t take a neuroscientist. If you’d asked his advice generally, he’d have said without hesitation that a thirteen-day rafting trip through the Grand Canyon was no place for a seventy-six-year-old man with Alzheimer’s. But JT knew Ruth and Lloyd. He’d guided four or five trips with them over the years and knew that if any two people depended on the river for their soul and sustenance, it was this couple from Evanston, Illinois. He also knew that Ruth was a capable woman
with a good head on her shoulders, who had presumably consulted with Lloyd’s doctor and made an informed decision on the matter.

Nevertheless, he was bothered by the fact that Ruth hadn’t disclosed anything about Lloyd’s condition on his medical form. The guides had extensive training in emergency medicine, but they depended on their passengers to tell them about chronic conditions.

All he asked was that people be straight with him.

Instead of rushing off that morning, they hiked up into a shadowy canyon abloom with the showy white trumpets of the sacred datura. Lacy maidenhair ferns lined the streambed, and orange monkeyflower spilled out of glistening pink walls. Eventually, the canyon dead-ended in a long, narrow slot pool, where everyone—including Peter—dunked themselves.

Back at the river, Mitchell surprised them all with an abrupt turnabout: he and Lena would be riding with JT today. No offense to Dixie, but he was wanting to get to know JT a little better. He’d thought about it long and hard last night, and as long as the dog stayed at the other end of the boat, Lena would be fine.

Thus JT found himself rowing with Mitchell and Lena that fourth morning. And he was glad it had worked out this way, because in his heart, he liked to think that beneath the surface of every pain in the ass was a well-intentioned individual who could probably shed light on some topic that JT had always been wondering about. To this end, as they headed out onto the river, he began to ask questions, and Mitchell was glad to talk, and within the first half hour, JT learned that Mitchell had paddled every mile of John Wesley Powell’s 1869 expedition except this last stretch.

“And what’ll you do when you finish?” JT asked.

“Write a book,” said Mitchell.

JT was pretty confident somebody else had already written that book.

“I’ve seen you writing in your journal,” he said, to be friendly.

“Oh, he has notes galore,” Lena chimed in. “We’re running out of
space! I tease him. I say, ‘Mitchell, when are you going to write the darn thing?’”

“That’s an ambitious project,” said JT.

“Well, you gotta have a project when you’re retired. What about you boatmen? Do you ever retire?”

This was not a question JT could easily answer. Some of his friends stopped guiding when they had families or simply left the river in search of a steady income. Others developed back or shoulder problems. But some kept rowing well into their seventies—wooden dories, rafts, kayaks, whatever they could get their hands on, because keeping them out of the canyon was like keeping them away from food or water.

JT didn’t know if he would be one of the old-timers or not. In fact his son Colin, a lawyer with a Phoenix firm, had begun pressing JT to retire from the river. “You’re fifty-two, Dad. Get a real job. You need medical benefits, you need a retirement plan.” JT would point out that a retirement plan wasn’t going to do him much good starting at this late date. “Doesn’t matter,” said Colin. “You shouldn’t be lifting coolers in and out of boats. Who’s going to take care of you when you need back surgery? Or when that hernia you’ve been complaining about starts hollering for some attention?”

JT was moved that Colin was looking out for him, but he suspected that Colin always wished he’d had a more traditional kind of father, not someone who was perfectly happy to fill in with some carpentry during the winter while waiting for the river corridor to open up in April.

“Some of us retire,” he told Mitchell now. “Some of us will never leave, though.”

“And which are you?”

JT grinned. “Haven’t figured it out yet.”

“Do you ever get tired of it?” asked Lena.

“Oh,” said JT, “maybe there’ll be a trip in October that seems to last too long. But generally, no. If I ever get to the point where I feel like I’m shuttling people back and forth, then I’ll retire. I’m not there yet.”

Mitchell flipped open his guidebook, then scrutinized the cliffs.
“Looks like we’re coming up on Nankoweap,” he said. “Are we going to stop? I’d sure love to see those granaries.”

“We’ll see. It’s a popular place,” said JT. “If there’s another party there, I’d just as soon not clog up the trail.”

It turned out there was, in fact, another large party at Nankoweap; from the river, JT could see a line of tiny figures inching up the steep peppered hillside to the ancient stone granaries. JT was tempted to skip the hike, but it was already past noon, and people were hungry.

“It’s a hot, dry hike,” he cautioned them after lunch. “If you come, bring two liters of water, and dunk your hat and shirt. No,” he told Sam sternly. “The dog stays here.”

Not everyone went; Dixie stayed with Ruth and Lloyd, and Peter opted for a nap. Of those who went, all but Mitchell followed JT’s advice and clothed themselves head to toe in wet cotton. Mitchell wore just a T-shirt, a dry one at that, claiming that he really did like the heat, and a wet shirt would just dry out within the first few minutes anyway, and he didn’t like that yo-yo feeling of being hot, then cold, then hot again. JT was too hot to argue, and Mitchell seemed to do just fine on the half-mile hike through desert scrub and then up along the side of the cliff, until, just fifty feet from the stone cubbies, he leaned over and vomited, not just once but retching repeatedly, so that JT had to grab on to the waistband of the man’s shorts to keep him from tumbling over the edge of the trail. He sent the others on ahead and made Mitchell sit and take small sips of water, but the man’s face and neck had turned deep red, and, sensing he was dangerously close to heat exhaustion, JT uncapped his own jug and poured half a liter of good drinking water over Mitchell’s head and shoulders.

“Sorry,” wheezed Mitchell.

Next time do what I tell you
, JT wanted to say.

“This is amazing!” Lena called from above. “Mitchell! Are you coming?”

“In a minute,” Mitchell replied.

In a minute my ass, JT thought. “You okay?”

“Better,” said Mitchell, just before vomiting again.

Mitchell never made it to the granaries; he couldn’t seem to muster the strength to climb the last fifty feet. He didn’t seem to care about it, either—a bad sign for someone who’d been so intent on getting up there an hour ago. JT knew the signs of heatstroke and didn’t think Mitchell was there yet, but he was dangerously close.

It
was
hot this trip. He reminded himself that all trips in July were hot; but still, he had an elderly couple and an overweight girl and a man who refused to follow directions; and as they headed back to the boats, JT wondered just how hot it could get without these people going really strange on him.

W
hoa. Dude. What happened?” Peter asked Mitchell.

Without answering, Mitchell strode into the river and dove under.

“Mitchell got a little overheated,” said JT.

“Heatstroke?” asked Evelyn anxiously.

“No,” said JT, “but it could have been. Listen up,” he told the group. “In case you haven’t noticed, it isn’t getting any cooler down here. I want you all to drink as much as you can, and then some.”

“What’s heatstroke?” Sam murmured. He and the dog were lying on their sides, facing one another like spent lovers. The dog’s eyes were wide open, and he was panting heavily. Every so often, Sam poured a handful of sand on one of the dog’s paws, causing it to twitch.

“Heatstroke can kill you,” said Mark. “You better listen to JT.”

“And you gotta keep your body cool,” JT said. “Jump in the river. Dunk your clothes. I don’t care. If you’re hot, you’re stupid.”

There were somber faces all around as they stood in line to refill their water bottles. Peter held the jug, and as he poured for people, he whispered to Amy that JT had spiked the water, and this was just a ruse to get them all drunk this afternoon so he didn’t have to cook them dinner tonight. Peter didn’t like it when things got too serious. Of course, he didn’t like it when people like Mitchell thought they knew more than the guides, who’d only been down the river like four hundred times between the three of them. And he didn’t like it when people couldn’t apologize for their errors in judgment. He thought a well-timed apology from Mitchell would have done a lot to lessen the tension on the beach. But Mitchell didn’t want to talk to anybody.

Peter wasn’t one to gossip, but he wasn’t one to keep 100 percent of
his thoughts to himself, either. And that afternoon in the paddle boat, he let it slip that he hoped Mitchell would chill out. “No pun intended,” he added.

“Did you hear he’s writing a book?” Jill said.

“About what?” asked Evelyn.

“Us,” said Peter. “Ha ha! Just kidding,” he told Mark, who looked alarmed.

Susan said, “He told me this trip was a big disappointment to him because he wasn’t able to do it in a wooden dory.”

“What’s so great about wooden dories?” said Peter.

“It’s more like Powell,” said Evelyn.

“And who’s this Powell dude again?”

There were groans all around. But nobody explained.

“My problem is that he’s setting a bad example,” said Jill. “I’m trying to get the boys to do what the guides say, and then Mitchell does exactly the opposite. Like not wearing a wet shirt for the hike.”

“I wonder what he’s writing about,” said Amy. “Every time I look, he’s writing in one of those notebooks.”

“Or taking pictures,” said Susan, a comment that elicited more groans, and threats to throw the camera in the river.

“Come on, people,” said Abo. “The guy simply misjudged the heat today.”

“No, he did not!” Jill exclaimed. “He really truly thought he knew better. He did the same thing on the hike this morning! We get to the stream, and JT tells him to keep his boots on, says you can protect your boots or you can protect your feet, and what does Mitchell do? He takes them off! ‘They’re two-hundred-dollar boots,’ he tells JT.”

“Be glad you’re not Lena,” Peter said.

“I would never let myself be bossed around like that,” Amy declared.

“Good for you, honey,” said Susan.

“Easy forward,” said Abo, and they stroked with the current.

“Who was the worst passenger you ever had?” Peter asked.

Abo chuckled.

“Come on,” said Peter.

“Fine,” said Abo. “Are you ready for a long story? Because this is a really long story. But its a good story. This guy he had a bunch of Boy Scouts, and you know how you all got an equipment list before the trip? Well, he told his Boy Scouts it was all bunk, temperatures wouldn’t drop below one hundred so forget the polypro, forget the fleece, forget the rain gear even. Then they get down here, and its monsoon season.”

“When’s that?” asked Evelyn.