Part 25 (1/2)

”Don't let up! Come on! Hard forward!” Abo yelled. His voice came from high above, as though he were standing over her-and maybe he was, maybe he wasn't, Susan had no way of knowing whether the boat was pointed up or down or level. Then they slammed into something and the V-wave lessened; now the water merely sloshed over her shoulders. The boat pitched again, and Susan felt her foot get wrenched from its cup. Frantically she wedged it back in.

”Keep going!” Abo yelled. ”Hard forward!”

And then, drawing on some reserve that she didn't know she had, Susan straightened up and dug down with her paddle one more time, taking the next blast head-on, and found that by doing so she regained both her balance and composure. Again and again she dug her paddle deep into the oncoming waves, and at some point, she felt the resistance that told her that her paddle was catching; she was helping to steer the boat, to propel them out of the chaos and into the smooth black current where it was calm.

A collective cheer rose up.

”f.u.c.king Maid of the Mist!” shouted Abo, standing and jouncing the boat like a child. ”You guys are awesome!”

”I thought I was going to drown!” Sam crowed.

”That's one heck of a lot of water,” Mark observed.

”Buckets!” Evelyn cried. ”Buckets and buckets and buckets!”

Breathlessly Susan searched upstream. From where they were now, Lava looked like the open spillway of a vast industrial dam. Had they really paddled through all that?

Sam was asking if they could drag the boat up and run it again.

”Sure we can,” said Abo. ”Long as you do the loading and unloading.”

”Seriously?” said Sam.

”I'm never serious, Sam. Haven't you learned that by now? Everybody watch JT,” said Abo.

Their amus.e.m.e.nt park hilarity fell silent as they watched JT's boat vanish into the curl of the V-wave. It reared up, then disappeared again. All they could see was the occasional flash of an orange life vest. Hang on, Amy, Susan thought.

Then like a beast JT's boat rose up out of the froth, water draining off all around, and there was JT half-sitting and half-standing as he struggled with the oars.

”What's he yelling?” asked Evelyn.

Susan couldn't hear anything. Upstream, scouters were racing down the path to the water's edge. Suddenly there was a thump and clatter in the back of the boat as Abo dropped to his seat.

”SWIMMER!” he shouted. ”Paddles in the water! Move it!”

”Who is it?” shrieked Sam.

Susan tried to locate Amy by her pink hat. JT's boat was bucking so much she couldn't see anything.

”Forward! Left turn! Stop! G.o.dd.a.m.n it! Left again! Follow Peter, you guys, come on! Forward! Stop!”

The contradictory directions came so rapidly that, try as she might, Susan couldn't keep up. In fact, n.o.body could coordinate any kind of group effort at all. They needed to break out of the eddy fence, that boundary between upstream and downstream currents, which in this case was sharp and distinct, two rivers sc.r.a.ping by each another in opposite directions. But their paddling was clumsy, and every time they neared the edge, they got caught and dragged back upriver. She kept trying to get a glimpse of JT's boat, to make sure Amy was safe.

”Don't watch JT!” Abo shouted. ”Just paddle! Come on! Put some more juice into it!”

Somehow, somewhere, they found a collective burst of energy, and in three communal strokes, they broke through. The boat shot forward and swung around, and they were headed downstream. Gone was their elation. They were on the biggest river in the world, and someone had fallen overboard, and Susan was doing a pretty good job convincing herself that it wasn't Amy; it was probably Ruth or Lloyd, who were old and infirm and had misjudged their capacity for strength- Until she saw the flash of pink, bobbing in the water less than twenty feet away.

Peter saw it too. He leaned over and extended his paddle out as far as he could, and with a bit of maneuvering, he caught Amy's cap on the fat wooden blade and swung it around and dropped it on the pile of gear in the middle of the paddle boat.

40.

Day Eleven Lava The main thing Amy was aware of when she slid off the boat was the sudden cessation of earthly noise. Everywhere there were bubbles: gray and white, big and small, spinning like another galaxy all around her. She felt somebody grab her ankle, skin against skin; then, whoever it was let go, and she flailed some more and managed to bob up to the surface. The boat, however, was gone. She looked this way and that and tried not to panic.

Then, right smack in front of her, two stories high and wide as a city block, loomed a giant wall of water.

Down she went, tumbling and swirling and spinning into a cauldron of darkness. She felt like Alice going down the rabbit hole. She had no idea which way was up and which way was down; she felt her s.h.i.+n hit something sharp and saw a flash of yellow. Something punched her in the stomach, then it swung her around and punched her in the back. She needed air, but only once did she surface into that sea of sloppy waves, gasping and swallowing water before getting sucked down again. Without any air, her lungs felt shredded, the emptiness so excruciatingly painful that she would have sucked in anything-water, air, light, the vapors of Mercury-just to fill them up and erase the pain.

This is it.

I cannot hold-my breath any longer.

She was all set to give in to the urge, to breathe in gallons of cold, dark water, when some force grabbed both of her feet, spun her around and around, and in doing so sucked her down where no human being had been before. This was no rabbit hole; this was the inside of the inside, deep and dark and bottomless. And at that point, her initial panic gave way to terror, as a spidery black creature muscled its long tentacles around her tiny body.

This is what its like to die, she marveled.

What happened next, she would never know. Maybe it was a fractal of light. Maybe it was a lone bubble that happened to catch under her chin on its way to the surface. Whatever it was, the water turned gray instead of black, and then it turned white instead of gray. Oblivious to the pain in her lungs and her gut and her leg and now her head as well, Amy kicked and flailed and pulled at the water and finally broke through the surface, where the ragged, enginelike bray that filled her ears seemed to come from a herd of wild animals, rather than from her own windpipe as she sucked down that first lungful of silvery bright air.

Nothing would ever, ever taste so sweet.

Only after filling her lungs repeatedly did she remember JT's instructions that first day. Look for the boat Look for the boat, he'd told them; put your feet up and lean back put your feet up and lean back, and so she looked for the boat. She looked for any any boat but saw nothing except a blurry-looking sh.o.r.eline that tilted one way and then another. Another wave sloshed over her, and she panicked that she was going back under again. But it was a little wave in comparison, and she stayed above water, sculling and riding the giant waves: this was one time when it helped to be so fat, another time being in the Minnow cla.s.s at swim lessons and everyone saying, boat but saw nothing except a blurry-looking sh.o.r.eline that tilted one way and then another. Another wave sloshed over her, and she panicked that she was going back under again. But it was a little wave in comparison, and she stayed above water, sculling and riding the giant waves: this was one time when it helped to be so fat, another time being in the Minnow cla.s.s at swim lessons and everyone saying, Look at Amy float, it's so easy for her Look at Amy float, it's so easy for her, and Amy feeling proud, she was only seven and didn't have any clue what was making it so easy for her, but of course her mother did, and her mother looked embarra.s.sed- A flash of red.

It vanished, then loomed up beside her face. A silver paddle, a black-gloved hand, a white beard beneath a yellow helmet. He was yelling something, tipping and slos.h.i.+ng, and she couldn't understand. Then his hand grabbed hers and folded it over a knotted lump, and she found the power within herself to hang on, and they were slicing through the ocean, and the sh.o.r.eline stopped tilting, and the fat white tubes of a raft appeared just as a gaggle of hands reached for her life jacket and pulled, pulled harder, and finally hauled her up over the tubes, letting her slop down into the soupy well of the boat, where among the buckets and the straps and the Nalgenes and a floating tube of sunscreen and a cl.u.s.ter of hairy ankles, she lifted her head and began to cough.

And didn't stop coughing, it seemed, through all that was yet to come.

41.

Day Eleven Below Lava Below Lava, on the right side of the river, lies a long sandy beach. Often river runners will pull in here, stoked high on the rush of running Lava; they might finally eat the lunch they couldn't seem to manage earlier, or pop a beer as they recounted their twenty-second, adrenaline-laced ride.

But there was no middle-of-the-day beer drinking in JT's party that day. The guides beached their boats and hammered their stakes, and everyone else unzipped their life jackets and tried, though it was not possible, to stop the ringing in their ears.

The last time JT had had a swimmer in Lava was three years ago, and it barely counted because, after getting washed overboard, the man popped up near the boat and was able to hold on for the rest of the ride. But Amy's experience definitely counted as a swim; she'd gotten sucked down deep, and when he saw her head vanish, he knew she wouldn't be coming up for a while. Nevertheless, he had a boat to row, and he did his best to alert the others on the river while seeing his boat safely through to the bottom of the rapid, albeit one pa.s.senger short.

The kayakers had landed farther down the beach, and JT wanted to thank Bud for rescuing Amy. But right now he had to attend to the girl. Something was definitely wrong. He saw it as soon as she tried to climb out of the boat: she couldn't even stand, she was so doubled over with pain. His first thought was a broken limb. They helped her up onto the beach, where she fell onto her hands and knees and put her head down in a kind of yoga pose. She'd unclipped her life jacket, and the buckles dragged on the sand as she let her hips sway back and forth, moaning, seemingly deaf to the guides and her mother and Peter standing around asking if she was all right. Then she fell onto her side and drew up her knees and made an awful face by baring her teeth and sucking in a great deal of air.

Peter and JT exchanged looks.

Then slowly she emerged from her trance. She opened her eyes and looked at their faces. ”What?” she said irritably.

Peter squatted and brushed his fingers against her shoulder. Susan, who had been hovering close, sat back on her heels. Amy rolled onto her back and propped herself up on her elbows. Beads of sweat glistened above her lip, and she licked them off and plucked her wet T-s.h.i.+rt away from her middle and said, ”Can't you guys find something better to look at?”

JT's first order of business was to get her out of the wet clothes. Even thirty seconds in the Colorado River could send a person into shock. And granted, Amy had a lot of padding, but he was still worried, especially with the way she was acting.

”Let's get your life jacket off,” and he held the jacket open, and Peter guided Amy's arms out of the armholes. Then Susan helped her take her T-s.h.i.+rt off, so that she was exposed down to her bathing suit.