Journey By Fire Page 10

  "Perro pequeño," Pepe squealed, delighted. "Perro pequeño!"

  "What does that mean?" Wiley asked.

  "Scruffy little dog."

  "Peh-kaynyo, then that will be its name…it's as good as any other, right Pepe?"

  Si, the boy said smiling.

  Pequeño had already laid down on the deck in the sun. He peered up at the people gratefully, as the raft slipped right-side into the current.

  ###

  They had entered a land of beautiful bone-dry ochre-colored buttes that rose from the desiccated ground beside the river. Wade could see the layers of geological time in the walls, like tree rings. Few plants grew on the riverbanks; everything was red sandstone and desert, like photos of Mars. The sun burned relentlessly onto their heads and their backs during the day, when they sought shelter under hats and umbrellas.

  The water supply was low, and Wade began to worry about firewood. They would need a fire to boil the water in the river, once they ran out of drinking water.

  "So you're telling me there's no resupply depot on the river anymore?"

  Jonesy lay on the deck with a hat over his face. Wiley steered now.

  "No. Not with Moab out of action. Hite's a ghost town, I'd bet."

  Hite…Wade referred again to his map, unfolding it on the deck. It was roughly halfway between Moab and Lake Powell, right near the Dirty Devil. He couldn't lose this map, he reminded himself, because it was just about all he had to lead him along the southwest and to his daughter.

  Wade let the fishing line dangle in the water; as a lure and bait, he'd tied a yellow tassel Carmen had given him along with a tiny cheese chunk onto the hook. Now he watched the hook break the greenish water in the current. A somnolence had settled over the raft. Everyone slept, and all he heard was the wind and an occasional strum from Javi's small guitar. Javi came over and sat down beside him. He wore a wide-brimmed hat, too, and he was shirtless and barefoot.

  "Did you change your mind about where you're going?"

  "No. We will still return to Nicaragua. But not by the desert. No, I don't want to make this trip again, through Mexico. I want to go by boat, in the ocean, follow the Colorado all the way to the sea."

  "Didn't like Mexico, huh?"

  "Mexico was fine; it's what the world has become with the migrations of desperate and dangerous people. It's too bad for a family to cross there."

  "I hear you."

  Wade bobbed his line up and down in the water, hoping to feel a tug from the other end. They sailed along steadily past the high red buttes, which he couldn't see over except for the flawless sky, marked only by the occasional stray, wispy cloud.

  "I'd have liked to be on this river thirty, forty years ago. Can you imagine the flow then?" he said to Javi. "Cool clean snowmelt water–probably deep enough to come halfway up that canyon wall. They had true run-off streams flowing into it, not these parched mudflats…the river's just drying up."

  He could still see the evidence on the surfaces of the canyons of flash floods off the desert floors, but now the desert could go years without the rain, and all the arroyos were perpetually dried up.

  "The damn at Lake Powell, up ahead…" Javi said. "That changed everything though."

  "The Glen Canyon Dam. Correct." He was talking about what had happened about sixty years before, when the federal government built the dam and flooded the canyons. "Those sublime canyons were full of ancient artifacts…they're being exposed again though…" Wade gazed out to the water aimlessly, then he had a tug on his line.

  He stood up on the deck and pulled back on his flexible pole, and then he let some of the fishing line out. He was careful not to fight the fish too hard, because this line was all they had. A sizable river trout broke the surface and flopped on the water and exposed its shiny belly to the sun. Then it dived down. Wade reached out and guided the line to the side with his free hand; by this time the fish fought and splashed and its tail hit the side of the raft.

  "Help!" Wade said, laughing. Javi put the guitar and his hat aside and went on his belly, where the line went into the water. Wade pulled back a bit and Javi pulled the fish out of the water with both hands and tossed it flopping onto the deck. Wade gave it a blow on the head with the back of a small axe, then he removed the hook embedded in its mouth. They wrapped it up in an old newspaper wrap that Carmen had kept, and prepared to cook it for that evening's meal.

  CHAPTER 21

  By late afternoon the horizon had filled with burgeoning, fiery orange clouds. They appeared to have nothing to do with wildfires this time. It was just an ordinary, stunning sunset. He sat on the front of the raft, as composed as he would be on a stonewall in his Vermont backyard, as the craft meandered down the river toward Lake Powell.

  They'd probably get there by the evening of the following day. Maybe there was electricity power still being generated at the lake's station. Then he could charge up his cell phone and check for messages…maybe…he ruminated on a lot of things.

  It was a lovely evening. They'd just finished a nice meal, considering, of the fish, rice, potatoes, and cheese. He'd caught three fish total. Then he'd gutted them with the Swiss Army knife, cooked the whole thing over a fire, then tossed the brittle bones with the oily skin and shreds of clinging, cooked flesh to the hungry dog.

  He was sated and sleepy, but he didn't think he really had the right to relax.

  The sky was angry, roiled, and inspiring; it cast splashes of fading sunshine on to the rugged canyon walls. The raft flowed towards nothing but the unknown, Wade thought, glancing over at the others, who seemed equally struck by the sunset.

  The breeze over the river had a coolness now in the early evening, with a scent of mesquite.

  ###

  They reached the junction with the Dirty Devil River, but there was nothing left of it but a space in the canyon walls where it used to flow. There was no sign of Hite, Utah, and its meagre inhabitants, nor did they see any other boats. This continued to surprise Wade; he'd thought the river would be busy. It only traveled in one direction; south. Trying to walk the desert was a death sentence, more or less.

  It left a bad taste in his mouth, the sense that no one wanted to head south on account of what they'd find there. As if everyone knew something he didn't.

  Then just as he was thinking this, and as the light had sunk to dusk, they spotted a submerged boat ahead. The prow stuck out of the water near the right side of the river. Wiley was at the tiller, preparing to hand it over to Wade.

  He'd volunteered to take the tiller for most of the evening as they slept. He thought steering the boat would help assuage a restless energy.

  Wiley looked back at him. "Should we check it out?"

  "Yeah, just get close."

  They floated past the wooden boat slowly, but no one seemed to be around, or on it. The shoreline was empty, just rocks, riverbank, and the silent canyon walls.

  "It's a battered boat–I wonder how that happened?" Wiley said. "'Ain't no storms or flash floods of late."

  "Maybe it's an old wreck," Wade said.

  "This isn't a rough river on these stretches," Wiley said, reaching over and grabbing part of the hull. The raft gently nudged against the side of the sunken boat. "Seems stove-in on purpose. Why don't we scavenge some of that wood…give me a hand…"

  Wade, Wiley, and Jonesy were able to tear off a few planks of wood for campfires later. They piled it on the deck of the raft, then they untied the line Jonesy had temporarily secured to the wreck, and they floated off again.

  The river wound like a snake through the narrow canyon. "Do you think maybe someone sunk it from above?" Wade asked. "By starting a rockfall?"

  "Yeah, could of," Jonesy said.

  "Ain't that a fetching development," Wiley said, gazing over the rim of the canyon, which hovered precariously above them. He was really missing his truck, Wade thought; he was still second-guessing its abandonment back at Grand Junction.

  "It's best that we keep going at night�
�cut the lights…I can steer by the stars," Wade said. He had already shifted the tiller to move the raft into the current, into the middle of the river.

  Then abruptly the sun dropped behind the tall cliffs and mountains and everything was enveloped in a calm darkness. The cliffs were black, but he could see the water's rippling reflections and it reminded him of watching the sea at night. The sky was dark purple with congealed webs of stars. When he looked off to the side, he could see two forms on the deck and the light from a candle; the eyes shined. It was Phoebe, who pet Pequeño who sat by her side.

  "Can you put that candle out?"

  "Do I have to?"

  "It's probably best…" He scanned the empty rims of the canyon. At his feet was a canister of lukewarm coffee to help keep him awake. He reached down, picked it up, and took a sip. The black canyon walls drifted past on both sides. Wiley had sulked back to his bedroll, and Wade could hear a murmuring from Carmen and Javi Santiago over on a part of the raft where they'd laid out their sleeping things.

  "Careful," he heard Carmen say. Pepe wandered over a part of the deck to pet Pequeño. "He's okay…" Phoebe said, then she lay down on her back and looked at the stars. Wade kept his eyes on the river.

  CHAPTER 22

  He heard the splash in the dark, then Carmen screaming "Pepe! Where's Pepe! Pepe!"

  Wade had no idea what time it was–somewhere in the depths of the evening. The tiller had needed no more finessing than a steady grip. The stars glistened and the tall black cliffs drifted by. He let go of his grip and ran to the back of the raft and jumped in.

  The water was cold but not icy. He faintly felt his feet touch the river bottom before he bobbed to the surface again, treading water in the dark current. He heard Carmen splash into the water and Phoebe screaming at her to get back on the raft. Their voices echoed stridently in the canyon silence.

  Then he thought Phoebe went in too…but by then he was swimming upstream looking for Pepe.

  He looked one way then the other, sputtering and feeling the cold blue blackness all around him. He noticed the mass of the raft drifting into the night. He figured Pepe would be splashing and panicking and moving with the current, but much slower than the heavy raft with its gear and seven human passengers.

  He swam upstream for about 10 meters, stopping every few seconds to look around. He kept seeing black, blobby shapes of what he thought was Pepe. He felt winded and like an idiot trying to sprint upstream. He stopped and treaded water, carried up by the current again; he saw a tiny light on the raft and heard voices fading over the water. He recalled that Jonesy had no heavy metal anchors on the boat, because he didn't want to carry the extra weight, and he thought they wouldn't be needed.

  As he drifted closer to the shore in the current, he heard a boy whimpering.

  Pepe was visible about five meters away over the water; he cried out and struck the water with the palms of his hands, thrashing about. Swimming hard towards the boy, Wade thought, Thank God he kept himself afloat. Thank God.

  Pepe was wet, shivering, and crying when Wade got to him. Side-stroking and clutching the boy, he took them both to a narrow, sandy shoreline, after feeling his way in the dark for several meters amongst some rocks. Wade got to his feet and the current swirled around his pant-legs. Pepe was water-logged, limp, and heavy as a sack of sand as Wade lugged him onto the muddy shore.

  ###

  The raft had vanished and the moon had set into the desert. They sat at the bottom of the cliff and clung to each other until the sun rose. He caught only snatches of sleep as Pepe slept in his lap.

  They were sheltered from the wind. He waited until morning when sunlight hit the canyon, then he spread their shoes and clothes across the few flat rocks on the slim shoreline. The dry red sandstone rose on all sides. They were trapped, hemmed in, except for the river that drifted past over the shallows they had just struggled through.

  Wade wrung out his shirt and his pants and laid them next to Pepe's, which he'd gently stripped off as the boy stared vacantly at the river, and at the man standing in the sun in his underwear and untied shoes.

  "Where the hell is the raft?" Wade said out loud. His voice seemed to violate the silent chamber of the canyon.

  Pepe had wandered off the deck in the dark. Why the hell wasn't Carmen watching him? he thought. What the fuck was going on? He climbed up part of a taller rock to get a better view downstream, but saw no sign of the others. The flat river disappeared around another bend, entering the next canyon. He couldn't climb the cliff with Pepe, and getting up there probably wouldn't help them anyways. God dammit to hell! he thought, what about all the gear I left behind? This rescue trip is shot to hell! He vaguely kicked at some stones and sat down and put his head in his hands.

  Everything was on the raft: his pack, pistol, bow, phone, maps, even the old Bible with its emergency meds, everything. Except for the knife, which had still been in his pocket when he'd dropped into the river. Well I still have that–that's something, he thought.

  We'll find the others soon. He calmed down a bit. Or maybe another boat will pass that'll take us downriver.

  He sat on the edge of a rock and watched a hawk circle the rim of the canyon, waiting for the clothes to dry and looking for he knew not what amongst the sterile rocks and cliffs.

  ###

  There wasn't much they could do, in his mind, but cast themselves back into the stream. Desperate measures…this was the way to catch up with the raft, which couldn't go in reverse.

  They were boxed in by the canyon; in fact, looking around, he considered themselves lucky at all to have found sanctuary in the dark on this paltry spit of riverbank. The sun spread like yellow liquid on the sandstone. The clothes were drying but would get wet again; maybe he'll make a ball of them and they'll go in half-naked. No not that…the river's too cold. Pepe sat on the rocks and stared at the greenish-blue water, and the current fanning across its surface. The kid must be exhausted and starving, Wade thought.

  "What I'm going to do now, kid…" he said as much to himself, as Pepe seemed traumatized into silence, "is build a cheap raft so we can float on out of here." Keeping busy leaked away his anger and frustration; he'd never find Kara if he got marooned in this canyon with the Spanish kid.

  "I'm going to call you kid, like Billy the Kid, okay?" In his soul, he regained a semblance of good humor. "You can help me build the raft, okay?"

  "Si…" Pepe said.

  "Alright!" Wade exclaimed, and even hearing words from the kid helped calm him. But not even a thank you for fishing him out of the river…I guess I can't expect that as the kid wonders why we're on this awful voyage in the first place, including visiting the slaughter farm.

  Wade began to collect anything he could mass together into a crude flotation device; he found them on the shoreline or floating by–shrubs and branches that had been uprooted the few times the Colorado had breached its banks.

  Clouds eventually moved in. They looked like giant bags of gray water. He knew they had to get moving fast.

  He made a big pile of the debris on the riverbank.

  "For a fire?" Pepe said.

  "No kid…that's our new raft…"

  "No raft!" the kid said, for the first time with something close to a smile.

  "Yeah, it is…"

  "¡Mamá! ¿Dónde está mamá!"

  "Mama is where we're going, kid. You just have to be patient."

  He had to have some way of binding the motley flotsam he'd gathered, so they could float at least their upper bodies on it. "You stay here…" he told the boy, then he began to scramble along the shoreline, looking for more debris for the raft, or if he got lucky, a discarded rope…

  He waded barefoot, mostly in the river shallows. He found a can, which he kept, and then an empty plastic jug, which he thought he might be able to use. This was survival–scavenge and collect absolutely anything you can possibly use, even if it seems like garbage or dead weight.

  He didn't find a rope, but he
had the mass of a raft put together and yet little to tie it up with. Or to keep it floating with their combined weight, which would be at least 100 kilos or 220 pounds.

  He took his pants off, again. He looked at Pepe and said, "Don't laugh…" Then he tied the pant-legs together. The pants tied this way offered some buoyancy. If he could combine that with the jug, and bind it all together with the mass of his raft debris…it was really more of a nest than a raft.

  He wanted to leave the same day, but the gray and now black clouds appeared at the canyon rim at noon. They were a part of a monumental cumulus that rose from the desert, like a billowy mountain on the horizon. Wade thought the clouds were stained with wood smoke from the endless fires. When it started raining, the puddles turned black. He couldn't capture it for drinking.

  It was like blood from the sky.

  CHAPTER 23

  They found refuge under a shelf of rocks, up against the cliff. Wade moved all their drying clothes into the refuge, along with the stuff he wanted to make a raft out of. The temperature might have dropped 20 degrees F., and the canyon went dark. Pepe started crying; Wade had to remind himself that not only were they marooned on the riverside, but the kid had lost his parents.

  "That's alright," Wade said. "This one doesn't look like it will last long. We're safe…" For the moment, he thought. Their clothes were barely dry, and he pulled them on the shivering child. He thought again of the raft, now miles down the river unless they moored. The Santiago's must be suffering now over Pepe; the raft could even be tied up not far around a bend in the river.

  He wondered what Phoebe was doing; he wondered if his friends were going to escape this desert tempest.

  It began to hail. They were showered with what looked like black, ashen pebbles, buffeted by a cool wind. Thunder cracked. He held the whimpering Pepe, then fierce lightening bolts struck different parts of the canyon. Explosions reverberated off the canyon walls, and flashes lit up the swollen river, making it look greenish yellow in the intermittent light.