Journey By Fire Read online

  The cleanliness of the river water was suspect, and that's why they had to carry their own. The river had a reddish tint with all the sandstone that had washed into it, and it was silted with ash and charcoal from the adjoining forest fires. The river used to be fed by snowmelt from the Rockies, but that hardly ever happened anymore, so now it often received an ashen sludge in the run-off from infrequent rains.

  Lake Powell and Lake Mead were rapidly evaporating, Wade knew from his research. They said you could stand next to the lakes and literally watch the water go down. The cliffs on the shore of each lake had giant white bathtub rings hundreds of feet high along their sides, showing where the depth of the water bodies used to be 25 years ago.

  ###

  The first day passed quickly and was calm and the river contained no dangerous stretches. In the old days, the river might have upended even a raft of this size, depending on the season. But now just getting it through the shallower stretches was a challenge. Jonesy had two gaffs for helping nudge the raft through shallower sections. Yet the raft moved steadily along the river that curved through red cliffs and hillsides covered with thin dry grass and brambles.

  Its movement made a slight breeze under the sun. There was a thin cloud cover, and it was pleasant just watching the cliffs go by. The passengers seemed safe, for now. Wade sat cross-legged under his hat and silently watched the shore and listened to the river's calm burble. The water was copper brown and didn't look drinkable, but he let his hand dangle in it and it was a good if cool temperature for swimming. He was already barefoot, so he took his hat and white t-shirt off, emptied his pockets on to the plywood, and lowered himself over the side into the water. The cold was a shock then felt like immense relief. He'd only bathed in the Arkansas since he arrived that day on the train in Denver.

  "Don't go floating away because I don't have time to catch ya," Jonesy called out, looking like a ship captain as he steadfastly eyed his tiller. Wade hung on to the side of the raft where it was wood and Styrofoam and let his feet dangle in the current. He felt the cold water all around his legs and the bottoms of his feet. Then he dunked his head but kept his grip around the edge of the raft. He opened his eyes briefly but the water was dull and murky below the surface. When he raised his head out of the water the cool immersion had washed away some of his bad feelings, and he saw Pepe and Phoebe leaning over the edge and smiling at him.

  He was tempted to let go, so he did.

  CHAPTER 16

  He pushed away from the heavy raft and swam along with the current. It was easy and there weren't any rocks and he kept the raft to his righthand side. "Don't stray!" Jonesy yelled out. Wade knew why he was nervous. If they lost touch with Wade, Jonesy wouldn't want to pull to the side to get him, and if Wade lost the raft, he would have to survive in the desert alone.

  He swam hard to the raft and grabbed the side again, and he noticed that Phoebe had stripped down to shorts and a bra. She had an ornate tattoo on her belly, in the shape of a dark green embroidery, that he hadn't noticed before.

  "Can you swim?" he called out.

  "Yes!"

  "Well?"

  "Of course!"

  "Just asking." Then he let go again and let the current take him. He looked up and saw a hawk or an eagle floating above the canyon. He watched it until the bird disappeared behind the high ledges, with the sky dark blue and empty. You never saw aircraft anymore, he thought. The cliffs were steep and fragile looking, and they had small washed out beaches beneath them. He wondered when they were going to stop the raft for the night.

  Leaves floated in the water, which sparkled and riffled in the sunlight. As he swam, he could see just over the water surface and he thought of swimming with Kara when she was small, dog paddling bravely in the current of a Vermont river, her chin set and out of the water but her eyes merry, and he thought of his daughter and his heart sank some, and he stopped making himself forget everything by immersing his head in the cold river.

  He heard a splash and Phoebe came up out of the open water laughing and he heard Jonesy say "Dammit, this isn't a holiday. I need you to stay close to the raft!" He had a rope coiled close to his feet and Jonesy tossed the rope close to the edge of the raft, but Phoebe had one hand on the edge and seemed to be in control.

  Wade could see Wiley sitting off the side sulking, beside the mast. He missed his truck, and Wade figured that he liked being in control. He'd locked the vehicle and hoped to return to it sometime; he was going to make his way into Arizona and see if the outfit he worked for still had any operable vehicles left. Unlike Wade, he'd had no one at home he'd abandoned.

  ###

  Phoebe let go and floated with the current, her head above the surface. She shook the water free of her eyes, smiled, and kicked to the middle of the river. Wade looked downstream and he could see a bend in the river and it was still calm. He moved over closer to the side of the boat and hung on to the side. The sun was bright on the water and when he squinted against it in Phoebe's direction she just seemed like a chunk of formless floating debris. The shoreline still looked rocky and empty; not too many places to pull over.

  "Where are you going to moor the boat?" he yelled over to Jonesie.

  "I'm keeping an eye out for the spot now."

  Javi Santiago stood up by the mast and was looking downstream. "It's getting a little rough ahead," he said to Wade. "Phoebe should come in."

  "Come on in," Wade yelled across the water to the swimming woman. It seemed like the raft had picked up speed. He looked ahead about 200 meters and saw some white water torquing above the surface.

  "Now!" he said. She began a crawl toward the raft but it turned partly sideways and floated out ahead of her. Jonesie frantically waved her on. Wade boosted himself up onto the raft and picked up the rope and threw it out toward where Phoebe was now actively swimming. "Grab the end!" he screamed over the flat moving water. "Hold on!"

  The rope landed limply and slowly sunk into the water. Wade jumped in feet first holding on to the other end; the rope was strung through an iron loop that was screwed into the raft's plywood floor. He sunk into the muddy, coppery water and saw nothing but murk then came up and could first see Phoebe's arm coming up out of the water. He could hear the rapids in the background and feel the pull of the raft on the other end of the rope.

  "Keep swimming!" he yelled, then he thrashed against the slow current with the rope in one hand. She floated off to the side then made her way to the middle of the river, with the surface of the water roiling with the beginning of the rapids. He reached out for her and he could feel his feet strike the muddy bottom now of the river and he was shocked it was so shallow, and afraid of breaking bones on some rocks, then he had her by a chunk of her shirt, hair, and right arm and he made the rope around both of them.

  He could see Jonesie at the tiller madly gesticulating at Javi and Wiley as they pulled on the rope. Wade kicked in the river water hard toward the raft then he had one arm up on the wood and the water was turbulent and getting in his mouth and they were pulling Phoebe up on to the raft. He boosted himself up and rolled over onto the raft; he could feel the floor of the craft bounce in the turbulence. It was going through strong but not steep or violent rapids, perhaps Class II or Class III, he thought.

  The shoreline went by quickly, then the cliffs gave way to an open green grassy section, and he started laughing. It just came out, lying there on his back. The faster motion of the boat made a breeze that was refreshing. Phoebe sat on the floor of the raft with her hands around her knees, dripping, quietly smiling.

  "You dopes," Jonesie said, almost parentally. "I told you not to go too far." He seemed tired, simmering.

  "Do you want me to take the tiller?" Wade said. Jonesie had been at it all day.

  "I will," Wiley said. Jonesie handed it over without a protest. The raft had sidled through the narrower passage, around a bend, and now sailed through a wider, flatter section of water.

  "We'll pull over and camp for the
night soon," Jonesie said, and he stretched out on a mat on the wooden floor. "Just stay away from the rocks if you see any…and if you can't avoid 'em, hit 'em with the side rather than the front of the raft. That's one of the reasons the Styrofoam is there." Then he pulled the hat over his face and fell asleep.

  CHAPTER 17

  They pulled over as the sun was setting. It seemed as if they'd entered the barrenest of lands. He'd seen no animals along the river, not even a bird or a red squirrel, beyond the eagle that time. Outside and beyond the cliffs was Utah, a burnt and burning cauldron. The sun dipped toward the cliffs and Jonesy aimed the raft for a muddy bank, and they grounded her.

  Wade jumped into the shallow water with the raft's line in his hand, then he fixed it to the narrow trunk of a stunted tree that grew out of a waterside rock fissure. It seemed secure enough. The cliffs around them were steep and shaded the color of ochre. He'd had a desire to climb them, to see what was going on above them and this river, but he thought better of it. He considered the flaky nature of the rock and the gathering darkness.

  Everyone disembarked from the raft onto the riverbank. Javi Santiago tossed the backpacks and duffels that contained his family's possessions onto the narrow shoreline. There wasn't much room on the riverside, just a slim embankment until the cliff and rocks began. He lay down a small tarp, fastidiously in silence, and began to make camp.

  "Maybe we ought to sleep on the raft," Wade said. He knew he would; he didn't trust the cliff or rockfalls or the small beach's air of vulnerability. Something about the river made him feel safer, but he wasn't going to force Javi to do it Wade's way. The sun dipped behind the cliff, throwing their landing site in cool shadow.

  Javi gave his bags a look, as if having second thoughts, then he said, "I think it will be more comfortable on the ground, beside the fire."

  "I'm staying in the captain's quarters," Jonesy said. "But first I'm going to eat. And drink. I'm hungry enough to eat a dead horse and thirsty enough for many a flagon of cold brew."

  "I could probably find you a dead horse up there," Wiley said, nodding upwards. "But I can't make any promises about the flagons of frosty lager."

  The top of the cliff was beautiful against the purple sky, Wade thought. Beauty hadn't been at the front of his mind much lately, despite the scenic and austere landscape of wind- and fire-scarred mountains and river valleys, which still had a life to them. He'd lived at merely a meagre level of survival, minute by minute, no room for reflection; punctuated by a few vengeful killings. It didn't make him feel at all like himself; he was doing it for his daughter, ultimately. He then felt a wave of longing for his wife Lee, for the true beauty of times they'd spent together.

  Wiley already had a small fire going on top of a circle of stones Javi and his wife had meticulously arranged. Wade could hear the crackle of small sticks and dry grass; sparks flew up into the air, to which the fire had given a slight scent of cedar.

  He thought of the time he and Lee had gone to the Alps together for their honeymoon. Flew Air Canada to Zurich, back when the world was somewhat normal. No kids yet. They lived in a tiny spotless hotel and sat in a cafe by a large lake. They stared at the mountains with the sun reflecting on the water. Some of the mountains still had snow on them, and wore wispy clouds that looked like hats. The lake was clean and clear. They were quiet part of the time, just holding hands, or laughing about stories from college or their silly childhoods. The alpine sun was hot but nurturing; they wore sunglasses and sipped ice-cold Fechy wine and swam in the cold lake afterward. They dived in from warm rocks, and Lee came up out of the cool water shaking her head and laughing. She had a big smile; lively eyes.

  Wiley threw bigger chunks of wood onto the fire, and this cast more sparks into the sky. It was very dark by the river. Wade's eyes had misted up, and he stood up and walked over the to the cliff-side and put his hand on the rock. It was warm too, which he found oddly, universally reassuring. All he wanted to do was bring his family together again. But the world had gone mad.

  ###

  "Yeah," Wiley said, coming back to his thought flow. "I could find horse and cattle, up there in that desert. Picked clean by the buzzards."

  "What are we eating?" Jonesy asked.

  Carmen looked up, having quietly accepted the lead-food-provision role from the days before.

  "Kidney beans and rice, and some onions all cooked together…"

  "We don't have any chicken, any meat?"

  "Just in cans. Chicken soup," Carmen said, looking down into the fire.

  "Let's open them."

  They really had to do some hunting and fishing, Wade thought. They all needed more meat to keep their strength up. He wondered whether there were any fish left in the Colorado; probably not. But maybe…

  "What about coffee?"

  "We have some coffee left," Javi said. "We save the grounds in cans."

  "Good."

  That reminded Wade of the morning, and he promised himself that he would climb the cliff. Maybe there were left-over settlements or vehicles; something more to scavenge. The canyons made him claustrophobic; the climb might provide relief. But he knew there was nothing up there but desert sand and scrub and an old, desolate highway that was more dangerous than the river.

  Moab was close, then it was 200 miles or more to Lake Powell and Page, in the former Arizona. He thought he'd probably get that far on the river, before he had to track south to Sierra Vista.

  Phoebe stood on the bank with a blanket over her shoulders. She had a faraway look, the expression of a girl who had just woken up.

  "How far's Moab?"

  "Not three mile from here," Jonesy said, looping the raft's line into a tidier bunch in his hands. The raft tugged gently against the line in the current. Night fell abruptly; you couldn't hear anything but the trickle of the river. Wind soughing through the cracks in the cliff wall.

  "Given the quiet…" Wade said. "There must not be much going on in Moab."

  "Not exactly jumpin' these days."

  Jonesy shrugged. "It ain't what it used to be."

  "I loved Moab years ago," Phoebe said. "The golden desert. It was so spiritual–I found some of my best rocks and jewels there. So much to do, so enlightened. The restaurants, the music, art, the desert walks. An oasis…" The flames from the fire leapt; you could see the shadows on the cliff wall. They seemed engulfed in desert solitude.

  "We stopping there?" Phoebe asked, looking around as if having emerged from her reverie.

  "No," Jonesie said, sitting down on a blanket he'd laid by the fire. "Back at G.J., they said 'don't moor at Moab. Too risky.'"

  "In what way?" Wade said.

  "Used to be okay, a trading post. Then it got robbed, least the story goes, and the bad types took over. They take a cut of everything that passes between people. It's not a trading post anymore, it's a robbing and graft post, or worse. The lowlifes came on from the city…Tucson or Vegas…or Phoenix…" He looked over at Pepe; he didn't want to scare him. But Pepe was playing a game with a couple of stuffed animals over by a bush. "They wear red bandannas, and no ones been able to dislodge 'em. Too bad; Moab, it was turning into a nice stopover."

  "Maybe the good folks up in Grand Junction could do something about it," Phoebe said.

  "Maybe…doubt it somehow…"

  "I'm going to cook something," she added, with a burst of good cheer. "What'd ya say, señorita? What else do you wanna whip up?" A couple of pans filled with bean-and-rice mixtures leaned against the rocks by the fire and simmered.

  "What else…" Carmen repeated, sifting through a bag at her feet. "We have a few potatoes left, and parmesan…"

  "Yeah!" Phoebe said. "Let's do it!"

  Wade went up on the raft to fetch his bow and watch the river and the cliff as the ladies cooked. When he stood on the raft, it seemed unsteady, like an old pier. The river lapped against its sides. At least there would be no fierce storms that night, he thought as he looked at the stars.

  He unfurled
his bedroll and lay down on it, using his backpack as a pillow. He could smell the food, and his stomach growled. He'd eat and try to get some sleep, then push for them to leave at first light.

  After he ate he slept on his back and in the middle of the night he heard more thunder in the distance. He figured it was a passing storm in the desert. He sat up and looked toward the riverbank, where the sleeping people lay quietly by the dying embers. When he looked over the top edge of the cliff, the sky was still purple with bright webs of stars. The stars seem to envelope you in the desert, he thought.

  Flashes and flickers of light accompanied the thunder. He figured it was lightening, but the thud of the thunder had a different nature, like something being dropped from the sky. He listened for a few minutes then pulled a blanket back over his head. The horizon was always alight, commonly from massive fires, and this phenomena appeared as nothing new.

  CHAPTER 18

  In the morning, he pealed back the blanket and sat on the edge of the raft and watched the river. It was dark-blue and cool; it seemed to change color, lighten, as the sun came up. He reached down and splashed some of it on his face.

  He always woke up in the minutes just before sun-up, which is about the only thing the present had in common with the past. He stepped off the raft onto the wet riverbank, where the others slept in silent lumps under their blankets and tarps. A pot sat on the campfire rocks with leftover grounds and coffee from the night before, and Wade went about re-starting the fire.

  Pepe exclaimed from beneath his blankets a few feet away, thrashed around, then seemed to go back to sleep. Wade dipped a pot into the river to make some weak coffee from the grounds; he figured the water was okay boiled. He otherwise distrusted it and wouldn't drink it; he feared it was contaminated by deposited ash and the bodies of animals and people, among other things.

  The raft tugged lightly against the line, the river flowing past in the shadows thrown by the cliff. He got a small fire going and put the pot directly in it, and when the water reached a spattering boil in the pan, he poured it over the grounds using a filter he carried with him. Then he sat on a log and sipped the coffee looking up at the cliff.