Biting the Moon (27 page)

Another hundred yards of fast water and then, as if the churning rapids had been nothing but a dream, their raft hit flat water deep and green and still as a lake, so placid Mary could see her own unbroken shadow floating on its surface. She thought again of that stretch of road after they'd left the vet's and wondered if anyone was up there now, looking down on them. But of course there couldn't have been. There would be no roads here, nothing more than maybe Forest Service trails. It was gorgeous but remote, cut off. She had the strange thought that the only rules that applied here were the rules of rafting.

Then her attention was caught by an enormous slab of rock in their path some fifty feet farther down, and also by the scout, Ron, who was standing above them on a granite cliff. He crossed his arms over his head in a sign to the boatmen. Ahead, the river was full of boulders, some as big as houses. Harry turned to tell them they'd have to line the boats or do some portaging around this section of white water up ahead because it was too thin to run. After that, they'd stop for lunch.

He maneuvered the raft over to shore, followed by Randy and the others in the second raft.

“Portage,” Mary discovered, was a pain in the butt, a fancy word for a really tiresome job—carrying their rafts to a point beyond the thin water Harry had mentioned. That meant not only the rafts but all the equipment, which would have to be stowed again. They had to move up and down, stumbling over rocks and down gullies to arrive, finally, at a point where they could put the rafts in water again.

Mary thought that, dangerous as the water they had just run seemed, it would still be hard to actually lose someone on a rafting trip if you had a first-class guide like Harry Wine. His ability to get them over the falls and out of that hole certainly proved that. Besides, there were grab lines, throw ropes, and hundreds of feet of rope for the rafts themselves. So it might not be so easy to explain someone's going irretrievably overboard.
People sure wondered,
Reuel had said,
a boatman experienced as Harry Wine is, how he could've let that happen.

Peggy's kayak had got trapped in a hole—something like that—on the Main Salmon, wasn't it? The two of them had been in kayaks, the river too high in spring for rafts. No one else, no witnesses.
Not much use trying to find anyone in that rough water.

Rough water was right.

Lunch made up for it: Wine's Outfitters supplied the food and drink, and they didn't stint. Mary hadn't realized how hungry she was before she smelled the bacon cooking in a frypan over the flame Ron got going. The bacon, he said, was for the pizza. She'd never eaten pizza cooked on a grill and watched him prepare it, rolling out the dough, grilling it on one side, flipping it over, and deftly covering it with the contents of the frying pan and other adornments he'd set out on the table. When it was done and the slices passed around, Mary decided it was probably the best pizza she'd ever eaten—thick with cheese, hot with chilies. There was an arugula and avocado salad and fruit for dessert. If this was only lunch, she was certainly looking forward to dinner. She had thought the food brought along would be more like soldiers' rations—tasteless squares of stuff—or stuff like hot dogs and potato salad.

Randy had gone to set up a portable toilet back behind some bushes. He instructed them to stick the red flag into the ground when they were using the toilet and to take it down when they weren't.

There was an old pump house not far from the place into which they'd settled. It sat near a sand-lined basin made by an eddy and edged by bitterbrush and broom grass. The pump still worked; Mary found the water cold and sweet, unlike any other water she'd ever drunk.

Andi was sitting beside Harry, and if the others noticed how closely she stuck to him, they'd probably have put it down to a schoolgirl
crush. Both Honey and Lorraine found as many excuses as they could to consult with Harry. Both of them had a fair knowledge of rivers and rapids, to judge from the remarks Mary overheard.

Floyd Ludens kept himself slightly apart, as usual. Mary noticed he didn't eat much: a slice of pizza, no salad. There was beer, too, but Harry advised them all to be careful of it. Mixx pooh-poohed this as he did most injunctions to be careful. Still, he didn't drink more than a bottle and a half. Ludens didn't drink any; he just kept on leaning against a big pine with that same purposeful expression on his face but nothing in his eyes, which seemed locked in a permanent squint. Mary went over to him.

“Do you do this much?” She gestured toward the rafts.

He shook his head. “Been out with Harry Wine a couple times, that's about all.”

“Here? On the Middle Fork?”

“Middle Fork, Main, once we did the Selway. That's a lot rougher.”

“Then I'm glad we're not on it. This one's rough enough for me.”

Ludens smiled, asked her where she was from, and they carried on a superficial information-gathering conversation from there. Then he asked her about Andi, and why the two of them were there—that is to say, in Salmon.

Mary searched her memory to dredge up whatever lie Andi had told. Oh, yes, to visit relatives. That was close enough, so that's what she said.

“She puts me in mind of my daughter.” Floyd nodded toward Andi, who was still talking to Harry.

What on earth, Mary wondered, could Andi and Harry find to share between them for all of this time? What topic of conversation could they find to keep them so wrapped up?

“Looks like her,” Floyd went on. “Does she have a lot of experience river-rafting?”

“Her? Oh, sure.” Mary tossed it off. “She's floated the Gaunty—” No, that wasn't exactly the name, but when Floyd didn't correct her she went on. “And Hell's Canyon, she's done those rapids. Oh, she's been everywhere.”

He smiled. “Sounds like my daughter, too.”

Harry decided that “some of you need to hone your paddling skills.” He didn't look directly at Mary and Andi, but since they had made absolutely no showing at all of their “paddling skills,” Mary assumed the comment was directed largely at them. The women spent another half hour or forty-five minutes getting a lesson from Harry, who was a tough teacher.

It was midafternoon by the time they shoved off again, after reloading the rafts. Since Andi wasn't giving up her seat beside Harry for love or money, Lorraine Lynch once again sat in the rear of the raft with Mary. And talked, talked about books, about rafting, about students at her college—talked and talked until Mary almost hoped the raft would wrap around a rock. She found this hard to picture, but Harry had warned them often enough against it. Then she was afraid her idle wish might be answered, because up ahead she saw big rocks jutting above the water and heard Harry exclaim, “Hell!” He looked up, over to the bank, and said something about Ron that Mary couldn't hear over the sound of the heavy rush of water. It didn't look as if there was enough space to float between them. The biggest of the three rocks, the center one, seemed to be heading right toward them.

Andi shouted, “We're going to hit!”

“Sit down!” yelled Harry.

Before they could slam into the rock head-on, Harry took a pull on one oar and spun the boat into a one-hundred-and-eighty-degree turn. This pushed the raft past the rock and had them moving into a tongue, stern first, headed downstream.

A flume of water bumped them over a rock bed and through a narrow passage with a sharp right-hand turn at the bottom. Harry kept to the outside to keep out of the shallower water, which meant they were going faster. Coming out of this turn, they nearly rammed a shelf of rock that Harry managed to clear only through a quick backward pull. But what bothered Mary was what she saw in front of them: a lot of frothy white water that meant a place full of rocks for one thing; for another, maybe a big drop, but they couldn't see it because of the turbulence. As they picked up velocity, Harry shouted at them to use back strokes to slow the raft to keep from wrapping around a huge rock that Mary could only now just see. She paddled as hard as she could to keep
the raft from dropping sideways into the hole. From this they seemed to glide, to fly into the clear green pool before them. The change was breathtakingly quick.

Harry was laughing, but even he sounded nervous. “Sorry about that. Jesus, wasn't like this last year.” He stood up to watch for the other raft, saw it, waved. “Those guys are good, best I've ever had.”

Mary was soaked; Andi was spluttering, wiping spray out of her eyes. All three of them looked back to see how the second raft was taking the rocks. She couldn't see behind. Ahead, she saw mist rising from the water and then their raft dropped and hit a reverse wave. Somehow, Harry kept the boat from spinning or capsizing and they were moving forward again, doubly drenched. Mary couldn't find a dry spot on herself.

“Hit a hole,” Harry called back to her, and flashed her a smile, as if she wouldn't have known they'd hit one without being told. He turned again to watch the other raft and couldn't see it.

“Where is it?” asked Andi.

“They're all right,” Harry said, as the boat behind them, having been tilted by the waves so that it stood nearly straight up, now came shuddering down, slamming against the water.

The faces of these “veteran” white-water rafters in the other boat looked a little drawn and white. Mary was glad, for once, that her boatman was Harry.

She hoped the cooler made it through all right. She was already hungry again.

Mary was relieved when they finally stopped at the campsite where they'd spend the night. While she helped off-load the waterproof bags, the other raft came in, towing the freezer of food behind it. Mixx got out, proclaiming the rapids were nearly as good as the Payette and the scenery almost as spectacular as along the Rio Grande.

Harry had set down two of the bags at the far end of the campsite, and the twins dragged the freezer out of the water. Andi helped Harry unpack the provisions. Mary pulled their sleeping bags out, carried them over beneath a tree, and started unrolling them. The tree was near them, which is why she chose it. She heard Andi, apparently talking about Santa Fe and the coincidence of his picking her up on that road between there and Albuquerque. Harry was stacking small plastic trays that reminded Mary of airplane food but, considering the lunch they'd had, probably wasn't. He said nothing but “Get out that flour over there and the sugar,” before he took the armload of food over to Ron and the campfire.

Mary took the opportunity to say to Andi, “You'd better be careful of what you talk about. It'll just make him suspicious.”

“I want him to be. He might do something.”

“Like try to drown you? Swell.” Mary shivered. “My God, I'm cold; I have to get out of these clothes.”

Andi didn't appear to be aware of the cold. She retained her pellucid calm and set the small bag of flour on the ground as Harry started back.

Mary looked around and into the trees, wondering where she could change. She had another pair of jeans and a sweater in her duffel bag but didn't much like the idea of going behind bushes. She went deep into the trees, loving the silence after the thunderous river noise. Sequestered in a grove of pines was a tumble-down prospector's shack, the roof partially fallen in. Life and gold or the hope of gold had fled from it long ago. She considered using it to change but decided it looked too good a hiding place for snakes. She went instead to the other side of a big ponderosa pine. Standing in its shadow and in a big patch of fool's huckleberry, she yanked on the dry jeans, zipped them up, pulled out a heavy sweater, and, still bending over, looked at the base of the tree. It must have been a husking place for squirrels, as it was littered with shucked cones.

Her head came up as she heard a rustling of leaves and branches, signifying movement.
Mountain lions
was her first thought, and she stiffened, heart racing.

What she heard was Harry Wine's voice, coming from inside the old shack. “
Atkins
? . . . insane” was all she heard.

“
Is it
?” The other voice belonged to Floyd Ludens. “
You're not . . . happened three years ago
.”

Mary was frozen in place, kneeling there. Floyd's voice held a threat as cold as the river.

“
For Christ's
 . . .” Harry's voice rose. “. . .
fucking paranoid
.”

“
What if I told you I had a letter from . . . ?
”

A bark of laughter, and Harry said, “
You're nuts
.”

The register of their voices went down, leveled off, so that Mary had to strain to make out any words. Carefully, slowly, she moved a few feet nearer the shack. She heard Floyd say, distinct and sharp, as if he meant to carve the name into the night, “
Peggy
.”

A silence followed in which neither man moved or spoke.

Peggy Atkins?

In her mind, she heard Floyd's voice again:
like my girl.

Someone called out, either Ron or Randy, for Harry to get over there and do the steaks.

Mary heard them leave the shack and heard feet move across the forest floor and, in another minute, heard Honey Mixx cry out something about the wine to Floyd.

Laughter rose and fell away. Hurriedly she finished dressing, pulling the sweater over her head and tugging it down. Then she shook out her hair and found herself looking straight at him.

Harry Wine was leaning against a tree, as if he'd just materialized before her eyes. The sun was at his back, making its bright descent through the branches of the trees, and for an instant its richly diffused light obliterated his features, cast him as a silhouette, a shape of darkness. Mary thought she saw, behind his nearly perfect form and face, dust and ashes, old bones calcified. He slouched against the tree as if he owned this place, yet he looked like he didn't belong here.