THERE WAS SOMETHING about knowing they were heading for a finish line that made the walking easier. Miles slid past, generosity bloomed. At pit stops, strangers applied moleskin to each other’s feet and laughed at jokes that would have gotten failing grades in any other situation. Conversations moved along the line of walkers, bouncing off the pavement only to be caught by others and passed forward or backward. Ava could still feel every step she took, a sharp vibration that hummed up her shins and pulled tight in the back of her legs, but she could imagine the end and the pain no longer mattered.
She thought of her mother and Kate, of what it must have been like, what it must be like, never knowing if or when it would be over, or what over would look like when you got there. The thought turned her spine cold and she was grateful for the certain knowledge of miles remaining to the finish, of the celebration waiting when she got there.
Around two in the afternoon, the volunteers at the pit stops started calling out the miles: “Five to go!” “Two-point-seven!” Teams started chanting, taking old army drills and modifying them while their feet stomped along the pavement. The pace accelerated. Ava could hear the lungs around her filling and exhaling faster and deeper; she could smell the fragrances of Bengay and perfume and deodorant thicken and grow with the rising heat of the walkers. As they got down to the last half mile, they encountered what looked like a continuous cheering station, the sound of applause rolling toward them, buffeting Ava.
Behind her dark glasses, Ava felt tears falling down her cheeks. She looked quickly over at Elaine, who was crying.
“It’s okay,” Elaine said to Ava. “It’s okay.”
Then they turned the corner and entered the home stretch, lined with people three and four deep holding up hand-painted signs, pumping fists in the air, one woman standing silently, as if holding in a sound that would deafen the rest of the crowd.
THE CLOSING CEREMONIES were over and family members were starting to find one another. An impossibly tall man with white beginning to fleck into his hair came out of the crowd and hugged Elaine long and hard.
“I am so proud of you,” he said. “Look at what you did.”
“Ava, this is my son Adam,” Elaine explained as she stepped back, smiling.
The man put out his hand; Ava moved forward to take it, leaning in. Kate always joked that Ava was like a dog, smelling every man, woman and child to sense if they were friend or foe.
“Nice to meet you,” Adam said, bending toward her, covering her hand in his. Ava inhaled, caught something, but it was immediately lost in the hailstorm of smells around them.
“I’m Ava,” she replied. Just then she heard her name yelled at top volume. Across the crowd she saw her father and Sara and Hadley, Sara’s twins on the women’s shoulders, big and little hands flying in the air.
“I have to go,” she said. She turned to Elaine and hugged her for a long moment. “I have your number; I’ll call.”
It wasn’t until she was across the crowd, after Sara and Hadley and her father had swept her up in a hug that lifted her off her feet, that her mind placed the scent. Blackberries.
KATE
N
o one had told her the part about peeing, Kate thought as she held on to the side of the huge yellow raft, her body half-submerged in water that seemed to freeze in place even as it moved past her. She watched the girls in the river around her—and they were still girls, Kate thought, no matter that they called themselves women—casually hanging on to the side of the boat as if they were ordering margaritas at the local bar, their conversations dancing in the air even as their bladders released into the river about them. Then with a laugh, they vaulted effortlessly up into the raft.
Kate gripped the rope that ran along the side of the boat, tightened her sphincter muscles to no effect, and hated the girls, even as she remained proudly awestruck at the slim elegance of her daughter, who now looked down at her from the safety of the raft, her face shadowed with concern.
“How’re you doing, Mom?” Robin asked.
Kate gritted her teeth. Or maybe they were chattering. The water really was cold, after all. How could river water be so cold when the air had reached well over one hundred degrees? Hot. Cold. Three hours into the trip, and so far subtle was not a word she would use to describe the Grand Canyon.
“Oh, fine.”
“Seriously, Mom.”
Patty the river guide, the ten-foot-long oars of the raft resting easily in her hands, looked over her shoulder at Kate.
“If the water’s too cold, you can get back in the raft and just pee over the side.”
It took Kate a moment to understand. This woman sitting above her, with her long muscled arms and terra-cotta tan, was suggesting that Kate hang her naked white buttocks off the side of the raft and pee into the air. There were five other boats. Kate had a sudden, full-color memory of walking down hospital corridors, one hand holding the IV stand, the other behind her, gripping her gown together in back.
“I thought I was done with flashing my ass,” Kate said in an undertone to her daughter.
“I’d turn the boat around,” Patty added helpfully. “Upriver.”
Actually, the rest of their rafts were well ahead of them by now, but there were other groups on the river, motorized expeditions, their rafts huge moving-van affairs that came flying down the river, their approach announced by the roar of their engines only moments before their arrival.
“I can wait until we stop,” Kate said. She figured her bladder was probably frozen by now, anyway.
It took three of the healthy young girls, joking companionably, to pull Kate back into the raft, two grabbing her arms, Robin finishing off the project by hauling Kate in by the waistband of her shorts. Kate landed on her belly in the raft, rolled over and sprawled against the side, breathing, and felt her bladder begin to defrost.
CAMP THAT EVENING was on a sandbar stretching warm and soft along the edge of the river, framed by stands of tamarisk trees, their branches leggy and graceful, silvery leaves shifting in the breeze. Once the gear had been unloaded, dry bags tossed fireman-style in a chain from boat to beach, their group had spread out, the veteran rafters setting up their tents, eager to claim the shady and protected spots, while others lounged by the river with books in hand. At the far end of the beach Kate saw Robin, washing her hair with the group of younger women, jumping back from the cold water, shaking their heads so the drops flew away from them in sunlit arcs.
Two of the guides were setting up the kitchen, digging in ammo boxes and the huge metal coolers for the utensils and ingredients for the evening’s meal. Kate walked up to the head guide, Sam, who stood at a makeshift table chopping onions.
“Can I help?” she asked. Sam appeared close to her age and was wearing a wedding band—two facts she found curious as she had always thought of river guides as young, with wild hair and wilder sex lives—but which also made approaching him easier.
“We’re probably fine, if you want to read or relax,” Sam said easily. It amazed Kate how calm the guides were, how casually they seemed to navigate waves or rumpled emotions. She herself felt like one of the dry bags, tossed from one experienced hand to another, capable of exactly nothing.
Let me do something I know how to do, she silently begged.
Sam looked over at her thoughtfully.
“Well, you could chop the green peppers.” He handed her the knife and took another one out of the case.
The knife felt good in her hand, simple and straightforward. She stood the pepper on its end and sliced down, feeling the quick crunch of the outer skin, the way the knife fell through the hollow space inside, the solid thump as the knife connected with the cutting board below. The brisk, spicy smell jumped up to meet her nose as she cleaned out the seeds and the stiff white flesh. Her fingers instinctively moved out of the way of the sharp edge of the knife as she cut quick, regular slices, and she found herself breathing easily for the first time that day. She looked up at the cliffs across from her, the late afternoon light playing among the layers, the air turning pink and ever-lightening shades of blue between the canyon walls. The water ran green in front of her, clear and cold.
“It’s gorgeous here,” she said quietly. “It feels as if the whole world is gone.” She laughed. “I bet everybody says that.”
“You know,” Sam commented, “in a couple days you won’t be able to even see the top of the canyon anymore.”
“How’s that?”
“The river goes down.” He said it without a trace of condescension, as if not realizing that a river had to go downhill was the most logical thing in the world. “We’ll go through two hundred million years of rock, and even the top layer is as old as the dinosaurs. Pretty amazing. Each layer has its own colors and textures. Kaibab, Toroweap, Coconino, Hermit, Supai, Redwall, Muav, Bright Angel, Tapeats.” He made it sound like the names of children he knew and loved, although Kate couldn’t imagine how many times he must have rattled off the list. “My favorite is Redwall.” He saw her face. “Want to know how to remember them all?”
She nodded.
“Know The Canyon’s History; Study Rocks Made By Time.”
“Or,” Patty said wickedly as she passed by, a metal box and a toilet seat in her hands, “Kissing Takes Concentration, However Some Require More Breath and Tongue. Thanks for the groover duty, by the way, Sam, my man.” And she was off, down the beach.
“Get a view of the river, Patty!” Sam called after her cheerfully.
“Groover duty?”
“You’ll see,” Sam said with a wink. “Better not to explain while cooking.”
“TODAY WE ARE GOING to see our first rapid.” Sam stood with his back to the rumbling green river, addressing the group, who sat cross-legged on the sand, gripping their mugs of coffee with the territorial protectiveness of people who are not used to getting out of sleeping bags at 5:30 in the morning. “Not huge, by any means—we don’t get those until the second half of the trip—but it’ll be good practice. Who wants to go in the paddle boat?”
The girls’ hands shot up, Robin’s among them. Robin looked at her mother sitting next to her and lowered her arm.
“I want to do today with you,” she said.
“You’re not the mother, Robin.”
“Exactly my point.” Robin grinned.
On an ordinary day, on the flat peaceful canvas of a lake, the paddle boat would have appeared substantial—a friendly yellow bus with room for six paddlers, lined up three on each side, and a guide at the back. Set in the context of the wide green river in front of them, compared with the eighteen-foot-long oar boats with their mountains of gear, the paddle boat shrank, a rubber duck among freighter ships. Kate watched the girls excitedly donning their waterproof pants and jackets, saw how Sam moved among them, carefully cinching up the side straps of their life jackets.
“You want it secure,” he replied matter-of-factly when one of the girls squealed.
Kate felt her stomach clench. She couldn’t remember where the fear had come from—a movie, a story, a dream, the one where the person is trapped below a boat or a layer of thick blue ice, underwater in any case, unable to find the surface. A memory of a moment that had not yet occurred, that last, long minute before her lungs surrendered to water, praying for gills that didn’t exist.
It was almost funny how much it scared her. You would think, having looked in the mirror and seen the lines of her skull beneath her skin, she would be immune from concerns about mortality. The get-out-of-death-free card, as Robin called it. But life had an odd sense of humor, it appeared, becoming more precious rather than less, each particular moment made more beautiful with the sense that it had been paid for, earned. Or perhaps it was simply that after skirting the precipitous edge of extinction, it would be too ironic to drown.
She looked at the big, muscular water and tightened the side straps of her life jacket.
“Do you want to go with Patty again?” Robin was asking. Kate considered the question. She felt a need for a masculine size and strength at the oars for this rapid, but she had already floated with Patty, trusted her. Maybe there would be karmic payback for putting your feminist ideals to the test. Kate liked that idea.
“Sure,” she said, grabbing her water bottles.
She and Robin were the only two in the big oar boat along with Patty, who sat above them on the rectangular metal cooler that spanned the width of the boat, one long, wooden oar held casually in each hand.
“Today’s a piece of cake, girls,” she said, eyes alight under her cowboy hat, ropy arms relaxed at her sides. “Just enough clouds to keep us cool; not enough for rain. Some good water, but not too big. You’ll do great.”
Kate and Robin perched on the sides of the raft at the front.
“When we get near the rapid,” Patty remarked, “you’re going to brace one foot against the side of the raft and hold on to a rope with each hand. No letting go.” Patty looked pointedly at Kate, and Robin laughed. The day before, when they had reached one of the larger riffles, Kate had instinctively put out her hand to hold Robin in the raft. “Soccer mom arm,” Patty had called it.
“Mom, if you fly out of the boat trying to keep me in it, I’m going to be really mad at you,” Robin said with a smile as they settled into their positions.
“I get it,” Patty commented to Kate from her position on the cooler. “I’ve got a kid at home.”
Kate looked up at her, shocked. “You do?”
“Eight years old. Little guy is smart as a whip.”
Patty pushed the oar boat off from the bank and joined the rest of the flotilla bobbing downriver like a lazy herd of cows. She sat at ease, dipping the oars into the water and propelling the boat forward just enough to steer, letting the river do the rest of the work. Kate felt the motion of the water as she gazed at the canyon walls that rose far above her. Already they were deeper in the canyon, carried by a river that had been running for six million years, each curve in the riverbed, each mile taking them somewhere older, more primitive.