A Short Story – Outward Bound

Sitting on the warm, sunlit rock, Eddie hugged his knees. Still shivering and still dripping, he looked into the flat green current of the river as it sped past. Everything seemed so peaceful, the surprising near silence of the rapidly passing river, the lazy desert heat of the late morning, the opening in the canyon walls that let the sun pour down on him.

He knew David was safe. He had caught sight of him perched among the low rocks just below the last set of rapids. Upriver, in the muted colors of the shaded canyon, David’s bright orange life jacket had signaled his presence. The raft would be coming downstream any minute now, stopping along the way to pick up each of the seven swimmers who had jumped into the rushing water just minutes ago. Eddie was distracted by the sensation of his feet cooling under the wet straps of his new sandals. Another vanity, only the best. The high-end tech gear he wore was performing as promised, rapidly drip drying, while he sat trying to make sense of what had just happened to him in those last – what – ten, maybe fifteen minutes.

Neoprene O-rings. They had come in a little zip-lock bag along with the sandals. Cautionary copy offered step-by-step instructions for installing the rings over the velcro closings of the sandals. “Jumping feet first into deep water or fast moving currents, without properly checking your O-rings…” warned that you could lose your new sandals, and suggested implicitly that you might then compromise the safety of the entire expedition. “Yeah right,” Eddie had thought. “Me and Tenzing Norkay” He had been much amused at prosperous suburban types like himself having to have only the best in authentic outdoor gear. He thought of the sleeping bags certified to forty degrees below zero. Looking again at the O-rings, he felt a tiny shudder. He was back in that first set of rapids feeling the force of the moving water, a force beyond appeal, a force that came close to sucking these same sandals from off his feet.

Turning his head upriver, at the approach of the raft, he could see David standing near the front. David was not smiling. Eddie knew he now had acquired a story to dine out on for a season or two. But he also knew he would probably never tell the whole story.

A Colorado River rafting trip, like so many things in Eddie’s life hadn’t been much more than a throw-away line. One of those, “Hey, wouldn’t it be neat to take one of those white water rafting trips?” When Lynn presented him with the trip, the airline tickets, everything arranged by a friend in the travel business, Eddie had been caught utterly off guard. Not wanting to appear ungrateful, he had had to improvise an enthusiastic response. As the trip approached, and as he and David got into planning what they needed, he didn’t have to feign anything. This was going to be really neat, he thought.

Initially, Lynn had thought it would have been Eddie and both boys. The hope being that Michael would successfully complete this, the latest rehab, that things might be different. They weren’t. Michael was on the street again, somewhere up near Albany or Troy all winter, and Eddie was taking it hard. He and David would be together for almost a whole week, getting away from everything. It had to help.

Eddie loved David without qualification. He loved him in the lightest of ways. They were friends. Eddie simply enjoyed just being in David’s company. Maybe it was compensation for the awful mess with Michael. Maybe it was all the time they had spent together in the car in the years when David was younger and playing ball on traveling teams. Eddie loved to talk, to riff on a theme and then connect to another theme and another and another until neither he nor anyone could figure out how they had gotten to the current subject. He always felt that David was one of the few people he didn’t bore. David was just finishing up his third year at Skidmore, and the rafting trip was set for the first week after he got home.

They spent the first night of the trip at an old, dumpy motel in Moab, Utah. The itinerary called for a group meeting the night before in one of the rooms, Eddie’s first look at his fellow travelers. He figured it would be close quarters for nearly a week and he knew how to grunt, nod and keep his head down until he had scoped out the scene. He and David were a self-contained social unit. He didn’t need or want any instant buddies on this trip.

A couple of college kids, staffers from the rafting outfitter, were already in the room helping themselves to beer from a large cooler and chatting up the paying guests. While they waited for the trip crew leader to arrive, Eddie learned that there would be nine other people in the raft, plus a crew of four.

Eddie said hello and introduced himself and David to an older couple, a wheezy, overweight retiree named Phil and his wife Louise. They seemed like nice people. A distracted guy in sneaky Gucci loafers came in with three kids. Eddie figured it was custody for the week. The two preteen boys had sullen faces and the girl, about sixteen, was difficult not to notice. She wanted to be noticed and bouncing across the room in cutoffs and a bikini top, she succeeded. Sleazy but funny words like “pneumatic” and “whoopee” flashed across Eddie’s brain. He made an immediate decision that the kid would remain invisible to him for the duration of the trip. He watched David watching the girl. That alone should prove entertainment enough. The last threesome were a bit more interesting, a hard looking couple in their late fifties with a grown son. All three of them looked like drinkers. The son had a lot to say. He had done these kinds of things before and wanted everyone to know it.

A tall thin guy, maybe in his early thirties, sauntered in and without a pause shouted, “OK everybody, Listen up!” “Uh Oh,” thought Eddie. He had seen this type before; the Eagle Scout, the acting sergeant in basic training, the facilitator, the middle school assistant-principal. The guy’s short sleeve dress shirt complete with pencil pack sealed the deal. Probably a Mormon too, thought Eddie, a no-brainer in Utah. There was something else about the guy that struck Eddie, a hint, just a hint of a kind of manic energy, the controlled craziness you met with evangelicals or saucer freaks, not quite a touch of madness, but close.

“Let’s get something straight right from the start,” he said. “This is not a theme park vacation. This isn’t going to be Disney World or Sea World.” He paused for effect, ”This is a wilderness adventure, and we want to make sure everyone comes out safely. It’s critical that you all pay attention, that you listen to and follow instructions.” Life jackets would be worn at all times on the raft, no wandering off, etc. etc.

At a little after nine the next morning, they assembled in the motel parking lot under a sun that was already making serious claims on Eddie’s attention. “John Boy,” as David had christened the thirty-something guy traveling with his parents, looked like he had had a bad night. They had been told that there was storage on the raft for a reasonable amount of beer. Eddie had bought two six-packs of non-alcoholic beer for himself and a twelve-pack of Heineken for David. John Boy and his folks had stacked up four cases of beer next to their duffels. Eddie figured there was stronger stuff stashed away.

Two Chevy Suburbans hauled them to the riverbank just south of town. Standing on the landing and seeing the river for the first time, Eddie wasn’t all that impressed. The mighty, mythic Colorado wasn’t more than fifty yards wide, flat surfaced and the color of pea soup, the kind you get in a diner. All those TV documentaries and magazine shots had promised something more than this.

One of the crew told him that the dense vegetation, improbably green, that lined the banks separating the river from the desert, was another bright idea gone awry. The plants had been imported to control bank erosion but like so much else out here, they had gotten completely out of hand.

The group leader, “River Guide” his official title as he told everyone again for the third or fourth time, showed up wearing a baseball cap with a dramatic sun skirt that covered his neck and shoulders, like an actor in a B-grade spoof of Beau Geste. The rest of the crew was busy with the raft, a huge contraption on a trailer backed up to the river. It was maybe twenty to twenty-five feet long and about eight feet across and made up of two inflated pontoons, one on each side of an open-work steel deck. A canopy covered the seating areas and a small outboard motor, with just enough power for steerage, hung from the back. It didn’t take long for Eddie to figure the pecking order. The “River Guide” was clearly the honcho. A burly guy with a black beard was the helmsman, and the other two guys would do all the loading, unloading, setting up and taking down camp and most of the cooking. All four were local school teachers and this was just a summer job.

Under a bank of trees, Eddie, David and their fellow passengers ate a picnic lunch of cold cuts and potato salad as the crew, aided by a half-dozen kids working for the outfitter manhandled the raft into the water. Eddie realized that he hadn’t taken a very accurate measure of the river’s current. What he had thought was a sluggish flow suddenly grabbed and pulled at the raft with a strength that was challenging the efforts of nearly a dozen grown men. Once in the water the raft shot downstream until the crew recovered and began pulling on the lines to bring it back to where they had launched it. It looked like they were working at it.

With a lot of waving and shouting from the raft and from the riverbank, they moved out into the current. The guy with the beard, Doug, took his position at the helm using the small outboard motor for control. After some brief shuffling, everyone settled into what would be their positions for the rest of the trip. Eddie watched the banks speed past, the flow so much faster than he would have suspected had he been watching from shore. They moved with the wind, and even under the canopy the desert sun dried out whatever moisture there was in the air and in their bodies. A half-hour into the trip, Eddie had helped himself several times to the water and lemonade stored in big coolers near the bow of the raft.

The guide, his name was Bill, began pointing out the geological and other natural facets of the river’s course. It was starting to turn into a school outing. “Now what kind of strata is that over there on our left? Anyone?” Eddie felt he had better establish some ground rules here. He turned away from Bill, asking David to hand him a beer. The two six packs were not going to go far in this heat. Canyon walls, rising to what he figured must be heights of several hundred feet, began to close in and shade the river. It’s all right out of a Wylie Coyote cartoon, he thought.

“If you want to cool off, go ahead and jump in,” said Bill. “The current will keep you up with us. Just be sure your life jacket is on right, and sound off when you go in the water so we don’t lose anyone.” The water was wonderful, just cool enough to banish the intense heat of the desert air. Eddie felt light and free, propped up by his life jacket with the river banks rushing by and the raft just a kick or stroke away. There were games. David and the kids taking turns trying to stand like water skiers on a plank towed by the raft.

They camped that night on a gravel bar under a sheer wall of orange and purple rock that towered above the riverbank. The crew prepared an edible dinner of steaks, fried potatoes and canned vegetables. Lots of bread and butter and a layer cake for dessert. They slept on cots, in sleeping bags under the open sky. Darkness came slowly, the desert air carrying the aura of the sunken sun on into the night. For almost an hour, Eddie tried not to fall asleep. The night sky was filled with swirls of stars he had never imagined possible. It seemed more light than dark.

Morning came with a damp chill, another surprise, thought Eddie. Breaking camp after a minimalist breakfast, they took their now accustomed places as the raft slid out into the current. “In about an hour, we’ll reach the confluence of this river and the Green River” Bill announced. “From there, the river will enter Cataract Canyon. That means rapids, boys and girls. And that’s what we’re here for. Right?” Eddie couldn’t quite bring himself to join the orchestrated cheering.

Now well into the second day on the river, Eddie realized that they had not seen a single other living thing. Not a person, not a bird, no wildlife at all. He knew from years of watching public television that the desert supposedly teemed with life, but they could have been on the moon.

The raft came to a stop just ahead of the first set of rapids. Bill, another of the crew and a couple of the kids jumped out on to the rocks and went ahead to scout out the scene. Bill’s job was to pick a path through for the helmsman. “OK guys,” Bill said, “this is a good practice run for the big ones that are ahead of us. Stay in your seats and hold on tight to the lines along the top of the floats. Whatever you do, don’t try and stand up or move around once we get into the white stuff.”

Eddie gripped the loop of rope beside his seat and checked to make David had a good grip. The raft slid back into the stream. They heard the rapids before they got a good look at them. The water had gone from green to brown. Ahead of and below them small standing waves marked their spots with tufts of white. Eddie felt the raft drop slightly as if it were going down a step or a bump. As they picked up speed, the bumping began to increase, both in intensity and in frequency. Eddie felt himself being lifted up out of his seat. He freed one hand and pressed down on David’s shoulder. Water splashed up from the sides of the raft and then in waves from the front. Eddie was drenched. His sunglasses blurred with water. Somebody began yelling, rebel yell style. Others picked up on it. By the time Eddie felt like yelling, it was too late. The noise had begun to recede and the raft had begun slowing down as they turned a bend into a shaded canyon of what now seemed to be almost still water. Even in the shade, they were dry within minutes. “Well, how’d you like that,” shouted Bill. His grin was proprietary, like he had something to do with all of this
.
Each set of rapids was a set of variations on the first. Some more bumpy. Some more wet. A couple of them, thought Eddie, were just about over the top. He found himself joining the others screaming, wondering if the intensity of the moment was accelerating or fading. And just how much more intense could it get without turning ugly. Eddie realized he was scared. It wasn’t an emotion he sought out. He watched David and realized that the idea of a bad outcome, a disaster, a catastrophe were not yet a part of David’s core beliefs. Good for him, he thought.

The rest of the afternoon was a mix of pleasant drifting on the smooth current of the river, drinking lemonade and laying back in the shade of the canopy. Eddie enjoyed talking with Phil, the older guy. The wife would smile, but didn’t have much to say. Eddie learned that Phil had been a gunner on a B-17 during the war. Eddie, a kid during the war, loved hearing someone who could talk about the war without laying a line of shit on him. The tranquility of just chatting away a day on the river would be interrupted again and again by short bursts of noise and chaos as they dropped through yet another patch of violent water.

Again, they camped under the open desert sky. The river rushing past like traffic on a nearby interstate. Up again at first light, Eddie walked a little downriver to take a leak, brush his teeth and throw some water on his face. That was it. The canyon was a carry in-carry out area. A portable toilet with detachable zip-lock bags was set up each evening. Everything was put back on the raft for disposal at the end of the trip. One of the kids who had to take a dump during the day was dropped off on the shore with a plastic bag. He was told to leave nothing behind. He didn’t look like this was what he had expected on his vacation.

The morning was a repeat of the previous afternoon. By now Eddie, like almost everyone on the raft was having a great time. Not the guy vacationing with his three kids. He looked less than happy, and each time the call went up of “rapids ahead,” he would begin to lose the color in his face. By the time the raft dropped into the first gully, he would look ill.

Just before lunch, the raft slipped up to a bar and the usual people got off to scout the rapids that could be seen and heard in the distance. After a few minutes, Bill came back and said, “this is a little one. If you really want to get the feel of all of this, you can jump in here and float down through it in your life jackets.” It would provide a taste, he said, of what is known out here as “canyoneering,” or going down rapids by being in them. “You might swallow a little water, but nothing more than that.” That was all Eddie needed to hear. One of his least favorite feelings, aside from being afraid, was involuntarily swallowing water. “No thank you,” he thought.

David joined the group jumping in. John Boy, the two brothers, Bill, two of the crew and David, splashed into the current and quickly drifted downstream. Eddie watched them move downriver until their heads were just dark dots above the water, the scene broken by flashes of orange as the tops of their life jackets bobbed above the surface.

At the foot of the rapids, their heads suddenly disappeared. Eddie realized that they dropped down into the first of the gullies in the water. They were already past the big standing waves and wouldn’t be seen again until the raft went downstream to pick them up. Eddie felt he had made a prudent decision. He wished now that he had looked up the elevation drop between Moab and the end of the trip at Lake Powell in Arizona. If he had done that Lynn, in a perfect deadpan voice, would have said, “Gee Ed, that’s really interesting.”

With the raft feeling nearly empty, Eddie hung on as they followed the floaters into the rapids. Bill had been right, the water, turbulent for a few seconds, quickly settled down to a dull roar, diffusing its energy into a large placid pond that opened out into the shadows made by the canyon walls. As each of the swimmers climbed dripping, sputtering and coughing, up into the raft, it was “Wow! That was wild. That was so cool.”

The raft had turned to face up river. In the calm of the pond, the little outboard easily held its own against the softened pull of the current. A still wet Bill, addressed all on board. “Look, the next one is real piece of cake, maybe about half as strong as the one we just went through. Last chance to try it guys.” There were several cries of “OK” and “Let’s do it!” Eddie looked at Phil who shook his head and silently mouthed the words “no fucking way.”

What the hell, thought Eddie. He felt he might regret having come all this way and not fully experienced all that the trip had to offer. ‘You going again David,” he asked. “Sure Dad,” he answered.

Again inside Eddie’s head, it was all “what the hell.” The same seven were going again, Eddie the only newcomer. He checked all the strap closings on his life jacket, left his hat on his seat and joined the gang lining up at the stern gangway of the raft. One by one, they jumped off into the air, dropping noisily into the water. Eddie, holding his nose, plummeted below the cool green surface, staying under the few seconds it took for the buoyancy of his life jacket to overcome the force of his drop from the boat.

They began drifting away from the boat and from each other in an ever-widening pattern. Eddie could see David’s head below and to the left. David had already entered a stream of current and was moving fast, opening the gap between them. Eddie rocked back, resting on his life jacket as he was pulled downstream. His position in the water, he thought with amusement, was almost like being at home in his recliner watching a football game.

The river began getting serious as Eddie and the others, he couldn’t see any of them now, were carried into a narrower section of the canyon. Steadily picking up speed, Eddie was aware of the strange, impersonal power of the moving water. It pulled at his life jacket, at his trunks, at his shirt and at his feet. The sound of the rapids ahead was no longer the distant gurgling he remembered hearing from the raft. With each second, the sound became louder, more clear, more distinct, rising and building into a roar that complemented the growing rush and turmoil of the water that swept him along. When he realized that within this flow, nothing he did or didn’t do mattered, he began to be afraid. “Oh shit,” he thought. “Why in God’s name did I ever do anything so fucking dumb as get off that raft.” He could no longer control anything, not even his position in the water. Ahead, he could see the initial drop where the unbroken surface of the river fell into the rapids. From this vantage point, the river was terrifying. The whitecaps they had been tearing through in the raft, laughing and yelling, were now immense towers of roiled, angry water.

Eddie also had to deal with an unanticipated companion to his fear. His pounding heart rate had sped up his breathing until he was now gasping for breath. Not a good mode of being, he thought, when your head was being pushed in and out of water. He was already breathing in more water than he thought possible, and he knew that the rapids themselves were still to come. For the first time in years, maybe for the first time in his adult life, Eddie began to fear for his life. He had no illusions that the life jacket would keep him alive in water like this, not if he kept inhaling it in with every gasp. He had seen the news footage of people drowned at sea, bobbing in their life jackets, heads face down in the water.

The drop into the rapids was a heart stopper. Eddie didn’t really have time to reflect on anything. He was swallowing water when he went face first into the standing waves. A whirl of underwater turmoil grabbed at him and pulled him sharply down. “This is it, I am going to die,” was all he could think. In the swirling darkness, that one thought raced through his brain like an electronic loop. “This is it, it’s over. It’s over. I will die here.” At what he felt was his final instant, another force shot him like a toy to the surface. He broke through into the light, choking and crying for air. In a careening whirl of water, he spun in circles as the rock walls of the canyon sped past.

Eddie just wanted it to be over. Soon the pace of the water would slacken. Soon, maybe in seconds, he would muster enough strength to overcome the current and pull himself out into calmer water. He would have time to compose himself, to stop choking, to conquer the need to vomit up all of the water he had swallowed. The river should begin to slow down. The current should start to weaken. The canyon should be opening out. But none of that was happening. If anything the stream was again accelerating, and in the distance he again heard the roaring sound of falling water. “Oh Jesus Christ, No,” he prayed. Somewhere in front of him was David. “What a fucking way to go,” he thought. “I don’t think I can get through anymore of this. What about David? What about David? Jesus Christ, No.”

“That fucking Mormon asshole,” his mind screamed. “He doesn’t have a fucking clue. We’re into a string of rapids.” That clown.” Eddie realized that Bill must have mistaken the spot where they had gone into the water for another place, an easier place on the river. “Too late now,” he thought.

The second set of rapids was as difficult for Eddie, if not more so than the first. At several points, he believed with all his heart that he would not survive. But he did, and after a third run of white water, he was able to pull himself out of the river’s slowing rush and into a side pond of nearly still water. Staggering out on to a gravel bar and then falling down, he lay on his side and fought back a retching cough while he tried to get his breathing back under control. Over the sound of the river, he heard shouting and watched as John Boy’s head and one that probably belonged to one of the kids as they went bobbing downstream at a speed that startled and amazed Eddie.

In the half-light of the canyon, Eddie sat up and looked upriver. The raft should be coming downstream at any minute. “Jesus Christ, that was awful,” he thought. “But, I am alive. I didn’t fucking die.” In fact, Eddie realized he had never felt quite this way in his entire life. Without knowing why, he stood up and looked across the still water of the eddy at the moving current. His first step surprised him. “What are you doing, you simple son-of-a-bitch,” he thought. The second step, like the first came almost of its own. He could feel the bottom slipping away from under his sandals. He could feel the first pull of the current and a sense of being carried away on something primal, something beyond anything he had ever known. He could even think that his going back into the river had something to do with David being out there ahead of him. But he knew it didn’t.