In the Heart of the Canyon - By Elisabeth Hyde Page 0,11
in those strokes, you want me to starve to death back here?”
The first sign of trouble came when Sam complained for the fifth time about being hot. The guides had set up a table in the small bit of shade and were fixing lunch while all the guests were hanging around in the hot sun with not much to do.
“Well, you know what I said earlier,” JT told him as he scooped out an avocado. “If you’re hot, you’re stupid. Go take a dunk. Keep your life jacket on.”
“I’m going in the river,” Sam told his father.
“Don’t go too far. Do you think it’s okay?” Mark asked Jill.
“If the guide says it’s okay, it’s okay,” Jill replied.
So Sam waded into the water up to his hips, and with a great deal of shrieking, he hopped up and down and finally dipped below the surface, but only for the briefest of seconds, during which there was a moment of silence, broken by the boy’s explosive burst as he shot back up, screaming. It looked like so much fun that soon everyone was dunking themselves, much to the guides’ approval, and there wouldn’t have been a problem at all but for the fact that when Sam got out of the water, he somehow managed to trap a fire ant between his toes, and he started screaming and hollering again and threw himself on the beach in a frenzy and pulled off his sandal and flung it into the river, where it promptly sailed away.
JT made a dash, but by the time he reached the water’s edge, the sandal was gone.
Jill was mad because it was a good pair of Tevas, brand-new, and Mark was mad because it showed such a lack of foresight, and Matthew was mad because Sam was getting all the attention, and Sam rolled about in agony, kicking sand in everyone’s faces as they tried to determine just where he’d been bitten so that JT could dab the bite with the stick of ammonia they kept in the first aid box for just that purpose.
“Right there, I think,” Jill said, splaying the boys toes. “Sam, be still!”
JT poked the ammonia stick between Sam’s toes. Sam screamed and kicked.
“For god’s sake, Sam,” Mark said.
“Try it again,” said Jill, but JT held back.
“What happens if you don’t use it?” she asked.
“Not much, at this point,” said JT. “You have to get it on in the first minute.”
People stood around them in a circle, peering down.
“I got bit by a fire ant in Africa once,” said Mitchell. “It’s no fun.”
Matthew dug in the sand, mumbling about how it was just an ant and he didn’t see what the problem was.
“Go stick it in the water, kiddo,” JT told Sam.
“I’m cold now,” said Sam.
Matthew remarked that it was only like two hundred degrees out.
“Just your foot,” said JT. “Come on.” And he helped the boy up by the arm. With great drama, Sam hobbled over to the water’s edge and dipped his foot into the water, his face breaking into a silent scream.
Mark watched with his arms crossed. “Please tell me you brought an extra pair of sandals,” he said to Jill.
“Flip-flops.”
“Nothing with straps?”
“No.”
“Oh cripe,” said Mark. “Darn him. He has no sense of responsibility.”
“He’s twelve, Mark.”
“When I was twelve, I had a job.”
Jill walked away. Mark’s job at the age of twelve was scooping leaves from his neighbor’s pool for five minutes every morning. Fortunately, before she could dwell on this, the other guides called out that lunch was ready, and they all shuffled over to the lunch table, where the crew had laid out a glorious banquet.
There were two kinds of bread, and ham, and turkey; slices of Muenster and cheddar cheese, tomatoes, red onions, avocados, cucumbers, pickles, and jalapeños; peanut butter and jelly; wedges of cantaloupe and watermelon; chocolate-chip cookies and nuts and Jolly Ranchers and M&Ms. Many had pooh-poohed the notion of lunch, certain they’d lost their appetite in this heat, but they suddenly found themselves ravenous and ended up packing as much between two slices of bread as they possibly could, then adding a little more for good measure. Susan tried jalapeños with peanut butter; Amy made herself a diet sandwich with turkey and lettuce leaves; Mitchell ate spoonfuls of jam straight from the jar; the boys squirreled away Jolly Ranchers in their pockets. Peter, of course, ate as much watermelon as he could without appearing gluttonous.
Meanwhile, the river flowed on, swiftly, quietly; constant and alive.