In the Heart of the Canyon - By Elisabeth Hyde Page 0,24

even if he did find someone, was it advisable to send a dog up the trail in this heat? He would require a lot of water, which could add eight, ten pounds to the load. And JT knew the people running the mule trips would balk; mules and dogs didn’t really mix on a steep and narrow rocky trail.

All too soon he heard voices and sat up to see the group returning from the hike. He scolded himself for worrying. The dog would be fine. They could keep him tied up all the time, if necessary. No one was going to go into anaphylactic shock.

“We’ve got the Roaring Twenties up ahead,” he told the group as they refilled their water bottles. “So tighten your carabiners, you might get dinged up and batted around, keep the bailing buckets handy, and expect to get very, very wet.”

“I won’t mind that!” Sam exclaimed.

“That’s the spirit,” said JT. “Okay. Into the boats. Same places as this morning.”

And so it was that, as they prepared to head out on this second afternoon, JT found himself tightening an extra strap around the dog’s life jacket. Sam and Matthew smacked water into each other’s faces; Jill dabbed more sunscreen on her nose; Mark dunked his shirt. Mitchell and Lena quickly reclaimed their seats in Dixie’s dog-free boat. Amy and Susan anxiously redistributed the contents of their day bags. Evelyn hiked upriver in search of maximum seclusion in which to relieve herself; Ruth limped toward JT’s boat; Lloyd followed, patting his shirt pockets for something.

And Peter Kramer wondered what Dixie looked like naked.

13

Day Two, Afternoon

The Roaring Twenties

From the right front seat in the paddle boat, Peter didn’t always have the best view of Dixie; her boat always seemed to be behind them, and he couldn’t turn around very often because he was the one setting the pace. But midway through the Roaring Twenties, Abo had them stop paddling so he could get out his kazoo, because he suddenly had an irresistible urge to toot them a song, and Dixie rowed on past, and there she was, in all her loveliness, her compact life jacket zipped up tightly over her red plaid shirt, her warped scarecrow hat on her head, braids peeking out from below.

Peter’s head spun, just imagining.

Oh, what a cigarette would do for him right now.

When his girlfriend broke off their relationship last fall after six long years together, nobody was more surprised than Peter. The news came out of nowhere: not only did she not love him anymore, but she had fallen in love with someone else, an insurance agent who drove a Mercedes-Benz and owned a lakefront time-share. A lovable insurance agent? Wasn’t that an oxymoron?

Peter didn’t get how something like this could happen, how one person could fall out of love without the other person suspecting anything. The words “clueless chump” ran like a news banner beneath his dreams, all night, every night. How had he missed the signs? There was the vacation with her girlfriends last summer, the many late nights with her book club, the mascara she wore when she went to the gym. (It turned out that was where they met: on the StairMaster! How clichéd, how … common! He imagined her not knowing how to access the TV channel, and there was John D. Rockefeller, ready to help.) Now they were married, living on a cul-de-sac, where from the looks of all the stray plastic toys littering the yards someone was definitely pumping fertility drugs into the water supply.

But was he going to allow himself to spend any time whatsoever thinking about Miss Ohio and John D. Rockefeller on this trip?

Abo pocketed his kazoo. “Okay, paddlers, we’ve got Georgie Rapid coming up. Lets stay to the right and follow Peters lead. Peter! Look alive!”

Peter gripped his paddle. They floated toward the rapid, watching Dixie up ahead.

“And there she goes,” Abo murmured. “Looking good, looking good.”

Their own boat was now gliding toward the dark V of the tongue.

“Okay now—FORWARD!” Abo shouted as they began to pick up speed. “Come on, paddle, folks, paddle! Let’s move this boat! Here we go!” Peter dug hard with his paddle, leaning into the rapid as they plunged down, taking the first cold wave head-on. “Right turn!” yelled Abo. Instantly Peter began back paddling; it was like slamming on the brakes, and the boat went nowhere, and he back-paddled again, this time whacking blades with Sam behind him.

“Right turn, Sam!” yelled Abo. “Right turn—you’re sitting on