In the Heart of the Canyon - By Elisabeth Hyde Page 0,3

back and locked his hands behind his head and gazed up at the spattered current of stars above. A warm breeze fanned his skin, and he picked out constellations: the Big Dipper, Cassiopeia, the busy little Pleiades.

Up on the beach, a burst of laughter erupted from the revelers, but by now his eyes had begun to twitch and blur. He fought to keep them open, to watch just a little bit more of the star show, but within minutes he was fast asleep.

July 3

I’m writing in the bathroom of our hotel room because Mom is out there with everything laid out on the two double beds, FREAKING OUT that she might forget something. Tonight we had our orientation meeting. Mom and I were late and we walked into the room and everybody stared at me. Must have been my FAT CLUB T-shirt. Please please please don’t make me go on this trip. There is nobody my age and all I’ll do is eat. And it’s going to be hotter than shit and I’ll probably sink the boats.

Maybe if I throw myself out the window, she won’t make me go.

We’re supposed to get up at, 5:30 tomorrow morning and the bus leaves at 6:30. I do not know what I am going to do with my mother hanging over my shoulder for two weeks. Why did she have to bring me along? I could have stayed home alone. Oh no Amy, I want some time with you, you’re going off to college in another year. Oh no Amy, I wouldn’t feel right. Oh no Amy, a serial killer might be able to figure out the twenty-two locks on our front door.

I think I’ve got food poisoning.

DAY ONE

River Miles 0–16

Lee’s Ferry to House Rock

2

Day One

Lee’s Ferry

Mile 0

The next morning JT woke up floating, as he did on every river trip. Fourth of July Launch day. The air was temperate, the sky a dark peacock blue. JT estimated it was about five o’clock. At some point during the night, he’d drawn up his sheet. Quietly now, he sat up and pulled on a T-shirt, climbed over his gear, and hopped out onto the beach. He lit the stove and started a pot of water boiling, and when it was ready he dumped a baggie of ground coffee directly into the water and gave it a stir. How good it smelled, this bare-bones coffee in the canyon!

By now Abo and Dixie were sitting up, yawning, fumbling for clothes. When the grounds had settled, JT filled three plastic mugs and brought them down to the water’s edge.

“Happy Fourth,” he murmured.

Abo took his cup without a word and closed his eyes and blew on it.

“Thank you thank you thank you,” said Dixie as he handed it to her. Her voice was soft, full of a sweetness and uncharacteristic fragility he tried to disdain but couldn’t. “How’d you sleep, JT?”

“Slept great.”

They sat very still and very quietly, taking in the shadowy blue-gray water, the silhouetted walls. A canyon wren called its plaintive cry, a long series of descending notes. A slight breeze lifted the hairs on his arms.

“I am so so glad,” Abo finally said, his voice deep and gravelly with sleep, “that I do not have to be nice to anyone right away.”

“How much of that whiskey did you have last night?” JT asked.

“What whiskey?”

JT left them and went to chat with the kayakers, who were straggling up the beach from their small camp just downstream. They were all related, it seemed: tall lanky brothers, along with their spouses and several children. JT asked them where they planned on camping that night; the key during these crowded summer months was for the different parties to stagger themselves that first night, so they wouldn’t be on top of one another the whole trip.

“Haven’t thought that far ahead,” said one of the brothers. Though he couldn’t have been more than forty, he had a full white beard. His name was Bud, and JT learned that they were all from Vancouver, where the temperature rarely rose above eighty degrees. Here, it was already close to a hundred. They were to be forgiven, he told himself, for not being the most organized group.

“Holler on the river if you need anything,” JT told them.

By seven o’clock, the sun was already up over the low hills to the east, and the motor people were scampering about on the fat tubes of their rig, tightening their gear, and some of the day fishermen