Ruth scolding Lloyd. “You have to tell me when you get up in the night! You can’t just walk off like that!”
Returning to the kitchen area, JT clicked the light stick and the stove whumped up into a hot blue circle of flame under the pot. The confusion over the stethoscope only confirmed what JT had begun to suspect after three days of Lloyd losing his day bag and forgetting everyone’s name and wondering where the dog had come from. It didn’t take a neuroscientist. If you’d asked his advice generally, he’d have said without hesitation that a thirteen-day rafting trip through the Grand Canyon was no place for a seventy-six-year-old man with Alzheimer’s. But JT knew Ruth and Lloyd. He’d guided four or five trips with them over the years and knew that if any two people depended on the river for their soul and sustenance, it was this couple from Evanston, Illinois. He also knew that Ruth was a capable woman with a good head on her shoulders, who had presumably consulted with Lloyd’s doctor and made an informed decision on the matter.
Nevertheless, he was bothered by the fact that Ruth hadn’t disclosed anything about Lloyd’s condition on his medical form. The guides had extensive training in emergency medicine, but they depended on their passengers to tell them about chronic conditions.
All he asked was that people be straight with him.
Instead of rushing off that morning, they hiked up into a shadowy canyon abloom with the showy white trumpets of the sacred datura. Lacy maidenhair ferns lined the streambed, and orange monkeyflower spilled out of glistening pink walls. Eventually, the canyon dead-ended in a long, narrow slot pool, where everyone—including Peter—dunked themselves.
Back at the river, Mitchell surprised them all with an abrupt turnabout: he and Lena would be riding with JT today. No offense to Dixie, but he was wanting to get to know JT a little better. He’d thought about it long and hard last night, and as long as the dog stayed at the other end of the boat, Lena would be fine.
Thus JT found himself rowing with Mitchell and Lena that fourth morning. And he was glad it had worked out this way, because in his heart, he liked to think that beneath the surface of every pain in the ass was a well-intentioned individual who could probably shed light on some topic that JT had always been wondering about. To this end, as they headed out onto the river, he began to ask questions, and Mitchell was glad to talk, and within the first half hour, JT learned that Mitchell had paddled every mile of John Wesley Powell’s 1869 expedition except this last stretch.
“And what’ll you do when you finish?” JT asked.
“Write a book,” said Mitchell.
JT was pretty confident somebody else had already written that book.
“I’ve seen you writing in your journal,” he said, to be friendly.
“Oh, he has notes galore,” Lena chimed in. “We’re running out of space! I tease him. I say, ‘Mitchell, when are you going to write the darn thing?’”
“That’s an ambitious project,” said JT.
“Well, you gotta have a project when you’re retired. What about you boatmen? Do you ever retire?”
This was not a question JT could easily answer. Some of his friends stopped guiding when they had families or simply left the river in search of a steady income. Others developed back or shoulder problems. But some kept rowing well into their seventies—wooden dories, rafts, kayaks, whatever they could get their hands on, because keeping them out of the canyon was like keeping them away from food or water.
JT didn’t know if he would be one of the old-timers or not. In fact his son Colin, a lawyer with a Phoenix firm, had begun pressing JT to retire from the river. “You’re fifty-two, Dad. Get a real job. You need medical benefits, you need a retirement plan.” JT would point out that a retirement plan wasn’t going to do him much good starting at this late date. “Doesn’t matter,” said Colin. “You shouldn’t be lifting coolers in and out of boats. Who’s going to take care of you when you need back surgery? Or when that hernia you’ve been complaining about starts hollering for some attention?”
JT was moved that Colin was looking out for him, but he suspected that Colin always wished he’d had a more traditional kind of father, not someone who was perfectly happy to fill in with some carpentry during the winter while waiting for the river