In the Heart of the Canyon - By Elisabeth Hyde Page 0,41

“I don’t like the looks of this. Let me see what Dixie thinks.” He called Dixie, and she came over and knelt and examined Ruth’s leg too.

But Dixie didn’t want to decide anything until they consulted Lloyd, so they called Lloyd over, and now Ruth cringed, because she was afraid Lloyd would bring out the Cipro, and she really didn’t think it needed Cipro, not yet; she had tended how many cuts and scrapes and gashes over the years? and she knew what infection looked like, and this was not it. But Lloyd came over, duly called, and he first got confused, and Ruth had to explain to him twice how it had happened (“What dog?”), and then, when he finally grasped that it was not a dog bite, he shrugged and told her to stick a couple of Band-Aids on it and stop complaining.

So JT and Dixie washed the wound and applied more ointment and bandaged it up, while Ruth sat feeling helpless, and Lloyd wandered over to Evelyn’s campsite and began emptying the contents of Evelyn’s day bag, in search of a long list of items he hadn’t seen since Lee’s Ferry.

Yesterday Jill had told the boys in no uncertain terms that they were to try and use the toilet, but by tonight she found herself caring about it less and less. What could happen, medically speaking? Five days wouldn’t kill them. Eight days wouldn’t kill them. Thirteen days probably wouldn’t kill them, but she doubted it would come to that.

Nor would it hurt Mark to go a day without sit-ups. Mark at forty had done well over two hundred thousand sit-ups: fifty per day, three hundred sixty-five days a year, for at least the fourteen years they had been married. At home he did them in their bedroom, upon rising. Here he did them on the sand, in the darkness, after everyone had gone to bed. Jill was grateful to have married someone who wasn’t going to let himself go, but she found herself wondering, as she lay on her sleeping mat listening to Mark’s little grunts, if he would really develop a set of the dreaded love handles in fourteen days. And so what if he did? The world wouldn’t come to an end, she wanted to tell him. She would still love him.

Ten feet away, Sam began to cough. She recognized the succession of sharp dry hacks. She waited for the aerosol hiss, the quick inhalation of his asthma medicine. Nothing. Sam sat up.

“Where’s your inhaler, Sam?” said Mark, between grunts.

Sam kept coughing.

“It’s in his wash kit,” Jill told Mark.

“Where’s his wash kit?”

“In his day bag.”

She expected the audible sigh of exasperation that Mark made whenever the boys didn’t live up to his expectations (be prepared; be responsible; keep your meds available), but instead she heard him rustling in Sam’s day bag. Then came the squirt, the deep breath in.

“Okay, cowboy. Go to sleep.”

Then Mark came back and lay down on his mat beside her. He smelled of sunscreen. Everybody smelled of sunscreen.

“Thank you,” she whispered. Thank you for finding the inhaler. Thank you for not criticizing him for not having it.

“I’m glad you organized this,” he whispered, after a while.

“Good,” she said. “Me too.”

“The boys are having a good time, don’t you think?”

“Yes.” She lay flat on her back, gazing up at the spattered runway of stars; on either side, black cliffs loomed, voiding out the rest of the world. She had never seen anything so beautiful. What other worlds were out there, and where were they all going? She reached out and splayed her palms on the cool, velvety sand. A sense of hugeness, of being able to wrap her arms around the universe, came over her. At the same time, she felt as tiny as a pinhole.

“I hope I get to paddle Crystal,” he said, after a while.

She felt jolted. “Why wouldn’t you?”

“A lot of people are going to want to paddle Crystal,” he said. “I heard Mitchell talking.”

“Ssshhhh. He’s right over there.”

“Mitchell hasn’t lifted a finger,” Mark whispered, “compared to all the water I’ve pumped.”

She reached over and took his hand. “Look at the stars, Mark,” she whispered. “Count them,” and he fell silent, as she hoped. And they lay there, floating on the sand, counting stars, while the ever-present sound of moving water lulled them to sleep.

July 7 Day Four

Mitchell is bugging the shit out of everyone. Tonight at dinner he started telling us the dam is going to break.