In the Heart of the Canyon - By Elisabeth Hyde Page 0,52

good time together.”

Matthew looked over to where Jill was laughing with JT; Mark and Sam were still off in the boat.

“I guess,” he said dully. “If we could just get a dog,” he added, scratching the dog’s ears.

A spasm of loneliness gripped Evelyn right then. She suddenly wished, with all her heart, that she had urged Julian to come after all. There was nobody with whom she was feeling a real kinship; she was a fifth wheel, unintegrated, both superior and inferior to everyone.

How did you express that, mathematically?

24

Day Six, Evening

Mile 93

That evening, to mark the end of a very long day, JT mixed up a bucket of margaritas. He had just started ladling them out when some hikers came traipsing through the bushes, a weary group of women whose first task upon reaching the river was to shed their clothes and dash into the water. No one was more intrigued than the two boys, who stopped arguing over the can smasher and knelt in rapt attention at the sight of four naked women whooping it up in the river. They were even more impressed when one of them recognized Abo and, after wrapping herself in a sarong, came over to look at some photos he had dug out from his ammo box. The can smasher lay idle.

Eventually, all the women wandered over, and in exchange for margaritas, JT was able to score an extra Ace bandage from them.

“Any of you happen to like dogs?” Dixie asked. “He’s really sweet. Doesn’t need much water, either.”

“Dixie,” said JT.

“Might as well ask,” Dixie said with a shrug.

“We’re not trying to pawn the dog off,” JT told the women.

“Oh yes we are,” said Dixie.

JT did not want to get into any more confrontations today—even with Dixie. Or especially with Dixie.

“No way did I do that,” Abo was protesting to his woman friend. “You are such a liar. Don’t anyone listen to her.”

“Are you Abo’s girlfriend?” Sam asked.

Abo looked up. “Sam, you’re way too young to be asking those kinds of questions.”

Sam whispered something to Matthew, and Matthew shoved him.

Another woman was watching Lloyd as he stood in the shallows, washing his face. “I ought to tell my grampa to do this trip,” she said.

“How olds your grampa?” said Abo.

“Older than that guy”

Lloyd finished washing and groped about for his towel, which was floating in the shallows. JT went over and picked it up, wrung it out, and handed it to Lloyd.

“Thank you,” said Lloyd, blotting his face.

“No problem,” said JT.

“My wife is in love with you, you know,” said Lloyd.

Alone in the filtered light of the tent, Ruth unwrapped the Ace bandage, dreading what she would find. Yesterday it had seemed that their careful ministrations might pay off, for the wound had calmed down noticeably. But today it had begun throbbing again, burning hot one minute and ice cold the next; she’d gotten to the point where she wanted to just rip the bandages off and stick her whole leg in the river.

She peeled off the last layer of gauze. Sure enough, the wound was red, slick, cheesy with pus.

Oh, the value of 20/20 hindsight! Regretting her earlier decision to hold off on the Cipro, Ruth frantically pawed through her day bag for the medical kit in which they kept an oblong blue pillbox with the Cipro and all the other just-in-case medicines. If she could take a Cipro right now, then she could tell JT—who was sure to come snooping around any minute—that she’d already put herself on antibiotics.

But when she finally found the canvas kit and unzipped it, there was no pillbox.

She knew she had packed it because she’d taken a muscle relaxant the first night. She emptied her day bag, thinking that maybe she’d simply failed to put the pillbox back into the canvas kit. No luck. She twisted around and emptied Lloyd’s day bag. No luck again.

Now Ruth felt a twinge of panic, for there were a lot of important medicines in that pillbox, not just Cipro. Had she left it back at their first campsite? Stuck it in someone else’s bag? Had Lloyd taken it? She peeked out of her tent and saw him walking toward the tent, shaving kit in hand.

“Do you know where the blue pillbox is?” she asked when he came crawling inside the tent. He smelled of peppermint, and old coins.

Lloyd looked at the mess strewn all over the tent floor. “Who did this?”

“I did,” said Ruth. “I’ll pick it up. But I’m trying