In the Heart of the Canyon - By Elisabeth Hyde Page 0,85
filling her lungs repeatedly did she remember JT’s instructions that first day. Look for the boat, he’d told them; put your feet up and lean back, and so she looked for the boat. She looked for any boat but saw nothing except a blurry-looking shoreline that tilted one way and then another. Another wave sloshed over her, and she panicked that she was going back under again. But it was a little wave in comparison, and she stayed above water, sculling and riding the giant waves: this was one time when it helped to be so fat, another time being in the Minnow class at swim lessons and everyone saying, Look at Amy float, it’s so easy for her, and Amy feeling proud, she was only seven and didn’t have any clue what was making it so easy for her, but of course her mother did, and her mother looked embarrassed—
A flash of red.
It vanished, then loomed up beside her face. A silver paddle, a black-gloved hand, a white beard beneath a yellow helmet. He was yelling something, tipping and sloshing, and she couldn’t understand. Then his hand grabbed hers and folded it over a knotted lump, and she found the power within herself to hang on, and they were slicing through the ocean, and the shoreline stopped tilting, and the fat white tubes of a raft appeared just as a gaggle of hands reached for her life jacket and pulled, pulled harder, and finally hauled her up over the tubes, letting her slop down into the soupy well of the boat, where among the buckets and the straps and the Nalgenes and a floating tube of sunscreen and a cluster of hairy ankles, she lifted her head and began to cough.
And didn’t stop coughing, it seemed, through all that was yet to come.
41
Day Eleven
Below Lava
Below Lava, on the right side of the river, lies a long sandy beach. Often river runners will pull in here, stoked high on the rush of running Lava; they might finally eat the lunch they couldn’t seem to manage earlier, or pop a beer as they recounted their twenty-second, adrenaline-laced ride.
But there was no middle-of-the-day beer drinking in JT’s party that day. The guides beached their boats and hammered their stakes, and everyone else unzipped their life jackets and tried, though it was not possible, to stop the ringing in their ears.
The last time JT had had a swimmer in Lava was three years ago, and it barely counted because, after getting washed overboard, the man popped up near the boat and was able to hold on for the rest of the ride. But Amy’s experience definitely counted as a swim; she’d gotten sucked down deep, and when he saw her head vanish, he knew she wouldn’t be coming up for a while. Nevertheless, he had a boat to row, and he did his best to alert the others on the river while seeing his boat safely through to the bottom of the rapid, albeit one passenger short.
The kayakers had landed farther down the beach, and JT wanted to thank Bud for rescuing Amy. But right now he had to attend to the girl. Something was definitely wrong. He saw it as soon as she tried to climb out of the boat: she couldn’t even stand, she was so doubled over with pain. His first thought was a broken limb. They helped her up onto the beach, where she fell onto her hands and knees and put her head down in a kind of yoga pose. She’d unclipped her life jacket, and the buckles dragged on the sand as she let her hips sway back and forth, moaning, seemingly deaf to the guides and her mother and Peter standing around asking if she was all right. Then she fell onto her side and drew up her knees and made an awful face by baring her teeth and sucking in a great deal of air.
Peter and JT exchanged looks.
Then slowly she emerged from her trance. She opened her eyes and looked at their faces. “What?” she said irritably.
Peter squatted and brushed his fingers against her shoulder. Susan, who had been hovering close, sat back on her heels. Amy rolled onto her back and propped herself up on her elbows. Beads of sweat glistened above her lip, and she licked them off and plucked her wet T-shirt away from her middle and said, “Can’t you guys find something better to look at?”