11

The purple-and-green kayak and the yellow creek boat hit with a dull thump that rose above the roar of the falls. The creek boat overcompensated and spun hard right, down into the curl. It went over the ledge on its side. The purple-and-green kayaker wrenched his boat back under him with a powerful hip snap and somehow hit the bottom of the fall nose down, a foot to the side of the creek boat. Horrified, Nell expected him to end up in a vertical pin, but he pivoted his entire body and the boat back under him. It was a beautiful, athletic move.

She had her rescue rope ready, having popped her skirt and pulled it out without thought. Tension zinged through her, heating her body in a flush. The purple-and-green wobbled, then made it out of the foamy trough in a flash of color. The yellow creek boat came up empty.

“Swimmer!” Nell shouted as others took up the call. The boaters standing on rocks searched the water with their eyes, holding throw ropes, but the swimmer didn’t surface. Closest to the falls, Nell reset her skirt and paddled hard toward the bottom of the El. Peripherally, she saw the other kayakers stroking upstream or ferrying across current. And the next boat was coming over the ledge.

“Crap!” the purple-and-green boater shouted. Nell skimmed past him. His rope was in his hands, his skirt undone. The swimmer came up feetfirst, one foot and knee, then the other foot. Not the reemergence of a conscious boater. Time did a funny little shift, slowing down. The light hit the water in a shimmer. The roar of the falls diminished. The swimmer’s body slowly rotated to the surface, face up, almost balletic, caught in the flow. His mouth and eyes were open, full of water.

Nell reached him, grazing his knee with her boat. The current revolved his body over, facedown in the water. Presenting the back of his head. She gripped her paddle and rope in her left hand and shifted in the bottom of her boat, preparing to take on weight. One-handed, she grabbed the back of his PFD. Hauled his head out of the water. Blood poured down his face. Rivulets of bright red. For an instant, just a moment of time, Nell again thought, Joe…But he wasn’t Joe. She knew that. He blinked, gagged, and time fell back in place with a deafening growl of white water.

The purple-and-green Arc-ProLine scudded up close, back paddling. He rafted his boat to hers on her left, running a piece of flex through the boat’s handholds with a quick jerk, pulling her kayak against his, restraining her craft, giving her security. He took her rope and paddle, freeing both of her hands. Nell shot him a quick look and saw black brows. Greenish eyes. A flash of sunburn, as he tucked her paddle and rope into the open cockpit of his boat.

She turned back to the swimmer. Nell caught a look at his face and recognized Scooter, a river guide who had worked the Pigeon a couple of summers when she was a teenager.

A kayak came over the ledge, sighted them, dodged right and boofed, hitting the water flat with an echoing splat. ProLiner didn’t bother with words. He started pulling through the water with draw strokes, snapping his hip, using his entire body to move the boats.

The swimmer Nell was holding vomited, twisting his hips up with the spasm, pulling his head down, into the water. Nell let her body follow him, stretching her arms and torso, knowing that, if not for the expert rafting of the ProLiner, she would have been forced to let go or be pulled under. Using her hip, she pulled the swimmer’s face back to the surface. But it wasn’t enough. She had to get him out of the river.

“Can you get him on the front of your boat? Or do you need me in the water?” ProLiner asked.

“I got him. Ready,” she said, not quite a question, more a warning. Not waiting for an answer, she hauled hard, kicked with her hip to counterbalance the weight, and rotated the swimmer to her, draping his body over the front of her boat, up across the cockpit. Her kayak lunged, threatened to roll and dump with the maneuver, but the rafting to the other kayak held. The swimmer’s hands fluttered weakly. He took a breath, chest moving in her arms.

“He’s conscious. Sorta,” she said over the sound of the El. “But we need to get away from the ledge. The raft will be over in about—” Nell looked up. Spotted the top of Mike’s head from his perch, sitting up high on the back of the raft. The Ranger was still upstream, but committed to the rapid, too late to turn back. “—now!”

ProLiner looked up at the El. Swore viciously. The rescue guides on top of the rocks should have warned the raft off and hadn’t. Both men were shouting and waving paddles, but it was way too late.

The Maravia Ranger raft came down the falls straight at them.

Mike spotted her. His eyes widened. His mouth moved in a curse and he shouted instructions to the crew. Expert paddlers, they spun the raft the instant they hit the trough, using its momentum to whip the ungainly craft. It went around in a dizzying swirl and past them. Around her, the kayakers cheered and clapped, the sounds of triumph and relief bouncing off the water behind them.

Nell swallowed hard and let out a breath she hadn’t known she held. Holding the swimmer, she lifted his head and made sure his airway was open. She could hear his breathing, a wet, gurgling sound. ProLiner guided the boats beyond the eddy line and into the still water. Nell cradled the swimmer.

Looking around, she counted boats, noting that Mike and Elton were doing the same. Stoned Stewart, moving with the lethargic motions of a heavy marijuana smoker, had reached the swimmer’s empty boat and tied it off behind his kayak. Hamp had found a paddle. Two other boats were picking up flotsam, stuff that had come out of the overturned kayak. Everyone converged on the swimmer, reaching their joined boats just as the ProLiner and she bumped shore. The Ranger raft spun in next, using the speed of the falls to beach quickly, grinding on the narrow lip of sand.

After that it was havoc, as ProLiner and Mike dragged the swimmer onto shore, and Elton and Mike took over lifesaving. Everyone on the run was certified in emergency swift-water rescue and basic life support, but Elton and Mike were the most experienced in advanced life support, or ALS, protocols. Both carried mouthpieces used to give artificial respiration and Elton even had a tiny bag of advanced medical supplies.

Nell sat in her boat, shivering with reaction. Her kayak was half in the water, half onshore, still rafted to the old-school Precision Arc-ProLine. The purple-and-green kayak had a lot of wear on it. Not a playboat, but a good boat to use in a search and rescue—stable and easy to maneuver.

Someone had talked about ProLiners at the campfire last night, and she wondered if the kayaker who had helped her was the same guy. But then she saw another ProLine, different year, different color scheme, a bit shorter in length.

She realized her thoughts were drifting. Seeking distraction. Needing diversion to keep her thoughts off of Joe. Joe, who had come out of his boat, just like this guy had. Somewhere on this river. With no one to help him.

She had to blink away an image of her husband floating facedown along the river, caught so that the current held him that way, not allowing the PFD to do its job and flip him faceup. Joe, drowning. Alone.

To occupy her mind and throw off the vision, she worked at the knot in the flex that rafted her boat to the ProLine kayak. But her fingers were cold and stiff, and the simple knot didn’t want to come free. She couldn’t see it for the tears in her eyes.

“Here. I’ll get it.” The voice from the river. His hands moved over hers, pushing her fingers away, as he proficiently untied the knot. “You did good out there,” he said.

Nell took a breath that pulled against her throat, a soft shudder sounding like a sob. She batted the tears away and managed a smile. “Thanks. But if you hadn’t gotten us those few feet over, we’d have been staring at the bottom of the Ranger. So, back at you. Nice job.”

He was down on one knee, kneeling on the bank, as he pulled off his helmet and shook his hair. It was still mostly dry. “Junior,” he said, tucking the helmet under an arm and extending his hand.

Nell took it. “Nell Stevens.”

“Yeah. I know.” She looked the question at him. “Wife of the boater we’re looking for? I was at the put-in overnight. Saw you at the fire.”

Nell eased her hand from his. “Thank you,” she said. “For being here. For helping…” Her heart squeezed shut. The sentence trailed off. Joe in the water. Dead. The picture wouldn’t go away. She closed her eyes.

“Glad to be able to help,” Junior said. He touched her hand and she met his eyes, greenish and intense. He extended her paddle and rescue bag that he had tucked inside his boat. Before she could respond, someone called his name and he stepped over people and boats, his back to her.

Nell climbed out, removed her helmet and ran fingers through her damp hair. Stretched. She pulled her boat and the ProLine up onshore.

In the middle of the small group of ALS workers and onlookers, the swimmer coughed.

A few minutes later, with Scooter stabilized as well as they could get him on the river, Mike and Elton began planning the arduous process of getting an injured boater up out of the river gorge and to a hospital. They split the paddlers into two groups, one group to cart Scooter up the gorge to the gravel access road and the rescue crew, the rest to search the Long Pool. “Junior,” Elton called. “You take team leader for the dredging.”

Junior looked like he might argue, but Elton turned away, not giving him a chance to speak. Nell hid a grin. There were drawbacks to doing a good job. Like promotion.

She dug around in her beached boat and pulled out the brown paper sack Claire had packed for her. Her mother hadn’t fixed her lunch since grade school, and had never prepared a kit for the hard work of paddling SAR. Claire had always felt she shouldn’t encourage her tomboy daughter’s addiction to rivers by being helpful. Nell hadn’t expected her mother to offer assistance even today.

Claire had surprised her. The contents of the paper bag were also a surprise: two Snickers bars, a big baggie of trail mix, a Coke for the energy boost and an apple—a Haralson, one of her favorites. Taken together, they were the perfect river snack, high in carbs, fiber and fats, a little protein, and a sugar and caffeine kick.

Claire didn’t like trail mix or apples, which proved that, although her mother had been against Nell’s love of swift water, she had been listening when her daughter’s friends and she gabbed about river trips. The packed snack was a gesture of affection, an emotion that had been strained between them for years. Nell’s fault. She knew it. Just as it was her fault that had sent Joe onto the river to save her.

Guilt sat like a devil on her shoulder, digging his pitchfork into her heart. She guessed she needed to talk to Claire. About a lot of stuff. And soon. They hadn’t talked—really talked—since her father died. The old sorrow at his death raised up and pierced her, painful and sharp, sliding in beneath the new pain of Joe being lost on the river. Nell took a deep breath against tears. She was inordinately weepy, and accepted that she would be until they found Joe.

She crunched into the apple. Haralsons were tart and crisp, though it could just as well have been ashes as she ate. Miserable, Nell shoved the last chunk into her mouth and tossed the core into the woods, the biodegradable pulp and seeds good for the environment. Maybe next spring an apple tree would sprout here.

“Litterbug.”

Nell looked around and saw Turtle Tom, Harvey and RiverAnn behind him, Harvey’s beard wet with river spray, RiverAnn sitting heavy in her boat. “Apple,” Nell defended, hiding her full mouth and her tears behind a hand. Tom was slender and muscular, with long, curling dark hair. Despite being so wealthy, his river gear was beat up and battered. Most rich hair-heads had the newest equipment and all the girls. Today, Tom was alone, unlike Harvey, who cast longing and miserable glances at RiverAnn. Trouble in paradise, it seemed. RiverAnn was a river-rat magnet, but it looked like her affections were currently bringing something less than joy.

When she had swallowed, Nell said to Tom, “Want to partner up?”

“Sure.” He was a man of few words, which Nell had always appreciated. She finished off the first water bottle and tucked it away.

Moments later, the paddlers all paired up—Elton and RiverAnn, who was shooting evil glances at Harvey; Junior with Hamp; and Nell with Turtle Tom. The others were climbing the gorge with the injured Scooter. That left only Harvey alone.

Harvey grumbled, “I’m odd man out. Junior, Hamp, I’ll make it a threesome.”

“Fine by me,” Hamp said, “but no tongue.” Everyone laughed dutifully at the old joke.

Nell and her new partner glanced at each other and, with the near-psychic communication of experienced paddlers, got in their boats, set their skirts and pushed off. Nell feathered her paddle until she had enough speed to make her boat track straight. Creek boats like hers were notoriously hard to paddle in still or slow-moving water, needing swift water and rapids to display their design characteristics. Tom’s longer, sleeker boat was better suited to the SAR, and he opened up a wide space between them at first.

As soon as she had a good rhythm and decent speed going, Nell followed Tom around the upstream shoreline of the Long Pool. The sun was overhead, growing hot in a cloudless sky. The air, so chilly earlier, warmed through her wet suit. Shadows dappled the surface of the water. Leaves fell and floated on the current.

Overnight, fall had come. Dogwood and sourwood trees had taken on color. If Nell hadn’t been grieving and fighting desperation, she would have enjoyed the day. Instead, it seemed like a mockery from God—a day so perfect and yet so full of fear and heartache.

Half an hour into the shore search, someone blew a whistle, a single piercing blast. Nell whipped her boat around, finding the paddler who had given the alert. It was Elton, standing onshore, paddle in hand. He pulled something from a clump of debris. Even across the pool, Nell could tell it was red. She dug in with hard forward strokes and reached the far shore. He was holding a PFD.

“Joe?” Nell called out, breathless, searching the shore with her eyes. “Is it Joe’s?” She eddied out, her boat bumping Elton’s.

Elton handed the PFD to her. “Check the shoreline,” he instructed the other paddlers. But Elton himself stayed with her, his blue eyes steady but empty, watching. Nell, hands shaking, turned the vest, inspecting the equipment, recognizing Joe’s extra nose plug and his whistle. “It’s Joe’s,” she whispered. Tears filled her eyes. “His knife is missing, but it’s his vest.”

Elton took the PFD from her. Nell felt something small but vital snap inside her. She reached for the PFD. “I want—”

“The cops will need it, Nell,” he said softly.

“Cops? Why—”

“The straps are all still in place. So is the zipper. It was cut off,” he said gently. “And there’s blood on the flex.”

“Blood?”

She curled her fingers under, her paddle cold in her hands. She met Elton’s eyes, then Turtle Tom’s. “Blood?” she said again, feeling as if she had never heard the word before. The world tilted and swirled like a slow, falling current. Silent, Turtle Tom unskirted and stepped from his kayak. Stepped into the brush to join the land search. He looked back once, his eyes full of questions. And what might have been accusation.