Rapid Descent

Nell turned back downstream and walked past her campsite. Ahead, she saw a pair of young tom turkeys, standing on a spit of shore, drinking. With a flap of wings, they whirled uphill, racing into the scrub and out of sight.

Boulders and water-swept trees wedged between rock blocked her way. However, between two rounded rocks she found a glimpse of the white water downstream. The Washing Machine on the Big South Fork. From this angle, it didn’t look too difficult. Dicey class IIs. It was impossible to hike farther. Nell headed back to camp, picking her way with care. Her breath felt easier, her chest pain was less. She could do this. She had to do this.

Back at the camp, Nell broke down the emergency X signaling for help. She tucked four lengths of flex into her pockets and scattered the branches.

Gathering up the last of her equipment, Nell strapped it on or tucked it in, wrapping the sleeping bags in their waterproof protection and forcing them into the stern. She stepped into the kayak-cockpit skirt and pulled it to her waist, her breath tight and painful. She couldn’t hear the soft wheeze of her lungs over the roar of the water, but she could feel it.

She added a bit more kindling to the fire and checked the temperature of the Backpacker. It was hot enough to eat, though not hot enough to be tasty. Of course, no amount of cooking could truly make a dehydrated meal tasty. She scooped up the rice and bits of chicken with a camp spork. Energy flooded her with each bite and she felt better instantly. Joe had chosen the Santa Fe chicken and rice, her favorite. Dinner suitable for a belated river honeymoon. Grimly, she smiled as she ate, sitting close to the fire and absorbing the warmth.

Nell washed the cup and spork and tucked them into place in the kayak. It was much more full than usual, with Joe’s sleeping bag, some of the equipment between her thighs instead of in the bow or stern. Using the empty water bottle, she carried enough river water up to douse the fire, first kneeling and drawing into herself a last bit of heat and warmth. When she could bear to, knowing that this meant she wouldn’t be warm or safe for hours, she upended the bottle. The water gurgled and sizzled the fire out. She stirred the ashes, pushing the half-burned kindling into the mud. She had never added any of the bigger logs, and left the pile of deadwood and the ring of stones for the next camper.

As ready as she could be, Nell slipped on her damaged PFD, zipping the vest up the side and yanking tightly on the remaining straps. Each action sent shock waves of pain through her. She pushed the agony aside. There would be time for pain later. Much later.

She settled her helmet on her head, careful of the egg-shaped bruise, though there was no way to avoid it entirely. If the helmet shifted, she’d hurt, so she pulled the chinstrap more snugly than usual. Satisfied, she dragged the kayak to the shore, which angled down to the water. Before her was the Big South Fork of the Cumberland River and the pristine pool at the base of the Double Falls, but boulders bigger than cars blocked her view. From the sound of the rapids, she better be ready.

Every river has a scent, and the iron-tang of the Cumberland and of deep, rich earth and sap-heavy trees lining the banks and up the gorge walls filled her nostrils. A blue heron stood on the far shore, watching. Bending against the pain of her chest and the thrumming in her head, Nell wriggled into the white-water kayak, placing her feet against the bulkhead, wedging her hips in tight and snuggling her knees past the thigh pads.

She drank the last drop of water from the second bottle and tucked it inside the kayak body with the others. She made sure that everything was in place and secure, properly balanced, as the slightest weight shift affected the roll and pitch of the nimble little boat. She shoved the supply bag with its precious water and food between and under her thighs, and clipped it securely to the bottom of the boat.

She rolled the curled hem of the kayak skirt around the back of the cockpit hole, easing it into place with cold, shaking fingers. When the back and sides were secure, she took a breath for strength, leaned forward with her elbows at her sides, using her body for leverage, and folded the front of the skirt over the front rim, the skirt and the boat’s emergency releases both in easy reach. It left her winded and aching and it was all she could manage—not a pretty entrance, but sufficient. And the repairs in the skirt held. She was watertight, at least for a while.

With a deep breath that banged around in her head and chest like a gong, Nell took her paddle in her right hand and shoved off with her left, sliding down the shore. Leaning back in a seal launch, she lifted her lower body and the bow as the kayak hit the water. Pain thrummed in her head and along her sides. Icy river splashed over her, the rashguard shirt providing some protection but not enough, water soaking through to her polyester sweatshirt as she braced right and left. With a directional sweep of the paddle, she guided the boat to the center of the small pool. The sound of whitewater was both behind and ahead, an enormous roar. Boulders and steep, tree-covered terrain rose all around her, forbidding and austere. It would have been beautiful if she hadn’t been sick. If Joe weren’t missing.

She swept with the paddle in the first half of a 360-degree turn, facing upstream, the Double Falls now ahead, with its rushing cheat visible. With another stroke that pulled her chest muscles into a short, tight spasm, she completed the turn. When she could breathe again, she checked the banks.

On the shoreline, what little there was of it, debris was piled against rocks. The scant foliage lay bent and low where it had been pressed down by rushing water, all evidence of the high water that caused the near disaster Joe had written about. She back-stroked gently to hold her place along the shore.

She located the current by the eddy line, a faint ripple of water. With quick, sure, forward strokes, Nell moved upstream, across the eddy at an angle, and leaned downstream. A single stroke and brace brought her into the current. It seized her boat and jerked her forward.

Ahead was the Washing Machine, a turbulent drop between two house-size boulders. The rapid was a class II, usually easy. Then came the El, a deceptive-looking, gnarly class IV. Though the rehydrated meal she had eaten sat uneasily on her stomach, she was glad of the energy it provided. She knew she would need every calorie before the day was over.

Nell positioned her kayak for the Washing Machine. Her heart pounded with erratic fear that, until now, had never owned a place in her life. She studied the shoreline rocks. No sign of Joe.

He should have been back by now. He wasn’t. There was nothing on this earth that would have kept Joe away from her. That meant that he was in trouble. And there was no one to help him but her.

She paddled forward with smooth strokes, into the churning water.

3

Nell shot between the two rocks and bounced down the Washing Machine, her Pyrahna bounding along the wave trains. Each time the boat rebounded, the jarring baited her lungs, teasing at the need to cough. Her ribs lifted and lowered with each breath, every paddle stroke burning with pain. She had raced through less than half the train of rapids when the coughing started. By the time she was through them, she was coughing steadily, her chest muscles tortured. The wounds on both hands had broken open. Even in the cold, her grip on the paddle was slick with blood. Still no sign of Joe.

The El roared up ahead. There was no time to reconsider.

Hands white and aching, her lungs on fire, Nell lined up for the El, paddling hard, spearing the water with forward strokes, glancing right and left for Joe. Nothing. No sign. The current grabbed the boat and yanked her forward. She was slightly off center, river-right.

The fifty-yard approach to the El was through squirrelly water, a boater term meaning that the water danced in unexpected ways, throwing the kayak up and down, requiring her to lean hard left and right, rocking up with hips and thighs and feet with each stroke, bracing the paddle against the water to maintain boat stability.

Her breath was tight, the air cold and filled with river spray. Nell fought to relax, knowing that tension in a paddle stroke could change both her direction and speed, resulting in the kayak turtling over. If she flipped, weak as she was, she might not make the required Eskimo roll back upright. And a wet exit from the boat—pulling the skirt loose and swimming to the surface—might be deadly with water this big and this cold. Nell had never run the South Fork with water this high. She pushed that thought down deep and away.

The rock ledge of the El, with its swirling plunge, appeared, the water flow making it into a monstrous curl and drop. Her boat dipped into the hole just in front of the ledge. She dug in with steady forward strokes, pushing the boat toward the drop-off, her breath tight and painful, moving without her usual fluidity. The backward-moving water sucked the boat back upstream. She bobbed and paddled, leaning downstream, pushing with her feet against the bulkhead, trying to work through the current. This was the invisible danger. Holes would trap and suck down anything, paddles, boats, floating bodies, keeping them down and spewing them out later, at a time of their own choosing. And she was weak, her arms and shoulders burning with exhaustion. With a last desperate stroke, panting, coughing, she broke free of the hole.

Her boat went over the ledge. She boofed, wrenching up her legs and the bow of the kayak, paddling hard against the diagonal curler. In this huge flow the curler was a tube of water that tried to spin her sideways. She hit the bottom of the drop in a spray that drenched over her with icy water, burying the boat. She jerked her thighs up again, out of the tube, sliding to the surface. Instantly she maneuvered around rocks, through holes, paddling and coughing, her eyes blinded by spray. Another hole tried to drag her back and she leaned hard over the bow, using a variety of strokes, on instinct to keep the boat pointing downstream and moving forward. Rocks dodged up in front of her, invisible until the last instant, evil spirits from the deep, intent on her destruction.

A downed tree blocked the space between two boulders, creating a strainer dead ahead. Nell had a staggering vision of the strainer that had trapped her. Branches brown with death, interlaced, dragging in the water. She shoved the memory away and swept hard left, rotating her torso, guiding the boat obliquely against the current. The right side of the kayak slammed into the rock face and instantly the bow of the boat swirled around the pivot point. The boat shot hard river-right, right into another hole. At the last of her endurance, Nell gave a series of hard forward strokes and draw strokes. Pulled the Pyrahna into an eddy leading river-right. She compensated, braced and glided into still water.

She was coughing violently, fighting to paddle straight, to find the shore. The river bottom rose up, long and shallow, to a bank, and she thrust hard twice, to send the boat up the shore, beaching it firmly. Popping the skirt, she rolled the boat to the side and shimmied out. She lay on the rock-and-sand beach, coughing, the raw, wet sounds louder than the water.

Long minutes passed. Nell lay still, letting her body recover. Her head pounded, dizzy with the exertion. Her clothes were drenched to the skin and shivers shook her hard, even with the rashguard and polyester shirt she was wearing. At least she wasn’t wearing cotton. There was an old saying, Kotton Killz; the water-absorbing natural fiber would have left her dangerously hypothermic already. As it was, she deeply regretted the loss of the dry suit to keep her dry and warm.

She was sure her fever was higher. Did being wet and chilled to the bone counter the fever? She didn’t know, couldn’t remember if she ever knew.

Every muscle in her body ached. Every breath ached. Every heartbeat, cough, sigh, swallow and pulse of blood ached. The sun came out from behind a cloud and found her, bathing her in faint heat. She spread her fingers into the light. Shifted slightly until her legs were in the sun. Slowly, some of the pain began to seep away.

Without warning, Nell fell asleep.

When she woke, it was to a whirling world and a fleeting loss of memory, a disorienting series of sun-washed seconds, during which pain pulsed through her with the beat of her heart. Her eyes focused. She recognized the pattern of rocks in front of her nose. Gingerly, she rotated to face the sky, the helmet kinking her neck at an uncomfortable angle. Nausea roiled in her like gnarly water.

She was sick. Flu or pneumonia, or both. Could you have both? Shoving with her elbows, Nell rolled over and struggled upright to survey the landscape around her. She had survived the El. She was on the shore of the Long Pool. Tossed by the current, she was river-right, a convenience term used by river sports enthusiasts. In a world with boundaries composed only by the movement of water, right and left were always determined when facing downstream, so that river-right and river-left always meant the same thing. She looked around. No Joe. No emergency X on a shore. No beached boat, bright red in the sunlight.

On the far side of the pool was another level shoreline, longer and deeper than this one. That was where the emergency access trail was, arduous and steep. On this side of the pool there was an old railroad bed, stripped of wood and rails, a path now used by horseback riders and hikers and the occasional four-wheel-drive park rangers’ vehicle. It was possible that she could make it up to the gravel one-lane road and hike out. But it would take hours, longer than it would take to run the river.

She might get lucky and come across horseback riders who would give her a ride out. Or she could trudge for miles.

She studied the landscape. There was no sign of campers or hikers. No horse smell. Nell looked at her watch, gauging how much daylight she had left. She twisted to her feet with a groan that echoed over the rush of water.

She could ferry across to the other side of the pool. It wasn’t even hard to do in the Long Pool, the current was so slight. But the trail out on that side of the river was a strenuous climb, hard uphill to a jut of land called the Honey Creek Overlook. Then another hard, miles-long walk on secondary roads to Burnt Mill Bridge, the input where she and Joe had started out. Again, she might get lucky and meet another hiker. Or she might not.

Nell lifted a leg and waggled her foot. She was in thin-soled river shoes, not hiking boots. She was hurt. Had all the breath of a…a dying moose, as Joe would say. Yeah. Hiking was out. Paddling was faster.

On the other hand, if she stayed on the water, she had to face the half mile of the Rions Eddy, followed by the steepest gradient of the trip, a drop of forty feet per mile with almost continuous class IIIs, including Jake’s Hole, where the river took a 180-degree turn between cliffs of 300 to 400 feet. The Narrows. And her paddling wasn’t exactly up to par. Nell looked at the sky, checking the weather. It was clear. The sun was warm. She had dried out considerably. She scanned the far shore again, hoping to see a hiker, signs of a campfire, anything. The hills and forest were quiet and empty.

She looked back at the water. A little more than three miles ahead was the old O & W Railway trestle bridge. There might be boaters taking a break there. Or campers. Or she might spot help before she even got there. But that meant she had to paddle the energy-draining, challenging water…She was between the devil and a deep blue crapid.

The deciding factor was Joe. If she stayed on the river, she might find him and be able to help. If she took the trail, another twelve to eighteen hours would pass before help would hit the water. So. Decision made. The river it was.

But she had to stay alert. If Joe had been standing on a rock in the middle of the river, waving his paddle and beating a drum, she might—might—have seen him in the last half mile. But she wouldn’t bet on it.

Nell knelt at her boat and pulled out the last Backpacker meal. She should have heated it with the other batch. Stupid. For now, she opened the packet and poured a bit of water into it. In an hour or so, she might be able to eat it. Instead of a real meal, she ate more trail mix, finishing off half the bag while she stretched. She should have started out with a good stretch before she hit the water. Stupid again. She hadn’t been thinking. She touched the bruised knot over her temple. It was marginally less painful. The cold, which was debilitating in every other way, had been good for the bruise.

Standing on the bank of the Long Pool, Nell pulled against muscles that were stiff and bruised, and wished for a bottle of Tylenol or ibuprofen. Of course, if she were wishing for something, it would be smarter to wish for Joe to appear, his red Pyrahna Riot play-boat cutting through the still water. But Joe didn’t materialize, and neither did a bottle of painkillers.

Feeling a bit better, she drank ten ounces of water and climbed back into her boat, strong enough this time to put the skirt on without huffing. She had to hurry. Time was passing fast. Sundown was three hours away. She had no intention of spending another night on the river.

She looked around one last time. Evidence of high water was everywhere. Strainers were piled at the shorelines, stacked against rocks in jagged knives of detritus. The water snarled and growled like a wild animal. Nature howling at the moon. Hungry.

Shoving off into the Long Pool, Nell paddled through still water, angling downstream, watching the current to the side. The eddy line was a diagonal ripple at an angle she didn’t remember from her last trip down the gorge. It flowed across the bottom of the pool and took a hard angular turn, a zig followed by a zag, as if something on the bottom was obstructing the flow of water.

She did a sweep upstream, followed by two forward strokes to approach the eddy line, then a quick peel-out just above the zigzag. She leaned downstream and braced through the current change. It was an effortless maneuver and Nell took a deep breath that, for the first time today, didn’t ache. She set up for the class IIs and IIIs of Rions Eddy ahead. The next half mile of rapids were squirrelly but not exactly MacGyver water. She told herself that she could make it. She could do this. She was able to both work the rapids and watch for signs of Joe. She put paddle to water, passing a low boulder that had dried in the sun. Two black snakes lay in the feeble heat, warming on sun-heated stone.

The boat took the first quarter mile of the class IIIs like a knife cutting through water. Clean and smooth, not a wobble or bobble. The bow of the boat slid beneath the rapids and Nell compensated, using hips, thighs and feet to reposition the kayak and prepare it for the next drop. Watching for Joe.

As always, the river was deceptive. By comparison to some western rivers, the gradient drop wasn’t much. But the water flowed around huge, vision-obscuring boulders, where short stretches of nearly flat but fast-moving water were followed by surprising drops and ledges. Unpredictable, capricious current changes and hundreds of undercut rocks, where water flowed beneath the visible part of the rock, tried to suck down any paddler who happened too near.

Between each drop, Nell scanned left and right, watchingc for a man or an emergency signal. Or a red boat. She was looking left when she should have been looking right. The water dropped out from under her and the kayak pivoted hard right and down. The short dive left her leaning upstream. She turtled over. Her helmet banged against stone. Nell saw stars. Her head pounded with a vengeance. Icy water rushed up her nose and filled her ears. Freezing her. Cold shocked her like a frozen spear to the brain.

She was in a hole between two rocks and she was stuck underwater. The current knocked her boat against rock with the hollow drum of doom. Fear billowed as the instinct to breathe fought with the presence of water.

But she still had her paddle. And she hadn’t been knocked out. Thank God.

With her left hand, she shoved at the upstream rock, then the downstream rock. Back and forth between them, working her boat out of the declivity. The water swirled her back in. Her lungs burned. She needed air. She needed—

The current caught her and bobbed her out.

But she was still underwater. Nell pulled the paddle under her. Gripped it in both hands. Twisted her torso forward for a sweep-style Eskimo roll. The water pitched her against another rock, banging her head and left shoulder underwater. Nell reacted without thought and twisted into a classic C-to-C roll. She didn’t like the C-to-C, but it worked.

And she was upright. Light blinded her. Nell sucked in a breath that was half water and leaned into the current just as she went over another ledge.

4

A glimpse of twisted limbs, wet and black. A strainer—a full grown oak, half submerged, its branches tipped with yellowing leaves and its trunk wedged between two boulders—was just ahead. Blocking her course. A swirl of water opened out river-left.

Nell slammed her hips hard left and dug in, ferrying across the strongest part of the current. Paddling with all her might. She banged against the left bolder trapping the tree and let go of the paddle with one hand. Using her palm, she shoved herself into the smaller, weaker current to the side, a cheat created by the strainer debris. She caught a glimpse of a dead animal pinned in the oak, gray and waterlogged, fur dragged by the water. And a second glimpse, an instant still-shot of her palm pulling away, leaving a trace of a bloody handprint on the branch.

And she was around, into the cheat, bashing her boat bottom in the trickle of water. She allowed the kayak to bump onto a low rock and sat in the sun, unmoving, breathing hard. Shuddering. The roar of water was partially muted, an odd trick of acoustics stifling the sound. It was like she’d been shoved into a different world. Still and quiet and safe, full of shadow.

Her breath had a definite wheeze now. Her head throbbed almost as loudly as the water had only moments ago. Nell blew the river water out of her nose and sinuses, and leaned forward to rest her head on one hand. Her ring and the cold flesh beneath were icy on her hot face.

A tickle started in her chest. Nell coughed, the coarse ratcheting sound echoing along the rock channel. She coughed and coughed, her ribs spasming. Her abdominals clenched painfully and she coughed up a gob of…stuff.

She spat into the water where it was caught in a tiny whirlpool and swirled out of sight. The coughing stopped and she breathed. The wheeze was softer, less pronounced.

That dead animal…Not Joe. She knew it wasn’t Joe. But still she wanted to find a way back upstream, just to check. Just to be absolutely sure. But it wasn’t possible. No way. There had been no sign of Joe anywhere.

Her head demanded attention, its throbbing increasing in volume and intensity. She cradled her skull in both icy hands. The pain seemed to swell like a wave washing over her.

“I can’t do this,” she whispered. “I can’t. I’m not gonna make it. Not alone.” A single salty tear slid down her nose. For the first time since she was a little girl, Nell cried. Covering her sobs in the embrace of her own arms.

Caught in the shadows, in the narrow lee of rock, she thought about prayer.

She hadn’t been to church since her father died. The car crash had killed both him and the wife of a church elder, with whom he had been having an affair. She had been twelve. And she had blamed God. Even though she realized that her father made his own choices and his own mistakes, and that God had nothing to do with either her father’s infidelity or his death, she still blamed God. Because she knew that God, if he wanted to, if he really loved her, could have made her father love her mother. He could have kept her father alive. He could have. And he didn’t.