Rapid Descent

And she hadn’t prayed since.

But perched on a rock, in a trickle of water, near where Pine Creek entered the South Fork of the Cumberland, after facing her own death twice in as many heartbeats, with the worst of the rapids—the Narrows and the Hole—yet to come and her husband missing, Nell thought about prayer. She raised her head and looked up. The canyon walls were closing in, a narrow channel of foamy water and sandstone in browns and yellows, and gray-coal-stained river boulders. There was a patch of blue and glaring sunlight visible in the westward-facing cleft of boulders. She wiped her face, the chapped skin burning. Pale, thin blood dribbled from her fingers. This cold, the blood flow should have been constricted by the temperatures. But with a fever, her body was acting weird. She clenched her fists. Out of options, Nell talked to God.

“Get me out of this, okay?” Her voice was rough, pitched lower with sickness. Her words grated along her throat painfully. She massaged it with one hand and kept talking. “Get me out of this, help me find Joe, and…and we’ll talk about us later. Okay? Just…don’t let me die. And don’t let Joe—” She stopped, the words strangled in her throat. Unable to finish the sentence. The thought.

Instead, she popped the skirt and finished the water in the third bottle, tucking the empty into the hull of the boat. That left her twenty ounces of water. She resecured the skirt and pushed off the rock, downstream, into the still pool. The roaring of the rapids ahead was louder than anything she had heard before today. In front of her, the river disappeared, crooking around and behind a massive boulder. In an instant she was back in the maelstrom. Heading toward the Narrows and Jakes Hole, watching for Joe. For any sign of Joe. Anywhere.

Canyon walls rose above the tree line around her, boulders blocked both water and her way. Water spirits, cruelly playful, knocked against the boat, tipping and redirecting and spinning it, trying to capsize her, tricking her with foamy, hidden dangers. Her boat was underwater as often as it rode atop it. She braced and stroked and pulled with the current, reading it, working with the flow to power her small boat. She swept past a flat-topped boulder capped with a series of altars. Guides often found places on rivers to leave stacks of the rounded, pancake-shaped rocks, each successively smaller rock balanced on the larger one beneath. It was half play, half superstition. Nell tipped her paddle at the formations in salute.

She whipped around a strainer that appeared out of nowhere. An image of the strainer that had trapped her flashed before her again, then vanished. But it left behind a hard ball of fear and desperation in her chest. She took the next series of wave trains too tight, too stiff, and was pulled out of position, making an ungainly inflexible run.

Just before the Narrows, she pivoted the boat into a tiny patch of still water river-right, between two boulders that didn’t appear to be undercut, with no current that could pull her under. In the cleft they formed, she sat. Her breath heaved. Nausea stirred. Dehydration was raising its ugly head, but it was to soon too break open the last bottle of water. Way too soon.

Coming up was the meanest, most gnarly piece of MacGyver water on the run. A long, squirrelly, hairy-hard, impossible crapid to the max. She had taken it before, several times, but it was a dangerous stretch. The last time she ran it, one of the men in her party got dumped. He had to swim the hole and came out with a broken arm, dislocated shoulder and compound fracture of his right leg. Getting him to help had taken the entire five-man crew the rest of the day. It had been a hairy, scary afternoon. Randy, an old paddling buddy, hadn’t been on the water since. And now she was running the hole alone. She searched around, up the canyon walls, between the rocks upstream and down. No Joe. But if he’d been tossed and made it to the shore-side of a boulder, he would be out of sight. He could be ten feet away and she would never know.

Nell popped the skirt and drank water, knowing that she had now taken in eighty ounces of water and hadn’t yet needed to answer the call of nature. She dropped the bottle back in the boat and resealed the skirt. Checked her palms. The flesh was white and bloodless now, nails slightly blue gray with cold. A callus was torn and should be bleeding, should be hurting, but her hands were too cold to bleed and her adrenaline was pumping. She’d bleed and hurt later, when Joe was safe. When Joe was safe…

Chest muscles tight, she peeled into the current. The roar of water increased as the canyon walls climbed. Three and four hundred feet, they soared above her. After a glimpse around for her husband, Nell paddled hard, choosing a position midcenter of the Narrows. With a series of quick strokes, she helped the water take her.

The boat disappeared and reappeared under the water, bouncing over it. Spray slapped her in the face. She maneuvered the tiny craft through the growling snarl of water. Jakes Hole was just below her. The current to the inside of the turn swept under and vanished, taking with it anything it could grab. Water on the outside of the turn curled up, ripping against the rock face of the boulders and the base of the canyon. At the bottom of the turn, the water curled continuously, like an ocean wave breaking without ceasing, a trap for the unwary. The river plunged down and down, a powerful churn of white water.

Nell took the turn in perfect position, her body guiding the boat with ease, as if the water spirits had decided to lend a hand. She swept with the current, taking the crest high. Around the turn, and down, she paddled with all the energy and might she had, letting the water carry her downstream, building momentum. She took a hard drop. Into another hole.

The kayak seemed to stop. Water sucked at the boat, pulling it back.

Leaning forward hard, Nell paddled, her whole body working to breach Jakes Hole.

She fought, reaching the curl and pillow of water that marked the lower boundary of the hole. Water shot at her face. Suction dragged her back and down. Her arms felt on fire. Weighted. Her wet sleeves dragged at her. And she broke through.

The small boat rose up and over and out in a sudden swoosh of movement and texture, the water beating at the hull. If she’d had breath, she would have whooped with success. Ahead were IIs and IIIs. Easy-peasy by comparison to the hole. She was laughing softly under her breath, but the movement of air in her throat was raw and aching. After he finished beating her butt for boating alone, Joe would be so impressed. She thrashed down the soft, panicked “what if…” that threatened to rise.

A quarter mile later, Nell spotted a patch of color. Her heart stopped. Breath froze. Her eyes glued to the patch of red. Red, hard plastic. Molded and rounded. Pressed between a rock and the base of the canyon wall.

She didn’t remember ferrying across to the boat. Didn’t think or breathe or hope. Until her small boat bumped into the patch of red. It was a kayak. Swamped. Upside down.

She touched it with a cold hand. Knowing. Knowing it was Joe’s boat before she even turned it. One hand holding her paddle, one hand free, she slid fingers along the curve of hull, underwater, to the open cockpit. There was no skirt over it. No body inside, dead and drowned. She braced the hand gripping her paddle against the boulder and wrenched with her free hand to turn the boat up over her bow, hip-snapping to stay upright. Filled with water, the flooded boat was graceless, weighing easily four hundred pounds.

It rolled through the swirling river current like a dead animal. Upright. It was Joe’s boat. Battered and beaten. New scratches and a hard dent in the point of the prow. But no Joe. No Joe.

No Joe.

She screamed his name, the sound lost in the continuous roar. Screamed and screamed, the name echoing with the water. Screamed until her throat was raw and only scratchy sobs came from it. Shudders trembled through her as she searched the rocks nearby for any sight of him. Fear and hope raged through her. She looked for a man holding a paddle high, waving to attract attention. Looked for rocks piled in an X. Driftwood in a rescue emergency position, tied in an X. Looked for a body. Looked for Joe standing on a rock, patting the top of his head in the “I’m okay” signal. There was nothing.

No sign of Joe beyond the battered boat. No indication that Joe had ever been here.

The small rational part of her knew that he hadn’t been there. He had come out of his boat upstream somewhere. Hope believed—knew—that he had swum to a rock and climbed up high. She had missed his emergency signal. Had missed sight of him. And now he was behind her, alone and injured. Surely injured. Hope tumbled with despair.

Or perhaps he had come out of the boat just upstream, and had swum the Hole. Perhaps he was yet below her. Needing help.

Her fingers slid along the kayak as if petting it, numb with cold. The red of the boat filled her vision, obscuring the image of anything, everything else.

Blind with the bloody color of the boat, acting on instinct alone, by touch and feel, Nell popped her skirt and pulled out rescue supplies, rope and flex, and secured the boat to a slender rock upthrust in the river. The water-filled boat bobbled in the current.

Watching the boat, the roar of water seeped into her consciousness. The color of red bled away.

She had to get to the next takeout. Had to get help. Get a search party started. She had to get help for Joe. Leaving the boat tethered to the rock, Nell resecured her skirt. It took her three tries to get the skirt over the cockpit hole. Exhausted, she pushed into the current, heading for the takeout at the O & W Railway Bridge.

If she didn’t get help there, then she would push on to the final takeout, Leatherwood Ford Bridge, at the Bandy Creek Campground. Leatherwood and Bandy Creek were smack in the middle of a national park, the Big South Fork National River and Recreation Area. If she saw no one on the way to ask for help, at least there would be qualified people at Leatherwood. Boaters, hikers, park service officers. Help in abundance for Joe.

She had covered three miles of rapids. There were three more miles to go.

Nell read the water and moved into it, an automaton.

She didn’t think during the run, seeing it only as a series of still-shots. The water slamming upward in a column of spray. An altar of rocks seven stones high. A dangerous curl of water that wanted to pull her down. Buzzards pulling at a fish, its bones pale and thin. The glare of setting sun on the top of an oak. The image of a dead hemlock, branches feathered as if reaching for help. The feel of the rigid boat encasing her. The cold of the water on her chest and arms. The wet shirts holding little heat, leaching her meager body warmth away. Her paddle blade, entering the water in a clean stroke. The sight of an osprey overhead, wings extended. The inhuman beauty of the gorge, a palette of fall foliage against the sepia browns and muted grays of sandstone and granite walls. The rush of foam across her yellow and orange boat. Black, water-wet stone. Rushing water everywhere, a deafening roar. No Joe. No Joe.

No Joe.

The O & W bridge came into view at last, and Nell’s eyes swept the spaces where boaters would often rest after the long stretch of rapids. The takeout was empty, the water so high the sandy beach drowned beneath it. There were no hikers climbing to the trestle. No hikers walking along the bridge. No beached boats or rafts. No smell or sign of campfire. But just in case someone was there and not visible from the water, Nell boofed her boat atop a rock and unskirted. On trembling legs, she rock-walked to land and made her way up the steep hillside and concrete platform to the stairs the park kept in good repair.

At the top of the sixty-foot climb, breathless, she surveyed the bridge and nearby camping area. The O & W railroad no longer ran, and its rails and ties had long been removed, leaving a nearly level, winding, one-lane gravel road that traveled along the gorge. Hikers and horse lovers and vehicles used it, but not today. There was only a scattering of dry horse manure to indicate anyone had been through in days.

Nell cupped her hands, found her breath and shouted. “Anyone here? Help!” She listened, hearing only the roar of water. Using the height, she scanned the rocks below for signs of anyone, but mostly for Joe. She saw no one. She was alone.

Fighting tears, she retraced her steps down to the river rock and pulled her body back into her boat.

Shoulders burning, muscles stretching painfully across her spine and ribs, Nell seal-launched off the rock, into the water, and paddled past the bridge. Took the last of the big IIIs. She was a machine, unfeeling, unthinking. Her paddle blades moved with eerie regularity, in and out of the water, side to side. Heading for help.

By the time Nell crossed under the bridge at the Bandy Creek Campground and cut the placid water to the Leatherwood takeout, the sun was setting. The river looked black and still, no longer a hungry predator. No longer interested in pulling her down. Bored with her. Moving on to other concerns, other prey.

Shivering uncontrollably, teeth chattering, she beached the boat, the hull skidding across the sand and pebbles with a harsh swear of sound. She smelled campfires. Saw lights far up in the hills near RVs and tents. Caught a whiff of grilling steak. At first she saw no one, and then, as the wind changed direction, she smelled a campfire close by—the heady scent of cooking beef and burning hickory riding along the breeze. She tried to call out, but her throat made only a faint croak of sound. Pain scratched along with the broken note.

Sitting in her boat on the beach, cold, so exhausted she could hardly move, it took Nell two tries to unskirt herself. She had to twist and roll to her side. Push herself from the cockpit to the sand. Wriggling one hip and then the other from the opening. Breathing hard, she lay on solid ground, her feet still tangled in the boat with her dislodged supplies.

She kicked her way free and made it to her knees, then her feet. Drunkenly, she moved through the dusk upwind, following the scent to the day-picnic area and parking lot.

The campfire was a brazier attached to the side of a beat-up RV. The scent of marijuana and beer rode the air now, tangled with the smell of burgers.

Laughter. Music. A guitar. She stumbled into the camp. Three men and two women. Images of them standing, turning, open mouths round in shock. And the sight of the ground rising at her, telescoped by blackness all around.

Nell’s next coherent thought was of warmth and earthquake. Light. Water being dribbled into her mouth. The dark eyes of a woman, her face rosy in firelight. Cradling her as if she were a child. “Drink. Come on. Swallow. That’s a girl.” Nell swallowed. The water hurt going down as if her tissues had been abraded by claws. The tremors were her body, shaken by sickness or shock.

“We’ve called an ambulance,” the woman said. “And the park service.”

“Joe,” Nell said, her voice less than a whisper. “My husband, Joe. He’s lost on the river. Help him.”

“Shit.” The woman called over her shoulder, “There’s another one still on the water.” To Nell she said, “Where? Where did he go in?”

“Somewhere after the Double Falls,” Nell whispered. “I got caught in a strainer. Had a concussion. He left me to go get help. He didn’t come back.” The enormity of the last four words hit her. Joe didn’t come back. She closed her eyes and slid into darkness.

5

The sheets were scratchy and coarse. The scent of harsh cleansers and the faint smell of floor wax brushed her senses. She struggled to open her eyes to a slit of light. Bright. The ruthless dazzle of fluorescent bulbs overhead, the glare stabbing steel blades through her brain.

Pain caught her up, pounding in her head, spasms in her chest with each breath. Muscles so stiff they creaked like old rubber when she shifted her head. The steady beat of agony on her brain. Lids so heavy she fluttered them but they stayed closed. Hot blankets encasing her, a little bit of heaven in a sea of misery. Hospital, for sure.

As if the lights knew what was wrong, the bulbs overhead went dark. A small light to her side came on. She sighed, and the pain softened into rubber blades stabbing her, instead of steel.

Finally, Nell opened her eyes. She was in a hospital bed. Window on her right. Door and sink on her left. Another door was at the foot of the bed, a shadowed toilet within. A man sat in a chair near her. An older guy, hair more gray than brown, suit rumpled. His eyes were on her. She frowned. Something was wrong…

“Joe.” She wrenched upright and the pain exploded again. She groaned, catching her head in her free hand, an IV yanking at her other one. She dropped back to the mattress, aware in some fragile part of her mind that she was not making sounds out loud.

“They said to stay flat,” a voice said. Cool. Conversational.

The man in the chair. Not a doctor. Not wearing the right clothes. Face too unemotional. Nell eased her hands away from her head and opened her eyes more slowly. Carefully, she turned and looked at him.

He leaned slowly forward and touched the fingertips of one hand to the tips of the others, dangling them between his knees, as if to create a sort of intimacy between them. Nell was pretty sure she hadn’t seen him before, didn’t know him, and didn’t want to be close to the guy. He smelled of old coffee and even older cigarettes. He said, “What’s your name?”

Nell considered. Not an unreasonable question. Just not one she was interested in. To save some pain, she whispered, “Have they found Joe?”

“The man you say is still on the water?”

She nodded slightly. It made her head pound harder, but it hurt less than her throat.

“River rescue is being coordinated right now. What’s your name?”

She moved her eyes to the window, her thoughts mushy and slow. It was black outside. It was the same day, then. Or same night. “Who’s in charge?”

“Park officials. What’s your name?” Steel in the tone now. The guy was persistent.

“Nell Crawford Stevens.” It came out a hard cee and sibilant esses in the whisper. “What’s yours?”

“Do you know where you are?”

Nell had been dealing with negotiator types all her life. Nobody was better at negotiation than her PawPaw Gruber. “Army, The Nam. Quartermaster,” as he always said. So Nell said, as distinctly as she could whisper, “What’s yours?”

“Detective Nolan Orson Lennox, Sr., investigator with the Scott County Sheriff’s Department.”

Nothing more, nothing less. Oh, yeah. Just like PawPaw. Nell saw some buttons, each with a small picture of a bed in a different position. She pushed the one with the head of the bed upright. In her mind she heard PawPaw as the bed rose. You want something? Always find a way to improve your negotiating position. Physical, mental, emotional. Next, offer something, so they have to offer something back. “I’m in a hospital,” she volunteered, feeling stronger now that she was more upright. “Who have they called to coordinate?”

“Your mother is on her way.”

Nell looked at the cop in surprise. “My mother couldn’t coordinate her way out of a paper bag.”

Amusement lit his eyes, and Nell was pretty sure he had spoken to her mother personally. He hadn’t understood her question. She couldn’t care less who was coming to help her. She spotted an ugly, squat pitcher, beaded with condensation and pointed at it, asking for something, requiring the other party to the negotiation to do her a favor. PawPaw would be tickled when she told him. “Water?”

The cop—she had already forgotten his name—stood and poured her a glass of water. “Can you tell me what happened?” he asked. He handed her the cup and helped her to steady it when her grip was too weak to hold it without spilling.

She studied him over the rim of the cup and sipped through the straw. The water tasted wonderful. When she had enough and her mouth felt less like it was covered with river mold, she dropped her head back and said, “I mean, who have they called to coordinate the river search?”

The cop put the pitcher down. He looked her over, examining her as carefully as she did him, letting the silence build. “The parks people have called in a team. After all the rain, the gorge is treacherous enough to warrant only the most experienced, though, so the team’ll be small. Maybe ten on the water. I understand that a few guides and rescue people from the Pigeon will be part of it.” When she waited, he added, “A guy named Mike Kren called about three hours ago. He’s leading them up. Some others were already closer in, rafting or kayaking. Most of them got here within the last hour.”

Nell nodded, feeling her eyes water, the sensation painful on her raw eyeballs. Unfamiliar. She did not cry. She rolled her head to the dark window, moving slowly, and started to talk, well, whisper. She told him everything she remembered, as close in sequence as she could. When she mentioned the letter Joe had left her, the cop said, “This one?”

She looked at him, and he was holding the double-bagged letter. Nell extended her hand, and he placed it in her palm. She saw him looking at her hands, at the blood-crusted wounds, but she had eyes only for the single piece of paper in the baggies.

How come she felt that it was the last thing she would ever have of Joe’s? How come she felt so…empty? No. I refuse to think that way. Joe is still out there. All I have to do is find him.

She smoothed the letter over her heart. Holding tight, so the cop couldn’t get it back without getting personal, she took a breath that quivered through her. The bandages on her chest were small lumps beneath her hands, beneath the hospital gown she wore. She went on with her story. Everything she could remember.

She had reached the part about finding Joe’s boat, when the door opened. Mike Kren strode into the room. It was like a small hurricane entered. “Hey girl,” he boomed.

The tears that had been swimming in her eyes fell as she held out her arms to her best friend in the world. Her tears caught the lights and haloed him, bright glints on the silver in his hair. As if he were her own personal avenging angel.

Mike would have laughed at the thought of being compared to an angel.

He lowered the bedrail and sat beside her, his wiry body blocking her from the cop, and gathered her up in his arms. She sobbed into his chest, the familiar scent of the man surrounding her. She crumpled Joe’s letter at him, indicating he should take it surreptitiously.

He tucked it into his own shirt before speaking. When the baggies were safe, he said, “Hey. What’s this?” He turned her face up and touched her cheek, his finger coming away wet. “I never saw this before. Nell Stevens, crying? Tears? Devil must be draggin’ out his long johns, ’cause it’s cold in hell right about now.”

“I lost Joe,” she sobbed. “He’s lost on the river and he’s got to be hurt, and I couldn’t find him—”

“Hey, hey, hey.” He snugged her face against his shoulder, stroking her short hair. He lowered his voice. “I’m making you a promise. Okay? Right now. If he’s findable, I’ll find him.” He tilted her face to him again. “You know that. I’d never leave somebody on the river in trouble. Specially not Joe.”

But the words resonated inside her. If he’s findable…

Nell stopped crying. Stopped breathing. She focused on Mike’s river-brown eyes, steady and serene. If Joe wasn’t findable, it was because he was stuck beneath an undercut rock or tangled in an underwater strainer. Or washed so far downstream he might not be found until low water in the next drought. It he wasn’t findable, it was because he was dead.

The thought opened something up within her, a deep, dark chasm, empty and howling with icy wind. A chasm she had been ignoring, denying. A shot of something bitter and frozen rushed through her veins like ice crystals. She clenched Mike’s shirt, the flannel and long-john shirt beneath bunching. “You find him,” she whispered fiercely, her eyes demanding. “You find him and you bring him back.”