Rapid Descent

He read her face, her demand, her desperation. Gently, Mike peeled her hands from his shirt and held them in his, like a promise. Or a benediction. He kissed her forehead, his lips cold and dry. “I won’t lie to you. But you know I’ll do what I can.”

It wasn’t what she wanted. It wasn’t a promise to make it all right. But the chasm that had opened beneath her moved away a bit, to the side. Mike had never lied to her. He never would. No matter what. Not even to save her sanity. But if a mountain could be moved, Mike Kren was the man to do it.

He squeezed her fingers and let go, set his craggy, lined face in a confrontational expression, and turned to the cop. “Mike Kren.”

“Jedi Mike? Old-Man-of-the-River-Mike?”

Mike blocked her and Nell could see neither man’s face, but she knew they were taking each other’s measure. Mike wasn’t fond of cops. Nell rather suspected that the cop would pick up on that. And Mike was well known in the river-guide community as a pacifist anarchist. If the cop had done any research at all into river rats, he had to know that.

“Some people call me that,” Mike acknowledged. He angled back to Nell before the cop could introduce himself, his weathered face creased in the soft light. “Tell me everything.”

Nell whispered, pushing her broken voice, starting over with waking in the campsite. Mike asked questions as she talked, questions about water volume, wind and weather conditions, other boats on the river, the kind of supplies they had carried with them on the overnight trip. He asked about certain rocks, places where boaters could go missing for weeks or months. Questions about the cheat and what she remembered about the strainer. They were questions of an experienced river guide, and Mike’s thirty years on the rivers in the Southeast U.S. showed in each. He concentrated on current changes, taking in her description of the big water, the tube that should have been only a curl at the El, listening with intensity about the zigzag current at the end of the Long Pool, nodding when she described the Narrows, tilting his head, his gaze far away, as if seeing it all in his mind.

Mike had been on rivers for longer than Nell had been alive and having him here improved Joe’s chances more than anything. When she reached the end of her tale, Mike sat silent, rubbing her fingers with his thumbs, thinking.

“Okay. Gotta go, girl. Got supplies to get together. I shut the shop, put a note on the door for any drop-ins to head over to Amos’s. He can have that church group coming in on Saturday, too, if we don’t get back in. We’ll lose money but it won’t kill us like it would have before Labor Day. Later, girl.”

He patted her shoulder, a single pat, like the promise he hadn’t been willing or able to give. Mike pointed his finger at the cop, a gun gesture, and blew through the door like a strong wind, taking Joe’s letter with him. The cop didn’t know that. Yet.

Nell lay back on the inclined bed and closed her eyes, fighting for composure. When she could control the tears, she asked the cop what else he wanted to know. And wondered if she cared enough to ask him his name again.

The cop was silent for a moment and said, “You’re a member of the river search-and-rescue team for the Pigeon River.” It wasn’t a question. Nell nodded. “You’re certified in river rescue?”

“River rescue, swift-water rescue, first responder, wilderness first aid, a few others, all through the New River Rescue Center.” Her throat ached with the tears building behind her lids.

“Mighty young to be certified in all that.”

Stupid questions, stupid comments. They needed to be talking about where Joe might be on the river. But he was a cop, and Nell had never once known cops to be useful on an SAR. They just got in the way. “I’m twenty-one. I took all the courses this past winter and early spring.”

“With your new husband.”

Pain sliced through her. His tone said, Your new dead husband. She nodded as the tears took over and leaked down her face. “It’s where I first saw him.”

The memory was a stabbing shaft, bringing her skin to chill bumps. She had been on the bank of the Nantahala River, putting together a Z-drag system to save an “endangered” swimmer in the water, a certification instructor at her shoulder. She had glanced up at the water. At a boater shooting past. Looking right at her with his daredevil smile, his intense eyes, so blue they might have been lasers. The connection so immediate it took her breath away still. And he was gone, his boat downstream so fast she couldn’t follow. She had lost him. Until he showed up on the Pigeon River two weeks later. He’d been looking for her. And he’d found her. And now she had lost him again.

“Joseph Griffon Stevens.”

She nodded. I lost him. The breath she took ached, as if it tore its way through to her lungs.

“You took all those courses so you could start up a new business.” Nod. “A business that had to require a lot of up-front, start-up money.” Nod. “And where did all the up-front money come from?”

“Joe got a loan,” she whispered.

“A loan,” he said, his tone odd.

Nell opened her eyes, seeing a halo now around the cop, but if he was an angel, he was an angel of the devil. His tone was too guarded, suspicious and Nell didn’t know why. She blinked and he wavered in the watery mix. Tears leaking down her face burned fresh trails in chapped skin. Her head was thumping like a jackhammer.

The words clawing down her throat, she whispered, “If you think I did something to my husband, you are stark raving crazy. Now go away.” It wasn’t the best thing to say in a negotiation with a cop—and everything was a negotiation, when it came to cops—but she just didn’t care anymore.

The cop studied her, his gaze taking in her bruised and lacerated hands, her face, lingering on the bump in her hairline. “I’d like the letter back, please. Until the investigation is over with. Or they find your husband. I’ll give you a receipt for it.”

“No.”

His brows rose. It was real surprise on his face, not some kind of fake cop look. But Nell had been raised with PawPaw and with Mike. She knew her rights, and like her independent mountain forebearers, she had little regard for keepers of the law. Nell just wanted them to get the heck out of her way and let her do her job.

“I won’t sign a receipt. You get a subpoena,” she whispered, “you can have anything I have. Till then, no. Besides, I don’t have any letter.”

The cop slid his eyes to the door. “I’ll be damned. He took it, didn’t he?” When Nell didn’t reply, his mouth turned up on one side in a knowing half grin and he looked back at her. “We’ll be talking.”

“Whoopie.”

The cop laughed, a single harsh bark of sound, and left the room, letting the door close noiselessly behind him.

Nell stared at the ceiling, silent tears dripping onto the flat pillow beneath her head.

Orson Lennox checked the phone’s display. His dad. It was 5:00 a.m., but it was also his first day on the job with the Knoxville PD. The old man had known he would be up. “Yo. You still up, old man?”

“Cop hours,” Nolan said. “And I can still whip your butt.”

“No question about it. What’s up?” Orson said, tying his spit-shined black shoes.

“You run rivers. Could a tiny little female with a concussion run the South Fork of the Cumberland alone? After a lot of rain?”

“You always run a river alone, Pop, no matter how many people are with you. But—” He thought a moment, trying to balance thinking like a paddler against thinking like a cop. “With a concussion? Only if she was real determined or real stupid.”

“How ’bout if her husband went missing on the river and she was going for help.”

“Possible. Any chance she did him in and tried to make it look bad? That’d make her pretty determined. He have money?”

“Friggin’ loads. And it looks like he mighta beat her up first, so maybe she can plead self-defense. Thanks. And good luck today, okay?”

“Nine tenths preparation, one tenths timing,” Orson said, quoting his father. He heard Nolan laugh at hearing his own words about the existence of luck quoted back to him. The call ended. Orson closed the cell, wondering about a paddler and her dead husband on the South Fork of the Cumberland. It was a perfect place to commit a murder and make it look like an accident.

6

“I’m fine, Claire. Really. And I’m leaving,” Nell said as she pulled a second long-sleeved T-shirt over her head. One was white and the other matched her jeans. Her mother had color coordinated her wardrobe, which made Nell smile while hidden by the knit of the second shirt. She smoothed down her flyaway hair and checked the site of the IV, pressing on the bandage the nurse had applied after Nell pulled the tubing out. It had made a big, bloody mess. The nurse had tsked and said something about blood work indicating signs of dehydration.

Well, duh. You think?

Nell didn’t remember anyone taking blood, but she had several bruised needle marks in both of her elbows. None of them looked like they were going to bleed again. Her butt, however was sore on both sides. She had taken two antibiotic shots, one in each cheek. They hurt when she sat.

“You look like you got beat up by a trucker,” Claire said.

Not hit by a truck. That would have been too close to what had happened to her husband, Nell’s father. But beat up by a trucker, that was okay. Even though truckers everywhere would take issue with her comment.

Nell bent over and stepped into her jeans, watching her mother through the wisps of her short hair. “I’m alive. What I look like isn’t important. I’m going to the put-in. Mike will need someone to handle the radios.”

“You have a concussion.”

Nell bargained with a lie. “Once I get to water, where I can keep an eye on the SAR, I’ll put on lipstick.”

Claire hesitated, tapping her manicured fingers on the bedrail while Nell pulled on socks. Her mother bargained back. “And you’ll stay in the RV. And not go on the river. At all. Promise.”

“Off the river for twenty-four hours.” When Claire didn’t answer Nell said, “Take it or leave it. I’m twenty-one years old, so I can sign myself out of the hospital anyway. I know. I asked the nurse.”

“Deal.” Claire frowned at her. “You remind me more ’n more of my father, you know. More and more.”

“PawPaw’s good people, even if he is the biggest hillbilly in the state. So, thanks.” Nell slid on laceless running shoes. “He didn’t want to come?” she asked in a smaller voice.

“You know my daddy. He ain’t leaving his mountain, his house or his dogs. Or that still he claims he don’t have. But he sends his love.”

Nell nodded and stood. Her grandfather and his shotgun would have been mighty handy against the cops, but beggars couldn’t be choosers. “Gotta go.”

While she talked to the nurse, Claire tight-lipped with disapproval at her side, Nell was careful to breathe shallowly, so that neither of them could hear her wheeze and somehow force her back to bed. Besides, she was breathing easier, and her fever was gone. Mostly. Nell could tell a difference in her body already, just since the shots. She wasn’t well, but the pneumonia wasn’t going to take over and put her back in bed.

The nurses called it “signing out against medical advice,” or AMA, and it took half an hour. They gave her a sheet of paper about what to watch out for with the concussion and another about the infection in her lungs, then handed her a bag that contained her helmet, her river shoes and her river-wet underclothes. They had been cut from her body and were still dripping. Nell wondered why the cop hadn’t taken them. Her PFD was gone. And she had no idea what had happened to her seven-hundred-dollar boat and the three-hundred-dollar carbon-fiber paddle.

Then she was in the parking lot in the soft morning sunlight. She spotted the RV. It was a one-year-old twenty-five-footer, bought from a foreclosure place off of I-40. Joe had bought it for them to live in, in Hartford, during the paddling season. They had left it in the Bandy Creek campground and she hadn’t thought about it since. Seeing it warmed her almost as much as seeing Mike had.

She headed to the RV, trailed by Claire, who continued to chatter all the while about how she looked like she’d been beaten up, and why didn’t she wear makeup at least for special occasions. When she could get a word in, Nell asked, “Who brought the RV in?”

“Mike, of course. You don’t think I drove that monster. ’Sides, where do you think I got your clothes? I called Mike when I got close to Oneida and he met me in it. I followed him in. There’s my car, see?” She pointed to the parking space behind the RV, the bright red two-door Mazda parked between the lines.

“You need makeup on,” Claire said. Nell shrugged. “For the TV lady.”

The words brought Nell up short. “What TV lady?”

Claire flushed slightly under her makeup, looking just a tad discomfited. Which meant it had to be something really awful. Claire could rearrange God’s calendar and social life without batting an eye. If she was uncomfortable, then it was a doozy. “The one who wants to do an interview. Right over there.”

Claire pointed and Nell saw a white news van with a satellite dish on top heading their way. Nell turned furious eyes on her mother.

“Don’t you go looking at me in that tone of voice,” Claire said, pouting and sliding into the dialect of the Tennessee mountains. “’Sides. They can help get the word out. Get more people to help look for Joe.”

“We have all the help we need, Claire. Only trained and certified rescue people need to be on the Cumberland. It’s too dangerous.”

“You were on it,” Claire said, as if that lessened the classification of the river’s rapids. And in Claire’s mind, it likely did. As if she just had a new thought, her mother held her big baby blues wide, heavily mascaraed lashes batting once. “And it’ll be great publicity for the business when they find and rescue Joe, your names all over the TV airwaves.”

Nell bent to one of the storage compartments that lined the base of the RV and found the spare key where Mike had left it. Joe had the original. Her heart stuttered at the thought. She slammed the storage door shut with unnecessary force and unlocked the door to the RV, closing it on her mother’s face and the TV reporter, who was climbing out of the news van. Before the driver could think to block her in, Nell started the engine and pulled out of the parking lot, leaving her mother and the reporter blinking in the sunlight.

Nell didn’t like surprises. Claire knew that. And she had better things to do than…than…Nell bashed the steering wheel with her fist and dashed tears from her eyes as she made a turn. She and her mom hadn’t had a real conversation since her dad died, but surely…surely Claire knew she wouldn’t want to talk to a reporter. Didn’t her own mother know her better than that? A soft voice whispered in the back of her mind, accusing that she hadn’t given Claire a chance to know her better. Not since the accident that claimed her father and the woman he was sleeping with. Nell shoved that thought away for later. Right now she had to find Joe.

By the time she reached the put-in at Burnt Mille Bridge and parked, Nell was exhausted. Her headache had grown from a soft rattle of padded drumsticks on her skull to a big bass drum of misery. She popped two ibuprofen, forced down a bowl of cereal and drank a liter of water. Then she flipped supply switches, making sure the RV had plenty of propane, water and space in the waste-storage tanks. Habit. She knew exactly what was left, because neither she nor Joe had used much of anything on the trip.

She gargled with warm saltwater to help her throat, found an old pair of Joe’s sunglasses and slipped them on, then added a sun visor, one that went all the way around her head instead of clamping on the sides of her skull. Her injured cranium couldn’t handle the pressure. She pulled on a sleeveless, insulated vest over the tees, still feeling the cold of the river. Hypothermia could hang around, especially after a lot of stress; Nell figured the trip down the river qualified as a lot of stress. Satisfied, she stepped into the October sunshine.

The put-in at Burnt Mill Bridge on the Clear Fork River was a place with a whole lotta nothing. No fast food, no gas, no hotel, no camping, no amenities at all. It was not much more than a double loop of gravel off a secondary road, a tiered grassy area in the trees with picnic tables, a few park trails and the old, blocked-off, one-lane trestle bridge. The bridge looked like a rusted derelict against the brand-spanking-new one.

The site was the midway point on a run that started ten miles upstream on the Clear Fork River and ended seven miles downstream at the Leatherwood takeout, and any river runner who had once been there could find it. However, if Claire tried to find the put-in, Nell’s mother would end up lost in the middle of nowhere. Nell felt a bit guilty about leaving her mother in the hospital parking lot. As soon as she could borrow a cell phone she’d call her. For now, it was too late to do anything about her mother’s whereabouts.

In the Burnt Mill parking area, there were five trucks, two vans and Mike’s huge SUV. More vehicles turned in to the parking area as she watched. Equipment and people were scattered across the gravel and grass in a mass of organized chaos. Kayaks, paddles, helmets and PFDs rested untouched on the slip of sandy bank that showed above the high water. Rescue ropes, flex, biners and other equipment were being tested and inspected by a couple dozen men and women, some wearing wet suits, dry suits and river shoes, others in hiker’s gear and boots.

A park ranger in his brown uniform looked rumpled and unshaven, and was almost twanging with energy. He stood with Mike and a group of boaters and hikers, each with a radio, checking equipment. There was a Cumberland County Rescue Squad van, the volunteers dressed in matching red T-shirts over warmer clothes in the cool morning air.

In the center of the throng was one full-size, self-bailing, Maravia Ranger river raft. It was Joe’s and hers—the shop name painted on its bright blue side—and was fully inflated and ready to go. Clearly Mike hadn’t transported it from the shop filled with air. He must have brought an air compressor with him in his truck. Organized as always.

Mike raised his paddle above his head, calling her over. Nell pocketed the RV keys and headed across the lot. There were familiar faces from Pigeon River in the crowd. Besides Mike, there was Harvey, RiverAnn, Turtle Tom, Hamp and Stewart, all guides she had worked with during her summers on the river, before she and Joe dreamed up Rocking River, the mom-and-pop river-guide, white-water-rafting and kayak-instruction shop they had opened the previous May. Seeing them so far from home, obviously here to help, brought tears to her eyes and Nell was glad she was hiding behind the dark lenses.

She stopped and greeted each of the guides, pulling on Harvey’s new beard, touching Turtle Tom’s newest tattoo, a huge-busted naked woman sitting on a rock beside an altar of river stones. He wore a sleeveless T-shirt to show it off. She flicked Hamp’s hat, a brown one with the initials of his school on it, Furman University, and kissed Stewart’s cheek. Stew wasn’t very bright, but he was a sweet guy, and he had no idea he was so gorgeous. He didn’t talk much, and he ducked his head, letting curly black hair cover his face.

Nell carefully didn’t comment on RiverAnn’s latest weight gain, just lifted a hand in salute. The girl gained and lost the same fifty pounds every year and seemed to be ending this season heavy. Still in high school, RiverAnn had hung around paddlers ever since she could drive, working as a waitress in a small restaurant that serviced the truckers who frequented I-40 and the few river people who stayed through the off-season, and working as a river guide in summers.

Nell had seen her a few times throughout the previous river-rafting season because she worked for Amos, the owner of the competition rafting company next door. But the girl stayed pretty much to herself and whatever river guide, climber or snow-patrol dude she happened to be with that season. RiverAnn laid her head on Harvey’s shoulder and Nell didn’t persist in trying to catch her eye. It seemed that she had picked out her winter beau already, and had eyes only for him.

Mike gave Nell a one-armed hug and handed her a high-power, multifrequency, two-way radio, a fancy walkie-talkie. She pressed the transmit button to hear the squelch sound, making sure it was working properly, and noted the channel the searchers were using. Cell phones didn’t work in the bottom of the gorge, and were carried only for emergencies where a paddler might have to climb out and call for help. The radios, while line-of-sight, were better than nothing, and radios could be used to pass messages up and down the gorge. Nell slid it into her vest pocket.

Mike said, “We’re ready to hit the water. Two of the hiking crews already left. We’ll have radio support all along the river, with hikers situated on the crests of the canyon walls, on the O & W road and the bridge. A couple of the most experienced guys are ready to rappel down to the canyon gorge.” When she raised her brows in surprise, he added, “They have climbing gear and experience, and I want to be able to throw a rope to shore and have it secured to a rock if we need it, or have them climb down to check out something we see up higher.”

Nell nodded, understanding and agreeing with his strategy. In swift water rescue, ropes were usually tied off to trees onshore, but parts of the gorge had few trees near the water. It was the closest thing to a western river gorge east of the Mississippi. Rock, rock and more rock close to the river, lots of white water and not much of anything else.

“We got three in the raft with me, and seven in kayaks. There’s another small team starting out from the put-in at the confluence of the Clear and the New Rivers at 10:00 a.m. We’ll meet them and work it from there.”

To Nell, Mike asked, “You met the team leader yet?”

“I thought that would be you.” Nell said, surprised. She was gratified to hear some life and volume in her voice. The hoarseness was fading.

“I’m taking up the rear in the raft.” He boomed out, “Elton. This is Nell.”

A slender man, not much taller than she was, handed a rescue rope to a woman beside him, raised his hand and walked over. He was blond, blue-eyed and all muscle, with the prematurely weathered skin and all-year tan of a river rat, ski patrol, mountain biker, hiker dude. A typical outdoor-loving mountain boy. Encased in the wet suit, he had the sinewy body of a black snake, a rolling, confident gait and not an ounce of body fat. He looked her over, seeing beyond the black eyes and bruises. “Hit a rock?” Elton asked, his voice soft, his words efficient.

“Concussion,” Nell said.

“Walk me through it.”

Once again Nell told her story and as she spoke, the crowd gathered around her. It was the first time they had heard the tale and she saw nods and shaken heads. When she reached the part about finding Joe’s boat, their eyes slid past her. Eyes that were filled with sympathy. Eyes that said her husband was dead. Stewart’s eyes filled with tears and he turned away. Harvey looked down, shaken. RiverAnn took his hand and squeezed. Turtle Tom reached out a hand and gripped Nell’s shoulder. “We’re here for you, Nell. Hang tough.”

Her throat closed up and Nell patted his hand, fighting for a breath, finishing with tears in her own eyes, tears that were becoming habitual and unwelcome. Her Tennessee dialect strong in half-whispered words, she shook off his hand, took off her sunglasses, claimed the eyes around her and said, “Joe’s out there. In trouble. With no one but youns to help him. Please. Find him and bring him home.”

Mike looked at Elton, who gave him a single nod. “Let’s do it, people,” Elton said.

As the group began to disperse, each person to his or her assigned job, Nell went to every single one, clasping a hand or giving a hug, depending how well she knew each. Saying the same thing over and over. “Thank you. Thank you so much.” The once-alien tears no longer felt so foreign, and Nell didn’t try to keep them from falling, even though they burned, even though they made some of the searchers uncomfortable.