The River at Night(16)

I was starving too and busy stuffing myself with all my favorite things—chicken sandwiches, shakes, and fries—but I noticed Dad hadn’t eaten much at all. He sat back in his seat, arms folded, alternately staring into space and looking at us like he was disappointed we were still ourselves.

? ? ?

One by one, the book lights switched off and total darkness entered, like another presence. I listened to the trees bluster and fill with wind, creaking and rustling. A few raindrops tapped at the roof here and there before a gust of much colder air blew in through the gap between the walls and the floor as if it wanted in, was looking for us. Soon the rain gathered all its strength and came pounding down.

I wanted to wake Pia and ask what the plan was for hiking and white-water rafting in a storm, if there even was one. Shivering in my sleeping bag, forming and re-forming my makeshift sweater--as-pillow, I couldn’t imagine a more miserable thing to do. I lay there ruing the day I said yes to this thing, thinking: I came on this trip out of loneliness and fear of being left behind by my friends. What good can come of that?

Lightning flashed, illuminating the narrow slice of ground between the walls and the floor, followed by booms of thunder. With a wave of nausea, I felt in my jaw the shame of how it would feel to stay back, alone in the lodge, forever remembered as the one who—immobilized by cowardice—could only watch as her braver, stronger friends hiked up and over the hill and out of sight.





Friday


   June 22





8


Like so many mornings after a torrential rainstorm, the day broke awash with brilliant sunshine and fresh air. Though the sun had warmed the tin room to the point where I’d grown hot in my sleeping bag, the wretched position in which I’d finally fallen asleep had morphed into borderline comfortable.

I gazed at the cot above me expecting to see the impression of Pia still sleeping there, but it was flat. To my left, Rachel’s bed was empty too, her bedroll neatly tied. I was relieved to see Sandra still bundled in her red sleeping bag, head tucked down. Like Pia, she was a natural-born sleeper.

Led by aromas of French toast and coffee, I climbed up the hill across grass flattened by the night’s downpour. In the distance, our destination: smoke-blue mountains obscured and then revealed by morning fog. I felt equally pulled and repelled. What did the mountains care about our plan to climb them, rafting the waters that divided them? They had eternity before us, and eternity after us. We were nothing to them.

? ? ?

We swung out onto the main road—Sandra, Rachel, and me crammed in the backseat—and drove about twenty minutes or so before Rory turned sharply onto an unmarked dirt road not much wider than his truck. Up in front, he and Pia kept up a lively conversation the rest of us weren’t privy to with the radio blaring and the roar of the engine. I watched her demonstrate some point with her long, elegant hands, then laugh. His white teeth flashed as he smiled at her, his strong arm resting on the open window.

We three sat in silence, bumping along so hard my teeth were chattering, feeling the main road recede as the forest came at us fast. Branches reached out and scraped across the windshield, snapping back behind us. The road decayed into two muddy grooves with grass down the middle, and the truck bounced so violently in deep ruts I thought the engine would fall out.

“You ladies all in one piece back there?” Rory called to us.

Rachel said we were, barely, just as a long green branch popped into my open window, dragged itself across my chest, and disappeared behind us. I didn’t think the road could get any narrower, but it did, until I didn’t see any difference between what we were doing and driving through the woods. Rory drove fearlessly and too fast.

We came to a break in the trees where the sky could breathe in, then rolled into a field of wildflowers, waist-deep heather, and clover. Rory barreled through the tall grasses, freeing a knot of blue butterflies that swirled up in a purple twist. Wild rhododendron and laurel bushes crunched under the wheels and clawed at the undercarriage. He never slowed down.

The land dipped down farther and there was the sensation of falling forward into something we shouldn’t. I smelled mud and water. Cat-o’-nine-tails taller than the truck hammered at us. The wheels caught in some kind of suction and the engine ground louder than it should have for how fast we were going until we dropped down hard on the back left wheel and stuck there, me piled up on top of Rachel and Sandra. We were scared but couldn’t help laughing as we disentangled ourselves.

“Shit,” Rory said, smacking the wheel. “This wasn’t a swamp two weeks ago.”

The truck groaned and sank a bit more. Wedged in my seat, I watched a dragonfly maybe four inches long hang in the air a foot from my face, a masterpiece of color and construction. It examined me with thousands of black eyes before it helicoptered away.

Rory manhandled the wheel and lead-footed the gas. The wheels whined as they turned, digging us deeper. He turned to Pia. “Can you drive a stick?”

“Sure.”

We laughed. Pia could pilot a plane. Rory jumped out of the truck with the grace of a much smaller man, pushed his way through the weeds, and disappeared behind the truck. “On three!” he yelled.

Pia installed herself in the driver’s seat and took over. Several unsuccessful attempts to free us later, Rory made his way to where we sat clumped in the backseat. He draped his heavy forearms over the window, face, hair, and clothes more mud than anything else. “Hate to ask, but I could really use some muscle back here.”