Chapter 23

September 12-30, 1999

Grand Canyon Trip 8

As it turned out, she hung around the office with Michelle for several hours, mostly just getting to know each other better. It turned out that Michelle normally didn't live in Flagstaff at all, but in Grand Canyon Village on the South Rim, with her parents. When she worked at the office, like this summer, she stayed with a great-aunt who lived in town. While she and Michelle were in some ways pretty different -- Scooter had never been that giddy and giggly when she was a teenager -- there were some things they saw much alike. Michelle may had acted like a true bubble-gummer, but she was as committed and skilled an outdoorswoman as either Scooter or Crystal. It was easy to see that she liked her fun, and that offered good prospects for the sailing trip, and whatever else they might wind up doing over the winter.

What else Scooter thought she might wind up doing over the winter was open to question. Before the last trip, she and Crystal had pretty well worked out the idea of finding some warm place to hole up for the winter. Crystal had talked about a place in the Florida Keys she'd worked as a deckhand on a dive boat back before she did the AT, and they'd thought that might be something to look at. But then Karin showed up, and who knew what would happen? She might well have to spend part of the winter by herself someplace, doing who knew what? Oh, well, she could probably think of something when the time came, maybe a little desert hiking. At this point, about all she could do was stay loose.

Along in the afternoon, Scooter allowed as how maybe she ought to let Michelle get back to work, not that there seemed to be much for her to do, and headed over to the Burro to do her laundry. While the washers were churning, she sat and nursed a beer, a little surprised that Dan wasn't around; hopefully he was having fun.

Things perked up a little when a guy she remembered vaguely from the spring came in. Apparently he couldn't remember her name, either, but they recognized each other as rafters and got to talking. In time she figured it out; this was Jim, the guy who'd gotten out of the Navy the previous spring and had worked as a swamper on baloney boats all summer. He'd gotten to do some oar trips, and had one more trip to go -- starting Sunday -- before his season ended. Once that wrapped up he was going to head back to his folks in Denver for a bit, and after that more or less had a winter job set up somewhere in Colorado as a ski instructor. Scooter envied him that a little; while she was a fair skier and snowboarder, she wasn't anything like good enough to be an instructor, which cut out that possibility for the winter. Besides, it was cold, and if this summer had proved anything she didn't know already, she liked it warm.

Jim seemed to be a pretty decent guy when everything was said and done, and again, with the experience with Dallas not far behind, she gave some consideration to inviting him out to the motel, but decided not to, at least not this time. After all, they were both rafters; there was a pretty good gossip network that permeated all the rafting companies, so it might not be a bad idea to avoid getting a reputation as being too easy -- at least not at this stage of the game, considering that as things stood now she planned on staying with it for a while. So, they sat around, drank beer with laundry breaks, and told river stories and Navy stories and hiking stories; he was still pretty fun and fun to be with. As the day progressed, a few other rafters came in and the bull session became a larger one. She heard a lot more river stories, and told a few herself.

Finally, she got back in the Dodge and headed for the motel, hoping she wouldn't run across any cops since she was probably over the blood-alcohol limit even though she'd been drinking soda and non-alcoholic beer for the last couple hours. In the end, it had turned out to be a pretty good day after all.

As expected, Crystal, Al, and Karin weren't back in the morning when it was time to do groceries, but, to her surprise, Jerry was -- he'd asked Jeff to bring him along, and Jeff had gone along with it, so long as Jerry agreed to restrict his helping to watching. His ribs were heavily wrapped, he had a couple casts, looked pretty grubby, and was obviously hurting, but he insisted he was ready to run a raft next trip, even though no one would believe him.

It turned out that Jerry remembered nothing between the start of his fall and coming to in a hospital room in Flagstaff, so Scooter got to tell him of the struggle to get him back to the rafts and the race with darkness to get to Phantom, and of Randy taking over his raft and running it as a gear boat the rest of the trip. Jerry said it was too damn bad he'd missed Randy, and he owed him a beer big time; Scooter said she wouldn't be surprised if he showed up in Flag again someday.

While Jerry wasn't doing anything -- half a dozen different people would get on his case real bad if he started to show signs of picking up something -- Norma and Barbie were again out there helping, and that made up for the fact that there were several hands missing otherwise. They wrapped up the packing late in the afternoon and all headed over for more beer and Burroburgers, but knocked it off fairly early.

Scooter could easily have managed to again spend the rest of the evening hanging around shooting the shit with other rafters; she also realized that she hadn't had a shot at the hot tub at the motel yet this break, so decided to head out there instead. She got most of her gear packed for the next trip -- changing a few things since it likely would be cooler than the last one -- then got on her briefest string bikini, if for no more than the odd chance that she might find a cute guy, and headed down to the hot tub. She hung around the pool and the hot tub for a while; there weren't any cute guys who seemed available, but there were a few other people hanging around and they got to talking. Absolutely no one could believe what she did for a living, which was both irritating and amusing; after all, if no one believed her, how much worse would it be for Michelle?

Finally, the attendant came to close the pool and the hot tub, so she toweled off and headed back up to her room, with the idea of taking a long shower to wash off the chlorine smell, then hit the sack until about an hour before she had to be back at the office. But, to her surprise, as she was in the shower, Crystal and Karin walked in. To make a long story short, they didn't have many leads to begin with, and every one ran to dead alleys. "Did Al talk to Mike?" she asked the two.

"Who? What?" Crystal frowned.

"Mike, you know, Michelle's brother. He's a cop down in Phoenix; she said he could run down driver's license records or something."

"Shit," Crystal shook her head. "Never thought of that and I'm pretty sure Al didn't either. Well, too late to do anything about it now."

"I suppose," Karin said. "I'd be tempted to try anyway."

"Better not, Mom," Crystal warned. "Remember, I may be making five out of two and two on Tanisha. But if that's what's going down, I at least know a little about her. If they're trying to lie low they might be more than a little paranoid, and it could get tough if you knock on the door without me greasing the skids."

"I suppose," she sighed. "There's enough else to do by the time you get off the river again that I might as well be working on it. It's been over two years since I saw Jon, another three weeks shouldn't matter that much."

"I hope you can sort it out," Scooter nodded. "Crystal, we have one thing we need to talk about before we see Michelle tomorrow, or at least before the crew bus starts back from Lee's."

"What's that?"

"You remember before the last trip, when we were talking about the Bahamas? Michelle checked into it; basically it's do-able, but we need to think about making reservations." She went on to explain for a few minutes.

"Crap, I don't know what to say," Crystal sighed. "We cooked that up before everything happened on the last trip. That changed a lot of plans and possibilities for the winter. Mom, do you have any thoughts?"

"Not directly," Karin replied. "But I don't see why you couldn't go, from my viewpoint. I'd be almost tempted to go along with you, except that I'm afraid I might cramp your style."

"Boy, you've got us figured out," Scooter grinned. "There's a good chance this trip could be focused on sex, booze and rock'n'roll. In other words, a normal raft guide vacation."