Chapter 59

August 5 - September 15, 2001

Team Two's Autumn - 1

Scooter hadn't told Jim the story of Randy and Nicole and his frustration about her getting away while he wasn't able to -- it just wasn't a story she thought she ought to tell, for whatever reason or another, and she also doubted that it was common knowledge among the customers. As it was, it was a couple days before she could get Nicole off to the side quietly, sitting on the back of a raft in the evening with a beer in her hand and ask gently about it.

"Scooter, I don't know if I was more ashamed of how I'd felt most of the way through the wedding trip, especially the first half, or ashamed to have to ask Randy to let me go again," she sighed after she'd recapped what had happened after Scooter, Team 3, and many of the hike-ins had headed up the Bass Trail. "The hell of it was that I knew he was going to feel hurt either way. I mean, I never thought he'd fly off the handle or something, but you could tell he was hurt. We worked out the deal on the sailing trip over the next couple days, and Al asked him to come do the last trip of the year, and, well, that took the sting out, but he was still hurt."

"I don't know," Scooter shook her head. "After that story you told last Christmas, I figured you'd be in handcuffs the minute you got home and might still have them on."

"I didn't think he'd do that," she sighed. "When we got home, I went and got them and asked if he'd like to lock them on me, and he just said, 'No, Nicole, the point's been made, ' and that was that, and that may have hurt me more than if he'd done it."

"So he didn't handcuff you after all?"

"Not exactly," Nicole blushed. "We, well, uh, another time he handcuffed me to the bed and tickled the hell out of me, but that was just playing; it wasn't the first time. I probably got more fun out of it than he did." She shook her head and snorted, "More laughing, for sure."

"I'm not real sure if I want to give Jim that idea or not," Scooter grinned. "So, it's still a sore spot, huh?"

"Yeah," she sighed. "I'm still not sure if I'm going to have to do Mosquito Valley -- that's the Girl Scout camp -- next summer or what. But if the river trip in November and the sailing in January don't come off pretty well, I'm just going to have to tell them I can't do it and tell him why. I can't have him resenting me for that. We both like to get out and travel too much, but I'm just coming to realize that if he can't do it I shouldn't do it, either."

"That's got to be a hard decision to make," Scooter said.

"It's one of those things you have to realize you've committed yourself to when you get married," Nicole told her. "I guess I hadn't realized it when we got married, but I'm learning it the hard way now. If that means spending all summer at home, lying out on the dock working on my tan while he's busting his ass, so be it, so long as he's not jealous of me for that, too. And I don't think he would be; he has all that down time in the winter."

"Look, Nicole," Scooter said, "Crystal, Preach, Jim, and I haven't worked out what we're going to do with the Felicity Ann yet, but even if Michelle goes it's probably not going to be the party hearty it's been in the past. The boat is big enough that there'd be room for you, even if it was only for a few days."

"I appreciate the offer," she said. "I really shouldn't take off during the school year if I can help it. I caught enough crap for last spring, and it's going to be a real race for me to get to school on time after this trip is over. Maybe another year we can work it out over Christmas break or something. But I really need him to do some traveling around during his time off so it can even things out some."

"Just throwing out an idea here," Scooter said. "Jim and I haven't worked out what we're going to do over the winter yet, but I suppose we could drop by Spearfish Lake during a cold time and tell him to get off his dead ass and go snowboarding with us for a week, or something."

"That would be a blessing," Nicole said. "Just don't plan anything, or at least let him find out that you've planned anything. Drop it on him on short notice. It really pisses him off when he makes plans and then something comes up so he can't do them. Hell, I don't blame him; that kind of shit fucked up our honeymoon, of all the damn things."

"I'm not sure what we're going to do, and it might not come off anyway," she said. "But let's tell Crystal and Preach the same thing, maybe between us one of us can actually do it."

"It sure seems strange to not see you and Crystal all buddy-buddy all the time."

"We are still the best of friends, although some guys have gotten involved, so that's changed things," Scooter told her. "I'm not sure what all is going to change and know the change isn't done yet. But then, when you got married there were some changes you didn't expect, too. Nothing stays the same, Nicole, not even this Canyon. Things change, and you never know when something really unexpected is going to happen to you."

Scooter had reason to remember those words exactly five weeks later. They seemed prophetic and haunting to think back on them.

On the fourth day out, they stopped at the Little Colorado. This was always a stop, one of the more interesting places of the Canyon, and one of the places that had a little special meaning. There was not a boatman that could not recite from memory John Wesley Powell's words that he'd written here, perhaps the most famous words written about the Canyon: "We are now ready to start on our way down the Great Unknown ... We are three quarters of a mile in the depths of the earth, and the great river shrinks into insignificance as it dashes its angry waves against the walls and cliffs that rise to the world above; the waves are but puny ripples, and we but pigmies, running up and down the sands or lost among the boulders. We have an unknown distance yet to run, an unknown river to explore. What falls there are, we know not; what rocks beset the channel, we know not; what walls rise above the river, we know not."

The view from the mouth of the Little Colorado is one of the most breathtaking of all the river level views in the Canyon. The walls reach high above, spectacular in their power, and Powell's words show that he was similarly impressed. While they were eating lunch, a customer by the name of Phil Osborne leaned back on a gear pile, sandwich in hand, and looked up at the sky. "It's amazing how far from civilization we are," he commented after a moment. "No news, no headlines, no radio, no TV, just the peace and wild of this place. We're about as isolated as Powell was, and this could be 1871 just as easily as 2001. There's nothing to remind you of civilization. I mean, hell, back east if you looked up in the sky there'd be airplanes and contrails and like that. But here, you look up at the sky, and there's nothing."

"It makes it so incredibly peaceful," his wife, Becky, agreed.

Scooter happened to be sitting on the raft tube at the same time, a sandwich in her hand, as well. "I rarely notice airplanes," she said after thinking about it for a moment. "I mean, I just don't focus on them. There's a lot of sightseeing over-flights in this area, but they stay pretty high and I usually don't notice them. Maybe it's selective denial, like I want to be back in 1871 with Powell."

"He'd really be amazed to see us going down this river in rafts and having fun," Jim said, from his spot on the tube of a nearby raft. "I mean, after all the troubles and starvation they had." He looked up for a moment, and added. "I guess I'm with Scooter. It's selective denial. I rarely notice airplanes here either."

The weather continued to be absolutely gorgeous. They were well away from the grinding heat of summer; the last trip, the one where there'd been the personnel shuffle at Phantom, had its hot days but had a few pleasant ones, too. This one had just the perfect weather that the Canyon often had in September, cool enough to make a sleeping bag feel snug at night, warm enough in the afternoons that for a couple hours swimsuits were often seen.

Two days later, they hit Upper Granite Gorge. Hance and Sockdolager and Grapevine were always challenging; this wasn't the first time that Nanci had run these big ones at the oars of Kevin's raft, but she had an exceptionally clean run and got congratulations from all. Scooter's opinion that Nanci was going to be getting a raft sooner, not later, was just reinforced. They were in a very good mood, even for a trip that had an abnormally good mood, when they floated under the Kaibab Bridge, around the bend, and up toward the rocky beach near the Bright Angel Bridge.

Then Scooter got a very bad feeling when she saw a familiar young, long-haired blonde standing on the beach, a backpack on her back and a tortured expression on her face. Instantly she knew something was very wrong, or else Michelle probably wouldn't have come down here at all.

As Scooter's raft slid up onto the rocks of the beach; Michelle took hold of the grab line to drag it onto the rocks a little. "Just a minute," she said, and headed over to help the next raft with the landing. In but a few seconds, all five of the rafts were nosed into the beach, and boatmen were getting painters out to tie them down.

"Michelle!" Scooter heard Crystal's voice, obviously thinking much the same thing. "Is anything wrong?"

"Have you people heard the news?" Michelle replied in a voice loud enough that everyone could hear.

"What news?" Preach frowned.

"Last Tuesday," Michelle said uncertainly, "There were four planes hijacked. Two of them flew into the towers of the World Trade Center in New York." She took a deep breath, and went on, still unable to believe the reality of what she'd seen happen real-time on TV, then over and over again in replays. "Both the towers collapsed. There's thousands dead."

Michelle's words turned the five boatmen, twenty-four customers, and one swamper into a hubbub of gasps. "You're kidding, aren't you?" Preach's voice broke through.

"No Preach, I'm not," Michelle shook her head, and continued. "One of the other planes flew into the Pentagon, and there's hundreds dead there. The fourth, the passengers fought back, and it crashed in Pennsylvania. On TV they said they think it was heading for the Capitol."

"Oh, dear God," Preach said. It was in a tone of prayer; he wasn't called "Preach" for nothing, because even though he was a boatman, he was still a Baptist minister.

"Look," Michelle continued in a loud voice, hoping that she could be heard by everyone, "I've called the emergency contact numbers of everyone on both the trips," she told them. "Everybody I've been able to talk to says that everyone is all right." Again, she took a deep breath, and hoped that her next words weren't the bad news that she was so damn sure it was, "But, Mr. and Mrs. Osborne, I can't get an answer at your son's house. I've tried day and night; I even tried early this morning before I started down from the rim, and all I get is his answering machine."