Chapter 10

Arizona is a big state and mostly empty once outside the Phoenix area. It was about 150 miles up I-17 between Phoenix and Flagstaff, a straight shot, and once outside the metro area the traffic died down to a minimum. Like many Western drivers, Jon set the Chevy's cruise control at a speed nicely over the speed limit and let it roll, so the driving time wasn't even two hours up a familiar road he and Tanisha had traveled many times before.

There is a considerable difference between the two cities in elevation -- Phoenix is barely over a thousand feet, while Flagstaff pushes seven thousand, and the altitude alone makes for a considerable change. In spite of a great deal of imported water, Phoenix is still a desert, but over the six thousand feet of elevation difference much changes on the way to Flagstaff.

Al's house was a low ranch house not far from the Canyon Tours office, located in a nice grove of Ponderosa pine, about as different from Phoenix as could be imagined. The elevation change also made it quite a bit cooler; while Phoenix had been temperate, only pleasantly cool when they left after lunch, it was thirty degrees cooler in Flagstaff, and from the front seat of the Chevy it looked almost as cold as Chicago had been. It really still was winter out there, although there was little snow on the ground.

Jon and Tanisha had met Al at the same time that Crystal and Karin came out of the woodwork to announce their presence in Arizona two and a half years before. Both of them liked Al; he was a big, rugged guy, very outdoorsy and gentle, very personable, hard not to like, which had a great deal to do with why his business had been so successful over the years.

Back when Karin had first met him and had her famous Canyon romance with him, back before Pete had been more than a casual friend, Al had been something of a river bum, without any particular goals in mind. Both he and Karin had agreed there was no real future for them as a couple, and there hadn't been at the time. Shortly after Karin headed back to Chicago, Al had first moved in with, and then married Louise, a fellow rafter. Not long after that Al and Louise purchased the then still-young Canyon Tours rafting company for what they always felt had been a bargain price that was much less than the company was worth these days. Over the years, Al and Louise had built Canyon Tours into a solid, reputable and responsible business.

Louise had died only a few months before Karin reappeared on the scene after leaving Pete. From every story Jon and Tanisha had ever heard, Al had been just about disconsolate, in very strong denial. He was starting to pull out of it a little when he made his first trip down the Canyon following Louise's death, and there he re-met Karin, who had come out from Chicago after she left Pete, in order to reconnect with Crystal. After the fact of Crystal's parenthood was revealed, Al and Karin quickly became an item, with Crystal happy to see it and encouraging the two every step of the way. It had taken a year and a half for the two to get married back last spring, and from every indication they'd been a very happy couple, picking up the strings of a long-lost fling and turning it into a real romance.

But that was before the events of a couple days before. Jon could not help but have mixed emotions at what the news he and Tanisha were carrying could produce, and he wasn't sure how it was going to be received. Understandably, he was a bit nervous about the whole thing as he pulled the Chevy into Al's driveway and parked it next to Preach's Buick. "Well," he said to Tanisha as he shut the car off, "We're here, for what it's worth."

"It's not going to be that bad," Tanisha sighed. She'd been dealing with Jon's nervousness about this all the way up from Phoenix.

"Yeah, I hope," he said. "I guess I'm just being pessimistic about it."

"Yes, you are. It's probably going to go just fine so long as you don't guilt trip yourself too badly. Let's head on in. I really want to find out what happened with Preach and Crystal. We just haven't heard very much about it."

"We probably ought to listen a bit before we drop the bomb," Jon sighed. "No point in balling up the whole evening."

"Jon, you're being pessimistic again. Cut it out."

"I know, I know," he shook his head. "Let's do it."

They got out of the car and headed up toward the house, to find Karin waiting for them. "Jon, Tanisha!" she smiled. "Good to see you. You two are looking good as always. How are you doing?"

"A little messed up," Jon said honestly. "Our sleep schedule is shot. We were up all night and didn't really get enough sleep to make up for it this morning."

"It's going to happen when you keep a schedule like that," Karin said, showing them into the big ranch house.

"Couldn't be helped," Jon said. "So how are you getting along?"

"Oh, about the same as ever," she replied. "We've still got a couple months before the first launch so there's still plenty of time for rigging, and now that Crystal is back and Michelle should be along any day, Al and I are talking about taking off for a couple weeks."

"Any idea where?"

"We haven't settled it yet," his mother replied as she closed the door behind them. "We wouldn't mind doing some surfing, but with all the people in the Bahamas the past month we've been thinking we'd like to check that out. Crystal says there's not much surf, but scuba diving is something both Al and I have wanted to try, so we're giving that some thought."

"Well, I'm sure you'll have fun, whatever you do," Jon said. His mother's enjoyment of trying new and exciting things still surprised him a little although he should have had plenty of time to get used to it by now. Last night -- God, that recently? -- Pete had admitted he never had been much of one to travel and mostly liked to stay around home, and that was the absolute truth, and even more so in the last years before the family fell apart. Karin had always chafed under that -- it was no secret -- but since she'd been with Al she'd done a lot of new, adventurous things and always seemed eager for more -- rafting, of course, but skiing, snowboarding, surfing, a host of other things. She referred to it as "catching up" and that was exactly what it was. To Jon's knowledge she hadn't tried out skydiving yet, but he wasn't willing to put it past her, either.

In a way, Jon was a little envious. Again, he was his father's son, and given the chance he tended to be something of a stay-at-home, much like Tanisha. However, under some pressure he and Tanisha had been skiing with Crystal and some of her friends in the past, and had come to enjoy it within reason. Scuba diving might be fun, he thought; it might be worth giving it a try some time. Other than the river trip the previous spring and a brief visit to Disney World while they were still back at Georgia Tech, Jon and Tanisha had never taken a real vacation, and that was a possibility.

They headed on into the living room, where there was a big, cheery fire in the fireplace, with dancing flames and the occasional crackle or pop. He and Tanisha had often talked that it would be romantic and a lot of fun to have sex on the floor in front of a fire like that, and though they'd never managed it, they hoped they'd get to sometime. Al was in his easy chair; Crystal and Preach were sitting on the couch, snuggled up tightly and acting like they were enjoying it. "So, how you doing, bro?" Crystal asked from under Preach's arm. She was big, big like Al, several inches taller than Jon, with a solid, athletic build; Preach, was thin, reedy, sandy-haired, and taller yet.

"Pretty good, considering," he replied. "So how was life in the Bahamas?"

"Not bad," she replied. "We got some sunburn, did some sailing, and got a chance to rest up a bit. Honeymoon stuff, you two know what that's like if anyone does."

"Well, yeah," Jon smirked without further comment. It had proved impossible to keep the full secret of just how active his and Tanisha's sex lives were, so they had a reputation for it being pretty active. "So how was the church tour?"

"Oh, it was all right," Crystal shrugged lackadaisically, which more or less told Jon it had been a little less than that. Although Jon knew his older sister had a spiritual side to her, it was not evident to those who didn't know her well. Back when Jon and Tanisha had taken the Canyon trip last spring when Al and Karin got married, they'd known that Crystal and Preach were old friends. It had been a surprise when, on the last day of the trip, Preach announced he was leaving his post at the church in Chattanooga to stay on the river, but even then Jon hadn't figured there was anything serious to it. That was nothing to the surprise he'd had the previous October, when his mother had called and announced the two were getting married the day after Thanksgiving. It still seemed like an awfully unlikely pairing, and about the best he could say was, "So far, so good."

"It was less inspiring than I had hoped it would be," Preach opined as Jon and Tanisha settled into a love seat more or less facing the fire. "All in all it was a success, and there were some good moments, but it got rather tedious after a while. The same thing, over and over again, the same questions, the same answers."

"And the same questions and answers that had to be skirted," Crystal added. "Some of those places were pretty conservative, and we always had to be careful to not talk about the age of the Canyon geology or else someone would get in our faces about it."

"That was one of the downsides," Preach admitted. "We were trying to get across the message that it's perfectly possible to have a life of adventure in the midst of a place of grandeur like the Canyon and still serve God. Having to tread softly on some of those things took some of the fun out of it."

"I can understand exactly where you're coming from," Tanisha said. "You don't have exactly the same kind of hidebound idiocy growing up in a black church, but there's plenty of other hidebound idiocy to make up for it. But let's be nice to each other and not get into discussing religious idiots."

"I'll second that motion," Preach agreed, having been over that very subject with her before and knowing what she was talking about. "It could be a discussion worth having sometime, but I don't think tonight is the night for it."

"So, where's Nanci?" Jon asked, as much to change the subject as anything else.

"Out in the kitchen, working on dinner," Karin replied. "She should be in as soon as she gets the cake she's been working on in the oven."

Jon shook his head. Once again, the comparison with the teenager he remembered and the young woman his sister had become had come to the surface. Back at home in Glen Ellyn, Nanci's knowledge of the kitchen had been limited to raiding the refrigerator, or possibly, if pushed, making a peanut butter sandwich. "I take it her cooking is coming along?" Jon asked.

"Oh, quite well," Karin smiled, understanding Jon perfectly. "Her cooking is like Crystal's, it runs quite a bit to river style, but since she moved in with us after she got off the river last fall she's picked up quite a bit. I really haven't even done much cooking the past few months."