Chapter 14

None of the rafting companies on the Colorado are licensed to sell or serve beer on the river, so the customers have to bring their own. It gets hot down there, especially in the summer months, so the beer and other drinks are kept cold by dragging them in the river in mesh bags behind the rafts. Sometimes, on trips in the hottest weather, the beer is gone by Diamond Creek, but on spring and fall trips, sometimes quite a bit of it is still loaded low in the rafts or sitting in drag bags when the customers take their ride out of the Canyon. De-rigging is hot work, and a lot of what remains is consumed by the crews in the process, but often there's some left over. It was a Canyon Tours tradition to store at least some of that extra beer back at the warehouse for the season wrap party. Since it was a nice day, a lot of that beer was now on ice in Al and Karin's back yard, not far from the Canyon Tours office. Sometimes it was a little hard to tell what kind of beer it was since the river had sanded the paint off the cans. "You know you've had a rough day," Randy remembered being told, "When you don't know what kind of beer you're drinking and really, you don't much care."

The nice clothes were gone, now; everyone was back in more casual clothes, even the brides and grooms. Al and Karin's house was packed, and part of the party expanded onto the patio in spite of the cool evening air. Since it was a combination wedding reception and season wrap party, there were a lot of rafting stories being told, and the supply of leftover beer was dwindling quickly. Randy and Nicole and Scooter and Jim found a quiet spot in the corner of the patio to talk for a couple minutes. "The one down deal about our getting married," Scooter said, "Is that I would have liked to have seen Crystal's face. I could just about hear her eyes get wide as saucers."

"You sure took everyone by surprise," Nicole smiled. "How many people knew you were going to do that?"

"Beyond us, just Karin and Pastor Jordan," Scooter said. "We ran it past Karin a month ago, we didn't want to step on Crystal's and Preach's toes, but everyone we would have had at a wedding was there anyway, why not kill two birds with one stone? Karin set it up with Pastor Jordan. She told Trey to go easy on the film during the ceremony and don't run out, more was going to happen, but she didn't tell him what and told him to not even say anything about that."

"Look," Randy said, "I'm happy for you, but there we are back to the sailboat again. I didn't want to horn in on Preach and Crystal's honeymoon and I don't want to horn in on yours."

"You're not," Scooter told him. "Understand that. Randy, there's gonna be six of us on a 36-footer, that's a lot of things but no way is it a honeymoon. Jim and I are staying at the house tonight, and in the morning we're heading down to Mexico to that place where Dave and Mary hang out. We may stay a day; we may stay a week; we may stay a month. That's our honeymoon; all we have to worry about is being back here before Christmas."

"OK, that makes me feel better," he said. "We should have a good time."

"Darn right, we're gonna teach 'em what they don't know how," Scooter laughed. "I told you, we have a reputation as Grand Canyon boatmen to uphold."

"There you are!" Karin exclaimed. "Jim, Scooter, get in here! There are cakes to cut!"

"We're coming," Jim grinned. "We'll be right along."

"That was the other reason why we let Karin set things up," Scooter laughed. "She could put some surprises into it."

"Yeah, this is a raft guide wedding," Nicole smirked. "The surprises aren't over yet."

While Scooter may have said that the raft guides considered Randy to be one of them, it wasn't enough to keep him from feeling a little out of place in the crowded room. Although there were a lot of people he didn't know, Randy had some friends in the room, and he tended to look for them. If his life had worked out differently, he would have been happy to have been here, celebrating the end of the long season, but he wasn't really a rafter and probably never would be. Even the chances of his making another Canyon trip seemed limited.

One of the people in the room who Randy did know was Trey Hartwell, Myleigh's fiance. While he didn't know Trey as well as he would have liked, Trey was definitely one of the good guys. Since he would soon be moving to Spearfish Lake, Randy expected that there was a good chance they would get to know each other a lot better. A while after things had gotten under way, Randy happened to run across Trey, who was holding a can of beer in one hand and looking a little lost himself. Randy wandered over to him and said, "I'll bet you're feeling a little out of place, too."

"Well, yeah," Trey admitted. "I only ran a couple trips with this gang as a swamper last spring, and one of the runs was the recording trip, where we were apart from the main group much of the time, so even the people I know, I don't know as well as I'd like to."

"That's both of us," Randy said. "I guess we'll survive. I hear you signed the papers on your house the other day."

"Yeah, that was a little weird," he said. "It seemed like the whole thing was a little detached from reality, if you know what I mean. I mean, we only saw the place once. I'm sure glad you were able to help out from your end."

"No big deal, most of it is stuff that I do anyway," Randy shrugged. "So did you wind up with a pretty good price?"

"Oh yeah, real good," Trey admitted. "I guess that realtor of yours put a little arm twisting on the previous owner."

"Binky is pretty good, and you can be sure that she made out all right on it, too," Randy nodded. "We'll have to make some time when you two are there, before the wedding, so we can see if there's anything else we can do to it while we're working on it."

"Oh, I'm sure there is," Trey said. "It's beginning to look like I might be spending some time in Spearfish Lake before the end of the winter term; maybe there'll be something I can do around the place. Like, there was that one room painted that hideous purple color. I could barely stand to look at it. Something has to be done about that. Does your crew do painting?

"We usually sub painting out," Randy said. "But I can put you in touch with a sub and eliminate the middleman."

"Boy, I'd really appreciate that," Trey nodded. "I mean, I don't know anyone up there besides you and Nicole and Blake and Jennifer. I'm going to have to lean on you guys for a lot of things."

"No problem, you and Myleigh are friends. I'll do what I can to help." Randy let out a sigh. This was about the best chance he was going to have. "Look, I've got something I've got to run by you, and I don't know if there's going to be a better chance."

"Sure, what is it?"

"I don't know where to begin," Randy shrugged. "You've probably noticed there have been a few practical jokes pulled at this wedding. Some of them are paybacks from other ones. Crystal pulled a couple on Nicole at our wedding; you've probably heard those stories."

"The handcuffs, and spiking the punch?"

"Yeah, although the handcuffs weren't Crystal's idea, she just made it a little, well, wilder if you know what I mean. So, a couple of them got pulled on Crystal at this one and there's more to come, although don't you dare tell her that. But here's the question. Crystal, Nicole and Myleigh are good friends, and they've shared a lot. But Myleigh has her own sense of humor, and, well, no one is sure if they should pull something on you and Myleigh or not. I'd be willing to let it slide, but I don't want Myleigh to feel left out, either. What's your call on it?"

"Boy, that's a tough one," Trey said. "Just off the top of my head, you have as good of an idea as anyone of what Myleigh's sense of humor is like, so if you were to pull something mild and fun, I think it would be all right."

"That's sort of been my feeling," Randy admitted. "Although I'll be the first to admit I don't know Myleigh as well as I used to. She's changed some since she's been with you. I can't put my finger on it or say just why, but she's, well, a little straighter than she used to be, I guess I'd have to say."

"Let me think about it," Trey counseled. "Maybe I can figure out some way to ask Myleigh without really asking her about it. Why don't we leave it that it's all right unless you hear from me?"

"Yeah, that'll work," Randy said. "We're not going to play rough, or anything. It's all in good fun, in any case."

This was really a pretty good party, and Michelle moved around the room with a smile on her face, being her normal, exuberant self. However, on the inside she felt frustrated and lonely, which was a strange sensation for her. She'd once heard a barbershop quartet song, Wedding Bells Are Breaking Up That Old Gang of Mine, and though she didn't know the words she knew the sensation.

She'd known Crystal and Preach were getting married, and then going to be making the church trip for the next few weeks and suspected it might happen off and on till spring. Other than the Bahamas trip and maybe the surfing trip in January, it meant she wouldn't be seeing a lot of her friends, and she certainly wouldn't have the adventures they'd experienced the past two years.

She'd known that Scooter had planned to spend a little time with Jim, but they still had some stuff planned together for the winter. It wasn't until this afternoon that it hit her that she'd just become a fifth wheel to both of them, the odd girl out. She didn't think she'd be cut out from Scooter and Jim the way the church trip had cut her out from Crystal and Preach, but it was as clear as it could be that now she was going to be an outsider there, too. She'd known Scooter and Jim were going to Mexico for a few days with Dave and Mary, but now Michelle was as sure as she could be that they would be gone just about every day from now until Christmas.

There were no plans for what they were going to do after they got off the Felicity Ann in early February, but it seemed likely that Scooter and Jim would still want some space before the rafting season opened. Scooter wouldn't just up and tell her to buzz off and give the two of them time together, but she was capable of hinting about it. The only thing Michelle had decided to do was to tell Scooter as soon as possible that she was going to head off by herself as soon as they were off the sailboat.

There was a problem, though. Where was she going to go? What was she going to do? And for December, as well as February and March? Since she'd hung out with Scooter and Crystal the last two years, she had expected the same thing this year and hadn't put much thought into it until Scooter and Jim dropped the bomb on everyone this afternoon.

She should have seen it coming, last year on the Felicity Ann. One afternoon, they'd been sitting under the shade of the boat's Bimini top, talking about one thing and another, and the topic had drifted to the possibility of someday getting married. All three of them agreed it was something that was likely to come sooner or later, but all of them wanted to keep their river lives, too. Al had often said that spouses had cost him more good boatmen than booze ever could, and all of them agreed that the best possible answer to the problem was to marry a boatman. The only problem was there weren't many single male boatmen around who any of them thought worth marrying, and all three of them were starting to get a little old for the run of the pack, anyway.