The Gorge

CHAPTER NINE

They’d made the foot of the falls just before dark, right on schedule. The group had unpacked and set up their tents (from the ProVentures Pup series), started a fire, and gathered around for a meal of energy bars, instant coffee, soy jerky, and banana chips. Bowie checked their faces as the flames danced in their eyes. They showed no signs of exhaustion, except for Travis Lane, the ProVentures rep. Bowie made a note to keep an eye on him. Chances were good the marketing whiz’s creativity was limited to tricky words and behavioral psychology, and didn’t extend into the skills necessary for backwoods endurance.

Lane had removed his boots and was busy rubbing his feet.

“What’s wrong?” Farrengalli said to him. “They sold you on the wrong pair of footwear?”

“The ProVentures line is perfectly suitable for this type of hiking,” Lane said. “Add a little fur and an extra lining, and you could hike the Antarctica with these.”

Farrengalli had produced a silver flask from somewhere, and it glinted with firelight as he tilted it against his lips. He wiped his lush Italian lips and said, “That sounds like a good gimmick for next year. You gotta cut me in on that action.” He glanced at Bowie and flashed those big incisors that could probably cut his leg out of a steel trap if necessary. “Maybe even let me lead it.”

Bowie didn’t rise to the bait. The embers were deep, orange, and hypnotic. Soothing, the way he imagined hell might be after you got used to it. He’d probably find out one day, but not too soon. He still had a lot of misery to endure, a lot of memories of Connie, a lot of years left to waste.

“Sounds like a job for snowshoes,” C.A. McKay said. He looked unfazed by the evening’s exercise, as if compared to pedaling an uphill stretch in the French Pyrenees, the long hike was the equivalent of a kid’s second week on training wheels.

“It would be a good opportunity to promote the Igloo outfit,” Lane said, not knowing when to clock out. “Insulated with goose down, double-layered with an advanced synthetic blend, guaranteed at twenty below.”

“Let’s worry about tonight, not next year,” Bowie said, noting that all five faces turned toward him when he spoke. Even that beautiful one that made his eyes hurt.

“What’s the worry?” Farrengalli said, voice louder than necessary even given the roar of the falls. A fine spray filled the air, adding an extra chill to the September night. The fire did a good job killing the moisture, but Bowie knew they would all wake up damp and stay that way until they reached the end of the run.

“Maybe ‘worry’ isn’t the right word,” Bowie said. “Maybe it’s ‘concern.’”

“Look, we got the best equipment money can buy, except we got it all for free, we’re getting paid, we’re going to have our pictures in a national ad campaign-” Farrengalli paused, gave his gleaming grin to Dove Krueger, and said, “Hey, sweets, don’t forget to make this mug the poster child of the trip.”

Krueger, who’d carried the added burden of eight pounds of advanced photography equipment, winced at Farrengalli’s crude endearment. Like Bowie, she didn’t acknowledge the man’s attempts at irritation. She reminded Bowie of his wife, and No, he couldn’t go there now. Wait until the safety of the sleeping bag, the disturbed dreams, the persistent image of her hand reaching through the snow “The Muskrat may be new, but the principles of river rafting are pretty well established,” Bowie said.

“Come on, we went through all this in orientation,” Farrengalli said, hitting the flask again. The liquor, or whatever was in the container, had flushed his face. But it could have been excitement, or maybe the warmth of the fire. Farrengalli displayed an easy familiarity with the flask, as if they had ridden the same currents for years.

“That was on paper,” Bowie said, keeping his voice steady, letting the tumble of water over the rocks add its backing beat. “The river isn’t paper.”

“The rapids range from Class V to Class III,” McKay said. “Big deal. We can take it like a rubber ducky takes a bathtub.”

Easy for McKay to say, but McKay had trained with world-class athl etes. White-water courses were rated on a scale of difficulty ranging from one to six, with Class I being the easiest, the water so gentle t hat you could almost walk it faster, assuming the depth wasn’t too gre at. Class VI carried the real risk of death.

“Thirteen miles, with an altitude drop of two thousand feet over t he entire run,” Bowie said. “The most difficult hair run in the easter n United States. We have long stretches of portage where the river spr eads out into shallows, and when we’re not carrying gear to the next p ut-in, we’ll be bouncing around on short falls, eddies, undercuts, and troughs. You already see the hiking is no cakewalk. The rafting is ev en worse, and a paddle won’t make much difference if you get caught in a sinkhole. Assuming the equipment holds up, we’ll be tested to the l imits.”

“The equipment is fine,” Travis Lane said. “The Muskrat’s been on the drawing board for four years already. It’s undergone every laborat ory test in the book.”

“This isn’t the laboratory,” Bowie said.

“ProVentures has a lot riding on the expedition,” Lane said. He wa s the closest one to the fire, stooped over and rubbing his hands as i f wanting to pocket the heat for later.

“Not as much as we do,” Bowie said. “ProVentures would pay with a tax write-off. We’d pay with our lives.”

“Ooh,” Farrengalli said. “Major drama. Did you write that down, sw eet stuff?”

Krueger, who had been taking notes by firelight, wrinkled her nose as if smelling a skunk. She was examining the climbing gear, coiled r opes and steel pitons that glinted orange.

“We wanted a difficult launch to prove a point,” Lane said. “An ou ter shell of polyurethane-coated nylon. A single-chamber inflatable ex terior, resistant to abrasion, stitched seams reinforced with the most advanced epoxy. The interior layer features a series of separate cham bers so that the raft functions even after a puncture. Screw caps with a hand-pump accessory means you can break it down and pump it up agai n in about two minutes.”

“I bet I can pump it in thirty seconds,” Farrengalli said, curling his arm and showing biceps the size of a swollen grapefruit.

“I’ll bet you can pump a lot of things in thirty seconds,” Krueger said. “But I bet you never last a minute.”

Farrengalli’s eyebrows, which actually ran together in a single fu rry strand, rose on his forehead. His mouth rounded into an idiotic O, as if he couldn’t decide whether he was being ridiculed.

McKay laughed and gave Krueger an affectionate slap on the shoulde r. He was sitting closer to her than necessary. Bowie wondered if the cyclist would cause trouble of a different kind. Farrengalli was an ob vious prick, but McKay might be a subtler one. And Krueger was attract ive by any standard, even his, perhaps made more so by the fact she wa s the lone pussycat in a pride of lions.

Having only one woman in the group had been a bad choice. Dove as that one woman was even worse.

“Breakdown will be easy,” Lane continued. The lack of confidence h e’d displayed when confronted by the wilderness had fallen away now th at he was in his element. He could just as easily have been wearing a three-piece suit and power tie, making a presentation to a group of in vestors. “Maximum weight capacity of one thousand pounds, yet deflates to a carrying weight of five pounds. Telescoping paddles weigh anothe r four pounds, and when you throw in the hand pump at five pounds, you get a package that can carry four of us downstream but fits into the space of a loaf of bread.”

Robert Raintree, who had been sitting on a fallen maple at the edg e of the clearing, finally spoke. “We have two rafts,” he said. “How d o we split up?”

“Like we planned,” Bowie said. “The rafts have a maximum capacity of four people, but we’ll be running three per.”

“ Menage a trois,” McKay said, leaning toward Krueger. “How does that sound, ma cherie? ”

“You might be a stud when pedaling in France, but that lousy accen t wouldn’t get you in anybody’s pants,” Krueger said. “Much less two p airs at a time.”

Bowie grinned. Maybe he wouldn’t have to worry about her after all. She was capable of handling herself, and her outdoors credentials we re as solid as his. After all, while he’d been out of the game in self — imposed exile, she’d been mountain climbing, wind sailing, hang glidi ng, and ice-floe snowshoeing, much of the time with a laptop and camer a. Besides, he knew a little more about her, and her stamina, than any of them.

“McKay, you and Lane will ride with me in the lead raft,” Bowie sa id. He’d originally wanted McKay and Farrengalli together, but based o n their behavior, he thought their egos might lead to dangerous differ ences of opinion. On Class V waters, there was room for only one battl e of wills: human versus nature, not man against man.

“Righteous,” Farrengalli said. “I get to ride with the two quiet o nes.”

“I don’t think there will be much time for talking,” Bowie said. “ Maybe at midday we’ll switch off, but if things are going smoothly, we ’ll probably stick with what works.”

It usually took an hour or two for rafters to coordinate their pad dling and work as a team. Bowie again regretted the company’s tactic, making a cold run with no rehearsal. ProVentures scripted everything e lse, so why not manipulate the Muskrat field test so it looked great f or the cameras? Why risk so much for a product in which the company ha d obviously invested thousands of development hours?

Because it was a pure publicity stunt. In fact, Farrengalli had be en selected in the equivalent of a reality TV show, a competition in t he Arizona desert that had been featured on the outdoors cable series Wild Life with Natalie, featuring a buxom aerobics queen who alternat ely taunted and coaxed the competitors. According to rumor, Farrengall i had bagged Natalie in the star’s trailer one night, just before a fi nal elimination round. Farrengalli subsequently won an obstacle course race that featured a hundred-foot-pole climb to a rocky plateau, a th ousand-foot wade through waist-deep quicksand that was actually colore d oatmeal, a reckless rappel down the side of a butte, and two barefoo t miles across the scorching sand with nothing but a wineskin full of cactus juice for sustenance. Whether Farrengalli’s bedding of the show ’s host contributed to the victory, no one was willing to say, but Bow ie would bet all the sponsors were smiling.

The series had been augmented with a feature story in Back2Nature, with Dove Krueger providing the photographs and copy. Krueger alread y knew Farrengalli, Lane, and Raintree through her work with ProVentur es. Bowie hadn’t known any of them until the ProVentures vultures had tracked him to Montana, made an unannounced helicopter landing on his ranch, and laid their obscene offer on his chipped plywood table. As m uch as Bowie could fool himself into believing he was the right man fo r such a job, in his heart he was as much of a prostitute as any of th em. This tour would keep him in dried beans, bait, and ammunition for the rest of his days, which meant he’d never have to leave Big Sky Cou ntry again.

But his remote cabin was nearly three thousand miles away, and the solitude he craved would have to wait for his sleeping bag. For now, he needed to take charge and plant the idea that if there was any trou ble, the group would turn to him for a decision.

“The river’s low,” McKay said. “Maybe we should check for portage trails in the morning.”

“No,” Bowie said, knowing Lane was listening. “We do this by the b ook as much as possible.”

“Looks to be running around two feet,” McKay said. The group had g athered at the water’s edge before making camp, and though much of the seventy-foot waterfall was hidden in shadow, the weak moon caught eno ugh of the silver spray to suggest its glory. Even a distance away fro m the falls, the ground vibrated with its thunder.

“It’ll look different in daylight,” Bowie said, standing. “We shou ld all get some rest. Let’s make an early start tomorrow. Breakfast at six, launch at dawn.”

They had lined their pup tents around the clearing, and Bowie didn ’t wait for the others to follow his command as he headed for his. He imagined Farrengalli would finish his flask first, and McKay would pro bably wait a few minutes in order to appear independent. Lane was alre ady yawning, probably the sorest among them. Krueger would be eager to escape the unwanted male companionship. Robert Raintree The two had scarcely spoken since the trip began. Bowie sensed the man harbored no unnecessary rebellion, nor did he seem overly interes ted in the adventure ahead. Though his eyes were open, his head was st ill as if he were meditating, or listening to the forest beyond the ro ar of the water. Bowie gave a brief nod and wriggled into his tent. He undressed in the cramped space and slid into his sleeping bag, his ca lves and thighs aching more than he had expected. Tomorrow, his should ers would get a workout from using the paddle, and when he next lay do wn, his entire body would be throbbing like the root of a rotted tooth.

Closing his eyes, he was assaulted by the same familiar sight, one that hadn’t lessened in intensity over the past five years.

They had been cross-country skiing, in a fairly treacherous but po pular valley in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. The sunlight sparkled off the s now, the air temperature was forty degrees, and the wind was mild. A p erfect day, even when viewed through shaded goggles. Bowie was a hundr ed feet ahead, figuring to blaze a trail so his wife’s passage would b e easier.

Bowie thought the first rumble came from his stomach, it had been so gentle. The second was accompanied by a small spray of loose snow, and then the massive wall of white clinging to the mountain above had let loose, thundering down like the cavalry of the Apocalypse.

By the time Bowie had flailed the long skis around, the bulk of th e avalanche had swept past, tossing a few chunks against his shins and coating him with powder, but otherwise leaving him unscathed.

Connie was gone.

The silence that followed in the wake of the avalanche was a mocke ry of the noise with which it had broken loose from its winter-long mo orings. Bowie stripped his gloves, knelt, and removed his fastenings, cursing his clumsy fingers. By the time he propelled himself into the settled trough of snow, precious seconds had passed. Avalanche victims didn’t die of broken bones, shock, or exposure. They died of suffocat ion.

After a fifteen-minute search, he finally spotted a patch of blue against the glistening white. Her stiff and gloveless hand, the finger s lifted as if waving good-bye.

Or reaching for him.

The diamonds in her wedding band gleaming in the reflected light.

He rolled over in his sleeping bag, but there was no direction whe re that hand wasn’t waiting, waving, beckoning, curling at last into a n angry fist. He should have died with her. By now, instant death held no appeal. His punishment was to linger for an excruciatingly long ti me, to share his endless nights with the memory, to taste the cold air of his failure.

As always, the sun could not come soon enough.