Nervously Peter looked around for Susan. "What's your mother say?"

"Do not," said Amy, "do not tell my mother. It's the alt.i.tude," she said.

Peter was going to note that they weren't exactly in the Himalayas, but then Amy pointed to the water. "Look," she said. "There are three rivers out there."

Peter looked at the water. She was right. Next to sh.o.r.e were choppy, dancing waves; then farther out, the midstream core, churning downstream; and finally the eddy beyond, floating upstream in a blanket of bubbles.

"You want some Pepto-Bismol or something?"

"No."

"Because the guides have all kinds of s.h.i.t in that first aid box."

"Jesus!"

"Don't get mad."

"I'm not mad."

"You seem mad."

"Well, I'm not. I'm just wishing I hadn't said anything to you if you're not going to leave me alone about it."

"Fine," he said. "I'll leave you alone."

"Thank you."

Then, just as the mention of lice will cause anyone's scalp to itch, so the mention of a stomachache made Peter feel a little queasy himself. He belched.

"Excuse me," he said, then belched again. He noticed Amy's wash bag. "Is that Vera Bradley?"

"How do you know Vera Bradley?"

"My ex-girlfriend liked those."

Amy picked up the bag and let it dangle from her finger. "My mother bought it for me. I think they're a total rip-off But it gives her a thrill to see me using it."

"Hundred bucks for a little purse," said Peter. "It used to kill me. But it made her happy."

"How long were you guys going out?"

"Six years."

"Who ended it?"

"She did."

"That sucks."

"Yup."

"Aren't you glad we're not with a bunch of Boy Scouts?" she remarked, after a moment.

Peter finished his beer. "You believed that story?"

"I shouldn't?"

"How do you know when a river guide is lying?"

"How?"

Peter shook his head. "Whenever he opens his mouth! G.o.d," he added, "you are one of the most gullible people I ever met."

20.

Day Four, Evening Mile 60 While everyone else was eating dinner, and when she was sure the dog wouldn't come over and start sniffing her leg, Ruth settled herself on a log and rolled up her pant leg. She unwound the Ace bandage, then gently peeled off the gauze underneath. What she saw was not encouraging. The wound was still raw and weeping, and the surrounding skin was red and hot to the touch.

Was it time for the Cipro?

In their medical kit, Ruth had packed a five-day course of antibiotics. It was a practice they'd adopted after one particularly painful trip when she got an ear infection on the fifth night, the kind that could have been easily cured with a course of amoxicillin but which, in the absence of antibiotics, had Ruth clutching the side of her head in agony for the next six days and Lloyd worrying about long-term damage to the middle ear. After that, they always brought along a broad-spectrum antibiotic. It was not something they advertised; although he would have made it available if someone really needed it, Lloyd did not want the responsibility of prescribing drugs to strangers while on vacation.

Now, looking at her leg, Ruth knew she had a decision to make. The redness and swelling indicated treatment; on the other hand, there were no red lines shooting up her leg. If they'd brought along two courses of treatment (and why hadn't they? What foolish oversight!), she wouldn't have thought twice. But with just the one round of pills, she was reluctant. This was simply a surface wound, after all, something that should heal, as long as she kept it clean and used plenty of Neosporin.

JT came striding over. "You should have waited for me," he scolded. "Look, the wind's picking up; your cut's going to get full of sand." He knelt and inspected the wound and frowned. "I don't like the looks of this. Let me see what Dixie thinks." He called Dixie, and she came over and knelt and examined Ruth's leg too.

But Dixie didn't want to decide anything until they consulted Lloyd, so they called Lloyd over, and now Ruth cringed, because she was afraid Lloyd would bring out the Cipro, and she really didn't think it needed Cipro, not yet; she had tended how many cuts and sc.r.a.pes and gashes over the years? and she knew what infection looked like, and this was not it. But Lloyd came over, duly called, and he first got confused, and Ruth had to explain to him twice how it had happened ("What dog?"), and then, when he finally grasped that it was not a dog bite bite, he shrugged and told her to stick a couple of Band-Aids on it and stop complaining.

So JT and Dixie washed the wound and applied more ointment and bandaged it up, while Ruth sat feeling helpless, and Lloyd wandered over to Evelyn's campsite and began emptying the contents of Evelyn's day bag, in search of a long list of items he hadn't seen since Lee's Ferry.

Yesterday Jill had told the boys in no uncertain terms that they were to try and use the toilet, but by tonight she found herself caring about it less and less. What could happen, medically speaking? Five days wouldn't kill them. Eight days wouldn't kill them. Thirteen days probably wouldn't kill them, but she doubted it would come to that.

Nor would it hurt Mark to go a day without sit-ups. Mark at forty had done well over two hundred thousand sit-ups: fifty per day, three hundred sixty-five days a year, for at least the fourteen years they had been married. At home he did them in their bedroom, upon rising. Here he did them on the sand, in the darkness, after everyone had gone to bed. Jill was grateful to have married someone who wasn't going to let himself go, but she found herself wondering, as she lay on her sleeping mat listening to Mark's little grunts, if he would really develop a set of the dreaded love handles in fourteen days. And so what if he did? The world wouldn't come to an end, she wanted to tell him. She would still love him.

Ten feet away, Sam began to cough. She recognized the succession of sharp dry hacks. She waited for the aerosol hiss, the quick inhalation of his asthma medicine. Nothing. Sam sat up.

"Where's your inhaler, Sam?" said Mark, between grunts.

Sam kept coughing.

"It's in his wash kit," Jill told Mark.

"Where's his wash kit?"

"In his day bag."

She expected the audible sigh of exasperation that Mark made whenever the boys didn't live up to his expectations (be prepared; be responsible; keep your meds available), but instead she heard him rustling in Sam's day bag. Then came the squirt, the deep breath in.

"Okay, cowboy. Go to sleep."

Then Mark came back and lay down on his mat beside her. He smelled of sunscreen. Everybody smelled of sunscreen.

"Thank you," she whispered. Thank you for finding the inhaler. Thank you for not criticizing him for not having it Thank you for finding the inhaler. Thank you for not criticizing him for not having it.

"I'm glad you organized this," he whispered, after a while.

"Good," she said. "Me too."

"The boys are having a good time, don't you think?"

"Yes." She lay flat on her back, gazing up at the spattered runway of stars; on either side, black cliffs loomed, voiding out the rest of the world. She had never seen anything so beautiful. What other worlds were out there, and where were they all going? She reached out and splayed her palms on the cool, velvety sand. A sense of hugeness, of being able to wrap her arms around the universe, came over her. At the same time, she felt as tiny as a pinhole.

"I hope I get to paddle Crystal," he said, after a while.

She felt jolted. "Why wouldn't you?"

"A lot of people are going to want to paddle Crystal," he said. "I heard Mitch.e.l.l talking."

"Ssshhhh. He's right over there."

"Mitch.e.l.l hasn't lifted a finger," Mark whispered, "compared to all the water I've pumped."

She reached over and took his hand. "Look at the stars, Mark," she whispered. "Count them," and he fell silent, as she hoped. And they lay there, floating on the sand, counting stars, while the ever-present sound of moving water lulled them to sleep.

July 7 Day Four

Mitch.e.l.l is bugging the s.h.i.t out of everyone. Tonight at dinner he started telling us the dam is going to break. He says it's unstable and the walls are crumbling and when it bursts there's going to be a 500 foot wall of water that'll wash us all down to the Gulf of Mexico. JT was ready to kill him-JT doesn't talk a whole lot, but he finally asks Mitch.e.l.l if he's an engineer or a hydrologist and does he know about this and that, and he's using all these technical terms and finally Mitch.e.l.l shuts up. But the damage is already done. Evelyn is convinced it'll happen during our trip.

And he's not very nice to his wife either. Like this afternoon, she got all excited about finding a fossil and asked Mitch.e.l.l to take a picture of it so she could show her kindergartners, and Mitch.e.l.l told her it would never come out, it'd just be a picture of a gray rock. I swear she was going to cry. So I took a picture for her. I would NEVER stand to be married to someone like him!!!!! Even if I am FAT!!!!!

Tomorrow I am definitely riding separate from Mom. As long as she is in the same boat with me, I end up saying like two words. Because I know she's evaluating everything I say. Oh Amy, I didn't know you wanted to go to China someday. Oh Amy, I didn't know you wanted to learn to kayak. Oh Amy, I didn't know you were really afraid of flying. I hate revealing myself in front of her. I wish I'd come on this trip alone.

When I get back I have to go visit colleges. I wonder if there's such a thing as drive-through liposuction. Here's my list: State U. Here's Mom's list: Harvard, Yale, Brown, Berkeley, Stanford, Amherst, Princeton. She says anyone who gets a perfect score on their SATs should aim high. If she tells anyone here about my scores, I will KILL her.

Maybe I should go to the University of Alaska, where I can wear a down coat 365 days a year, and no one will really notice that I'm FAT.

DAY FIVE.

River Miles 6076 Sixty-Mile Rapid to Papago

21.

Day Five Little Colorado It was midmorning the next day when their three boats floated into the confluence of the Little Colorado River. Instantly JT could tell that it hadn't rained upstream, for the tributary was running its strange, aquamarine blue. On a hot summer day, the Little Colorado could get as crowded as a suburban water park, but JT decided to stop anyway, and not just because Mitch.e.l.l had been talking about it all morning. People of all ages liked the Little Colorado; the water was warm, and they could lounge and play in its series of pools and waterfalls.

There must have been a dozen boats at the confluence that day, and JT had to do some tight maneuvering to find s.p.a.ce to pull in. As his pa.s.sengers eagerly scrambled out of the boats, JT warned them about the crusty travertine ledges; using Abo as a model, he showed them how to fasten their life jackets upside down, diaper-style, to avoid sc.r.a.ping themselves. Then he let them loose, and they ran upstream and joined the throngs, shrieking, splashing, sliding down waterfalls and hitching themselves into clumsy trains that broke apart, limbs in the air, hands grabbing for feet, frenzied laughter the likes of which JT was used to here on the Little Colorado but which most of the adults had not experienced since grade school.

While they reveled in the warm blue waters, JT went from boat to boat in search of gauze, for that morning, Lloyd had taken it upon himself to change the bandages on Ruth's cut. He did a thorough, precise job, wrapping her leg liberally, which would have been commendable in a hospital but was unfortunate down here on the river where they were so low on gauze to begin with. By the time JT realized what was happening, Lloyd had already ripped open the last packet.

Hadn't Ruth remembered they were low on gauze? Why didn't she stop him from using so much? Sometimes it baffled him, how good, intelligent people could get so s.p.a.cey But today he got lucky, for the pontoon crew had a few extra rolls to spare. Thus at least partly replenished, he leashed the dog and hiked up a small hillside to a spot where guides left messages for one another.

It was here, years ago, that he'd left love notes for another guide, a girl named Mac, always a trip behind him, it seemed, until finally they managed to synchronize their schedules, and then it was just a question of whose boat to sleep on, his or hers. After three years together, they drove up to Vegas one night and got married, and within a year Colin was born, taking Mac off the river for a couple of seasons, which she never really forgave him for. JT, that is, not Colin; Colin she doted on, but she and JT never managed to figure out the parenting thing, not as two river guides anyway, and Mac resented JT every time he left on a trip, and JT reminded her it was her choice not to go off for two weeks and leave the baby, he'd be glad to take Colin so she could do a couple of trips each season. But it didn't work. The resentment spilled from her eyes every time he came back from a trip, and they finally decided it was more important for Colin to have two relatively happy parents than one unhappy parental unit, and that was how JT found himself a divorced father with a son to raise, a son he had every intention of infusing with the river spirit but who now worked for a law firm in Phoenix and criticized his father for not having a real job with a retirement plan.

There were no love notes today, just a pink-petaled bathing cap that another guide had left for Abo. "Thinking you might need this," the sc.r.a.p of paper read. It was clearly a woman's handwriting; JT wondered how long it had been there and where the woman was now. Sometimes he had the feeling that the guides' love-ghosts haunted the canyon, showing up here and there in the form of heart-shaped rocks, or shooting stars-or campy pink bathing caps.

Back at the river, Dixie and Abo were shepherding everyone toward the boats-a giddy bunch, all of them, waddling with their life jackets drooping below their hips. It was while they were unfastening and refastening them into correct position that JT noticed one of Matthews buckles hanging by a thread.

"What happened to your life jacket, Matthew?"

Matthew looked down.

"How long's it been like that?" said JT.

"I don't know," said Matthew.

The black nylon strap was ragged and stringy; judging from a few other spots that looked suspiciously like tooth marks, JT guessed who was responsible.

"Do you have a needle and thread?" Jill asked.

"Yes, I've got a needle and thread." He didn't mean to sound curt, but he could tell from the look on Jill's face that he did. He got out his sewing kit and mended the strap, and when he was done, he warned everyone to keep a close eye on their gear.

"That dog chews something of mine and he's history," said Dixie.