DOWN THE GREEN RIVER
WE WERE FINE. We were holding on to a fine day on the fine Green River in the mountains of Utah five hours from Salt Lake with the sun out and Toby already fishing, when his mother, Glenna, said, “We’re sinking.” She had been a pain in the ass since dawn. I wanted nothing more than to argue, prove her wrong, but I couldn’t because there was real water in the bottom of the raft. You’re supposed to leave your troubles behind when you float a river, but given our histories, that was a fat chance.
We were that strange thing: old friends. I’d known Glenna since college; she had been Lily’s roommate and there was a time when we were close as close. She had been an ally in my quest for Lily. We’d had a thousand coffees at their kitchen table and she’d counseled and coached me, been a friend. Then after college she had married my pal Warren, which had been her mistake, and I had not married Lily, which had recently (twenty-two days ago) become mine. Warren had not been good to Glenna. His specialty was young women and he used his position as editor of the Register to sharpen it. She had grown embittered to say the least, and I wanted now simply to cut that deal—old friends or not—call her a sour unlikable bitch and get on with the day my way; if I had known that she was going to be the photographer for the news story I was writing, I’d have stayed in town.
She had her suitcase—something that has no business even near a raft—balanced on the side tube, and she held her camera case aloft in the other hand. It was dripping. The suitcase made me mad. I was just mad. Glenna had been to Lily’s wedding a month (twenty-two days) ago. She had talked to Lily. Now I could see the water over the tops of her shoes in the deep spaces where she stood. It was not common to tear a raft on the gravel, but it happened. I looked downriver for a landing site. The banks were both steep cutaways, but there was a perfect sandbar off to the right side, and I paddled us for it.
After the three of us dragged the raft clear of the water and unloaded the gear, spreading it out to dry, I set Toby at the downstream point with a small Mepps spinner and went back to repair the raft. Glenna was sitting on her suitcase, checking her camera. Her god damned suitcase. Warren had assigned me the story and her the photographs. “Floating the Green”—it would run in Thursday Sports.
I was trying not to think. I had taken the job to get out of town and because I needed the money. Warren said the photographer would pick me up at four a.m., and there in the dark when I saw Glenna’s ’70 Seville, the same car she’d had at school, my heart clenched. We had all spent a lot of time in that car. And I knew she’d seen Lily. Twenty-two days. If I had been ready, been able to commit; if I had been thirty percent mature; if I had not assumed being more “interesting” than Lily’s other dates would keep me first, then I might not have been standing on a sandbar with my teeth in my lip. Did I want to ask Glenna a few questions? Does Lily miss me? Has she said my name? Where should I send her tapes? Yes. Would I? Hey, I had a raft to fix, and as I said, I was trying not to think.
Now sitting on her suitcase on a sandbar, she stretched and reached in her bag for another Merit, which she lit and inhaled. “How’d he talk you into this one?” she said as smoke.
“He mentioned the beauty of nature.” I waved up at the sunny gorge, the million facets of the exposed cliffs. “The clear air, the sweet light…”
“Bullshit, Jack.”
“The money, which I need.” I flopped the raft upside down. There were a dozen black patches of various sizes on the bottom, but I could find no new hole. Using my knife, I tested the edges of all the old patches, and, sure enough, one large one was loose. “What about you? You don’t need another photo credit.”
She pointed at Toby where he fished from the edge of the sand. “I’m here because you know how to do whatever it is we’re going to do and you can show it to Toby in some semblance of man-to-boy goodwill and something will have been gained.” She flipped the butt into the Green River. “About the rest, I could give a shit. If Warren wants me out of town so he can chase Lolita, so be it.”
I bent to my work, scraping at the old patch. I peeled it off and revealed a two-inch L-shaped tear. I wiped the area down and prepared my own new patch with the repair kit while the sun dried the bottom of the raft. I didn’t like that phrase so be it. There’s gloom if not doom in that one.
And sure enough, a moment later Glenna spoke again. “Jack,” she said. “Something’s happening with the water.” Her imprecision almost cheered me, then I looked and saw our sandbar was shrinking. Toby had reeled in and was walking back, stepping with difficulty in the soft sand.