In the Heart of the Canyon Read Online Free PDF Page A

motor rigs were still on the beach, and she thanked her lucky stars she wasn’t on a motorized trip, for it seemed a clumsy and thoroughly illegitimate way to experience the river. Upstream, fishermen waded toward Wyoming, casting their lines.
    With each stroke, the oarlocks creaked. Dixie sat facing forward and pushed on the oars, rocking at the hip. Choppy little waves splashed against the side of the boat as they headed into rougher water.
    “Is this a rapid?” Peter asked as they jostled along.
    Dixie leaned into the left oar to keep the boat straight. “Just a riffle. Why? You worried?”
    “Of course I’m worried,” said Peter. “I can’t swim. Just how cold is this water, anyway?”
    “Forty-six degrees,” Dixie said. “Straight from the bottom of Lake Powell, courtesy of the Glen Canyon Dam.”
    “You really can’t swim?” Evelyn inquired.
    “Sink like a rock,” Peter declared.
    “Didn’t you take swimming lessons as a boy?”
    “I flunked.”
    Evelyn couldn’t believe they let people come on this trip if they couldn’t swim. And why was he here if he had such dread of the water?
    “Trout!” hollered Lloyd from the back.
    Evelyn searched the green water but saw no fish.
    Dixie asked where everyone was from.
    “Cincinnati,” said Peter.
    “What do you do in Cincinnati?”
    “Water my mother’s peonies a lot,” said Peter.
    Dixie laughed. “How about you, Evelyn?”
    Evelyn allowed that she was from Cambridge.
    “And what do you do in Cambridge?”
    “I teach biology.”
    “Don’t tell me you teach at Harvard,” Peter warned.
    Evelyn allowed that yes, she taught at Harvard, which instantly put a stop to the conversation. This happened frequently; after fifteen years, she’d never figured out how much to say when people asked where she worked. If she volunteered that she taught at Harvard, she seemed to be bragging. If she held back, inevitably someone would coax it out of her, and then her attempt at discretion seemed snooty.
    “I’m glad you don’t talk with a Boston accent,” Peter said. But before he could start in on
pahking the cah—
everyone felt the need to quote the stale little rhyme—there was a rubbery squeak from the back of the boat, followed by a thud and a cry of distress. Evelyn whipped around to see one of the old man’s pale, hairless legs poking skyward, with no sign of the rest of him.
    “Lloyd!” his wife cried. In a flash Dixie shipped her oars and hopped back over the gear to help the man up, letting the boat simply float along.
    “Are you all right?” Dixie asked.
    “Well gee!” Lloyd exclaimed. “I don’t know what happened!”
    “You have to hold on,” Ruth scolded, brushing at Lloyd’s sleeve.
    “I was!”
    “Tighter, then,” said Ruth.
    Dixie scooted back to her seat and took up her oars again.
    “Doggone hot,” Lloyd said.
    Soon they turned a corner, and Navajo Bridge came into view. Five hundred feet above them, its dark lacy arch spanned the canyon walls. Tiny figures dotted the railing. It was hard to believe that just over an hour ago, Evelyn herself had been standing on that bridge, looking down. Yet here she was now, on the river itself, already initiated into the world of river runners. Evelyn gave a small, insignificant wave to those above. She felt herself dividing the world into
us
and
them
, those on the river and those not, sojourners versus the rest of the world. And it seemed somehow fitting to her, although she couldn’t explain why, that this dividing point should be the resting place for Julian’s golden heart.
    Involuntarily she glanced down into the green water, half-expecting to see a flash of gold, knowing, even as she looked, what a silly, impossible thing that would be.

6
Day One
Miles 4–6
    N ever in her life had Jill Compson felt the sun burn so intensely. Not in Salt Lake City. Not in Phoenix. Not in Key West, where she’d grown up. It scorched her shoulders and made her skin feel painfully stretched.