The Hookman

The Hookman

A short story by Timothy Hillmer

A Carolina Paddler Reprint

Editor’s Note: This short story by Timothy Hillmer originally appeared in the book, First Descents, published by Menasha Ridge Press in 1989. Edited by Cameron O’Connor and John Lazenby.

 “The Hookman” is the first fictional work to appear in Carolina Paddler.

∞ Cruz remembered the first time Old Crawdad took him down to the river with the hooks. Like throwing a shotput underhanded on a string, he had told him. Ain’t no picnic being a hookman. Dead bodies is heavy at the bottom. They’ll fight ya. Crawdads’s voice was raspy, like a creaking hinge being shut on a cage, and he dangled the hooks at his side as casually as a string of trout. Ten pounds of metal-pronged claw attached to thick gold-line rope. He showed Cruz how to coil the line, then belay it out after he’d thrown as the barbed talons dragged along the bottom in the tugging current.

                  “Never tie it on,” Crawdad said, “or you’ll be as dead as the ones you’re looking for. Drag you right under.”

                  Cruz listened to him, balancing the hook in one hand. He kept three loose coils of the heavy rope in the other, then began to rock back and forth, swinging the grappler like a pendulum gaining momentum. When he released, the hook flew like a steel bouquet, soared in a wide arc, and plummeted into the river.

                  “Keep the line taut so’s you can feel for something catching. You’ll pull up a lotta shit, kid. Branches. Pieces of scrap iron. I hooked a kitchen sink once. Thought I had Moby Dick under there.”

                  He showed him the gloves. Black leather with extra padding sewn into the palms and extending halfway up the forearm to prevent rope burns.

                  “You’ll know when ya got one,” said the old man. “There’ll be this thump on the line and then it’s like they’re crawling up the hemp all of a sudden, coming up after ya, the hook caught in their chest or leg.”

                  He drove him along the river and showed him the best places to look, where the strong eddies carved out pockets in the shore and the current reversed upstream. Near Trout Bridge. Across from Hobo Campground. In the tangle of trees parallel to the abandoned mine.

                  “I learned all the good fishing holes. I pulled up six in one summer.” Crawdaddy laughed and Cruz saw a flash of black gums. “It’s not pretty, kid. Spooky line of work.”

                  He needed the money. He had to pay rent and buy groceries and take care of his father, Tucker, who was on the wagon. They lived in a trailer in the alley behind the Shady Lane Saloon. Two bedrooms and a bath. A mattress on the floor for each of them. Cruz kept the blinds drawn so the dust would stay out. Tucker liked it that way. Dark.

It was the only work he could find since getting laid off in Bakersfield. Kern River Search and Rescue was the official name. They wore yellow hard-hats and khaki shirts with the brown and green Forest Service logo emblazoned like a tattoo on their sleeves. Fires up in Sequoia. Cars going off the road from L.A. and into the canyon. Cleaning up the shore after the motorcycle gangs had partied. It was mostly river work on the Kern. A tourist tangled up in a snag in midstream. Fisherman with their legs trapped in rock cracks. Hunting for bodies after a drowning. They lost six to eight each summer, usually during the high water. Someone would get too close, slip, and they’d be gone in the froth of white. Two days later the body might wash through the gorge. Sometimes it took months.

                  Cruz was the new boy on the team. He was younger and stronger than the others, barely 17, so he handled the hooks. The veterans didn’t touch rookie work. They drove the trucks and gave orders to the newcomers. They’d done their time and liked to talk about it. Especially Walker. Cruz listened to the stories he told.

                  “Pulled a biker out from under the bumper of a Mercedes in my first week,” Walker said. “Skull crushed and head split open like a coconut. I zipped him up in the plastic and let the EMTs haul him away. I went behind my jeep and threw up in the ditch. Get out if ya don’t like it.”

                  It was the sound of the telephone Cruz dreaded. Sometimes the calls came long after midnight and it was as if he’d been sweating and waiting hours to hear Lou, the boss, say “brush fire” or “rockslide.” He’d rehearsed in his mind what it would be like the first time he dragged the river. Two a.m. Phone rings. Lou will say in a croaking wheeze to meet at Miracle Springs. “Another one, kid,” he’d say casually, as though he were ordering a second round of drinks. “Fell in below the dam. Found some tennis shoes. A carton of bait. Probably some rich geek form L.A.” Geeks. Cruz hated the word. That’s what they called the dead ones. Cruz had never seen a geek. The others joked with him about it. “Just wait.” they said, “your time’ll come.”

                  The work kept Cruz busy. Landslides over the roads in the high country. Nothing serious. They started sandbagging in May for the high water they knew was coming. There had been a big snowpack at Mt. Whitney and the river would swell soon, icy water rushing down from the Sierras in a torrent. Walker made bets with the others on the first geek.

                  “Before the middle of June,” he’d say, “put your money down. All proceeds to the Geek Funeral Parlor.”

                  Cruz never bet. It disgusted him. They called him “rookie” and “greenhorn.” He kept his distance. They kidded him about other things. His old man. Mostly women and his inexperience with them.

∞∞∞

                  It was the last week in May. Dark night. No stars and clouds swirling in. Cruz was in bed listening to his father groan in his sleep, staring at the clock, when the phone rang. He knew it was Lou.

                  “Looks like Walker won his bet, kid,” he said. “Tourist thinks he saw a guy fall in. Found a jacket and camping gear. Porsche parked near the Springs. Water’s hauling ass. We’ll have to hustle to get him out before he gets into the gorge. Bring your hooks.”

                  When Cruz arrived, the others were slowly fanning out, methodical, as though they were walking to church. He went with Crawdad below Trout Bridge. The hooks were heavy, clanking together in the silence. When they reached the bank he saw the river all foam and whirlpool, slamming into a jam-up of willows and scrub brush.

                  “Good spot,” he heard Crawdad say. “Good place to get hung up.”

                  Cruz was sweating when he threw the first one. The hook rose straight up and then bounce in the shallows.

                  “Shit, kid,” the old man hissed, “get it out in the meat of the water where it counts. Ain’t much time. No mercy in that river.”

                  He threw again, a good one this time, and he felt the rope slide through his fingers. The current was strong, sucking the claw down into the violent flow and away from him in seconds.

                  “Work your way down like I showed ya,” he heard Crawdad say. So he did, dragging the steel across the bottom towards the jam-up, the black gloves hot from the friction of hemp on leather.

                  They worked nonstop for two hours, Crawdad shining the light, Cruz throwing the hook. A rhythm began. He’d measure the distance, toss the grappler, haul it in. A few snags, mostly wood or rock caught in the webbed talons. Water glistened on the black steel. He felt Crawdad’s breath on his neck when he threw, the light flashing over his shoulder and tracing the area of the hook through the air. Crawdad was eager. He watched for a sudden tension in the line. A trembling. A pulling down. Cruz smelled whiskey on his breath.

                  It was near dawn, the sky like slate, when the hook caught. Cruz felt the change in the rope, heard Crawdad’s breath quicken.

                  “He’s down there, kid,” he said, “I know these things.” The hook came free and they tried again, this time throwing upstream and letting the claw drift down. Three attempts and nothing grabbed.

                  Cruz was scared. He wanted to get away form the river, to run and let Crawdad finish this. He wanted the hook to break off or the rope to snap. But the old man was there, pressing.

                  “He’s stuck on something,” he mumbled, “Work fast. He might get away.” They continued, trying to relocate where the obstruction had been in the riverbed, each time the hook sinking down into the oily dark and then pulled in, empty.

                  The line went taut on the ninth try. Cruz felt it slithering away from him and down. The weight was moving under there, shifting, the swift current trying to tear it loose. Crawdad helped him, their arms straining to bring it in. Breath puffed out in short gasps. Legs shook. Cruz wanted to cut it, let it go, but Crawdad pulled on, his eyes fixed on the line and the point of descent. They felt the rope jerk suddenly, the weight breaking free and inching downstream. Their feet slid in the mud toward the water.

                  “Dammit, tie it off!” yelled Crawdad. “Wrap it around something!” Cruz let go briefly and secured the rope around a tree trunk. For tne minutes they heaved at the the line, hauling it in against the force of the river. Forearms throbbed. Fingers cramped.

                  Then he saw it. A bare shoulder breaking the surface. A head, the scalp pink and shining in the light. A hand, limp and bent against the current. They pulled the body into the shallows. Crawdad held the line. Cruz went in after it.

                  Cold skin. Like fingertips on a freezer wall. The smell enveloped him. Not death. River scent. When he grabbed the shoulder to ease it out of the shallows, he saw a torn red t-shirt. Jeans, now heavy with water . He picked the body up in his arms and set it on the bank in the high cutgrass.

                  Crawdad shined the light down. Cruz saw a woman. Young. Maybe 23.

                  “Look at her skin,” Crawdad said. “hardly been touched. Only dead a few hours. Like she’s sleeping.

                  Cruz saw closed eyes. Lips parted as in mid-dream. The face was pure and milky, as if scrubbed by sand and water. Cruz thought of the chalky smooth face of a statue in church. He put his hand on her cheek, in her hair, over her eyelids. Pure. Like moist cotton. As if one touch could bring her back. One kiss. He felt his eyes blur, his stomach twist. Then Crawdad’s hand on his shoulder.

                  “The first one is the hardest, kid. Go easy. Let’s wrap her up.” But Cruz couldn’t and stumbled away. So the old man covered her in the tarp. They drove back to the others. Cruz not saying a word.

∞∞∞

                  June brought the heat. It descended on the Kern like a veil of lace. Cruz put in 12-hour days in the 100-degree weather. The snowpack near Whitney broke all records and each day the river inched further above the high water mark as the snow melted the mountain glaciers and fueled the current. They sandbagged along the bridges and near the riverside cabins and homes. Eighty-pound bags stacked six to eight feet high. “Ball-breakers,” Crawdad called them. When that was done they started on the firebreaks up in Sequoia, tearing out sage and cactus with picks and shovels, always listening for the sharp buzz of a rattler’s tail. The forest was parched and crisp, ready to burn. Crawdad was on their asses no matter what.

                  “Flood or fire, water or smoke,” he’d sing out, “it’s hot as Hades and you’re working like ladies.”

                  Crawdad was always there, like a devil on his shoulder. Teaching him. Cussing him. His silver hair hanging from under his stained hat like tassels. Cruz knew nothing of his history. No wife. No family anyone knew of. Only the river and forest for as long as anybody could remember. Cruz trusted Crawdad’s knowledge of the land and liked the way he kept Walker and the others at a distance. Liked his vulture nose. The whiskey smell of his breath. The acrid, sweet scent of the little Dutch Masters cigars he smoked.

                  “Two packs a day for 20 years,” he’d howl, “and lungs like snow.”

                  The daily grind took everything out of Cruz. He came home to the cramped trailer, his skin like scorched copper. Tucker was usually asleep in his room, the faraway sound of the Dodgers game on the radio. Cruz would shower, then rub lotion on his raw skin. The heat took away his appetite. He drank glasses of iced ginger ale to kill the bitter taste of sand and dust in his mouth.

                  At night he hauled an old air mattress on top of the trailer and slept under a gulf of stars. He imagined a cool breeze drifting inland from the Pacific to soothe him from the heat. In the distance he could see the twitching pink and green neon of the Kern Valley Motel. He listened to the sound of traffic out on the interstate. He dreamt of the drowned girl.

                  In the dream she was alive and staring up at him with eyes like black eels, her mouth so close he could feel her breath on his lips. Looking down he saw the hook thrust into her side the blood weeping into the cutgrass like syrup.He awoke suddenly cursing the dream, feeling lost and adrift in an ocean of death and night and darkness. All he knew was her name. He had read it in the newspaper obituaries. Denise Kaufmann. Age 19. Born in Bakerfield in 1960. Both parents deceased. No surviving family.

                  There were no drownings in early June, so Cruz didn’t work the hooks. They rattled in the back of Crawdad’s truck like a skeleton. But within two weeks the Kern rose 2,000 cubic feet per second and Cruz saw the river transformed into a raging torrent of foam and power. The search and rescue team went on 24-hour alert, and they eyed the bridges and highway embankments carefully as the silt-laden waters clawed the shoreline. They posted DANGER signs in the parks and campgrounds and warned tourists to stay away from the Kern.

                  One evening he drove his old man’s jeep down to Hobo Campground. The riverside trailers had been abandoned and left to the mercy of the flooding. A ghost town, thought Cruz. A stray dog sniffed at an overturned garbage can. Water lapped at the wheels of an abandoned truck. From the shore he could see giant willows that had collapsed into the river and floated downstream, their roots and foundations eaten away by the powerful current. A few trees had jammed up in a boulder garden and created an enormous strainer to sift the river like a gold dredge.

                  He sat near the river’s edge and watched the sleek water rush by, glassy and green as jade. He liked the sound it made–”sweet music” Crawford called it–and the way it enveloped him and blocked out all other sound. He could feel the coolness rising off the surface, cutting the heat like a razor. he thought of the drowned girl and wondered whether her death had been a suicide. He thought of Crawdad and the hooks and wondered if the old man inquired about the past lives of those he dragged form the river. He sat there until the Kern faded in the dusk and the water became a stream of gleaming oil rolling in front of him and his mind felt cleansed of sweat and work and dust. This was all he needed. This sweet music, endless and eternal, flowing into the canyon below.

                  On the morning the Kern peaked at 7,000 cfs, Lou called a meeting at headquarters. It was midweek and Cruz was dreading another three days of chopping out cactus and mesquite in the high country. They gathered in the corrugated steel warehouse behind the main office, and Cruz spotted Crawdad standing off to the side, squinting out from under his baseball cap.

                  “I need a couple of men for the river rescue team.” Lou began. “Saunders and Martinez, the core crew, quit on me yesterday and moved up north. I need volunteers to use a raft and oars to rescue stranded swimmers and or search the shoreline for bodies. I received word this morning that river ain’t going down for awhile, that there’s enough snow up near Whitney to keep it high until damn near August.”

                  He paused shifting his weight from one boot to the other.

                  “With the big water here to stay,” he continued, “we might as well gear up for some accidents. Any volunteers?”

                  Cruz could hear Walker and the others talking in the corner. Then there was a long silence, interrupted only by the roar of a gravel truck passing by outsde. Lou cleared his throat and spoke again.

                  “How ’bout it? I need some help here.”

                  Walter spoke first. “None of us vets gonna touch that job. no way in hell, Lou. We done our time. Besides, that goddamn river’s suicide right now.”

                  Lou stared at the crowd, his pudgy face ragged and sweating in the heat. He started to say something but stopped, only to turn and stare away for a moment. Then Cruz saw a hand go up from the side of the crowd.

                  “I’ll help out,” Crawdad said, “but I’m too old for this shit. I need somebody to row.”

                  Cruz felt his skin tingle when he heard Crawdad, a layer of quiet settling over the group. He could feel the old man’s eyes on him and he looked down at his feet. He knew what the others were thinking. He was the new kid, the greenhorn. He and Crawdad were alike in that they had no wives or children, no real family but for his father. Cruz knew he had paid no dues, at least not like the others. He looked up and saw Crawdad still glaring at him, waiting for him to step forward and back him up. He thought of their time by the river and the way the old man had taught him to use the hooks, the way he had covered up the drowned girl when Cruz couldn’t stomach it. He felt his face redden, heat up. He raised his hand.

                  “Okay, Cruz,” said Lou. “you and Crawdad get the river gear. Training starts this morning and…” Walker’s voice cut him off in midsentence.

                  “I ain’t saying this cause I wanna take the kid’s place but the Kern’s no place for rookies. Especially now. The kid don’t know shit about what he’s getting into. The rapids down there will eat him alive. Hell, nobody should be going near that river. It’s a death trap. Why should we die cause some geek falls in? I say let ’em drown.”

                  Then Cruz saw Crawdad step into the pack of men. He spoke directly to Walker. “Why don’t you ask Cruz what he thinks?”

                  Until then Cruz had felt like an outsider, a spectator. But suddenly he felt the focus of the crowd shift to where he stood.

                  “What do you say, boy?” said Crawdad. “You heard Walker say what he thinks. Now it’s your turn.”

                  The old man’s gaze was unblinking, intense, and Cruz could see his red eyes waiting for an answer. He knew what Crawdad needed from him this time, just as he’d known when they’d gone to the river with the hooks. But he let the dark weight of the question hang in the air for a moment, let the silence fill the space between him and the others like a wall.

                  “You can back out,” Crawdad urged him. “I’ll find someone who ain’t afraid. You decide.” he could feel the old man pressing again, could hear his words haunting him. Ain’t much time… no mercy in that river.

                  “I ain’t afraid of the Kern,” Cruz said. “Besides somebody has to go out on the river. It might as well be us.”

                  Then Crawdad turned to Lou. “He’ll know his shit when I’m done working with him, boss. He’ll know his shit or we’ll both drown like fucking rats in the willows, and I don’t plan on dying soon. Didn’t he take on the hooks when nobody else wanted them? Didn’t he?

                  “You can sign his ass goodbye,” said Walker, striding out of the warehouse and away from them.

                  Cruz heard a buzzing of voices around him, then saw Crawdad approaching, ‘Don’t listen to Walker, the old man told him.

                  “He’s a first-class bullshit artist. C’mon. Stay close and I’ll make a boatman out of ya.”

∞∞∞∞

                  “Geek Patrol” was what Crawdad called it in the beginning. Cruz felt scared that first morning. Walker’s words still fresh in his mind, as they drove down to some slow sections of the Kern where the river opened up out of the willows. Crawdad dragged from the truck the old boat, a 16-foot black military raft, and stretched it out in the sand.

                  “It’s old,” Cruz said.

                  “Shit,” Crawdad said. “it’s old alright, but it’s hauled too many bodies out of the river to go under now. It’s a fucking river hearse. Look at this.”

                  He showed Cruz the grey, rectangular patches checkering the seams and tubes. Cruz ran his hands along the rough surface, feeling the irregularities as if they were zippered scars against his fingertips.

                  “You sew up a raft just like a man,” Crawdad said. “There’s a needle and thread under all those rubber Band-aids.”

                  Then the old man took a bucket of river water and washed the boat down until the black exterior shone like sealskin. They took turns inflating the six chambers with a cylinder pump, going at it until Cruz could feel his forearms and back throb.

                  They unloaded the ten-foot oars, each one sleek and heavy as a wooden beam in Cruz’s arms, and set them next to the raft. There were other things in the back of the truck. Rusty ammo boxes, smelling sour and dank when the lids were popped off. A metal rowing frame with a slanted wooden seat attached. Frayed coils of rope wound tight as a hangman’s noose. Two thick plastic body bags for drowning victims. “Corpse condoms,” the old man called them. All of the gear carried the scent of mildew and decay, like items unearthed from a long storage underground. The musty odor filled Cruz’s nostrils with an awareness of the tools and their trade. To carry the dead from water to an earthen grave.

                  Crawford taught him the knots, the sheet bend and bowline and truckers hitch. At first the rope was awkward in Cruz’s fingers, like stiff wire in the hands of a child, but the old man stood beside him and guided his hands through the invisible patterns. They used red webbing to lash the steel frame into the center of the raft, cinching it down taut to the metal D-rings. They slid the boat into the river and tied it off to a tree, then watched it bob and sway in the green current. Crawdady slid two of the oars into the U-shaped metal oarlocks jutting skyward from either side of the frame then showed Cruz how to lash the third to the side.

                  “Once you’ve learned to row, she’ll be like a black bullet in the whitewater,” Crawdad said.

                  He made Cruz begin that morning at the oars, sitting in the wooden slantboard rowing seat. “Be careful how ya slide, or you’ll get splinters up yer ass,” he told him. He called it a crash course in river sense, in learning to row by rowing. “Sometimes you got to be a fucking fortune-teller. That’s what it takes. See the unseen,” he said.

                  The oars were bulky and awkward in Cruz’s hands and he struggled, catching the wooden tips on rocks or thick roots buried in the shallows. The river was deceptive, seen n the calm sections. The swirling undercurrent twisted the oar blades flat beneath the surface and they plunged down, ripping Cruz forwards as he clutched the handles and was nearly jolted from the boat. He flailed impatiently at the river, hoping the oars would bite into the water for a powerful stroke. He felt overwhelmed and frustrated that first morning, as if the Kern were conspiring to trick him at every turn.

                  Crawdad showed Cruz how to feather the blades as they dipped back into the water so they would slice through the emerald current like fins. He taught him the basics: the pivot, the double-oar turn, the portogee. “Use yer legs more!” he’d shout. “Drive up with yer legs. That’s where yer power is.” The old man was like a barking demon, always positioned directly behind Cruz in the stern of the raft. “Pull with left oar… too hard, dammit! Correct with the right. Keep the angle. Now point yer bow at the shore and pull away. Don’t lose it. PULL!”

                  For a week they worked the slow stretches, ferrying back and forth across the current, practicing angle pivots and catching the calm pockets of water behind boulders. Cruz would go home at night with quarter-sized blisters on his palms. He bought leather gloves and cut the fingers off to protect his hands when he rowed. The old lifejacket he wore chafed his skin raw under the armpits, and his lower back was inflamed with pain after the first day. But he learned to relax at the oars and listen to Crawdad. “You’re picking it up fast. A natural. Let the river do the work for you. Go with the flow.”

                  Soon he grew accustomed to the icy tingle of water lapping at his ankles in the morning, the itch of poison oak breaking out on his skin. Slowly, the river world became more to him than just a place of the dead. The days of working the hooks and sandbagging and digging firebreaks up in Sequoia seemed long ago, replaced with a sense of restlessness, of watching a wave curl endlessly back and repeat the sharp cycle of water and its motion. Each morning revealed blue sky and a gold wafer of sun slanting down from the canyon rim as they rigged the raft. When he felt the river taking over, he sensed a childlike electricity within himself, like gliding across stormy waters on a magic carpet.

                  During the second week they moved downstream to where the river narrowed. “Ya gotta dance like a water bug down here,” said Crawdad. “Dance or drown.” He called this section, “the jungle.” Willows arched out over the river, their roots stabbing up through the surface, the water boiling as it slithered in and out of the tangled foliage along the shore. The rapids had been christened by Crawdad with names like Strangler, the Cauldron, and Executioner. They all contained short bursts of frothing waves within tight channels. “The trees are the killers,” he heard Crawdad say one morning at put-in. “Get pinned underwater by a willow and the water’ll hold you there till Christmas.”

                  The undercurrents and twisted passages of the jungle were like a frightening maze of traps for Cruz. He grew afraid each time he felt a sudden burst of speed as they accelerated blindly around a bend, each time the dark water tugged the raft toward a partially submerged mass of vines and branches, each time Crawdad’s voice jumped him from behind and began to screech commands. When they stopped at noon for a brief lunch, Cruz ate little. His mouth tasted sour and his stomach churned at the thought of what lay downstream. He yearned for the hot afternoons of digging firebreaks in rattlesnake country.

                  Crawdad showed little mercy, continually pushing and correcting his every stroke. When they reached Nightmare Corner late in the day he even refused to describe the rapid beforenhand as he had with the others. “You’re on your own.” he said, “I aint’s always gonna be around to look out for ya. Read it and run it.”

                  Looking downstream, Cruz saw a series of cresting waves surging into a tangled stand of low hanging willows on the right. He pointed the stern of the raft left and began to pull away from the trees, but the first powerful wave crashed into the boat, spinning it backwards and out of control. Cruz strained at the the oars, trying to pivot the boat back around as they descended into the rapid, when suddenly he heard Crawdad scream, “DOWN!” Too late, he felt something solid and heavy explode into the back of his head like a hammer and he was swept into the river.

                  Dazed, he saw water sweirling around him, endless and deep. I am drowning, he thought in a panic. This river is my grave. Then he felt iron hands on the collar of this lifejacket as he was ripped from the depths and thrown onto the floor of the raft. Choking, he spit out water and panted for air. He looked up and saw Crawdad at the oars, grinning as he rowed the boat away from the willows.

                  “You OK?” Crawdad asked, “That was one helluva branch that decked ya.”

                  “I think so,” Cruz answered. His head pounded, and he felt a walnut-sized swelling on the back of his neck.

                  “You’re lucky, kid. Brother Blue Heron was smiling on ya today. Those willows aren’t usually so merciful.”

                  “Brother Blue Heron?” Cruz repeated, puszzled.

                  “Hell,” Crawdad cackled, “he’s king of the river gods and protector of all the boatmen. But you can’t know Brother Blue until the river kicks your butt at least once. And you’ve just been baptized!”

                  They both began to laugh, softly at first, then louder. Cruz could feel the adrenalin seeping away, tension easing into the air.

                  “You’re crazy,” he said to the old man. “Crazy as hell.”

                  “Maybe so,” said Crawdad, “but I’ve had a lot of close calls on the river and Brother Blue always brought me back up for air. Now get yer butt up here and row.”

                  Cruz clambered over the thwart and switched positions with Crawdad. As he began to maneuver the boat downstream, he said, “Thanks for grabbing me.”

                  “You’re welcome,” said Crawdad. “Maybe you’ll do the same for me someday if the river gods are with us.”

                  “And Brother Blue Heron,” said Cruz.

                  “And Brother Blue,” echoed Crawdad.

∞∞∞

                  In the weeks that followed there were other accidents. A drunken motorcyclist plunged his Harley 100 feet off Lover’s Leap into the Kern. A six-month-old infant was swept out of the hands of a preacher while being baptized near Trout Bridge. Each time Cruz was called out with the hooks, he waited for the task to get easier, for ther victims to become faceless in his dreams. By the third body he knew he coould never cleanse his memory of the dead. All victims whose time has come, Crawdad liked to say. All resting with Brother Blue.

                  On the last Saturday in June Cruz’s old jeep broke down. He had to hitchhike to Kernville to the auto parts store for a new fan belt. By the time he headed back to Lake Isabella on the Reservoir Road, it was late afternoon and the sky had darkened to a plum color in the west. He stood by the roadside, keeping an eye on approaching vehicles as well as the distant storm.

                  An old man gave him a ride in the back of his truck to Bodfish, then vanished up into the hills in a cloud of dust. Probably a miner, thought Cruz, one of those desert rats who emerge from their hideouts once a month to check the P.O. box and get a drink. For ten minutes he stood by a Dairy King drive-in, his thumb out, watching as the motor homes and other tourists passed him by.

                  He recognized the red Bronco truck from a distance and immediately dropped his thumb, then turned his back as the vehicle came closer. Cruz heard the squeaking of brakes as it slowed beside him. He looked over and saw Walker’s red face, a veil of sandy hair thinly pasted to his scalp.

                  “I thought it was you,” Walker said. “Where you headed?”

                  “Back to Isabella,” answered Cruz. He held up the fan belt. “My jeep’s on the blink and I had to get this in Kernville.”

                  “Hop in. I’m headed in that direction.”

                  Cruz walked reluctantly to the door and climbed in. The Bronco was luxurious in comparison to his jeep. Cool air hissed form the side vents. The seats were clean and shiny. Emmylou Harris crooned from the tape deck.

                  “Nice,” Cruz said.

                  “Thanks. It gets me around.”

                  “So where you been?” Cruz asked.

                  “I had to visit my ex-wife in Kernville and see my little boy. Saturday-only visits are a bitch, but I love to play with the kid. He’s a slugger. Seven years old and already he hits like Garvey”

                  They were silent for a while, just listening to the tape. Cruz was glad for the music. He felt uneasy around Walker, especially after the confrontation in the warehouse with Crawdad.

                  “So you’re working a lot with the old man?” said Walker.

                  “Yeah.”

                  “I heard you pulled that biker out last week. Sounded like a pain in the ass.”

                  “Three hundred pounds and then some,” said Cruz. “took us four hours to get him in. He was snagged in a brush pile.”

                  “I know how it is,” said Walker. “I was on the hooks when I started with the Forest Service.”

                  “How long ago?”

                  “About eight years. I put in my time with Crawdad. I’d watch that old fucker, if I were you. Don’t trust him. He’s crazy.”

                  “How’s that?” asked Cruz

                  “Him and his Brother Blue Heron bullshit. He’s obsessed with that river. Did you know he pulled his own daughter out with the hooks back in the the fifties? Some said it was a suicide. His wife left him afterwards. Nobody talks about it anymore. You’d think he’d be scared to death of the Kern. The old guy ain’t together anymore. Cracked up. Lou said theyy’ve caught him stealing from the dead. Rings. Watches and bracelets. Garcia caught him red-handed with a victim’s wallet.”

                  Cruz was silent after that. They were drawing close to Lake Isabella. A raindrop spattered on the windshield and trickled down. He wasn’t sure if he could believe Walker. As they came down a hill he could see that the streets in town were already wet and slick with a glaze of warm rain.

                  Within five minutes they were pulling up next to the trailer behind the Shady Lane.

                  “Thanks,” said Cruz.

                  “No problem” replied Walker, “Hope the belt fits.”

                  Cruz hesitated before getting out. “He’s not all crazy. He know the Kern like no one else. He’s taught me things.”
I know,” said Walker, “but watch yourself. Don’t let him get you into something you’re not ready for. His life don’t mean shit to him. He’s hanging on with a bottle of whiskey.”

                  He got out of the Bronco, then watched as Walker pulled away and vanished down the alley. He stood there for a moment in the rain, thinking about what Walker had said. He tried to picture Crawdad with a wife and daughter a long time ago. He saw a different man. a father pulling his dead child from the river. The first is the hardest he had said to him go easy. He took it all in. The dust turning to mud at his feet. The laughter slipping from the back door of Shady’s. His heart pounding as if encased within a tin statue. Then he walked inside thinking of the jeep and the fan belt and the dinner he would make for his father. Then sleep. His time to dream. His sweet music.

                  As storm front moved in on Friday morning during the first week of July. The early morning was overcast, the sky darkening with deep shades of purple and charcoal. Lou called Cruz at 4 a.m., startling him from sleep.

                  “I just heard,” he said, “Crawdad called. Says he was coming up the canyon from Bakersfield last night, when a Mexican family flagged him down near Hobo. Said their son was missing. meet Crawdad at Manning’s Bridge. Take the raft and hooks and search the willows. Kid might be pinned and still alive, so hurry. No time to waste. Storm is coming.

                  They were on the river by dawn, rescue gear and ropes lashed tight into the boat. They brought the hooks, storing them in a thick canvas bag and tying it to the rowing frame. Cruz felt a chill when he touched them, the prongs rust-tipped, like blood dried and baked in the sun. They wore faded yellow raingear under their lifejackets, smelling damp and sour. Cruz rowed the jungle section again, working hard at the oars until he felt sweat inching down his ribs. He saw the river now as a narrow ribbon of landmarks he had memorized and learned. The buffalo-shaped rock perched like a high sentinel on a cliff, marking the entrance ot Executioner Rapid. the miner’s abandoned cabin near Trout Bridge. The powerhouse at Borel. Thunder rumbled south near Bakersfield and he glimpsed jagged veins of lightning like the edges of broken glass.

                  Crawdad sat behind him, saying little. Both Cruz and the old man knew the water might rise with the storm, maybe up to 7,500 cfs or more.  Crawdad studied the shore and the strainers for the missing boy as Cruz focused on the river. They worked thier way down methodically, hopping from one side to the other like a zig-zagging water strider. Crawdad’s disjointed finger pointing the way. There were moments when Cruz imagined he was alone and rowing in solitude. Then he would hear a rasp behind im, a voice of warning.

                  “Be ready, boy. There’s a family waiting to know if their kin is drowned or alive. Sweating it out. This ain’t no time for relaxing.

                  When the rain came it felt like pearls of ice on his cheeks. “Manna from the river gods” is what Crawdad might have called it. Answered prayer from Brother Blue, thought Cruz.

                  It was drizzling when they reached the towering granite wall near the take-out. It was streaked with mineral deposits, each strand a tributary of color. Cruz began to ease the boat over when Crawdad stopped him.

                  “Not here. We’re going further down today, where the river’s tighter. More places to get hung up. Just you row. I’ll take care of the fishing.”

                  Cruz hesitated, letting the oars drift free in the water.

                  “I’ve never seen this section before,” he said.

                  “Don’t matter,” said Crawdad. “I know it well. I can talk you down it.”

                  “Shouldn’t we get back-up from shore?”

                  “No time for that. Brother Blue’s telling me the kid’s down further. I know it.”

                  Cruz could feel a drumming inside his chest. Watch yourself, Walker had said. He silently longed for Crawdad to spot the body before they went further into the canyon. He had not even seen this lower section from the road high above. Shielded by an overhanging shelf of granite, it had always been a place of shadows for Cruz, a dark slit in the landscape where the river narrowed. A no man’s land.

                  In the first half mile the tangled foliage of willows and scrub brush gave way to vertical sheets of granite and basalt slanting down to the lip of the river. No sign of a body. Then the rapids began. “Asskickers,” Crawdad called them. Cruz had never seen water so huge. White-tipped waves poured over the bow, filling the boat as Crawdad scooped out the muddy water with a plastic bucket.  Cruz could feel the pulse of the current quicken beneath the raft, as if the streambed were tumbling down a staircase of time-hewn steps. They were descending now, going deeper. No roads or take-out beaches visible. The rain fell in shimmering torrents, turning the walls into fortresslike slabs of ebony. Water spilled form the cliffs above, cascading in great streamers and pumping the river with speed. Cruz felt the raft dive into the trough of a wave, then rise up and break through as if at sea in a storm.

                  He looked for places to pull over and climb out. There were none. He silently cursed the old man for bringing him down here. He struggled to follow his directions, the whitewater a blur of motion. The main rapids came at them in dark succession and the old man summoned them by name: White Maiden’s Walkaway, Sundown Falls, Deadman’s Curve, Silver Staircase, all twisting, blind drops where the river suddenly plummeted down into violence. Oddly, Cruz thought of history lessons he’d read as a child, how the early explorers were told the earth was flat and to sail off the edge was to perish in hell. To where dragons wait was the warning echoing in his mind as he approached each horizon line, trusting only Crawdad’s words as to what lay below.

                  The day seemed timeless, water billowing like white fire around them. The boat was sluggish to maneuver, brimming full with the icy river. The rest places near shore were few and the Kern whipped by in a racehorse blend of enormous suck holes and razor-sharp rocks. At Coffin Corner, the black raft slammed against an undercut boulder, wedging tight, and water began to pour over the upstream tube, threatening to wrap the boat like cellophane around the obstacle. Cruz and Crawdad threw their bodies against the downstream edge of the raft. They strained against the onslaught of water. Suddenly their boat popped free and they scrambled back to their positions. Cruz at the oars and Crawdad bailing. He felt his forearms tighten and grow numb from gripping the oar handles. He was at siege with the fury surrounding him.

                  They reached Gravedigger Falls late in the afternoon. Still no sign of a body. Crawdad made him pull the boat over to scout this one. Walker’s warning loomed clear in Cruz’s minds. He was uncertain of everything now, even Crawdad’s story about the Mexican family and the body. Don’t trust him, Walker had said. He’s crazy. But maybe Walker had been lying in order to disgrace the old man and keep them off the river. Cruz saw no clear choices. They had made it this far. He would go the rest of the way.

                  They tied off in the trees and hiked down along a slippery ledge. Cruz saw a gleaming, V-shaped tongue of glassy water sliding into the rapid like an arrow, the entire entrance overshadowed by a towering wave at the bottom. One hundred yards downsream hte river vanished between two black monoliths of granite.

                  This here’s just the little brother,” yelled Crawdad above the roar, pointing at the wave. “Down below is Gravedigger Falls, the big daddy deathtrap. No way we are going into that. I seen a kayaker try and run it once. His boat came out in pieces. Never found the body.”

                  He was silent for a moment, almost reverent as he stared at the horizon line downstream.”We’ll portage at the horizon line downstream. We’ll pull over just above it on the right and portage. There’s a footpath we can carry the boat around on. Only one way to run Gravedigger Falls. On shore.”.

                  His directions for the rapid in front of them were straightforward. “This little one’s called Tombstone. No way to portage it. You gotta break through the lateral waves coming off the right, then keep pulling to slip by the big curler at the bottom. Maybe I’m getting too old for this shit, kid, but don’t go near the left. Stay clear of that bottom wave. Hit it dead on and we’ll flip. If the river sucks you down into the falls you’re a drowner for sure.”

                  As thy hiked back to the boat, Cruz felt his mouth suddenly go dry as sand. He had no spit. He paused, letting Crawdad get ahead of them so he could stop and pee, all the while listening to the deafening clamor of the rapid. Doubt clouded his mind. Simple thought of self-preservation, of not wanting to die. His life don’t mean shit to him, Walker had said. He stopped at the water’s edge and closed his eyes, smelling the dank scent of rotting wood, feeling his breath escape in shallow, uneven gasps. He longed for sunlight and warmth. He imagined being at the top of the canyon and peering down into shadows, down into the abyss where he now stood.

                  He walked back to the raft where Crawdad waited.

                  “Walker told me you were crazy,” Cruz said.

                  “Fuck Walker,” Crawdad replied.

                  “Isn’t this crazy?” Cruz said, pointing at the river, “I mean look at this rapid.”

                  “It’s crazy if you don’t think you can do it.” He fixed Cruz with a questioning stare. “What’s the matter, boy? Are you doubting Old Brother Blue now when you most need him? Are you pissing on the legend?”

                  “No.”

                  “What else did Walker tell you?”

                  “Nothing else,” Cruz said angrily, “but why haven’t we found the body?”

                  “Because there is a body and there ain’t,” said Crawdad. “There is if you believe Old Brother Blue and all he’s taught you and why we’re here. There ain’t a body if you believe that lying bastard, Walker. Which is it?”
“Untie the boat when I’m ready,” was all Cruz said.

                  They launched from the trees after Crawdad had bailed the boat dry. The current was sleek, accelerating, and Cruz hung close to the shore, the raft’s stern pointing right. Twenty feet above the drop he began to sweep hard on the oars, gathering momentum to break through the first lateral waves of the tongue. Suddenly he felt the raft glance off something, perhaps a finger of rock jutting up form the shallows or a root. In a flash, Cruz saw the boat rebound out into the center then careen sideways into the maw of the rapid. He felt dizzy, a sickening emptines in his stomach as his oars flailed madly at water.

                  “Straighten it!”  he heard Crawdad shout, and he did , a last-second pivot swinging the bow around before they rocketed into the bottom wave. Cruz saw the black raft peel upward like a dagger pointing at the sky, straight and true, only to buried by a colliding wall of darkness.

                  Flipped, he thought, stunned, as he tumbled helplessly, head over heels, out the back of the boat. Like being in a washing machine filled with black ink, the muddy water forced it way in and pummeled him. He grabbed for a line, the raft, Crawdad’s hand. Only churning water. In his nose. Throat. He felt himself spun upside down. He saw the fading light, the air bubbles exploding around him. He was dragged under as the current sucked at his lifejacket, pounded him in the depths, then hurled him up again. He clawed for air. No mercy, thought Cruz, as he was flung down into a white chamber of foam. Geek.

                  Then he felt a surge, a downward thrust, like being shot from a cannon, and his body was flushed away, released. He broke the surface directionless, choking, the air like ice in his throat. The waves broke over him and he began to swim toward what he thought was the right shore, his hands knifing through the water as the bulky raingear and lifejacket dragged in the current. He kicked through another wave, then lunged ahead, groping for a rock, a tree limb. He felt a stone outcropping and muscled his way up, crawling onto his stomach until he was out of the river, safe on shore, hacking water from his flooded lungs.

                  Crawdad? He whirled and saw the black raft upside down and hurtling away from him downstream. He could see the old man clinging to the perimeter line on the side, tugging at it as he tried to pull the boat to shore. Crawdad held on, he thought as he watched the raft hovering near the entrance to Gravedigger Falls. “Swim!” he screamed . Then, too late, he saw Crawdad, his faded lifejacket still visible as he hung frozen on the horizon line for an instant, vanishing into the foam spitting up from below. Gone. Off the edge of the world. To where dragons wait.

                  He perched on the rock, staring at the empty void where Crawdad and the raft had been only seconds earlier. He expected to hear a scream, a shout of fear or pain. Nothing. Only the roar. In shock, he got tho his feet and began to stumble along the shoreline, his hear pumping within the frail inner cave of his chest. A feeling of helplessness overwhelmed him. He was aware that Crawdad could be trapped downstream and he could not reach him. Cruz saw the haunting image of the boat disppearing over the ledge. Crawdad’s head snapping back. Cruz gasped for breath, panic humming in the air like a swarm of insects buzzing relentlessly around his head.

                  He scrambled over car-sized boulders, his tennis hoes heavy with water. He slipped on a wet stone, fell down, then rose to climb again. He wasn’t sure how long it took to reach the rapid. Time seemed not to exist in ths moment. Only distance. He struggled up a granite slab to it’s crow’s nest pinnacle. What he saw was breathtaking.

                  A white maelstrom. At the top the river narrowed into a tight channel, then spilled 30 feet down into a gigantic cauldron of thrashing waves and reversals. In the center of it all loomed a towering fang of rock, a basalt tooth with geyser’of spray billowing off the sides. It was as if some demonic force beneath the streambed had suddenly erupted into a tempest.

                  He couldn’t survive this, Cruz thought. Nobody could. He scanned the rapid for signs of the boat or Crawdad. At first there was nothing, only raging water. Then he was a single oar, seemingly unbroken, jutting up from the river like a miraculous golden staff, shaking violently. Upon looking closer, Cruz saw it had been driven down into a rock crack and imbedded like a chisel into marble. He searched for a flash of orange or yellow, any sign to reveal that Crawdad might be trapped somewhere within the rapid. Then he hurried downstream to look below Gravedigger Falls. It was near dusk and he could feel the evening darkness lowering itself over the canyon like a shroud.

                  It was slow going in the rain and storm. The shoreline seemed impenetrable with layer upon layer of brambles and hanging vines. Within 15 minutes, Cruz saw that he was trembling uncontrollably He stopped near the water’s edge to calm himself. Blood dripped down from a gash in his forehead. He sat on a low rock and took in deep breaths, then exhaled forcefully. Arenalin shot through his arms and legs. There was no time to think of fear or death. Only calm. He could almost hear Crawdad’s voice: ease into it; let the river do the work for you. He stopped fighting the panic and it washed over him, cold and unsettling. He accepted it.

                  He began to search again. With light fading, he forced himself to mechanically sweep the shallows for any sign of the raft or Crawdad. Thick branches and thorny plants tore at his exposed face and hands. Cactus needles pierced his skin, penetrating the protective raingear like a bayonet tip. At one point he became ensnared in a mass of vines and he thrashed like an animal covered with snakes, lashing out at the night until he broke free and ran blindly through the undergrowth.

                  He needed help. He knew he could not continue the search alone in the darkness and survive. He watched the sky for signs of clearing, an opening to stars or moon. And when he was saw the first glint of a constellation, like warm light glowing under a door, his hope soared. He could now see he was out of the main canyon and the steepness of the surrounding walls had lessened. He knew the highway was somewhere above him. He stripped off his lifejacket and raingear, the plastic pants torn and flapping loosely at the knees and began to climb.

                  The rock and scree beneath him were loose and unstable. It was as if he were ascending a blanket of sand that was being slowly pulled away. He saw the slope as an endless dune aimed at the heavens and he climbed cautiously, testing each hand or foothold before trusting his weight to it. Imbedded rocks and scrub brush aided the footing as he crisscrossed the face of the canyon wall to avoid cliffs and overhangs. He would set his vision on some shadowy object in the distance, then scrambled up until he reached it. Rest. Climb again.

                  Fear pushed him higher. He knew that if Crawdad had survived somehow and was on the river shoreline below, he would be injured badly and in need of immediate medical treatment. He remembered when the old man had yanked him from the water at Nightmare Corner like some guardian angel and how later he’d said to Cruz someday you’ll do the same for for me. He would find Crawdad somehow. He would get to him and carry his body to shore so the Kern could not claim it.

                  He knew there was no stopping now, no going down. His chest heaved like a bellows, each breath searing him as if he were inhaling flame.. If he were to stumble or collapse he would surely plummet to his death, too exhausted to catch himself. Occasionally he saw headllghts above him, shooting out over the canyon rim, then vanishing. This is the way it is, though Cruz, his holding on. He could remember hopping a slow train on a dare when he was a child, and the terror he felt as he dangled from the boxcar, his feet only inches from the sparking wheels. He wondered if Crawdad was clinging to a willow somewhere below, his legs broken, his blood oozing into the river. Cruz felt connected to the old man, as if some invisible line ran from his body to Crawdad’s. Each step toward the road lifted his spirit. Each breath. Each second of holding out.

                  When he reached the highway, he clambered over the guardrail and saw he was on a long strightaway. He looked for road signs but saw none. He sat the road’s edge, his ragged breathing beginning to slow. He could taste blood on his lips and noticed that his knees had been scraped raw as if he had crawled though shattered glass. He waited for headlights to pierce the night.

                  He was sitting in a daze when he heard the far-off hum of a car. He limped out onto the road until the glare of high beams illuminated his tattered figure. He raised his weak arms to signal, flapping them like a broken bird, then saw the vehicle slow and pull off. He could hear voices approaching and he lfted a hand to shield his eyes from the light.

                  “Shit, this kid’s a mess,” he heard a stranger say. Then rough hands eased him down into a sitting position against the guardrail.

                  He saw a truck grind to a halt, then heard the slamming of doors. “Use the radio and get an ambulance,” a familiar voice called out. He could see Lou approaching.

                  “Cruz, are you OK?” he asked, kneeling beside him.

                  “I’m fine.” Cruz answered. “but Lou…” he reached out and gripped his arm. “… it’s Crawdad. He’s still down there. We flipped and I got thrown out. Crawdad stayed with the boat and went into Gravedigger Falls. I couldn’t get to him.

                  “Relax,” said Lou. “We’ll find him. You’re in no shape to go searching for his body.”

                  “But maybe he’s not dead, maybe he made it through.”

                  “Maybe so,” said Lou. “If anybody could make it through the falls, it’d be Crawdad. Now we gotta get you in the hospital.”

                  Cruz closed his eyes. Minutes passed. He felt as if he were floating in a cloud of mist, his body supported only by air, the movements around him far away. He smelled the pungent odor of antiseptic from the first-aid kit. He heard the rip of paper as rolls of sterile gauze were torn open, and in the distance, the shrill, penetrating sound of a siren approaching.

                  When he opened his eyes he saw Walker standing in front of him. He was staring down as if he were gazing at a wounded animal found by the roadside. Lou was over by the truck. A crowd of men huddled around him as he talked with headquarters on the radio.

                  “He almost killed you,” Walker said, “him and all his river gods. I tried to warn you. He had no respect for the power of the Kern. None. Never did. That’s what killed him.”

                  “Why aren’t you out looking for him?” asked Cruz. “He might be alive down there. He could be dying.”

                  “Because I respect the river.” said Walker. “I’ve got more sense than to go out searching for a dead man in the middle of the night when the Kern’s running sky high.”

                  Something snapped inside Cruz. At first, he felt nothing, no pain or anger or exhaustion. He noticed a rip in the left knee of Walker’s jeans. A stranger smoked a cigarette nearby, its red tip gleaming like a firefly in the darkness. Then a wave of heat, perilous and unchanging, rolled through him. He wanted to kill Walker, crush his skull like pulp on the asphalt. He wanted to scream and hear his own voice shatter the stillness. Then a wave of heat, perilous and unchanging, rolled through him. He wanted to hit him with his fists in the shoulder, face, until teeth cut into his knuckles. But he waited.

                  “These things happen.” Walker said. “People die in this line of work.”

                  Lou came and led him to the ambulance, helped him inside where he could lie down on a stretcher. Cruz knew it would be days before he could cry, when  the loneliness would grip him and he would be haunted by Crawdad. He knew that pain in his life was something to guard against, a scorpion hidden in the dust. Yet he felt it, deep and stinging, as if the past had never existed. He held on to what he had left. The beautiful face of a dead woman. A prayer from an old man. May the river gods be with us, he thought.

                  And Brother Blue.

∞∞∞

                  Carolina Paddler thanks Menasha Ridge Press and Adventure Keen for the permission to use this article.