“Caleb,” Carlyle said, “why don’t you let me ask the questions?” He turned to Ashcroft. “You explained all about strainers and foot entrapment, right?”
“It’s the first thing we do every trip.”
“But it didn’t do any good. Then what did you say?”
“I told them that if we hit a boulder they had to jump to the high side or the raft would pin.”
“Go on.”
“They refused to pay attention to me, but I figured that by the time we reached the gorge, they would have wised up.”
Betts slapped his palms onto the table. “Just tell him what happened, for Christ’s sake.”
“Two hundred yards from the Basin, they started rocking the boat, smacking their paddles on the water, jumping up and down on the thwarts.”
“I was right behind him,” Betts said. “They staggered down the Indian like a blind man on roller skates, colliding with tree stumps and boulders. His boat was completely out of control.”
“It wasn’t like that at all,” Ashcroft said.
“Tell him about the kid,” Betts said. “See what he thinks then.”
“Jeff Katz, the one who got hurt, went kind of nuts. He began waving his paddle like a sword and yelling like a madman. That’s when we hit the rock and Katz did a backflip into the Indian.”
“Neil Armstrong could have seen that rock from the moon,” Betts said.
“It was below the surface. How was I supposed to know it was there?
“That wasn’t the end of your problems that morning was it?
“No. Just as I was about to warn Katz again, we hit a rock.
“How long was he under water?” Carlyle said.
“Three or four seconds. He came up right next to us, choking, with a terrified look on his face. I grabbed his vest and heaved him into the boat.”
“You read him the riot act finally?”
“I said the next time I might not be able to save him.”
“If you were having so much trouble with Katz, why didn’t you ask Betts to take him?”
“Ask Betts? Are you kidding? Look at him now. He’d just laugh at me. So would the others.”
Carlyle looked away from Ashcroft, then down at his notes. “Go on with your story.”
“By then, my arms felt like lead weights. There was ice everywhere. We even saw a couple of whole trees coming down from up north. I thought I still had some time to turn them into a decent crew, but Katz began horsing around again. He punched the kid next to him and bounced around on the front tube like a madman.”
Pierce leaned forward. “Did it ever occur to you at that point to finally put him in someone else’s boat?”
“How was I supposed to do that while we were surfing down Cedar?”
“You could have ordered him to stop his bullshit.”
Betts laughed. “Why didn’t I think of that? We could carry handcuffs and clubs in our rafts next time.”
“People do what they’re told if they’re frightened enough,” Pierce said.
“Alex, just let Bob continue,” Carlyle said.
Ashcroft slouched with his head bent forward like a disgraced monk. “We came rushing up on Entrance. You all know how quickly everything turns bad there. One second, you’re floating past Virgin Falls, then you turn the corner and you see the river boiling.” He stopped and took a breath. “The boat hit a rock and Katz went airborne.” Ashcroft’s voice was hollow, as though he was describing a movie he’d seen. “When Katz tumbled over the side, his left leg got tangled in the chicken line.”
“For how long?”
“Thirty seconds or so. I couldn’t drop my paddle until we’d moved away from the worst hydraulics. Then I ran up the side of the raft, grabbed his life vest, and hauled him in. He lay in the bottom of the raft, thrashing around, grabbing the back of his leg, and screaming.” Ashcroft, head down, stared at his hands. “I can’t talk about this anymore.”
Carlyle looked at Marshall. “Ryan?”
Marshall scowled. “When we slid into Blue Ledge basin, Bob yelled that he needed some help. I grabbed the First Aid Kit, ran over, and sliced open the left leg of the kid’s wetsuit with a pair of scissors. I saw right away that it had begun to swell. And his foot had already turned white. People in the other boats could hear him crying.” The room was silent for a few moments.
“What then?” Carlyle said.
“I had Nash there. He’d been an EMT in the army for three years and had seen more blunt force trauma and open fractures than most surgeons deal with in a lifetime.”
“Keith, what about the kid’s leg?”
“The knee was dislocated, but that wasn’t what really worried me. I thought there was a chance that Katz had ruptured an artery in the back of his leg.”
“And that’s a real emergency?”
“If you don’t stabilize the leg and get the patient to a hospital immediately, there’s a good chance you get paralysis or worse.”
“Worse?”
“Gangrene. We had no way of getting back to the put-in, and North River was at least two hours away. Since we were just five hundred yards from Virgin Falls, I told Betts to run back upstream and grab the backboard we’d stowed there. It was in a stand of cedar ten yards from the river.”
“For the record, say how you knew this.”
Marshall leaned back. “Every rafting company puts backboards below each major rapid. They’re wrapped in plastic, bound with duct tape, and lashed upright.”
“How long was Betts gone?” Carlyle said.
“Five, ten minutes at the most. But when he got back, he said there was no backboard at Virgin.”
“You knew that couldn’t be true.”
“Of course not. We put that thing there three weeks earlier. Right before the season began. I marked the tree with orange surveyor’s tape myself.”
“You’re absolutely sure about where it was?”
“If you ask me that one more time, this interview’s over.”
“What did you do then?”
“Keith fixed up a splint using a spare paddle. It would do until we got down to Osprey where there was another
