she wear makeup at least for special occasions. When she could get a word in, Nell asked, “Who brought the RV in?”
“Mike, of course. You don’t think I drove that monster. ’Sides, where do you think I got your clothes? I called Mike when I got close to Oneida and he met me in it. I followed him in. There’s my car, see?” She pointed to the parking space behind the RV, the bright red two-door Mazda parked between the lines.
“You need makeup on,” Claire said. Nell shrugged. “For the TV lady.”
The words brought Nell up short. “What TV lady?”
Claire flushed slightly under her makeup, looking just a tad discomfited. Which meant it had to be something really awful. Claire could rearrange God’s calendar and social life without batting an eye. If she was uncomfortable, then it was a doozy. “The one who wants to do an interview. Right over there.”
Claire pointed and Nell saw a white news van with a satellite dish on top heading their way. Nell turned furious eyes on her mother.
“Don’t you go looking at me in that tone of voice,” Claire said, pouting and sliding into the dialect of the Tennessee mountains. “’Sides. They can help get the word out. Get more people to help look for Joe.”
“We have all the help we need, Claire. Only trained and certified rescue people need to be on the Cumberland. It’s too dangerous.”
“You were on it,” Claire said, as if that lessened the classification of the river’s rapids. And in Claire’s mind, it likely did. As if she just had a new thought, her mother held her big baby blues wide, heavily mascaraed lashes batting once. “And it’ll be great publicity for the business when they find and rescue Joe, your names all over the TV airwaves.”
Nell bent to one of the storage compartments that lined the base of the RV and found the spare key where Mike had left it. Joe had the original. Her heart stuttered at the thought. She slammed the storage door shut with unnecessary force and unlocked the door to the RV, closing it on her mother’s face and the TV reporter, who was climbing out of the news van. Before the driver could think to block her in, Nell started the engine and pulled out of the parking lot, leaving her mother and the reporter blinking in the sunlight.
Nell didn’t like surprises. Claire knew that. And she had better things to do than…than…Nell bashed the steering wheel with her fist and dashed tears from her eyes as she made a turn. She and her mom hadn’t had a real conversation since her dad died, but surely…surely Claire knew she wouldn’t want to talk to a reporter. Didn’t her own mother know her better than that? A soft voice whispered in the back of her mind, accusing that she hadn’t given Claire a chance to know her better. Not since the accident that claimed her father and the woman he was sleeping with. Nell shoved that thought away for later. Right now she had to find Joe.
By the time she reached the put-in at Burnt Mille Bridge and parked, Nell was exhausted. Her headache had grown from a soft rattle of padded drumsticks on her skull to a big bass drum of misery. She popped two ibuprofen, forced down a bowl of cereal and drank a liter of water. Then she flipped supply switches, making sure the RV had plenty of propane, water and space in the waste-storage tanks. Habit. She knew exactly what was left, because neither she nor Joe had used much of anything on the trip.
She gargled with warm saltwater to help her throat, found an old pair of Joe’s sunglasses and slipped them on, then added a sun visor, one that went all the way around her head instead of clamping on the sides of her skull. Her injured cranium couldn’t handle the pressure. She pulled on a sleeveless, insulated vest over the tees, still feeling the cold of the river. Hypothermia could hang around, especially after a lot of stress; Nell figured the trip down the river qualified as a lot of stress. Satisfied, she stepped into the October sunshine.
The put-in at Burnt Mill Bridge on the Clear Fork River was a place with a whole lotta nothing. No fast food, no gas, no hotel, no camping, no amenities at all. It was not much more than a double loop of gravel off a secondary road, a tiered grassy area in the trees with picnic tables, a few park trails and the old, blocked-off, one-lane trestle bridge. The bridge looked like a rusted derelict against the brand-spanking-new one.
The site was the midway point on a run that started ten miles upstream on the Clear Fork River and ended seven miles downstream at the Leatherwood takeout, and any river runner who had once been there could find it. However, if Claire tried to find the put-in, Nell’s mother would end up lost in the middle of nowhere. Nell felt a bit guilty about leaving her mother in the hospital parking lot. As soon as she could borrow a cell phone she’d call her. For now, it was too late to do anything about her mother’s whereabouts.
In the Burnt Mill parking area, there were five trucks, two vans and Mike’s huge SUV. More vehicles turned in to the parking area as she watched. Equipment and people were scattered across the gravel and grass in a mass of organized chaos. Kayaks, paddles, helmets and PFDs rested untouched on the slip of sandy bank that showed above the high water. Rescue ropes, flex, biners and other equipment were being tested and inspected by a couple dozen men and women, some wearing wet suits, dry suits and river shoes, others in hiker’s gear and boots.
A park ranger in his brown uniform looked rumpled and unshaven, and was almost twanging with energy. He stood with Mike and a group of boaters and hikers, each with a radio, checking equipment. There was a Cumberland County Rescue Squad van, the volunteers dressed in matching red T-shirts over warmer clothes in the cool morning air.
In the center of the throng was one full-size, self-bailing, Maravia Ranger river raft. It was Joe’s and hers—the shop name painted on its bright blue side—and was fully inflated and ready to go. Clearly Mike hadn’t transported it from the shop filled with air. He must have brought an air compressor with him in his truck. Organized as always.
Mike raised his paddle above his head, calling her over. Nell pocketed the RV keys and headed across the lot. There were familiar faces from Pigeon River in the crowd. Besides Mike, there was Harvey, RiverAnn, Turtle Tom, Hamp and Stewart, all guides she had worked with during her summers on the river, before she and Joe dreamed up Rocking River, the mom-and-pop river-guide, white-water-rafting and kayak-instruction shop they had opened the previous May. Seeing them so far from home, obviously here to help, brought tears to her eyes and Nell was glad she was hiding behind the dark lenses.
She stopped and greeted each of the guides, pulling on Harvey’s new beard, touching Turtle Tom’s newest tattoo, a huge-busted naked woman sitting on a rock beside an altar of river stones. He wore a sleeveless T-shirt to show it off. She flicked Hamp’s hat, a brown one with the initials of his school on it, Furman University, and kissed Stewart’s cheek. Stew wasn’t very bright, but he was a sweet guy, and he had no idea he was so gorgeous. He didn’t talk much, and he ducked his head, letting curly black hair cover his face.
Nell carefully didn’t comment on RiverAnn’s latest weight gain, just lifted a hand in salute. The girl gained and lost the same fifty pounds every year and seemed to be ending this season heavy. Still in high school, RiverAnn had hung around paddlers ever since she could drive, working as a waitress in a small restaurant that serviced the truckers who frequented I-40 and the few river people who stayed through the off-season, and working as a river guide in summers.
Nell had seen her a few times throughout the previous river-rafting season because she worked for Amos, the owner of the competition rafting company next door. But the girl stayed pretty much to herself and whatever river guide, climber or snow-patrol dude she happened to be with that season. RiverAnn laid her head on Harvey’s shoulder and Nell didn’t persist in trying to catch her eye. It seemed that she had picked out her winter beau already, and had eyes only for him.
Mike gave
