The rafters got back late. Everyone got up early the next morning, had a good breakfast, and turned to doing the last of the rigging and packing. About noon, a big tour bus from Las Vegas showed up with the other passengers here for the trip down the river. Then there were introductions, instructions, more packing, more confusion, but finally, one by one, the rafts were loaded and pushed out onto the water; boatmen took up their oars, and they were off for two weeks in the most spectacular wilderness in the world.

There are no words big enough, nor grand enough, nor glorious enough, to express the size, the intricacy, the colorfulness, the continual change, the pure awe of the Grand Canyon. "The most awesome landscape on earth" is a phrase commonly used, but it hardly implies the wonder. It is vast and tiny, open and narrow, colorful and drab, plain and fancy, old and new, and everything in between, all in one, one in all.

The Canyon is relatively shallow and seemingly wide open at Lee’s Ferry, over a hundred miles north of Flagstaff, but it soon closes in and deepens, running through high, vertical walls, and the sky narrows in its view from the river. Just below the launch point there is a small rapids that the raft crews don’t think too much of; it’s called Paria Riffle, and is the first of a hundred and sixty rapids, more or less, that will be passed through along the course of a trip through the Canyon.

The many rapids usually lie at the foot of side canyons entering the main river. Rock and debris are carried down the side canyons by violent thunderstorms and deposited in the river, forming the rapids. Some, like Paria, are small; others, with names like Crystal, Lava, and Hance are large, difficult, and dangerous for the inexperienced, which is why the rafts were piloted by boatmen, some with vast experience, some just learning the trade under the watchful eye of the experienced.

The trip ran quickly for the first days, stopping at some of the major visual delights that the Canyon offers; places with names like Redwall Cavern, the Little Colorado River, Nankoweap, and places that have ever gone unnamed. Often, the boatmen would set down their oars and talk about the Canyon, some of the things to be seen, some of the known history and hints of the barely-known history of the human past, or of the geology, biology, wildlife, or other natural items of interest.

When they came to a rapids, the passengers would hang on, often shrieking with the thrill of passage; while the boatmen at their oars steered the raft through the tumbling waters. It could get wet, and sometimes they were soaked, but no one minded, for it was hot, hot even for April, and most of the party wore swimsuits or light clothes most of the time. In the dry air and warm sun, a mile downstream such clothes as they wore would be dry again, ready for the next soaking.

Each day, as the afternoon wore on, the rafts would nose into shore, almost always on some sandbar, large or small, off to one side of the river. Sometimes the spots were small and cramped, others were expansive, with broad views of the sky. Much of the gear would be unloaded from the rafts, with everybody in the party pitching in. Boatmen and helpers would get started on dinner and set up such other facilities as were needed, while the rest of the party spread out to find likely spots to spend the night, almost always sleeping under the broad expanse of the sky. One night when rain threatened, several people set up tents, but Will and Jennlynn just wrapped up in a tarp like he’d done many times in his life, and it hardly mattered to either of them.

Shortly after dinner every night, the party would gather on a selected patch of beach, and there’d be a fire. Collecting firewood was not permitted at this time of year, and ashes may not be left behind anytime, but part of the gear on every raft was a small bundle of firewood, not enough for a big fire, but enough for a cheery one. The fire would be set in a firepan, and when blazing merrily, people would talk, stories would be told, guitars would be taken up, and there would be music. Jennlynn always envied people with musical talent, and she hadn’t known that Will played the guitar, but he borrowed one from Al, and played a number of old western songs. These were not so-called "country-western," but old-time songs that had been passed down from cowboy to cowboy since the days of the Chisholm Trail. As the flames flickered and died, people went in ones and twos off to their awaiting sleeping bags, ready to do it again tomorrow, and the day after, and the day after that.

The trip group was relatively small; later in the season Canyon Tours would be taking twenty customers on five rafts, but in the cool weather early in the year there wasn’t quite the demand, so there were only four rafts and fourteen customers. By this time, people knew a lot about each other, and plenty of stories had been told, enough to feel comfortable with each other. Without discussing it, Jennlynn and Will knew better than to bring up stories about the Redlite Ranch or related activities, for they both knew well that most people didn’t look at prostitution the same way they did. But still, there were stories to tell; the story of Jennlynn and Shirley finding Will out on the dry lake that Thanksgiving morning years before had long been told, as had the trip riding fence a couple years ago, without the intimate details, of course. Will wasn’t much to talk about himself, especially among strangers, so Jennlynn did more of the telling for them.

By now, the rest of the people on the trip had some idea of who they were: they knew that Will was a sergeant in the Air Force, and was a Nevada cowboy at heart. They knew that Jennlynn had a Ph.D. in engineering, worked for a company in Phoenix, and owned an aviation charter company on the side. In a small group like this, most people soon perceived that the two were an unlikely couple, but just really enjoyed being together. For that matter, long before, Will and Jennlynn had agreed without much discussion that they weren’t boyfriend and girlfriend, and in the long run there wasn’t any point in trying to be. Yet, together for two weeks among strangers, they found themselves at least temporarily filling those roles and enjoying it, and perhaps even showing it off a little.

While everyone knew each other pretty well, that didn’t mean that all necessarily liked each other. One of the couples was especially obnoxious. Vance Merillat had a chip on his shoulder all the time and was very grumpy, especially about letting himself be dragged on this trip where there was only a limited amount of beer; his wife, Audrey, was loud and obnoxious herself, with a shrill voice that grated on everyone’s nerves. She was constantly bickering with Vance, mostly because he was being so grumpy. Most of the people on the trip tried to avoid them when possible, but it wasn’t always possible.

Two of the men on the trip, Dick Booker and Steve Troutt, were married, but had left their wives at home. They were rather joyful about their temporary freedom from bondage, and both of them were acting rather rough and obnoxious themselves some of the time; Booker had plenty of suggestive stories, and didn’t mind telling them.

Over a week into the trip, they stopped at an especially pretty beach, where a huge cliff hung high overhead; the rafts were nosed into a hard sand beach, and after the dinner dishes were done and put away, the firepan was again broken out, and the stories were floating around. It was Booker who touched things off as the light was getting low and the fire was building up. "Hey, Cowboy," he said in a rather loud voice. "I hear you got legal whorehouses in Nevada. There any truth to that?"

"Oh, yeah," Will said curtly.

"Where do you find these whorehouses anyway? Vegas? I never heard of that."

"Not in Las Vegas," he replied. "Nearest one to there is about forty miles."

"Humph," Booker snorted. "Might have to rent a car and check one of them whorehouses out."

"If you do, you don’t want to call them that," Will said, a little irritated at the man’s behavior. "Brothels, bordellos, that’s fine. Not whorehouses. Whores are the illegal girls that work the streets in Vegas. The houses have got some fine ladies."

"How would you know?" Troutt chimed in. "You been in one?"

"More’n one," Will said softly.

"Thought there was more to you than you let on," Booker snorted.

"Cowboy!" Audrey said with alarm. "I can’t believe you would have anything to do with women like that! Women like that are the scum of the earth. A woman would have to be sick to do something like that, on drugs or something."

"That’s a stereotype out of your ignorance," Jennlynn said pointedly. Will knew that she had a temper, but in the times that he’d been with her he’d only seen flashes of it. This loudmouthed woman had been burning both of them, and now he could feel Jennlynn just about ready to cut loose. He quietly put his hand on hers and squeezed. Cool it! was his message.

"Honestly," Audrey continued, "I can’t figure out what the people in Nevada must be thinking! Why would they let something like that go on? My God, I could never do anything like that."

"No, ma’am, I doubt you could," Jennlynn replied with a frost in her voice that by all rights should have frozen the Colorado River solid. "You would make a lousy prostitute. You couldn’t make a living at it. You don’t have the temperament, and you don’t have the guts."

"I should hope not," she replied angrily. "I can’t imagine how a woman could do something like that. She’d have to not have any regard for herself. Like I said, on drugs, or just totally lost out."

"There are women like that," Jennlynn conceded. "You usually don’t find them in the houses. Even if they can pass the health inspections and background checks, they can’t cut the competition and don’t get picked out by the customers. That’s part of the reason Nevada has bordellos in the first place, to filter out those kind of people."

"Maybe I’d better get out the guitar and sing a song," Al commented, trying to head off what was obviously proposing to be a serious fight. Audrey had her temper up, and Jennlynn, who’d been one of the most placid people on the trip, had serious fire in her eyes.

"Why would that matter?" Audrey said, angry that anyone would dispute her obviously correct opinion. "Prostitutes are trash, the scum of the earth!"

"How would you know?" Jennlynn replied in a level tone, but even more icily, if such a thing were possible. "Have you ever been in a Nevada bordello? Have you ever talked to a prostitute? If you haven’t, you don’t know what you’re talking about; you’re just talking out your ass."

"You don’t have to use that tone with me, young lady," Audrey replied. "I wouldn’t stoop so low to talk to a prostitute."

"Then let me correct you," Jennlyn said with an evil smile. "You’re talking to one now."

Silence reigned in the bottom of the Grand Canyon for several seconds before Louise broke the mutual stare down that was going on across the fire. "Jennlynn?"

"I particularly resent the stereotype that all prostitutes are drug addicts, or are dumb, or have no self respect. That’s just as bad a stereotype as saying that all blacks are criminals or all hillbillies are stupid," she said in a level but firm tone. "There’s an even broader range of people in the business than we have on this trip. Granted, most are in it for the money. But then, most people do whatever they do for a living primarily for the sake of the money. The good prostitutes, the ones who are a success, mostly put up with stereotypes like that from ignorant people because on balance they enjoy the work."

"But . . . but . . . I thought you were an engineer with a doctorate!" Audrey stammered. "A pilot with your own business."

"I am all of that," Jennlynn said. "I would not be any of them if I hadn’t turned out at the Mustang Ranch seven years ago next month. I only work as a prostitute a few days a month anymore, and only in a legal situation. It’s a small fraction of my total income. I don’t need the money. I happen to enjoy the work. I need the release and the relaxation, just like some people play golf or go bowling."

"I . . . I don’t believe it . . . I mean, a nice woman like you?"

"I don’t fit into your stereotype, right?" Jennlynn sneered.

"Cowboy?" Vance asked, for once looking to defuse things. "Did you know about this?"

He nodded. "Miz Swift was workin’ for my Gramma when they found me out on the dry lake that time I told you about."

"Your . . . grandmother?" Audrey gasped. This was clearly beyond belief!

"Will’s grandmother," Jennlynn smiled sweetly, "Is my best friend. She’s been in the business in one way or another for over fifty years. She’s the floor manager, which equates to Madame, of the Redlite Ranch Bordello in Antelope Valley. She’s also one of the finest women on the planet. Now, Audrey and everyone else – if you’d like to hear more about it, and have an unusual story to tell when you get back home, Will and I can tell a few stories and still keep it fairly clean. Or we can shut up about it. Your choice."

"Jennlynn," Audrey started, trying to pull herself together. "I’m sorry. But I still don’t understand how you could get to doing such a thing."

"I needed the money," she replied, sounding more casual. "At the time, I was facing the need to come up with about fifty thousand dollars over two years to finish off my bachelor’s degree. I had a good scholarship, but it didn’t cover living expenses or those additional ones my aviation minor required. There’s no way you can accumulate that much money in the time I had to work with in the minimum-wage jobs that were available. I’d already discovered I liked sex, liked sleeping around. It was still a hell of a long step to make, because, Audrey, like you, in those days I thought of prostitutes in the kind of stereotypes you were just using. I just had to learn I was wrong by being there."

"You say you only do this a few days a month?" Louise asked.

"That’s right," Jennlynn told her. She’d dropped Will’s hand while things were tense, but now she picked it back up again. "For various reasons, some legal, some personal, I only do it at the Redlite Ranch. Will happens to be the only guy I’ll party with outside the house, and he’s the only one I party with for free. That means he’s very special." She looked across the fire at Booker, who was still amazed at the direction the discussion had gone. "Dick, if you’d like to visit the Redlite, you’d be welcome, but I won’t be there again before you head back east." She threw a knowing grin across the fire at him. "But maybe some other time."

"Will," Al asked. "What do you think about this?"

"Seems natural," he shrugged. "I growed up with it, after all."

"You don’t mind her doing this?"

"Not for me to mind; it’s her decision to make," he said. "Just like it’s her decision to be my friend. I’m almighty grateful that she decided to do that."

"I can’t help but be curious," Steve piped up, "About how much you charge."

"Steve, I don’t want to be rude," she replied. "But that’s one thing I cannot discuss. To do so outside a private room at the Redlite Ranch would be illegal under both Arizona and Nevada law, and I’m very careful to stay within the law."

"Miz Swift, let me help you out on this," Will said. "Steve, I can’t discuss what she charges either, simply because I don’t know. It’s none of my business. In any case, it varies from one time to the next, depending on a lot of things. As a rule of thumb, you can usually negotiate a quick one at the Redlite for $200 if the lady is in a good mood and they’re not busy. The price goes up from there. Way up."

"Two hundred?" Audrey said. "That seems, well, more than I thought. A lot more."

"At most houses, the lady only gets half that," Will told her. "Half goes to the house."

"The Redlite is a little different," Jennlynn added. "We get sixty percent there, but that’s unusual."

"Why the difference?" Louise asked.

"The biggest reason is that the management wants to be able to select the best possible workers, and that makes working there more attractive," Jennlynn explained. "The philosophy there is quality, not quantity. Beyond that, the owner is actually trying to run it at a loss, both for tax reasons and to keep his ex-wife’s lawyers confused about his real income."

"Makes sense," Al nodded. "Jennlynn, maybe this is a little personal, but just how much do you make, anyway?"

"I don’t want to get into the details," she said. "But when I turned out, I considered $500 a day after the house cut and expenses to be a par day. But I was working every day then, good and bad, at a lower-priced house, at a lower cut. These days, I only work busier days at a higher cut and a higher rate, so par is up over a thousand, now. I usually work about forty days a year."

Gears were obviously grinding in several heads. "What you’re saying," Vance finally said, "Is in seven years that you’ve made around a quarter million dollars as a prostitute."

"Somewhere around that," she replied. "Perhaps a little less, since there was a period several years ago when I worked very little. I’d have to go back to my tax returns to give you an exact figure. But I know women who do that much in a year. Obviously, they work harder at it than I do."

"You could live on that and be off most of the year," Steve said in awe.

"I suppose," she smiled. "The fact of the matter is that I don’t do drugs, I drink very little, and don’t have many expensive hobbies except my flying, and I make a profit on that. Skyhook Aviation was intended to be a tax write-off, but I made the happy mistake of hiring the right person as my chief pilot, and thanks to him I even make money there. But I will freely admit to being a workaholic. I would easily go nuts if I wasn’t desperately busy most of the time, so while I’ve enjoyed this trip, in a way I’ve found it rather stressful."

"Again, it may be a little personal," Al commented. "But it sounds like you make a lot of money."

"What with everything, including my day job and return on investments in the stock market and elsewhere, my adjusted gross income last year was just shy of $300,000. My net worth isn’t easy to calculate, but is most likely over a million. Considering the fact that I didn’t have enough money to buy gas to get back to Los Angeles when I landed at the Mustang Ranch seven years ago, I’m not complaining."

"But it seems like such an immoral way to do it," Audrey protested.

"I suppose a lot of people would feel that way, and I’ll grant you that," Jennlynn nodded. "But you have to ask yourself the question, ‘Whose morality?’ There are countries and cultures who would consider every woman here to be equally as immoral as the most blatant prostitute, just because we’re so brazen as to be sitting together in mixed company, wearing clothes that not only reveal the shapes of our bodies but some of our skin, and not wearing veils. Will recently spent two years in one of them. It depends on how you look at it. I consider myself to be a rather moral person. I try to stay within the law, not just in the prostitution but in the rest of what I do. I try not to cheat anybody in anything I do; I try to be honest, and so on. It’s not simple and it’s not easy, but like beauty, morality lies in the mind of the beholder. I can’t make that judgment for you, and you shouldn’t for me."

* * *

"Miz Swift," Will said as they lay in each other’s arms in their bedroll later that evening. "I always knew you did well, but I had no idea it was that well. I guess I never thought it out."

"You know what bothers me, Will?" she said softly. "Is that you’re now thinking of me as a millionaire, not as me."

"Miz Swift, you can never be anything to me other than what you are. I’ve always been awed that you’d have anything to do with me at all. I’ve never understood what you see in me."

"Will, it’s very simple," she said, holding him tight. "You’re the only man I’ve ever met who isn’t bothered by what I do for a living. Me being a prostitute doesn’t matter to you. I just hope to God the money won’t matter either."

"I’ve always known you when you’ve had more money than I’ll ever have," he said softly. "When you’re a kid in high school, a woman that flies her own airplane seems pretty rich. I know better now but it don’t change matters none."

"Will, it’d be very easy to fall in love with you, and maybe I have, in a way."

"Me too, Miz Swift," he said softly. "But it wouldn’t be a good idea, and you and I both know it. You can make room in your life for me on vacation, but you ain’t up to doin’ it full time. I’m pretty much the same way. I may be in the Air Force but it’s just something to do till I get back out to the ranch. That ain’t your world. You can visit it, like on this trip, and enjoy it for a while. But like you said, just the relaxation of this trip is stressing you out."

"Damn it, Will," she said. "There really isn’t any hope for us, is there?"

"Nope," he agreed. "But it don’t matter to me none. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. I think if we tried to fix it, we’d break it."

"I agree, it’s not a paradigm worth breaking." She let out a big sigh. "A few days every now and then are like heaven, but I think we’d drive each other nuts if we tried it for more than that."

"Then we’ll just have to do it again some time," he smiled, and rolled to kiss her. "I’ll be looking forward to it."

For some time, no more words were needed.

Quite a while later, they lay cuddling each other. "You know Will," she whispered. "It irritates me that they’re going to think of me as a millionaire prostitute and ignore everything else that I’ve accomplished. Damn it, you say the word ‘prostitute’ and people quit thinking that you’re capable of accomplishing anything else, and that you’ll never be anything different."

"You knowed that was going to happen when you said it," he replied.

"I know," she sighed. "I guess Audrey just pissed me off. But you know, that was the first time I’ve ever come out in public about it, other than with the people I work with at Lambdatron. People there were a little shocked when they first heard about it, but once they had a chance to think about it, it made sense to them, and I just don’t get any static about it anymore."

"Most people don’t think it through the way we have," he agreed.

"Most people don’t have enough information to be able to think it through," she said. "I think that’s why I mouthed off some tonight. I don’t know that I got through to anyone, but at least they have some facts to base their judgments on. But damn it, Will, I take a degree of pride in who I am and what I’ve been able to accomplish, and I think I’ve accomplished it honestly, so there’s reason to have that pride."

"Lots of people ain’t gonna see it that way," he commented. "You and I and some of the people we know will, but people like Audrey ain’t never gonna unless you hit ’em upside the head with it."

"I know," she sighed. "Hell, I’m considered one of the more up-front people in the business as it is, and I try not to say too much about it. I said a long time ago that I wasn’t going to cover it up, but I wasn’t going to advertise it, either. Maybe I need to think about that a little, maybe by showing I enjoy it, that I take pride in it."

"Could be, Miz Swift, but you’re going to have to be the one to make the decision because you’re going to have to be the one to live with it."

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