| Wes Boyd's Spearfish Lake Tales Contemporary Mainstream Books and Serials Online |
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| Wes Boyd's Spearfish Lake Tales Contemporary Mainstream Books and Serials Online |
Chapter 14
The boatmen helped the customers gather their gear and get loaded onto the crew bus, which would take them up on the rim to meet the charter bus sent to pick them up. There were hugs and tips and a few tears, but soon the customers were all on the bus and headed up the hill. As the short-bodied brown bus went out of sight, they were now a part of the past, and it was time to look to the future.
“So,” Al asked, “how’d it go?”
“Well, like I told you on the phone from up at Phantom,” Duane said, “while I’ve seen better trips, I’ve seen a lot worse, too. This group started out a little shaky but got pretty cool and laid back toward the end.”
“Well, it often happens,” Al smiled. “Any problems or anything?”
“Not really,” Duane said, deciding to not mention Michelle’s rocky stomach. It wasn’t anything Al needed to know about, at least not yet. It may not have been much of a problem at all; at least she hadn’t mentioned it since Lava, and she’d have a few days to deal with it. “Just a basic routine trip.”
“Good deal,” Al said. “I guess the White Team didn’t have such a great first trip. It seems they had four Mormons along who tried to convert everybody, and I guess it got a little sticky.”
“I can see why,” Duane laughed. The White Team included Preach, Kevin, and Nanci, all of whom were pretty serious about their religion – Preach a Baptist, Kevin and Nanci Methodists. “I’ll bet the scripture was flying pretty good.”
“I guess,” Al laughed. “I’ll tell you what, though – better them than me.”
“No fooling,” Duane laughed again. “OK, before we get going with everything, is it still the deal for Michelle to stay topside next trip?”
“Yeah, we have to make the best of the opportunity,” Al said. “We’re only going to get one other chance with you this summer.”
“I’ve basically let Barbie be the assistant trip leader the second half of this trip,” Duane replied, trying at least superficially to talk Al out of the idea for Michelle’s sake. “Michelle has pretty much stayed out of the way, and Barbie did real well. I don’t foresee any problem with Michelle taking the next trip.”
“Well, probably,” Al agreed. “But let’s do it this way at least once. Michelle isn’t going to spend much time off the river. I’ve got it worked out for her to do the next trip with the White Team since we’ve got a boatman who has to go home for some reason, a wedding or something. She’ll launch several days after you, but will only be a day after you getting off the river, so she can come right back to your team.”
“I guess,” Duane sighed, realizing that he’d pretty well lost the battle before he got started. It would have been just as easy to send Andy with the White Team instead of Michelle, but Al had his mind made up and that was that. It could well be there were other reasons he didn’t want to talk about. “Just so long as I get her back after the next trip.”
“You will,” Al said. “It means I’m going to be bouncing Andy around a little until I find a regular spot for him, but it’ll give him a chance to remember how an oar boat works again. What we probably ought to do is to load Michelle’s raft on top so we can get at it to get her gear out back at the shop. Andy’s out with the Red team doing a half trip. He’s walking out the Bright Angel Trail on Sunday, and Michelle’s dad is going to run him right back over to Lee’s.”
“We don’t have to do it that way, Al,” she said. “I can get anything I need out of my raft now.”
“Go ahead and do it,” Al replied. “I guess that means we can load ’em as they come. That is, unless you have any rafts that need to be worked on.”
“If there is, nobody’s mentioned anything, and I’ve asked,” Duane said. “As far as I know, I guess everything can just stay on the trailer until we get back up to Lee’s. Anything else?”
“No, not really,” Al said. “I just made the trip today to get out of the office. Too nice a day to be inside.”
With that they turned to working on the rafts. They unloaded each one rather more than they would do at an evening campsite with coolers, food boxes and filled rocket boxes coming out and going in the pickup. The sleeping bags were stacked in a pile to be loaded on the crew bus; sometime in the next few days Jeff would wash all of them. It wasn’t a rush item; there were more sleeping bags than there were crews, so the bags rotated among them. The drag bags that had kept pop and beer cold on the trip down the river were also stacked for loading, along with some kept in the bottoms of the rafts. Water carriers, now mostly empty, were also set out to be hauled separately; they would be sanitized and refilled at the shop as well. Not everything was unloaded; the drybags with the tents stayed right on the rafts, for instance, along with some other gear that wouldn’t need work between trips.
It was a long list, but everyone had done it before. As soon as they’d emptied a raft as much as it needed to be, Al backed the trailer in front of it, and an A-frame arrangement was used to pick it out of the water and load it on the trailer. Then, the next raft was moved into position, the gear unloaded, it was lifted onto the trailer, and so on.
What with everything, it took a couple hours. It could be done more quickly and had been, but there was no reason to rush this time. Finally the rafts were all tied down on the trailer. Jeff was back with the crew bus by that time, and all hands turned to making a duffel line to get the sleeping bags, personal gear and incidentals aboard.
Finally everything was loaded. The crew got onto the bus and Jeff drove it up the Diamond Creek Wash road, the pickup and trailer with rafts following along behind. It took a while and could have been a smoother ride, but it could have been worse, too. Before long, they were out on the highway. It was a long trip back to Flagstaff, and soon most of the crew was asleep, among them Duane and Michelle, cuddled up with each other in a shared seat.
It was late in the afternoon before they arrived back at the office. There was unloading to be done, a little work on the gear here and there, along with things that needed to be done to get ready for the next trip and might as well be done now. Crystal was there, looking a little frazzled, but she pitched right in on helping with the work.
The filled rocket boxes had to be emptied and sanitized, a stinky and messy job that traditionally fell to the junior swamper, Erika in this case. She pointedly asked Al if there was any possibility that a second, more junior swamper might be along on the next trip, and was disappointed to be told that there wasn’t, although there was a good chance of one on the trip after that. “Well, that’s a little better,” she shrugged and went to work on the rocket boxes, making plans for a serious shower, and soon.
All in all it went pretty well, and much like normal, although it took a while. Al commented that it got a lot more complicated when they had two crews in at the same time, as had happened the previous weekend. The Red Team came off the river on Thursday with a Saturday launch, and the Blue Team followed on Friday with a Monday launch planned. “We’re still going to have to work out how to make that work,” Al said. “Thank God I bought a second trailer, so we don’t have to unload the rafts Thursday evening then load them right back up the next evening.”
“I wondered how you were going to manage those turnarounds,” Duane commented. “It would have been a serious pain in the ass.”
“No fooling,” Al agreed. “We’ve still got a few kinks to work out in the process, but we might as well learn how to do them now, since we’re going to be doing the same kind of things even more in future years. We need to talk about them a bit since you’re going to be in the middle of one of those two-turnaround deals at the end of your next trip, but I figure you don’t want to go over it now. It can wait till Sunday.”
“Right,” Duane nodded. “I want to get this wrapped up so Michelle and I can get on the road for her folks’ house.”
After a while longer they had everything pretty much as done as they could. They were getting the final little things finished when Crystal came over to them and said, “Hey, you two. Let’s head over to the Burro and have a beer. I know you want to get heading out to Grand Canyon Village, but I don’t often get to have a beer with friends without Preach looking a little sideways at me.”
Duane looked at Michelle, who nodded back at him. “Sure,” he said. “It’s got to be a little hard to be off the river without him.”
“You have no idea,” she sighed. “Let’s take my car. I’ve got to come back here and do a couple things later, anyway.”
In just a few minutes they were in Crystal and Preach’s Buick, heading down to the Burro. “You know, I sorta miss my old Dodge,” she said as they headed downtown. “I drove that thing around Flag for years, but there wasn’t any need for Preach and me to have two cars.”
“Yeah, we probably could get along with just one,” Michelle said. “Except for the fact that the Mustang is easier on gas, and we really need the Jeep for winters in Spearfish Lake.”
“Yeah, that’s something we need to talk about sometime,” Duane agreed. “But I don’t think we want to get rid of the Jeep at least until we know what’s happening next winter. We haven’t heard a thing from Phil, but we didn’t expect to this soon. So how’s it going staying topside?”
“Boring,” she sighed. “In a week I’ve managed to put some new scratch marks on the office walls to go with those Michelle left when she was stuck topside a few years ago. Dan does most of the customer scheduling, phone work, and books, and Mom helps him with it if he runs into any problems, which he doesn’t anymore. I’m trying to learn some of that so I can back him up, but most of the time I’m out in the shop piddling around with Jeff.”
“I know how being stuck in the office works,” Michelle agreed. She’d had to do it off and on for three years. “It gets damn dull at times.”
“No shit,” Crystal agreed. “It’s not like I really have anything to do except back up Dad, but I need to know how this jazz is done so I’ll know how to do it when Dad and Mom decide to head up to Alaska or some damn place.”
“Do they have any plans for that?” Michelle asked.
“Not this year, but you never know. I’d bet good money they’ll be gone somewhere for a while next year, but I don’t think they’ve picked a spot yet. Whatever else happens, we’ve got to get this short-turnaround procedure ironed out. It was kind of a mess last weekend, and it’s clear we’re going to have to get more work done for both the crews coming off the water so they won’t have to do it on their days off. That’s why I’ve been out in the shop with Jeff so much.”
“I have to admit, I wondered about that a little,” Duane nodded. “It was bad enough last year.”
“The problem is worse than last year. Last season we had the short-trip crew passing the long-trip crew while they were out on the river,” Crystal said. “The short-trip crew would be gone from the shop on their next trip before the long-trip crew got in. Now, they’re passing at the shop, rather than on the river, so we’ve got two crews running around trying to get everything done in too short a period, getting in each other’s way in the process. It’s nothing that can’t be solved, especially if we bring in an extra helper or two for those double-turnaround days, but getting it worked out is going to be a pain in the butt. What’s worse, it’s going to be like that two weekends out of three. Hopefully, by the end of your next trip when you get stuck with being one of those crews, we’ll have a few items worked out.”
“Well, at least it means we get to see people on the other crews occasionally,” Duane temporized. “We’ve never been able to do that much in the past.”
“Yeah, that was one of the downsides of the old system,” Crystal agreed. “There’s no point in getting into it too much now, since that’s something Dad and I want to go over with you on Sunday. I can tell you that a few procedures are going to change, and there’s going to have to be a tighter timeline on when and how things get done than there has been in the past. It’s not like it used to be when we could say, ‘Hell, we’ve got all weekend, let’s knock off and do it tomorrow.’”
They talked a little more about the double-turnaround procedure until they got to the Burro. They went inside to the cool darkness, got a booth, and when the waitress came over they ordered beers. “Are you sure you want the fact that you’re getting a beer to get back to Preach?” Michelle asked out of curiosity.
“I don’t care,” Crystal shrugged. “He doesn’t mind my having a beer every now and then. Hell, he’ll even have one every now and then if it isn’t in public. But if we’re in public, it can get a little awkward, especially since he’s been acting like a minister part-time again.”
“What’s this?” Michelle asked. “I thought he didn’t want to have a church.”
“He still doesn’t,” Crystal said. “But there’s this little church across town, a little independent place that’s sort of Wesleyan Methodist but not really. They’ve been without a pastor for a while since they really can’t afford one. Preach kind of wants to keep his finger in being a minister without having to commit to doing it full time, so ever since we got back from the show circuit last winter he’s been going over there as a substitute pastor about every other week if he’s in town. He won’t take any money for it. He says he doesn’t want to feel like he’s obligated to preach. Besides, he can make a scriptural case that a minister should be a member of the congregation, not a paid professional.”
“I always knew Preach had a radical side to him somewhere,” Duane smirked. “I guess there it is.”
“Yeah, really,” Crystal smiled as the waitress brought them bottles of beer and glasses. “It’s just as well, I guess. We agreed a long time ago that I wouldn’t make a very good minister’s wife, especially with me having to run Canyon Tours sooner or later. Part of me thinks it’s a waste, since he’d be damn good at it, but most of me is just as glad, too.” She let out a sigh and continued, “I guess that’s another issue we’re going to have to iron out in the next few years. Whatever happens though, we agreed a long time ago that my commitment to the business has to come first.”
“I guess I knew that,” Michelle agreed. “You’ve talked about it enough in the past.”
“Yeah, there’s enough money involved that we can’t turn our backs on it. You guys both know Randy up there in Spearfish Lake. For years he wanted to be out on the river, or hiking a trail, hitting the surfing circuit, or something, but he had this family commitment to their business. That’s just gotten even tighter since his grandfather died last winter and left him managing the construction company, and then he and Nicole had Brent Wayne. He’d still like to be out running rafts with us or something, but it’s not going to happen and we all know it. There’s several million bucks involved, and there’s no way he can turn his back on it to be a river bum. I always kind of laughed at the real world biting him in the butt like that until I got caught up in exactly the same damn thing.”
“We’ve heard him rant about it,” Michelle agreed. “He’s a nice enough guy, and he and Nicole have that gorgeous house, but I know that in a way he sees it as a prison.”
“I don’t blame him,” Crystal sighed, “I’m beginning to get in the same situation. I mean, it’s fun to be a river bum, and for a long time that was all I ever wanted to be. But as time goes on you acquire responsibilities, and you have to do what you have to do to deal with them. Maybe I can continue as a part-time river bum for a while yet, but even this week has taught me that there are responsibilities topside to keep the crews organized enough to be out on the river in the first place. It’s the job of the people back in the office to grease the skids as much as they can for the people out on the river who are basically on duty twenty-four hours a day to provide the excitement that keeps the customers coming to us. I can already see things that the office people should be doing to make the turnarounds easier for the crews.”
“Like what?” Michelle asked.
“You want a big for-instance? There’s no reason that the crews should have to buy and pack their own groceries. It wastes half a day or more of their break period, which is already too short. There’s no reason people topside couldn’t be doing that and ease their load, so when you guys load up for a trip you’re just given a stack of boxes and coolers with a list of what’s in each one, and they’re organized so you use the stuff up in order.”
“We’ve always done it that way,” Michelle protested. “Al always said it needed to be done that way so the crew would know where everything was.”
“I know,” she nodded. “And I think he’s wrong on that. Granted, it takes away a little flexibility, but on the river, crews could just work our way through food box one and cooler one, and when they’re empty they start on food box two and cooler two, and so on. That means the meals have to be programmed a little, but at least on the White Team we do pretty much the same thing every trip. I mean, halibut the first night out, burgers the next, spaghetti the third, and so on.”
“Yeah, we do it that way too,” Duane agreed. “And we pack it all with the intention of always doing it the same way so we know what’s next and where it is.”
“Right, and that’s my point,” Crystal replied. “There’s no reason you should have to take part of your break to do it at all if someone else could do it for you, so long as you can be sure what’s supposed to be in food box one really is in food box one. There is a little savings to that, too, in that we could buy some food items wholesale a ways ahead of time, or shop sales. That’s probably what’s going to sell Dad on the idea, not the fact that it makes life any easier on the crews. Scooter and Jim come in next weekend, the day after Preach gets in, and I’m going to try getting stuff for both teams and have it already packed, except for the last-minute fresh stuff to be picked up just before heading for Lee’s. I’ve already talked it over with them, and it looks like a good chance to test out the idea.”
“It would make things go a lot simpler, especially on the short breaks,” Duane agreed, realizing that Crystal was starting to take a hand in management even though she made sounds like she didn’t want to at all. “We’ll be catching one of those the next turnaround, and I’d kicked around the idea of having Michelle do the food purchasing ahead of time, until I realized that she’s going to be with you and won’t be getting in until a day after us.”
“We may have it going by then, we’ll have to see,” Crystal said. “I can’t tell you now; it’s going to depend a little on how next weekend goes. But that’s what I meant by saying that the people topside have got to do a better job of taking care of the people on the river who bring in the bread-and-butter cash for us, especially now that we’re going to a tighter schedule. Don’t get me wrong, Dad has done fine, but he’s still a boatman at heart even if he doesn’t get out on the river much anymore. He still has a little bit of ‘we’ve always done it that way before’ about him when it comes to the topside stuff. It’s not like when it was just you and Jeff topside, Michelle. There were times there when those of us on the river had to do things that people topside should have done, but there was no one to do them. We can’t continue that way and make the short turnarounds work.”
“I’m glad someone has seen that,” Duane said. “Doing a short turnaround the last couple years has always been a pain in the butt, but I just thought it was something that had to be done.”
“Doesn’t have to be that way,” Crystal sighed. “But changing things is a little hard. Like I said earlier, I’d rather be out on the river, but I’m coming to understand that it’s going to happen less and less in the future. I can see the time coming when I might only get in two or three trips a year, and maybe short ones at that, or even half-trips. By that time, Preach and I could have a house and kids and PTA crap, so it’ll be even harder to get out on the river since my topside responsibilities are going to be increasing too. I’m coming to realize that I’m going to have that responsibility toward the company and the crews along with that home and family stuff, so I’m trying to accept and get used to it now. The real world hits hard, just like it hit Randy hard.”
“I hope this doesn’t sound harsh, Crystal,” Michelle replied thoughtfully, “but I guess I’m just as glad that it’s you, and not me. All I ever wanted to be was a river bum, and having to think about giving it up is something I really don’t want to do.”
“Yeah, but it’s part of growing up,” Crystal shook her head. “The time could come real easily when there are other things you have to do, too. Then you’re going to have to face the same questions and get used to the reality. It ain’t easy. I know.” She polished off her glass of beer, then added, “I suppose I better get you two back to the office so you can head home. I’ve still got a few things I really need to get done today to get you back on the river.”
