Andrew Gross - One Mile Under

Once or twice she almost slipped and had to catch herself, whitewater lashing at her legs. The overturned kayak was maybe ten yards from her now, on its side in the swirling pool. No sign of movement inside. The current tugging at her from all around.

Without a rope or a partner, she knew what she was doing really wasn’t the smartest idea.

Finally, she made it across, straddling the eddy where the kayak had come to a stop.

“Can you hear me?” she called out. But whoever was inside wasn’t responding and hadn’t moved. She could see it was a guy, but his face was in the water, the current slashing all around. He wasn’t wearing a helmet, either. Everyone always thought they could take this river without a care. Dani bent down, positioning her legs on the rocks for traction, and flipped the body over on its side.

Her stomach dropped, just as precipitously as if she had plummeted over the falls herself. She stared for a moment, shocked and disbelieving, denial, then sorrow filling her inside.

She knew him.

She stared into the dead rider’s drained, colorless face.

She knew him well.

Trey Watkins, Charles Alan Watkins III, whom everyone always jokingly referred to as “Your Honor,” because his name sounded more like that of a Supreme Court judge, than someone who could ski the back terrain at Aspen Highlands with the best of them. He’d done a few off-terrain videos in a few Warren Miller ski films—and rock-climbed out at Maroon Bells in the summer. He also used to teach hang gliding off the summit of Ajax.

Dani also knew he could get down this river without a hitch in the worst of conditions, and this surely wasn’t that.

There were abrasions all over his face and a fresh, oozing wound on his skull, and his neck was pitched at a horrifying angle. She grabbed his wrist and looked for a pulse, not finding even a hint of a heartbeat. Oh , Jesus, no … She rested him back down in the river.

Trey.

She knew he came out and did an early run before work sometimes, just to keep his feet in the game, now that he had a regular job. Regular, meaning off of skis, the mountain, or the river. She recalled how a few years back he and Dani had ended up together after last call at the Black Nugget, when Dani had come back after college after her mother had died. It wasn’t much of a relationship, or even what you’d call a fling. Trey wasn’t exactly boyfriend material back then. He was a quiet, rugged guy from a small town up north, and with his long ponytail, his washed-out, blue-eyed smile, and that easy, but confident way, women always seemed to flock to him. As Dani had a couple of times, maybe a little rootless and angry back then over her mom.

But somehow Allie Benton made all that change. Trey settled down, married, cut his hair. He even got a totally “straight” job managing the Outdoor Adventures shop in town. They had a kid. Petey. Who everyone said made Trey a changed man. Dani had last seen him a couple of months ago at the Post Net store in town. He was mailing off an application to the national ski trade show. He’d developed this custom mounting for those GoPro action cameras that skiers and riders put on their helmets, and which they were selling like crazy in the store. Dani remembered thinking, Who’d ever figure Trey Watkins for an entrepreneur? Amazing what having a kid could do.

And here she was staring at him now. Bloodied and crumpled. Those washed-out blue eyes that looked like Roger Daltrey’s of the Who stilled. It didn’t make a bit of sense where they were. Trey could handle a rapid like the Cradle with Petey on his lap. He could do it blindfolded, even with this amount of water being pushed around. Dani inspected his kayak. She didn’t see any gashes or dents. She looked at the oozing abrasion on the side of his head. She just closed her eyes and shook her head in disbelief.

Poor Trey.

She thought about trying to drag the body out and administer CPR, but he was gone. It was clearly too late. She took out the radio from her belt. The company bus was set to meet them all not too much farther downstream. It was already on its way there.

“ Rich. Rich …” she called in. “Can you hear me? It’s Dani.”

No one answered. Only a scratchy static came back.

“Rich, get on the horn, quick, I need you,” she said, trying again. “It’s urgent. Something’s happened here.”

“You at the fords already?” Her tour partner finally came on the line. “God, you’re early, Dani, it’s only—”

“Negative, Rich. I’m at the bottom of the Cradle and we’ve got some trouble here. There’s been an accident.”

“Oh, shit,” he went, imagining the worst. “Everyone okay …?”

“Not us,” Dani said. “It’s Trey Watkins. His raft flipped over. There’s a gash on his head. He’s not breathing, Rich.”

“ Trey? Oh my God …” Everyone knew him. “Any sign of a pulse?”

“Negative, again. I can’t believe this, Rich.” Trey could ride with the best of them out here. The most challenging water was all well behind him. She looked back and saw her raft team all gathered on the shore, looking on. “I’m holding him here, Rich. He’s dead.”

Chief Wade Dunn kneeled down on the rocks overlooking the river, as the Pitkin County Rescue Team pulled the kid out of the water.

Not a kid really. He was twenty-nine. One of those adrenaline junkies around town who did it all. Off-terrain skiing. Paragliding. Mountain biking. The on-site opinion of one of the EMTs who inspected the body was blunt-force trauma to the head and possibly a broken neck. Any one of those rocks could have caused it. No telling how far the raft had continued down. Made you wonder. Wade watched, lifting his Stetson custom cowboy hat. Trey Watkins was also a topflight river rider. This far downriver, he was way past anything that might have been thought of as a challenge. Wade knew his young wife. Allie. Pretty, and must be quite a gal to tame someone like Trey. And things were just starting to take off for the guy. A new kid, and he had this camera-mount business that was just getting off the ground. Allie’s father, Ted Benton, who owned a rib restaurant and a small hotel in town, once joked to Wade that his son-in-law was going to make them all look poor.

Wade watched the rescue boys do their job. Look at him now.

They lowered down a stretcher, then hoisted the body back up the slope, and cut a path in the brush to where the emergency vehicles had parked on the road. Wade stood up and looked at the body as they brought it by. It looked exactly like what it probably was: the kid must’ve flipped and struck his head on the rocks. Enough to cause that wound or to break his neck. Probably trying out some slick new move. Grab some air or a spin-o-rama, or whatever they call them today. And not wearing a helmet. Not as smart as ol’ Ted thought, apparently. These kids, they all think they’re invincible. Come here from all parts, think their life is a fucking X Game. They’d do a drug and alcohol test in the postmortem. Who’d bet on what they’d find?

Thrill junkie.

He was like that once, too, Wade reflected. Invincible, or he surely thought so. That was back when he was the sheriff in Aspen. Not Carbondale, the little commuting town thirty miles down the road where everyone lived who couldn’t afford to live in Aspen. Shit, he could’ve pretty much run for mayor back then. Or governor. Anything he wanted. He knew all the big celebs—Don Johnson, Melanie Griffith, Goldie Hawn, and all the big CEOs flying in on their Learjets and Citations. Now look at him. Divorced. Twice. Widowed once, though they had been living apart. A couple of stints in detox. Running a police force one-tenth the size of what he used to, and lucky to have the damn job at that. Looking a whole lot older than his fifty-seven years. Basically broke. Now he was what, the mayor of the sober community here in town? Younger, more ambitious men all waiting in line for him to retire.