A Fountain Filled With Blood

“Take me to the river,” his headset sang. “Drop me in the water.” Over his head, the rotors powered up into a dull roar. Under his feet, the skids shifted. He braced his elbows on his knees and shut his eyes. Clare was making ch-ch-ch sounds between her teeth, accompanying her mental music.

“Here we go,” she sang out. The floor lurched beneath him and then they rose slowly, slowly into the sky. Beyond the open cargo doors, the world sank out of view. He thought if he looked at the seat to his left, he would see his buddy Mac, his transistor radio blasting between his boots, his hands slapping out the rhythm of the song.

“I-I-I want to know, can you tell me?” his headphones sang.

Mac would have liked Clare. Except she was sixteen years older than he would ever get. And he, Russ, would look like an old man to Mac. How had he gotten to be so old when he still felt the same inside?

“I need your help here.” Clare’s voice cut through his reverie. “I don’t know where the gorge is. I’m having a hard time sighting the road through all these trees.”

He opened his eyes and looked out the window in the cabin door. Forget the minivan. This was a frickin’ picture window. He shifted sideways in his seat and pressed his hands against the solid metal edges of the door to hold back the sensation of falling. “Um,” he said, taking a deep breath. They were creeping along a dozen yards above the trees. “That’s it, down there. The road. Keep heading in that direction and you’ll be over the gorge.” If he turned his head, he could look at the back of Clare’s.

“There?” she asked, twisting and pointing at the window in the cockpit door.

“Shouldn’t you keep your eyes on the instruments?”

“The army gives us special training on how to look out the window and fly at the same time.”

He could tell she was having a good old time. He leaned forward and closed his eyes again. The rotors whined and the chopper tilted forward slightly as she brought it around and headed toward the crevasse.

“Okay, I’ve got it in sight,” she said. “Russ—where are you?”

He sat up again. He could see the curve of her jaw beneath her helmet as she twisted back, craning to see him.

“Are you feeling airsick?” She sounded doubtful. As she should be, since the drive up the mountain road to the spa site had bounced him around a lot more than anything she had done.

“No.”

“Okay. Can you unbuckle and shift seats? I want you to look out the other cabin window. It makes for a better search if you cover both sides.”

“Okay.” He didn’t have the wherewithal to answer in anything more than single-word sentences. He unclipped and shifted to the ghostly Mac’s seat. The geologist’s description of the gorge knifing down the mountains was more clearly accurate from this height. The crevasse looked a lot narrower than it had when he’d peered over the edge. He thought of descending into that crack in the rock, wrapped in nothing but cargo netting. It’d be a miracle if he didn’t end up a smear on the rock wall.

“See anything?”

“No.”

“Are you doing okay?”

“Yes.”

“I’m going to drop her down a bit.” The chopper sank in a series of jerks, like an elevator on the fritz. He pressed his lips tightly together and braced his hands for another look out the window. Green leaves, everywhere green pulsing in the hazy sunlight, with a gray slash through the jungle, a scar in the earth.

Jesus, he thought. Get a grip. He forced himself to focus on the crevasse, picking out boulders and scrubby plants, the tobacco brown trickle that was all that remained of the brook at summer’s height, the flash of metal—

“Wait! I think I see something.”

The chopper stopped its forward motion and hovered, twisting slightly back and forth. He saw it again, a glint of metal on a lumpy bundle rolled against a small boulder. A backpack? He hadn’t noticed one when he’d surveyed the accident scene the first time. “Can you go a little lower?”

Clare dropped the chopper another few yards. He let his eyes spiral out from the backpack, searching, searching…. He spotted the geologist’s hiking boots first.

“I’ve got him.”

“Where?”

“See where there’s a clump of birch saplings growing low on the wall?”

“Yeah, okay.”

“That’s ten o’clock. Look at two o’clock.”

There was a pause as she searched over the floor of the ravine. “Okay, I see him, too. I’m going to maneuver us so that the cargo door is above him. Good Lord, he’s still. Are you sure he’s not dead?”

“If he is, and I go through all this for nothing, I’m going to be seriously pissed off.”

There was a sound in his headset that might have been a stifled laugh. The chopper dipped and swayed into position.

“Okay, you’re on.”