Day Four
July 24, 1952
Thursday Afternoon
Fifteen miles west of Denver, where the flatlands collide with the Rockies, a frothing whitewater river snakes out of the mountains into Clear Creek Canyon. Next to the river is a twisty, dangerous road. With a dead body in the trunk, River took that road west between vertical rock walls, deeper and deeper into the mountains.
Ten miles into it he turned right on 119.
Eight miles later, an abandoned road appeared on the left. The mouth was barely recognizable as something other than overgrown vegetation. The guts of the road disappeared over a jagged ridge into thick lodgepole pines.
River headed down it.
He hadn’t been this way in years.
Five miles down that road was a long-abandoned gold mine, filled with thirty or more dangerous vertical shafts that disappeared straight down into the belly of the world.
River used to come here as a kid.
He and Butch Bannister would dare each other to jump over the shafts. Some were narrow and easy. Others were a whole different world.
River pulled next to one of the wider shafts and stepped out of the car.
The thin mountain air was ten degrees cooler than Denver, maybe fifteen.
With the clouds and the wind, it was almost cold.
He opened the trunk and pulled the body out, tipping it over the lip and letting it drop to the ground with a thud. He grabbed the feet and dragged it towards the hole, stopping two yards short.
He looked at January.
“I’ll bet she’s not the first to be dropped down here,” he said. “I’ll bet she lands on ten more just like her.”
“Be careful. Don’t get too close.”
“Don’t worry,” he said. “I used to play here as a kid.”
He got behind the body and pushed it with his foot, closer and closer to the opening, then in.
The body banged against the sides on the way down.
It was a familiar sound.
River had dropped five hundred rocks down the shafts.
The sound was always the same.
In spite of the chill, his brow was moist. He wiped it with the back of his hand and looked around.
The world was silent.
Not a sound came from anywhere.
“She’s in China,” he said. “There’s one thing we don’t have to worry about, and that’s anyone ever finding her.”
January wrapped her arms around him.
“I’m sorry we had to do this.”
River shrugged.
“It was her fault,” he said. “She was the one who got all fancy with the binoculars. She’s the one who fought back when she shouldn’t have. Screw her. She got what she deserved.”
January picked up a rock and threw it in the shaft.
“What’d you do here as a kid?”
“What do you mean?”
“You said you used to come and play here as a kid. What did you do?”
“We jumped over the shafts.”
January smiled.
“No way.”
“Yeah, I’m serious,” River said.
“Show me.”
“Show you?”
“Yes.”
He tilted his head.
“And what’s my reward, if I do?”
“Whatever you want.”
“Be careful because there won’t be any take-backs.”
“Stop stalling and show me.”
River looked around. There were a good dozen shafts in sight, all smaller than the one in front of him, which was somewhere in the neighborhood of three good-sized steps, ten or eleven feet.
“This one will do,” he said.
“Go for it.”
He walked back, judged the distance until it burned into his brain, then sprinted for it with everything he had. At the very last inch of ground, he planted a foot and then catapulted his body high and twisting, not in a way to land on his feet, only in a way to clear the mark.
He landed on the other side with a thud and rolled.
He got up, brushed the dirt off his pants and walked towards January with a grin.
“I never did that one before,” he said. “It always scared me too much as a kid.”
“Looks like you’re growing up.”
“Anything I want,” he said. “That was the bet.”
“That’s right.”
“Get in the back seat of that car.”
“Yes sir.”