This story was first published in the San Diego Writer's Monthly, Sept, 1993
Crossing the San Juan
by Tom Scanlan
At the beach I often played this sinister game. I would walk down close to the water, just seaward of that wavy line of dirty yellow foam that separates the wet sand from the dry. Standing in one place, I would lift and lower my bare feet until the sand liquefied, and the sucking action began to pull my feet downward into the darker silt. The muddy sand there is saturated with sea water and has some of the properties of quicksand. The more I tried to move my feet up and down, the deeper they'd sink. I always stopped when the wet sand came up to my ankles. It was at that point the memory I could not banish would always re-emerge, and my fascination with quicksand turned to anguish.
The dull roar of pounding surf and the smell of salt air faded into the background. The blue water of the Pacific became the swift muddy waters of the San Juan river in northern New Mexico, the way I remembered it that tragic summer some twenty years ago. I was standing on a sandstone ledge that tilted gradually into the river a few feet in front of me, gazing toward the sagebrush-covered mesa looming above the opposite shore.
My cousin Paul had decided, for some perverse reason, that today he was going to wade across this river. He had stripped to his shorts and waded out to where the river swirled around his waist. He stood there, halfway across, a well-muscled ranch kid, confident, sixteen, and nearly six feet tall. He waited, watching to see if I was going to follow him.
He shouted to me, "C'mon, don't be a sissy, Charley. It won't get any deeper than this." It was hard to hear him over the rippling and splashing of the current and the wind rustling the trees along the bank where I stood . But I heard him well enough, and I was humiliated by my own timidity. My fear of the river shamed me in front of the one person whose admiration and friendship I desperately wanted.
Paul was the big brother I'd never had. He taught me to drive (Mom would have killed him if she knew) and sometimes let me drive his pickup when we went shopping in Farmington. If I did OK, he'd buy us milk shakes at the Navajo drug store before we returned to the ranch.
But that day I was more afraid of the muddy San Juan river than eager to have Paul admire my bravery. I had just turned twelve. I was skinny, slightly small for my age, and lacked self-confidence. The water would be chest deep on me where Paul was standing. Unlike Paul, I could swim OK, but I wasn't going to wade through water up to my chest where I couldn't see the bottom and the currents were swift and unpredictable. Once again, I shook my head, no. I didn't trust what my voice would do if I tried to shout. I was on the verge of tears from fear and my anger at him for taunting me. He yelled something that sounded like 'chicken shit' and turned to continue wading across.
He was always teasing me to do something against my better judgment. Usually it was a physical challenge that was easier for him than me, like jumping across a deep arroyo or climbing up the steep, crumbling, slippery-walled sandstone badlands until I was too tired to keep up with him. I was never quite sure if he was trying to build my character or just liked to tease me because I was raised in the suburbs and not on a ranch like him.
As I stood there watching him, his body suddenly seemed to shrink. The water rose up to his chest. Like he had stepped off a ledge. He began thrashing the water and screamed toward me,"Quicksand! I'm stuck!"
I sucked in my breath. It felt like my heart had stopped. He wasn't teasing this time. I ripped off my shoes, tugged off my Levis and jumped into the water. The river, fed by still melting snow from the nearby Rocky Mountains, was much colder than I expected. Worse, I hadn't splashed and plunged more than twenty feet out from the bank before the strong current began pulling against my legs. Out where Paul was, I might have to tread water. I couldn't fight that current and pull him out at the same time. I hated my smallness, my weakness. Then I remembered the rope in his pickup.
I looked back toward his battered red pickup, parked at the end of the dirt road only a hundred feet from the river's edge. I stopped wading and shouted to Paul, "Hang on! I'm going for a rope."
I don't know if he heard me but when he saw me stop, he screamed, "Hurry! I'm sinking deeper." The water was up to his shoulders now. He had his head tilted back and was splashing frantically against the water with both arms, trying to pull himself free.
I turned and plunged back toward the bank. I heard him call out, "Wait! Help me, Charley. Don't leave. Help me." I fought the urge to turn back toward him, clambered up the slippery bank, and ran the rest of the way to the truck. I jumped onto the running board and vaulted over into the truck bed, painfully scraping my shins on the rough metal side. To my relief, the rope was in plain sight, coiled neatly on top of a folded canvas tarp.
When I quit breathing so hard, I realized that it was terribly quiet. Paul was no longer screaming. I scooped up the rope and looked quickly toward the river. There was no sign of Paul. Maybe I was looking in the wrong place. Maybe he'd pulled free and was downstream. I shaded my eyes against the afternoon sun and scanned the glaring, muddy waters. Nothing broke the surface of the water. Nothing moved but the water itself. The river looked deceptively tranquil, just eddies and wavelets, whorling and disappearing and reappearing. I cupped my hands to my mouth. "Paul! Holler so I can see you." I heard only the soft moaning of the wind, the gurgling of the river. Oh, God...
I jumped from the truck and ran back to the river, careful to enter the water where my wet footprints still showed on the bank. My eyes searched that flowing, muddy brown horizon while my body fought the relentless current. There was no head bobbing, no upstretched hand...nothing. I waded deeper into the river channel. I looked over at the opposite bank and then downstream toward a small sand island. Nothing. The river was up to my waist. I had to lean against the current and head upstream to force my way toward where I had last seen him. Each time I lifted one foot off the muddy bottom to take another step, the mud resisted. The current pushed me sideways, threatening to wash me downstream.
When I finally reached mid-river the icy water was up to my chest. I had to fight continuously to maintain my footing. Gasping for breath, I stopped and began to search for Paul. It was impossible to see through the muddy water. All I could do was feel around with my hands and feet. I dreaded the possibility that I might brush against his lifeless body almost as much as I feared not finding him. Even more, I dreaded the thought of stepping down into a pothole filled with quicksand.
I began to imagine the horror of Paul's stepping onto a soft sandy bottom that suddenly gave way, sucking him downward into it's muddy yaw, pulling him deeper and deeper each time he struggled to break free. I imagined the muddy water rising slowly up to his chin and then covering his mouth and rising toward his nostrils. He would take his last deep, desperate breath and then hold it as long as he could. He'd continue to sink with each effort to pull his feet loose. The water would come up over his eyes. I imagined him closing his eyes to shut out the silt and grit. Relentlessly, that awful muck would continue pulling him down, deeper and deeper. Soon the cold, grey muddy river bottom itself would creep up over his waist, his chest, up to his chin, over his mouth. I imagined Paul's lungs feeling ready to burst. He couldn't hold his breath any longer. Knowing the consequences but unable to help himself, he'd breathe in a mouthful of sand, choking off a scream no one would hear, his eyes opened wide but blind, in that final instant of his life.
The roar of pounding surf broke through my thoughts. The smell of salt air replaced the smell of sagebrush. A jogger in blue sweats had stopped a few feet away. He was staring at me.
"You O.K.?"
I looked up at him, self-conscious of how ridiculous I must look, planted almost up to my knees in wet sand. I answered, "Just trying to see how deep you can sink in this stuff." I held out my arms toward him. "Can you give me your hand a minute?"
"Sure. Grab hold."
He extended his right hand and I held on tightly with both hands. He took a step backward and pulled, but his foot skidded in the sand, and he nearly fell on top of me. "Damn! You're really stuck good." He dug in both his feet firmly at the edge of my little puddle. "Hang on."
Again he pulled against my weight, leaning backward and pushing both his feet hard against the crumbling sand. I angled toward him, straining to pull my feet free. I started to lose my balance. About to fall, I let loose of his hand. He sat down hard, splatting unceremoniously onto the wet beach. Shaking his head, he stood up and brushed caked sand from the wet spot on the seat of his jogging pants.
He stood there, winded. "This won't work. You're in too deep. You'll have to dig yourself out."
His words resonated in my mind as I looked down toward my feet, still mired deeply in sand. If I'd been in real quicksand, still sinking...
An incoming wave crested and broke, sending a sheet of foaming water racing up the sloping beach to where we stood. It slowed and then stopped, the leading edge barely reaching the muddy pool engulfing my ankles. The water swirled briefly around my legs before it sank, hissing, into the sand. Watching it, I saw, once again, the muddy waters of the San Juan river. Far out in the middle, Paul's head was just visible. I could hear his screams.
The screams became angry shrieks, almost directly above me. I looked up, jerked back forever from that seductive memory. A large white sea gull had just flown overhead. It was diving toward the blue water just beyond the surf, scolding a smaller gull circling some morsel bobbing there in the waves. The small gull circled once more, screeching ineffectually. Then, through eyes suddenly moist, I watched it fly away.
The End