Robert McGuill
They’re walking through the country store, arm in arm, when Jason Mattlock remarks offhandedly to his girl, Carrie Carson, that fly-fishing is for fags. He says this under his breath, as they stroll past the display case with its flawless arrangement of hand-tied flies, and when Carrie slaps his arm and asks him where he comes off saying such a horrible thing about the beloved sport of Izaak Walton, Ernest Hemingway and, all right, since he brought the subject up, her father, Charlie, the boy bends his lips to her ear and whispers, Because it’s boring.
They stroll up to the counter, laughing. “Pack of Luckies,” the boy says, turning to the clerk. “And these.” He sets a fruit pie and two bottles of water on the counter. The water comes from a local spring. The artificial fruit pie, from some chemical factory people back east call a bakery.
“That it?” the clerk asks.
“Yeah, that’s it.”
Jason turns and smiles at Carrie.
He claims he isn’t like the rest of the ball-scratching poseurs up here who kick around in flannel shirts and hiking boots, pretending they’re mountain men. He doesn’t need three-day stubble to make some kind of statement about himself. He lets his actions do the talking. He’s a hope-to-die adrenaline junkie who’s high on his own unstoppable luck, and if there’s a sport that’s the least bit dangerous, you know what? He wants in. Because what’s the point of living if you’re not living on the edge? Yeah, yeah. But she’s been hanging with Jason long enough to know it’s true. Every word of it. He’s one of those guys who’s going to squander his whole life base-jumping and climbing fourteeners and cave diving in Mexico. Only, she isn’t going to be that girl.
But that’s a conversation for a different time. Today’s today, and tomorrow’s going to come soon enough, and right now the only thing Jason wants to discuss is whitewater. Shooting a class IV rapids in his sport raft, which he’s outfitted stem-to-stern for what he calls “maximum thrill-osity.” An hour from now, he promises Carrie with a wolfish grin, they’ll be chopping through the legendary waters of the Royal Gorge. The Grand Canyon of the Arkansas. A dangerous, wildass run, he assures her with a single raised eyebrow, and one she won’t soon forget. It’s going to be the craziest ride of her life, he says—excluding, of course, those rarified moments she’s spent with him in the sack, doing the nasty.
They met on the slopes last winter, over at Monarch Mountain Resort, where her dad, Charlie, is a ski instructor.
Her folks are mostly okay with Jason—her dad is, anyway—but because she’s only a few months away from her freshman year in college and looking at a full ride on an academic scholarship, they’ve been dropping some not-so-subtle hints. What’s the rush? her father says. Why not get through your first semester and see how things play out? If Jason’s the guy you think he is, he’ll still be there, waiting. Her mother, who’s had it in for Jason from the get-go, isn’