The third osprey chick was fine, said Polly. Maybe it was in the deep center of the nest. The dogs would find the body if it wasn’t.
The kids and dogs zigzagged around the field. “Something else may have eaten it already,” said Jane, who had an ancient view of life.
Polly pushed such thoughts away. The bench faced south toward the river, the still-green hills and white-tipped Absaroka Mountains, all the snow from the tops and the darker north-facing slopes still plummeting into the Yellowstone, where it joined the immense melt from the caldera of Yellowstone Park and plunged on to the Missouri, the Mississippi, the Gulf. The river swirled and thundered, but the level would drop quickly. This green world would burn up in August when the fires kicked in. If Ariel’s friends had waited even one week to float, she might not be out there now, invisible.
Why, thought Polly, losing herself for a second, ripping herself back. They watched a disembodied kite flit above a lonely cow on the far side, above trees and rocks, below the osprey’s circling mate. Jane’s spaniel, a blur with millipede legs, hadn’t seen much beyond her own Michigan backyard, and barked at a stroller, an alien. The couple pushing it showed no sense of humor. She barked at the oblivious day-trippers passing on the Yellowstone River, too. Jane and Polly avoided looking directly at the water until the county’s search boats appeared.
“It seems like a tremendous waste of time,” said Jane. “They can’t see anything in that water.”
“They’re hoping she’s alive on a bank,” said Polly, who felt as though she should be looking, too.
“Not likely,” said Jane. “After two days. When do they give up?”
“Not yet,” said Polly. She waved to a man in one of the drift boats, her skinny cousin Harry Swanberg, grandson of the redoubtable Maude. It wasn’t his first search.
Two days earlier, on Friday, June 28, when eleven people headed to the Yellowstone, putting in at about three in the afternoon just south of Livingston for their first float of the year, the river was too high to be safe, but the group wanted to stay ahead of the onslaught of summer tourists. An older crew had talked about going but bowed out—Vinnie was dealing with a client’s suicide attempt in jail, Polly and Ned had an appointment in Bozeman, Josie and Harry were squabbling about their wedding. There would be nothing relaxing about a float when the river was flowing this fast, but many of this younger group were used to the Colorado and the Salmon. They’d floated a dozen times the year before and wanted to see which channels had deepened or filled with gravel during high water, where beaches had formed or banks collapsed. One drift boat held two people delusional enough to think they could fish in the cloudy, turbid water; a large raft carried seven others who only wanted to have fun; and a couple—Ariel Delgado and Graham Susak—chose a double kayak. The group packed beer, fried chicken, and coleslaw. They brought coats, though when they shuttled cars to their take-out, on the east end of town, it was ninety degrees. When they put in, ten miles south of town, it was slightly cooler, with a puff of clouds to the west.
They passed many downed trees, some hard to see in the milky water. The people in the raft and drift boat—bartenders, teachers, carpenters—watched the kayak, worried, but Ariel was careful, and Graham had spent his childhood on Puget Sound and the Columbia River and swum on a college team.
They saw two bald eagles, one golden eagle, many ducks, bank swallows, a fox, dozens of whitetails, hundreds of cows. Someone’s goat ran along the riverbank, watching the flotilla. Graham said he saw a bear, but no one believed him. The river was too violent to hear much, and people shouted conversations. Hail loomed when they were an hour in, nearly to the canyon. You could feel a sudden sharp edge to the air even before an extreme darkness appeared to the northwest. The threat passed quickly, with just a little wind, and though the people in the raft and the drift boat decided to get home, Ariel and Graham pulled over on a pretty island. They waved, and Ariel disappeared from the world.
Something awful happened every year on the river. How could it not? Even during a spring when the flow wasn’t record-breaking, whole trees shot down like Pooh sticks. A stiff dead baby bison had floated through town a few years earlier with its own golden eagle riding on top, watching the world between nibbles.
People loved the river Yellowstone for coolness, prettiness, peace, food, wildness, a dare, but touching it meant buying a lottery ticket. Using it was like driving on ice, flying a small plane, walking out of a bar with a stranger. It was easier if the unlucky person was a tourist, but usually it was someone the town knew, someone who loved the river, who understood what he or she might be getting into. This year it was Ariel, who’d been born here, played soccer and cello, tested high, been generally beloved.
When Polly and Ned moved to Livingston, Ariel, age seven, was one of the first people they met. Harry, Ariel’s almost stepfather for three years before Ariel’s mother found religion, stayed close with the girl and brought her to Polly and Ned’s ramshackle house while they renovated, and Ariel swept sawdust or played with paint samples. When Ariel’s mother married the next year, they saw less of her, though Harry kept up monthly lunches. Ariel’s stepfather, who worked for UPS, was a conservative Christian and loved his stepdaughter but was jealous of his wife’s history. Harry, who’d managed the impossible task of being a popular cop in a small town, was a difficult predecessor.
Ariel started helping with Sam when she was fifteen and he was two. She succeeded her joyless best friend Connie Tuttwilliger, whom Polly used for a few hours a week when Sam reached two months. Polly had been finishing a cookbook edit, and her notion of how things would proceed—she’d work at night and during the baby’s naps, or perhaps while Sam was peacefully watching dust motes and attentive dogs—was shredded during the first weeks of colic and doubt and fatigue. Connie thought Polly and Ned were bizarre—so many books, wine bottles, the foreign and violently flavored condiments in the refrigerator, and the clean counter of cooks above an unclean floor of slobs—and was offended by the idea that Polly insisted on nursing rather than handing over the baby for a bottle. Connie generally lacked humor, or what Ned referred to as elasticity, but she was renowned for her first aid skills—when Bobby Lundquist had stuck his tongue in an outlet, she’d gotten his heart beating again, and this had made her services priceless to all the parents who signed up for her summer swimming lessons. She was in demand, and the Berrigans were relieved when Ariel, who was more their speed, was allowed to babysit despite their status as nonbelievers.
After high school, Ariel stuck close—college in Bozeman, an apartment with Connie. She was a good girl, a kind girl. She dated vaguely and rarely got in trouble. When Ariel did misbehave, Harry and Polly and Josie and Ned were the people she could call. Ned and Harry plucked Ariel out of a high school party during senior year and waited quietly while she threw up in an alley behind the Methodist church. Polly rescued her when Ariel, busted at an under-eighteen party in Bozeman, panicked and told the police Polly was her mother.
But Ariel was mostly a cautious girl, sometimes to her detriment. Prepping for a catering one night, drinking wine with Polly, she’d said she’d never gone out with anyone she’d been in love with. All the boys she’d dated had been assholes.