Hellbender (Murder Ballads and Whiskey Book 2) by Jason Jack Miller Read Free Book Online Page A

rain or sunshine—I learned that no matter what I did, this rock would never move for me. So I got a hell of a lot better at going around it.
    To get to his video spot, Duff had to push his way through the throng of geek boaters crowded onto Vulture Rock, on the other side of the main flow of water. The geeks were usually from the city, either Pittsburgh or D.C. and guides kind of hated them. They had money and drove nicer cars and acted like they owned the river. Like the bars stayed open just for them. Like all the redneck locals were no different than black flies. Like Ohiopyle was their playground, even if they only paddled when it was eighty-five degrees and sunny.
    My job was to deny them any sort of entertainment. I looked over at Alex and smiled.
    She didn’t smile back. Instead, she said, “So there’s a room underneath the rock?”
    I nodded and that was it. Duff believed that the amount of time you spent looking at a rapid was directly proportional to your likelihood of flipping. And talking about a rapid, like Alex was doing, was even worse.
    She said, “Like, water goes beneath the rock?”
    I put my finger to my lips. “Shhhhh.” I pointed to draw her attention to the first
    raft, now entering the channel above Dimple.
    I blew my whistle to get their attention and took a deep breath.
    They quickly developed a right hand angle, just like Smurf told them to. I had them drift forward. All four faces in the raft watched intently, waiting for the ‘paddle hard’ command.
    “Not yet.” I shook my head and waved my hands.
    “Not yet.” I held up my pointer fingers.
    “Go! Go! Dig! Dig Dig!”
    Their well-synchronized strokes took them easily past Pinball and I relaxed a little. I looked at Alex and raised an eyebrow. “One down.”
    The second boat was already in the channel. A group of high school boys. I
    blew my whistle and waved my hand to get their attention. Then I gently gave the ‘paddle forward’ signal. High school boys were the best, usually. When they didn’t want to look stupid in front of the guides. They watched me and did exactly what I asked and my hand gestures were essentially a repeat of my last set of commands.
    “Right.” “Steady.” “Steady.” “Hold.” “Right.” “Hold.”
    I looked over at Duff and shrugged. Days like this didn’t sell videos.
    He made a ‘V’ with his fingers. “That’s only two.”
    Upstream the next raft careened into the channel. I blew my whistle to get their attention, but they hit the ledge on the river left side and spun. Duff stood up when the geeks on the rock behind him started to cheer.
    I blew into the whistle so hard my ears rang. I stomped my foot and yelled, but the family of four couldn’t get their shit together. From the back of the raft the dad yelled, but his two sons wouldn’t budge. Both looked a hell of a lot younger than the minimum age requirement—their life jackets looked gigantic. When I saw they weren’t going to make it I sat on the rock, preparing to put as much of my weight on the raft’s downstream tube as I could.
    In one gushing motion the raft hit Dimple and swamped. The upstream tube disappeared as the river swallowed the dad. The geeks on the rock applauded when I pulled the mom and smaller kid onto Dimple with me. Clinging to the center tube, the older brother floated downstream alone in a raft filled with knee-deep water. Smurf peeled out of the eddy and hustled toward the dad.
    Raucous applause from Vulture Rock alerted me to the presence of another boat already in the channel—another potential disaster. I waved my hands over my head, but the paddlers never once looked down stream at me.
    “What the fuck did you tell them, Smurf?” I blew into my whistle so hard I got lightheaded. I waved my arms, but they never once looked at me.
    The snowball effect was in full swing. I frantically kicked the boat away from Dimple, but the raft cart-wheeled and its paddlers disappeared below the rock. Smurf