Rapid Descent

RAPID DESCENT

Gwen Hunter
Rapid Descent

Acknowledgments

My Thanks To:

Mike Kohlenberger—raft guide extraordinaire, teller of great stories, and the real Jedi Mike. A guide who would never ever toss a client into the drink on the Lost Guide, but who has the skill to do it if he wanted. You are the only person I ever based a character on. Thank you for all you taught me about rivers, the history of the Appalachian Mountains and their ecology. It is because of you that this book exists at all.

Dave Crawford, owner of Rapid Expeditions in the Smoky Mountains, who gave us kayak instruction, kept us safe, took us rafting and had great stories. Thank you for all you taught me about myself. Because of you, I fell in love with hardboats and rivers, and I learned to relax.

Dave Shook of Old Town Outfitters in Rock Hill, South Carolina, and his son Cameron Shook, who came up with gear information and…um…have I mentioned the great stories? River people have a lot of great stories!

Sarah Bell of Green Rivers Adventures for the great trip down the Upper Green River. Loved the IKs—single-man inflatable kayaks! Ashlyn and Emily, you were great guides!

Leah McDowell, for the lessons in kayak rolling at UNCA, University of North Carolina at Asheville, and for introductions to so many people.

Becka Crawford, who named Rocking River.

Ralph Altman for being a friend since high school, and for being so gracious as I tried to pick up kayaking skills.

Robbie and Donna Ashley for the use of their pool while Rod and I learned to Eskimo roll.

CeeCee Murphy for helping me work out the accident scene where Nell is injured. And who loves rivers with “nice drops” of twelve to twenty feet…

My mom, Joyce Wright, for being my first and best reader, first and best fan, and for catching things I missed in the manuscript.

Jeff Gerecke, my agent, who keeps the future in mind.

Miranda Indrigo, my editor. Gifted with the broad view, a gentle—though thorough—editorial hand and an innate kindness. You have always made my books better, stronger, tighter and faster than my own limited vision.

And last but never ever least, thanks to my husband, Rod, who has supported my careers, my dreams and my writing. And who was willing to take on a new sport, a new lifestyle (river rat) and a new way to travel (RVing). I’m the luckiest gal in the world.

In memory of Delta

Who gave us love, guarded the house

and was an adventurer at heart.

Contents

PART ONE

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

PART TWO

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

PART ONE

1

Six Years Ago

Nell woke slowly, her eyes slit, blinded by sunlight. She blinked to clear the gummy substance away. Licked dry, cracked lips. Trees took shape overhead, fall leaves turning gold and red. Blue sky peeked beyond them and puffy clouds floated between. She was lying down. Outside. Lifting a hand, she encountered slithery cloth and held it up. It was her sleeping bag.

She eased an arm out of the bag and braced her elbow on the ground, then pushed. Her arm quivered, so weak it barely lifted her. Slowly, she sat up. The world rocked and whirled, dipping like a class-V rapid. A mallet thumped rhythmically against the inside of her head.

Nausea doubled her over; Nell reeled, retched, grabbing her head. Her pulse pounded. She retched again and again, dry heaves slamming around the pain in her skull, a wrecking ball intent on pulping her brain into mush. Intense thirst ripped at her throat. Her eyes burned, tearless. Shivers caught her. She clutched her head with a hand and the pain over her temple doubled. A pulpy knot rested beneath her palm.

Dehydration. Shock? Yeah, shock. Bump on the head, likely concussion.

Big freaking help, figuring out a diagnosis, she thought. She eased back down and eventually the nausea dissipated. Trees overhead stopped dancing. A bird called. Whitewater roared nearby. The air was cold and damp, the sensory stimulation as familiar as her own skin, yet nothing looked familiar from where she lay.

Beneath the sleeping bag, she fingered polyester fleece, smooth against her hand. Under that, she felt the ultrafine knit of water-wicking synthetics—her cool-weather, stay-warm-even-if-you-get-wet long johns.

Slowly, she turned her head and was rewarded with only a small increase in the rhythm of the hammer beating against her brain. The coals of a long-dead fire were close by. Four full water bottles.

Water. Nell slid an arm out and grabbed a bottle, pulled it back under the sleeping bag. With trembling fingers, she opened it. Managed to drink a few sips without losing much to the cloth of the sleeping bag. After a few minutes, her stomach settled and she drank half of the water. Her body sucked up the fluid, demanding more. But she waited, allowing her system to accept it. If she drank it too fast she might throw it up and lose all the benefit. She remembered that from wilderness first-aid class, or maybe it was the swift water–rescue course. She didn’t remember why she was on a riverbank, alone, but if she could remember that much, the rest would surely come back.

Gradually, sip by sip, Nell drank almost all of the twenty ounces and capped the bottle. Slowly she sat up again, holding her head to keep it together, sure it wanted to fly apart. She was lying on a flat space in a tiny clearing, not more than ten feet wide and maybe twelve feet long. A shelter had been built over her, thin boughs of fresh-cut tree branches resting over a single, larger branch. She held her hand over the stone-ringed fire pit. It was as cold as it looked. Deadwood was piled nearby, but hadn’t been used to feed the fire. Her kayak was overturned, hull up, resting atop her PFD, paddle, helmet, dry suit and kayak spray skirt. Her rescue rope had been used to secure the pine branches of her shelter in place. Her other rescue equipment, biners, pulleys, prusicks, were all piled together, half in, half out of the rescue-equipment bag. Near them was a cell phone, in pieces, turned on its side as if to dry out.

She reached an arm out of the bag and flipped the dry suit over. Each of the limbs had been sliced and the neck hole had been cut out, the gashes irregular, as if made by a rescue knife, slashing. The chest area was ripped and torn, punctured, as was the abdominal area. A sharp twig, dead pine needles still attached, was rolled into the neoprene fabric over the chest, which should have been protected by her flotation vest. It was twisted and snarled through several holes. A feeling of dread slid between her ribs with all the finesse of an assassin’s blade.

She pulled the neck of her fleece shirt out and looked at her chest. Across her neck, ribs, abdomen and along her sides were field dressings, mounds of gauze held in place with elastic cling wrapped around her. Blood had seeped out and dried in the dressing. Her ribs and chest throbbed with each breath, and she had a feeling that if she coughed, she was going to hurt. A lot. She was cold, shivering, the skin of her hands white and puckered.

Nell looked around. First rule of white water—never paddle alone. But she was alone, and had been for a while, it seemed. Second rule of white water—you can only depend on yourself. It looked like she would have to.

Moving like an eighty-year-old instead of with her usual vigor, Nell peeled out of the sleeping bag. First things first, and the most urgent was the call of nature. Too weak to bend properly, she held on to a branch to rearrange her clothes, using the moment to inspect herself more thoroughly. She was covered with lacerations, punctures and bruises, sure evidence of being caught in a strainer. The feeling of dread increased. Finished, Nell pulled her clothes back in place and caught sight of her left hand. The plain gold ring brought her up short. Memories flickered. The feeling of alarm increased.

Where was Joe? She looked around the clearing. Joe had been here. It was his phone in pieces. His way of stacking firewood, with a package of corn chips nearby. Joe would never have left her alone.

Nell hobbled to the stacked firewood and bark. Kneeling, working by instinct, she positioned the bark, leaves and fibers in a cone, placed the kindling over it and took two Fritos corn chips from the opened pack. With the lighter she found beneath the chip bag, she lit the corn chips and set them to either side of the cone. The oil in the chips burned a long time and was a time-honored way of getting and keeping a fire started. The leaves and bark ignited and Nell fed the small flame with kindling until it could support itself on the deadwood. The blaze felt unbearably hot on her face and hands, testament to hypothermia.

Joe would be impressed at her recall of medical terms. He used them fluently, while she more often stumbled over them. She held her hands over the fire, warming herself, rubbing them gently together. They were bruised and cut, nails broken with filth crusted beneath them. She leaned into the smoke, holding her breath, letting the warmth seep around her head, through her snarled hair. Her face was chapped and raw, and the warmth felt wonderful. Rocking back on her heels, she took in fresh air for several breaths, then bent back into the smoky heat. And again. And again. Thawing herself.

When she was warmer, Nell rolled to a sitting position and slid her feet into her lightweight, neoprene river shoes with tough rubber bottoms, constructed to be worn by paddlers in cold water, and stood. The shoes were dry and warmer than her feet. Joe had left them beside the sleeping bag, which, when she looked it over, was both bags, Joe’s and hers, one inside the other.

Nausea flirted with vertigo, and a cough threatened but held off. She crossed the clearing to the pile of supplies, strength returning more quickly now that she was moving, but pain bid for attention. Her head injury made the world sway drunkenly.

Beneath the cell-phone parts were two items—her rashguard shirt, which Joe had somehow pulled off her body, and the Ziploc baggies that Joe used to keep sensitive electronics dry. They looked as punctured as her chest. Inside was a piece of paper, a letter with her name at the top. A shiver trembled through her, teeth chattering.

Shaking, Nell opened the ruined bag and let the plastic fall to the ground as she read her husband’s neat, block writing.

Nellie baby,

Don’t know what you’ll remember about the accident. Water went up fast just before we reached the Double Falls. The class IIIs looked and sounded like class Vs. Big water. You were out of position river-left, and elected to take the cheat. I was too far right and had to take the crapid.

Nell smiled at the river runner’s term for a crappy rapid—a difficult and dangerous rapid, but one without a hoohaah component, without joy at the bottom. She touched the paper, her fingers sliding over the word.

I was scared shitless when you weren’t at the bottom, in the pool. The end of the cheat was blocked by a dead pine and you got caught in the strainer. Force of the water had lifted your boat up enough so you could breathe, but the tree was shifting, dragging you down. I did a hairy ferry and took to the rocks, climbed to get to you. By the time I did, you were bleeding pretty badly and starting to slip under.

Nell smoothed the paper. Badly…Joe with his perfect grammar…

She considered the description of the rapids. The double falls, the cheat—the easier drop taken by novices or wimps—the mention of a pool. She remembered the trip. Joe had planned it as a delayed honeymoon, kayaking on the Big South Fork of the Cumberland River. Not a bad run, but not easy, and not one they could paddle without a lot of rain. The South Fork had notoriously unpredictable water levels. Not a dam-fed river, rather, a rain-fed one, it was usually dry this time of year, but the remnants of a late hurricane had stalled over the Tennessee plateau and dumped a lot of rain. The South Fork had been running big water—nearly 2500 cubic feet per second, or CFS.

Her headache eased as she began to put it together, and as the water she had drunk entered her bloodstream.

I got you out of the boat but we had to swim the last of the cheat to the pool. The water took a squirrelly curl and it knocked you into a rock. You went out. Concussion. Shock. I’m so sorry, baby. I couldn’t hold you. I banged up my knee, getting you to shore.

Nell looked around. They were river-right. Joe had gotten them across the river in big water. Swimming. With a bad knee.

I got us up the shore to a flat spot and set up camp, made a fire, got you warm. I watched for other boaters, but the weather must have turned nasty upstream and no one was taking the river. It’s morning now, and you’re still out and I’m getting worried. The water is still too high to hike back, and my knee is swollen up like a grapefruit. I’d never be able to make it up the trail at the confluence and then the two miles to the nearest house. So I’m paddling to the takeout for help. I know—never boat alone. But I’ll be careful. And I’ll get back to you. I love you.

Monday, 0800, Oct. 22

Joe

Nell carefully folded the paper back into the uncertain protection of the ripped baggies. She glanced at her watch. It was 2:00 p.m.—fourteen hundred according to military time, Joe’s preference. The date displayed was 10–23.

Nell’s legs gave way as her puny strength leached out. She sat, landing hard, the baggies and her watch face all she could see. It had been over twenty-four hours. Joe had been gone more than a day. If she was where she thought, then his rescue trip should have taken half the previous morning. Help should have reached her this morning at the latest. It was now afternoon, and no help had arrived. She looked out at the water, still running high, perhaps 2000 CFS. There was a large X made of tree branches—an emergency signal to any passing boaters—only feet away on the shore. Joe’s handiwork.

Joe had gone out on the water alone.

Fear spiraled up, her heart beat at a painful, irregular pace.

Her short fall had dislodged something in her lungs and she started coughing, low, wet racking coughs that seared her chest. Nell clutched her torso with one hand, her head with the other. She had taken in water. Probably had pneumonia to go with the concussion. She stared into the tree trunks, oak, poplar and sycamore branches, wavering for a moment with thin tears. She was too dehydrated to truly cry. Not that she had cried in years. Not that she would cry now. She closed her eyes, the world swirling, sucking her down.

When Nell woke again, her skin was hot and she was shivering. Only half an hour had passed, but her lips felt like sandpaper and her body ached. When she could sit up again, Nell scanned the clearing and her equipment. She was sick. There was no way she should go on the water. But Joe was out there…He hadn’t come back. He was in trouble. Had to be.

Shoving the bag with the precious letter into her pocket, she pushed to her knees and stood, fighting the need to cough. She could cough later, be sore later, be sick to death later. After she found Joe. She focused on that one thing. Find Joe.

2

The most important element in finding her husband wasn’t the state of her health, but whether her boat was still usable. She ran her hand along the hull, noting a few new scratches, but nothing major. Using her own body weight to test for cracks, she stepped up on the overturned boat and walked along it. It was sound. Forced to use both hands to flip the lightweight, forty-five-pound kayak over, she reeled and nearly fell as the boat rocked lazily upright.

She was weak. Too weak to be contemplating what she was planning.

In her memory, she could hear Joe’s threat when he gifted her with the Pyrahna Micro Bat. “You ever boat alone and I’ll kick your pretty little butt,” he’d said, giving her that grin. Oh, God, that grin. Devil-may-care, skirting the edge of reckless but never giving in, so full of untamed life. She pressed the pads of her fingers against her burning eyes.

“I’ll help you kick my butt,” she whispered, “when I find you. After I kick yours for scaring me like this.” Her voice was hoarse, weak.

Knowing she needed water, she upended the bottle and finished the last drop, capped it, and set the empty near the supply bag. The small, portable water filter was nowhere in sight, and she knew Joe had taken it, leaving her bottles. Which was smart, in case she had been too weak to make it to the river to filter some. She tucked two of the full water bottles inside the bag, and opened the fourth one to sip on. Joe had left her a large packet of trail mix and both of the dehydrated dinners they had brought, but the packages had somehow been punctured. Backpacker meals were similar to Meal, Ready-to-Eat, survival fare developed by the military and now made by several commercial companies and used by survivalists in the wild. Joe always packed a couple when they were going to be out overnight, just in case the fishing was bad. Along with the cell phone, these had gotten soaked and were bloated, the dehydrated food expanded with moisture.

She sniffed each of the freeze-dried packets and tore one fully open, pouring its contents into a metal cup, adding a little of her water to reconstitute it. Carefully, she placed a rock at the edge of the small campfire and balanced the cup on it. The ripped package went into the flames and she tossed the uneaten one into the torn baggie.

There was a smear of red on the baggie. Fresh blood. She inspected her hands. Several of the uncountable cuts on them had broken open. There were no medical supplies left. It looked like Joe had used all the cling and gauze on her already. Nell shrugged. She wouldn’t bleed to death, not from these little things.

While the food warmed, she munched trail mix and considered the dry suit, but there was no way to wear it. She shoved it into the bow of the boat and checked the rigging. The boat was permanently rigged just for her, sculpted pieces of hard and soft foam along the rigging’s hip and knee pads, the bulkhead set just right so the balls of her feet rested against it for leverage and steering. She had lost one of the hip pads, and she pulled the suit back out. Joe and she both boated with rescue knives strapped to their floatation vests, and she cut an oblong strip about four inches wide and two feet long from one of the legs; she folded it over until it was the right thickness and wedged it in place, securing it with a strip of duct tape. The parsimonious part of her cringed at further damaging the expensive suit. The realistic part of her counted it as just another element of the goal—finding Joe.

Shivers racked her. It could be cold in October on the Cumberland. She would miss the dry suit. Undeterred, she shoved what was left of it back into the bow. To counter the cold, she pulled the rashguard shirt over her head, feeling stupid that she had not thought of the warmth it could provide until now. Thus fortified, she dismantled the camp.

The rescue rope had been knotted through the tree branches of her shelter, and by the time she finished removing it, her hands were bleeding freely and stinging from pine sap. She coiled the rope properly and tucked it into her rope bag. Joe had taken none of her flipline, but she was missing two prusicks, webbing, and two carabineers—biners—used for rescue. Joe had likely lost his while rescuing her and had been smart enough to take hers.

An image hit her, Technicolor, surround-sound memory. Her hands. Holding the branch of a dead tree. Blood flowing weakly over her skin. White water rising around her, the river’s might thunderous. Rushing and cold. The smell of the Cumberland was iron-wet in her memory. The roar of power damping any other sound. She was trying to attach a length of webbing to a branch above her, the biner and bright red flex sharp in her memory. She had tried to rescue herself. And somehow had lost the equipment. The image went no further, leaving her with only that single moment—tree, her hands, blood, two pieces of rescue equipment. And pain in her chest, up under her PFD. Where she had been stabbed by a branch she hung from.

When the instant of memory faded, Nell was sitting on the ground again, her white-water equipment before her, trail-mix bag on its side, some of the valuable calories spilled on the ground. Shivering, goose bumps tight on her skin, fever surely rising, she gathered up the mix and brushed it off. Eating it, she went back to work.

Her personal flotation device was missing a strap at the bottom, cut through by a sharp knife, but it would keep her afloat if she had to swim. The neoprene kayak skirt, the device that made boat and boater one and kept out water that would otherwise quickly swamp the small craft, was another matter. When properly in use, a kayak skirt was fitted around the rim of the opening of the boat and snugged around the boater’s waist, making both a watertight unit. The skirt had been damaged and repaired with duct tape, which would make it stiff and harder than usual to fit over the rim of the boat’s cockpit.

Nell pulled against the elastic neoprene, counting the tears. There were three big ugly ones and five smaller ones, all hidden beneath duct tape which had been applied to top and bottom. Nell felt her waistline and compared her wounds to the damaged skirt. The strainer must have punctured through the skirt, up at an angle beneath her PFD, and through her dry suit. Joe had obviously repaired what he could, but the duct tape restricted the elastic of the neoprene skirt. It might last for another run. Might.

But she had not lost her helmet and, miracle of miracles, she still had her paddle. Briefly, she wondered if she had dropped it when caught in the strainer. She had no memory of it in the vision of her hands. If she lost it, Joe must have recovered it for her.

Either way, she was good to go. But first, the river. She walked along the shore, checking out the flow, but the river curled away from her between the boulders lining the South Fork of the Cumberland. Balancing carefully, she climbed up one and worked her way upstream, jumping from the top of one car-, bus-, or house-size rock to another—the only way up or downstream, outside of the white water. Her river shoes gripped the slippery boulders. If she fell and busted her leg, she would be in bigger trouble than she was in now.

The water flow was still high and gave her an idea how difficult the trip was going to be. The roar of the water was like a jet engine. White water foamed and churned, hiding the undercut rocks, strainer-debris, sieves and other dangers.

The cheat was only a few yards upstream, still running with enough flow to take it in a creek-boat. She couldn’t see the tree that had caught her, the cheat curving hard around a huge boulder, the rock the size of their bedroom in the apartment. Big water. Water that had already tried to kill her. Which made her mad, a much more useful emotion than the worry that niggled at the back of her mind.

Nell turned back downstream and walked past her campsite. Ahead, she saw a pair of young tom turkeys, standing on a spit of shore, drinking. With a flap of wings, they whirled uphill, racing into the scrub and out of sight.

Boulders and water-swept trees wedged between rock blocked her way. However, between two rounded rocks she found a glimpse of the white water downstream. The Washing Machine on the Big South Fork. From this angle, it didn’t look too difficult. Dicey class IIs. It was impossible to hike farther. Nell headed back to camp, picking her way with care. Her breath felt easier, her chest pain was less. She could do this. She had to do this.

Back at the camp, Nell broke down the emergency X signaling for help. She tucked four lengths of flex into her pockets and scattered the branches.

Gathering up the last of her equipment, Nell strapped it on or tucked it in, wrapping the sleeping bags in their waterproof protection and forcing them into the stern. She stepped into the kayak-cockpit skirt and pulled it to her waist, her breath tight and painful. She couldn’t hear the soft wheeze of her lungs over the roar of the water, but she could feel it.

She added a bit more kindling to the fire and checked the temperature of the Backpacker. It was hot enough to eat, though not hot enough to be tasty. Of course, no amount of cooking could truly make a dehydrated meal tasty. She scooped up the rice and bits of chicken with a camp spork. Energy flooded her with each bite and she felt better instantly. Joe had chosen the Santa Fe chicken and rice, her favorite. Dinner suitable for a belated river honeymoon. Grimly, she smiled as she ate, sitting close to the fire and absorbing the warmth.

Nell washed the cup and spork and tucked them into place in the kayak. It was much more full than usual, with Joe’s sleeping bag, some of the equipment between her thighs instead of in the bow or stern. Using the empty water bottle, she carried enough river water up to douse the fire, first kneeling and drawing into herself a last bit of heat and warmth. When she could bear to, knowing that this meant she wouldn’t be warm or safe for hours, she upended the bottle. The water gurgled and sizzled the fire out. She stirred the ashes, pushing the half-burned kindling into the mud. She had never added any of the bigger logs, and left the pile of deadwood and the ring of stones for the next camper.

As ready as she could be, Nell slipped on her damaged PFD, zipping the vest up the side and yanking tightly on the remaining straps. Each action sent shock waves of pain through her. She pushed the agony aside. There would be time for pain later. Much later.

She settled her helmet on her head, careful of the egg-shaped bruise, though there was no way to avoid it entirely. If the helmet shifted, she’d hurt, so she pulled the chinstrap more snugly than usual. Satisfied, she dragged the kayak to the shore, which angled down to the water. Before her was the Big South Fork of the Cumberland River and the pristine pool at the base of the Double Falls, but boulders bigger than cars blocked her view. From the sound of the rapids, she better be ready.

Every river has a scent, and the iron-tang of the Cumberland and of deep, rich earth and sap-heavy trees lining the banks and up the gorge walls filled her nostrils. A blue heron stood on the far shore, watching. Bending against the pain of her chest and the thrumming in her head, Nell wriggled into the white-water kayak, placing her feet against the bulkhead, wedging her hips in tight and snuggling her knees past the thigh pads.

She drank the last drop of water from the second bottle and tucked it inside the kayak body with the others. She made sure that everything was in place and secure, properly balanced, as the slightest weight shift affected the roll and pitch of the nimble little boat. She shoved the supply bag with its precious water and food between and under her thighs, and clipped it securely to the bottom of the boat.

She rolled the curled hem of the kayak skirt around the back of the cockpit hole, easing it into place with cold, shaking fingers. When the back and sides were secure, she took a breath for strength, leaned forward with her elbows at her sides, using her body for leverage, and folded the front of the skirt over the front rim, the skirt and the boat’s emergency releases both in easy reach. It left her winded and aching and it was all she could manage—not a pretty entrance, but sufficient. And the repairs in the skirt held. She was watertight, at least for a while.

With a deep breath that banged around in her head and chest like a gong, Nell took her paddle in her right hand and shoved off with her left, sliding down the shore. Leaning back in a seal launch, she lifted her lower body and the bow as the kayak hit the water. Pain thrummed in her head and along her sides. Icy river splashed over her, the rashguard shirt providing some protection but not enough, water soaking through to her polyester sweatshirt as she braced right and left. With a directional sweep of the paddle, she guided the boat to the center of the small pool. The sound of whitewater was both behind and ahead, an enormous roar. Boulders and steep, tree-covered terrain rose all around her, forbidding and austere. It would have been beautiful if she hadn’t been sick. If Joe weren’t missing.

She swept with the paddle in the first half of a 360-degree turn, facing upstream, the Double Falls now ahead, with its rushing cheat visible. With another stroke that pulled her chest muscles into a short, tight spasm, she completed the turn. When she could breathe again, she checked the banks.

On the shoreline, what little there was of it, debris was piled against rocks. The scant foliage lay bent and low where it had been pressed down by rushing water, all evidence of the high water that caused the near disaster Joe had written about. She back-stroked gently to hold her place along the shore.

She located the current by the eddy line, a faint ripple of water. With quick, sure, forward strokes, Nell moved upstream, across the eddy at an angle, and leaned downstream. A single stroke and brace brought her into the current. It seized her boat and jerked her forward.