All cell phones or other communication devices are banned on this trip. Become one with nature and write in your natural state. All your senses will be returned to their natural condition. This workshop will be taught by Wenona, who will also be your river guide. She grew up along this river. Her grandfather was Eskiminzin, an Aravaipa Apache Chief. She has published numerous books and has taught writing seminars at colleges and universities throughout the country.
The ad urged instant registration because only fifteen participants would be accepted. I complied and instantly signed up, because the river trip sounded great and the workshop was actually much cheaper than taking a guided river trip for the same number of days. I thought that maybe it was cheaper because we had to row our own boats. I had barely enough credit left on my Visa to pay for the trip.
That was three weeks ago and now here I am at orientation in the Hassayampa Inn’s Marina room with fourteen other writers, not counting Wenona.
“I know your first question will be about my name,” she said, “so I may as well tell you about it right now. Wenona is my American Indian name. It means first born daughter.
I raised my hand, she nodded and I asked, “was Eskiminzin, really your grandfather?”
“Yes, and did you know Native Americans had a universal sign language that their children learned by the time they were three years old, before they could even talk? Any child could communicate with any Indian, no matter what tribe they were from?”
I didn’t know this and evidently none of my classmates knew it either as they all looked dumbfounded.
“Now,” she said, “Let’s get to know one another before we get started. You first,” she pointed at me. I stood up and told my story, how I wanted to learn to be a writer. Fourteen other wanna be writers stood, told their names and stories.
“Let’s move on. I want to tell you I have published sixteen full length books and numerous short stories. I only teach to give back some of what I receive from the spiritual world.”
She had us all sit in a circle and said, “OK, now that we all know one another. I want each of you to tell us what you’re feeling right now. I heard fourteen stories of frustration, problems, and despair that seems to plague all writers. I heard stories that ranged from mediocre problems to heart wrenching downright cry-in-your-beer type stories.
My turn to speak came, “I’m sure happy to be in the place that I am right now, with no tribulations after listening to all the troubles everyone else has.”
I had almost always said the wrong thing in circumstances like this. All these people essentially bared their souls and I made a dumb comment like that. I wanted to kick myself, but it was too late. What’s said is said.
If I had known I was getting into a touchy feely class like this I never would have taken it. I’ve learned to never expose my weakness to others. It just gave them power over me. And now a bunch of would be writers thought nothing of telling complete strangers their innermost feelings. Unbelievable!
Wenona turned out to be very spiritual. She believed everything came from a higher power as a gift to us and we should accept anything given us. Our lives have been lived to make us what we are right now.
Yeah, that made sense to me. Of course, most of us, if given the choice, would be a different person sitting here right now, but as we weren’t given the choice, I wondered if what she said had any truth to it. Maybe I needed to live the life I’ve lived to enable me to have the mindset I now have and this gives me the ability to write as I do.
“This trip is your chance to clear your mind of any troubles you may have and to only concentrate on your surroundings. When the trip is over you’ll be amazed at your power of concentration. You’ll be noticing the colors of people’s socks, eyes and hair, and many other details you never bothered to look at before,” she said.
“By the way, everyone bring a lemon sized object to give away tonight.”
“I don’t know how to swim,” said Lydia, a psychologist from Phoenix.
“No problem, you’ll be wearing a life jacket at all times.”
We all boarded a bus in the parking lot and went on our way. It took a few hours to get to the heliport where we boarded a helicopter four at a time and were taken to an unknown location. The flight was thrilling and the scenery extraordinarily beautiful. We were put down on a sandbar where four boats were waiting for us. No motors, but enough oars for everyone. We could see from the flight in, this area was indeed desolate. We didn’t see another human, road, or building for miles in any direction.
“How can we be doing this on the small fee we paid to attend this workshop?” I asked her.
“I’m paying the difference out of my pocket; I just received a very large advance for my next book and want to share my good fortune with all of you.”
A loud round of applause greeted her statement as everyone showed his or her appreciation of her generosity.
“All right, listen up,” she said, “this is a five day trip and I’m bringing a satellite phone with in case of emergency. Wenona reached into her backpack and pulled out the phone. and passed it around so everyone could see that it worked. All other means of communication needs to be left here. Give all devices you may still have with you to the pilot.”
He got a collection of cell phones, PDA’s and a couple of laptops. As he flew away there were a lot of forlorn looks on the faces. This was a first for most of them, being in the wilderness with no means of communication with anyone but those present.
“Who’s going to row the boat?” asked Claire from Lisle, Illinois.
“You and everyone else, the ad stated that you’d get to row” Wenona said, as she threw her backpack into the lead boat.
A grumble rippled through the body of the workshop participants, but the helicopter was gone and there wasn’t much anyone could do now except row. I guessed most of them skipped the print where it said “Row your own boat.”
“We’re going to camp here for the night and start early in the morning.”
She led us around a bend and everyone was shocked to see several canopies set up with tables beneath them laden with food and drink.
“That must have been a helluva advance you got,” said Connie from Alabama, as she grabbed a cold bottle of Coors.
“No writing tonight everyone just eat, be merry and relax. Tonight we’ll have a campfire, and please bring the lemon-sized object to the campfire.”
The fire burned bright and the beer and wine flowed freely. I enjoyed the smiling faces and loud laughing.
Wenona stood and called for everyone’s attention. “One at a time, place the object you brought with you around the fire and tell us what quality you are giving with it.”
There were many different objects placed in a circle: jewelry, a cross, rocks, a fossilized piece of bone and other stuff. Each item was assigned a characteristic such as love, peace or some other nice attribute. Each person picked an object with the attribute they most wanted. I picked the fossilized piece of bone and when Wenona asked me,” what its attribute was”
For some unknown reason I answered, “Murder!” Silence, everyone sat silent and still. “I meant Mother,” I said, I don’t think anyone believed me. I wondered if this was a premonition like I sometimes got.
Everyone got their object and sat in a circle away from the roaring campfire. Suddenly Wenona stood before us completely nude and she looked great considering she was over sixty.
“All you ladies take off your bras,” she yelled, swinging her fifty two triple D in circles, “Free yourself from any and all restrictions.”
Hesitant Luann from Georgia stood up, reached under her T-shirt, released her bra and joined Wenona in bra swinging. Soon all the women were swinging their bras in unison. All the males clapped at this exhibition of freedom. They soon discarded Jockey shorts and swung them in unison with the women. I joined in myself because this looked like fun and the women outnumbered the men two to one. Every man’s dream come true I thought, as the women took their T shirts off and there was titties bouncing all over the place.
I don’t know what came over me. I’m usually reticent about displaying any emotion, but I stripped naked and danced around the fire and chanted like an old time Indian. The more I danced and whooped the faster and louder I got. An unseen force was driving me, I could never dance like this. Maybe I’m learning to free myself from restrictions placed on me by myself? I guess the ad was right when it stated that we’d rev up our senses, mine sure were revving up, way up. Before long everyone is emulating me by dancing around the fire and whooping like Indians.
While everyone was dancing I saw Wenona leave the fire and head towards the boat. Then a shadowy figure emerged from the woods and joined her, it looked like Luann but I wasn’t sure who it was. I followed them from a distance and saw Wenona reach into the backpack she had set in the boat. She removed the satellite phone and threw it into the water. I wondered what the hell she was doing destroying our only means of communication. After they walked away I was already naked so I just dove in the water to try and retrieve the phone, but the current was strong and I returned to shore as fast as I could. When I got back to the fire everyone had disappeared and I crawled into my tent and slept.
Morning arrived and everyone averted their eyes because of what we all did last night. Wenona had breakfast ready and after a few minutes passed she noticed that there was an empty place where a plate of food sat untouched.
“Who’s missing?” she asked, while counting heads to be sure she hadn’t put out too many plates. I looked around and didn’t see Luann, “It’s Luann. She’s not here.” I said, and stood up to go look for her.
“All right Joe, sit down, she’s probably going to the bathroom and she’ll show up any minute.”
A minute went by, then ten, then thirty. “I’m going to look for her,” I stood and started to leave.
“Hold on, let’s do this the right way. There are fourteen of us, so make seven teams of two. Each team will go in a different direction for a half hour only. Then we’ll all meet back here,”
My partner was Juan, he was from Prescott Az and he had misgivings about this whole expedition we were on.
“Did you know Wenona’s father was a German prisoner of war who was executed at Nuremberg for war crimes?”
“How did that happen? I mean how did her mother meet a German war criminal? Did she go to Germany?”
“When he got captured he pretended to be an ordinary enlisted man, and was sent here with other German rank and file to work on the farms. It wasn’t until the war was over that his identity was discovered.”
“What’d he do that was so bad?” I asked.
“Personally killed thousands with his experiments.”
“Experiments, what kind of experiments?”
He believed that humans have a spirit, or as some call it, a soul. He was determined to capture one. He carried out many gruesome experiments. He burned people to ashes and had the smoke rise through filters in an attempt to capture a spirit.
“Did he ever capture one?”
Juan looked at me like I was crazy. A half hour went by with no sight of Luann and we headed back to camp. Everyone had already returned while we were still looking.
“I’m going to call the forest service and have the rangers come and look for her.” Wenona fished in her backpack for her phone. A look of perplexity washed across her face as she picked up her backpack and frantically dug for the phone.
“It’s gone,” Surprise was written all over Wenona’s face. I was amazed that she was such a good actress. I wasn’t sure if I should expose her or not. I didn’t know why she threw the phone away or what she had done with Luann. I thought it best to remain silent, for now.
“How do we get in touch with anyone if you lost the phone?” asked Jerry from Chandler, AZ
“We don’t until the chopper comes back in four days,” said Wenona, “there’s no sense in sitting here waiting. If Luann comes back there’s plenty of food for her to eat. If she doesn’t find her way back, the sooner we get downriver to alert the rangers the better the chances of finding her alive.”
That made sense. We all got into the boats and shoved off. As the current swept us into the center of the river I noticed all the boats had four except one. Luann would have been the fourth passenger.
The current moved us downriver. As we came around a bend in the river loud screams erupted from the women in the first boat. I saw they were paddling for shore so I turned my boat in that direction and let the current carry me closer to shore. I saw what they were screaming about. In the center of a sandy area were the remains of what looked like a human being, now just a charred stump. Waving in the breeze attached to a piece of driftwood stuck in the sand was a half burned mane of red hair. The same red color as Luann’s hair.
“Everyone back in the boat!” shouted Wenona, waving her arms to signal that we should keep going. They had gotten out of the boat, she took one look at the burned stump. Then she returned to the boat. The only sound was the water as we floated on the river. Each of us thought and wondered our own thoughts. Was that Luann back there or somebody else, or maybe something else? I believed we all came to the conclusion it had to be her. Especially with her or at least what looked like her hair waving in the breeze.
We floated for hours without anyone saying a word. Everyone probably thought that one of us had done that to Luann. I tried to figure out who could have done it. I of course suspected wenona, and I told my boat mates, “I have my suspicions. But I’m not ready to accuse anyone yet, because I’m not sure that burned up thing I saw was actually Luann.” I’m wondering if they’re thinking it’s me because of the word I muttered last night.
Wenona signaled us to land. We pulled our boats up on a sandy beach.
“We’ll have lunch here and then everyone spend two solid hours writing about our experience so far,”
Sandwiches that Wenona had packed in the boat the previous day didn’t get eaten. It seemed everyone had lost their appetite; all started writing furiously, except Karen who told Wenona, “Are you crazy? One of our group has just been murdered, and you expect me to sit down and write. Fuck you,” she said, and sauntered off without looking back.
I wrote my suspicions down and didn’t share them with anyone yet. I didn’t accuse no one, but I made a list of possible suspects. No one talked about Luann, yet I know she was the only thing on anyone’s mind. Wenona acted as though nothing unusual had happened and everyone was taking a cue from her and trying to act nonchalantly, because although every one of us suspected foul play, there was no positive evidence. No one got close enough to the burned corpse to identify it positively. For now everyone just went along hoping against hope that everything was OK.
“We’ve got two more days before we’ll reach a point in the river where there’s a cabin and a phone. I expect you to all write how intense your feelings are about being isolated like this, your hopes, fears, and uh, your suspicions.”
“Suspicions of what?” I asked. She just glared at me.
Juan pulled me aside. “It’s her, I know it is.”
“What happened to innocent until proven guilty?”
“She’s the only one with motive and opportunity. Why would anyone else do that to Luann? She was such a nice girl.”
Juan must have had a thing for Luann.
“Maybe what we saw back there wasn’t her,” I said.
“It was her, all right. Don’t you know that’s how these desert Indians used to kill the whites they captured? Tie them to a stake and burn them after they scalped them. With her Nazi father she has a double amount of killer genes.”
“Jumping to conclusions there, don’t you think Juan?”
He gave me a look of disgust and walked away.
We were getting ready to shove off when we heard a shrill scream that bounced off the canyon walls. We all rushed in the direction we thought the sound came from. “Over here quick.” Juan stood on a ledge that overlooked the river and close to his feet was a pool of what looked like blood. “I think that’s her.”
Our eyes followed his finger to something that floated on the river.
How does he know it’s a her? I wondered
“Who’s missing?” We concluded that Karen from New Mexico was missing. The one who refused and had not participated in writing earlier I thought.
“Quick get in the boats, maybe we can catch up to her before the rapids.” Wenona said. The word rapids froze everyone in place.
“C’mon move it,” she shouted, and everyone scrambled to board their boats. We all started rowing furiously and tried to catch up to what may have been Karen. A canoe passed us like we were standing still and rowing the canoe was a muscular Indian man wearing nothing but a loin cloth, an eagle feather in a head band and an arm band with a Nazi Swastika on it. When he got along side Wenona’s boat he set his paddle in the canoe and they talked to one another in sign language. Of course none of us could sign so whatever they said was unknown to us. He took off down the river at twice the speed we were traveling and it looked like he caught up with whatever it was we were chasing down the river. It looked like he hauled something into his boat, but it was hard to see from this distance. After three exhausting hours of rowing Wenona led us ashore. I mentioned that we now comprised a lucky thirteen and get dour looks from everyone.
“Who was that Indian dude in the canoe?” I asked, “Is he going to send help?” She just looked at me and didn’t answer.
It’s strange how we broke up into groups. I was left out and I wondered if it was because of the word I uttered at the campfire, or my lucky thirteen remark. The word I uttered seemed prophetic now with two of our members possibly murdered. Wenona and I were the outcasts; she got us into this or maybe it was because she was Indian with a Nazi father as Juan had made sure everyone here knew her history. He was telling everyone, “See them Indians can use that sign language since they’re babies. That means we could be surrounded and they’re signing to Wenona and we don’t even know it.” I thought Juan must have forgotten his medication.
“We should just get in our boat and take off by ourselves,” Juan told his group, but they’re didn’t go for it, because they didn’t know the river and Wenona had mentioned rapids. No way were they going on their own. I’m glad to have heard this because I knew they’d probably all drown if they tried to make it by themselves.
Another group talked about how it seemed Wenona didn’t try very hard to catch up to Karen, and who was that Indian who passed us? Are there more of them? That one seemed to know Wenona and when Joe asked her who it was, she didn’t answer. With a Swastika on his arm I’m thinking, it must be her brother. How many Nazi Indians can there be?
Wenona had prepared dinner and we all ate very little. After dinner Wenona told us, “OK I need you to write for three solid hours about today’s experiences.”
“Can’t we pass on the writing after all that has happened?” begs Jack from L.A. California.
“Are you kidding? With your heightened emotional state you’re going to write the best story you have ever written,” she said.
We all got our writing materials from the boats and wrote until dark that is all except Lydia, who said, “I don’t think my resources are best utilized by writing at this particular time. I’m going to sit here and drink this pint of Vodka I have with me.” She proceeded to sit on a rock, opened her pint and took a long swallow that made her gag.
There was another campfire but no revelry like the previous night. We sat silently around the fire and wondered if something was going to happen to another one of us, and who caused this shit to happen.
We set up our tents in a circle practically touching as though being this close together would stop anything from happening to us. It didn’t stop anything because in the morning one more was missing. Lydia, the psychologist from Phoenix, was gone without a trace. Now there are only twelve of us not counting the Indian/Nazi leader.
No one was anxious to start tracking Lydia, either from fear of finding her like we found Luann or because we knew it was useless to search. We all made a half hearted attempt to find her before Wenona told us to pack up, because the sooner we got to the cabin the sooner we’d get help for Lydia. I was wondering why she hadn’t sent the Indian in the canoe for help. He was moving twice as fast as we were and probably was already at the cabin.
As we apprehensively rounded the first bend in the river expecting to see another burned body, we found nothing but the natural beauty of the canyon. Can one appreciate this beauty while under the strain of knowing there’s a chance you might be murdered in the next few hours, I wondered. I enjoyed it but it sure didn’t look like any of the others did except, of course, for Wenona. She appeared to have enjoyed every experience to the max.
“One more night.” I heard my boat mates talking. “If we all stick together no one will be able to harm any of us,” said Claire from Lisle, Illinois. The other two agreed and I noticed they were holding hands while rowing with the other hand Funny how a simple thing like holding hands can be so comforting to some people.
I wondered what the odds were of making it through the night without another murder. That word returned to haunt me; I still don’t know why I uttered it at the campfire. I wondered if somehow I unconsciously committed these crimes. I knew mentally unstable people sometimes did things like that, but I believed I could never had done anything like what was done to Luann. One of my favorite sayings was “never say never” so I didn’t rule out the possibility.
Wenona signaled us to head for shore. There was another sandy beach. The sandwiches got eaten today.
“OK, everybody write for two hours.” No one objects to writing this time as the ones who objected previously disappeared. I watched my three boat mates go off hand-in-hand and all the others stuck together in one group. I headed for a rocky ledge overlooking the river and sat on a flat rock. I wrote like I’ve never written before and I know Winona was right when she said we would write well with our emotions raised as they were by the mayhem going on around us. Danger, Excitement, Isolation is what the ad promised and that promise was being fulfilled.
All the other boats were loaded, readied to go. I still waited for my three mates when two of them ran from the rocks and yelled incoherently. When they calmed down a little we understood what they said, “Claire is gone. Just disappeared, she was there one minute and gone the next.”
“I thought you guys were going to hold hands all the way home,” I said.
“We were until she needed to go pee and stepped behind a rock. We never saw her again.” He broke down and started sobbing.
“Who wants to search for Claire?” Wenona asked. Not one hand was raised to volunteer because everyone knew it was hopeless. Now there are ten of us left. Juan harangued everyone saying, “You all should be able to see that it’s Wenona killing everyone. Are we going to stand idly by until we’re all dead?”
He’s scaring everyone. I grabbed him by the arm and led him away from the others.
“Look,” I said, “we’ve only got one more night before we get to the cabin and then we’ll all be safe.”
“Oh yeah, you believe that, do you? All we know is what she told us. What are you going to do when there’s no cabin, no phone tomorrow? Or maybe you won’t be here tomorrow to worry about it. Or how about those rapids she was talking about? Maybe she’ll see to it that all the boats overturn and we all drown, maybe a bunch of Indians with Swastikas painted on their arms are getting ready to attack us right now.”
What he says rings true. Could she be planning to kill all of us? If she was, why? Why kill so many people? I remember what my race has done to hers and I’m thinking if she’s deranged she could easily justify her reasons for killing us.
“What can we do about it?” I asked Juan.
“I know what I’m going to do about it.” He turned and walked away. This was getting to be routine, him walking away from me in the middle of a discussion. It didn’t bother me because I knew he was really scared.
Those of us that remained boarded the boats and headed downriver once again. Silence was pervasive and no one dared speak less they break the spell that hung over us like a dark rain cloud. I could imagine everyone praying they would make it through the night. I wondered how many said, “Please God, let it be someone else,” Probably everyone, because that’s what I’m saying.
Wenona led us to shore for what was to be our last night of camping No one seems concerned for our missing mates. Self-preservation is taking over and no one has time to worry about those already gone.
“I want you all to write for two hours tonight,” Wenona said.
“Fuck you.” Juan said. “How the fuck am I going to concentrate on writing when I’m worried some asshole is going to kill me?”
“Great,” she answered, “write with the passion you’re displaying.”
The tents are set up in a very tight circle and everyone swears they won’t sleep until the journey is finished. They all lied because everyone but me has dozed off. I know they’re not used to the fresh air or exertion ,especially the energy draining-tension we’ve all been under.
I’m up watching the beautiful sunrise from the riverbank when I hear the screams. “She’s gone;! She’s gone! Connie’s gone!” Someone wailed. That would be Connie from Alabama.
“Listen to me,” Wenona shouts. “Write down what you’re feeling right now.”
We all look at her. “How can we write when Connie is missing?” One of the remaining members asked.
“Never mind Connie, just write,” Wenona turned around and walked off through the rocks.
Everyone was in a state of shock and started writing, except Juan, I watched him as he looked around to see if anyone was watching him, I didn’t think he saw me follow him. He stealthily climbed the rocks above where Wenona had walked. I followed to see what he was up to. As I climbed over a ridge I saw him with a large boulder raised over his head. A vision of Wenona standing beneath him flashed before me. NO! I shouted, as he dropped it. He turned and looked at me his face ashen. I wondered if it’s because I saw what he did or if he’s ashen because of what he has just done. I walked over to the ledge he stood on and saw Wenona lying on the ground with the heavy boulder sitting where her head would have been.
“You know it was her. I had to do it. Don’t tell anyone, please,” he begged.
I turned around and walked away from him for a change. When I got to camp, I looked in Wenona’s backpack, and found the map she used. The cabin location was marked with an X and looked like it was probably only a few hours away.
I told everyone, “We’re leaving, let’s go.”
“Who died and made you boss?” one of the guys asked, “Do what you want I’m leaving.”
I started to push the boat into deeper water when everyone grabbed their belongings and jumped into their respective boats. We all started rowing as hard as we could.
Juan was watching me. I wondered if he was thinking of dropping a rock on my head. Should I say anything? Was it Wenona who killed everyone? I didn’t know what to do.
He was standing on the opposite bank of the river and he was apparently trying to talk to us in sign language. That would be the only way to communicate, because the river’s rushing waters made it impossible to hear. He tried to warn us by using sign language and I could imagine the look of disgust on his face when he realized us whites couldn’t do what a three year old Indian could do. He jumped in his canoe and started rowing in our direction.
Juan screamed, “He’s coming after us, everybody row as fast as you can.”
We all heard the roaring sound at once and Juan yelled, “Rapids, everyone hold on to the boat so you don’t get thrown out.”
Just as he finished yelling all the boats began speeding up caught in the fast flowing water.
We bounced of rocks, water poured into the boats, everyone screamed. We prayed and kept on going, I shouted, “Row, Row,” I saw in the movies where the rapid runners always kept rowing to maintain control of their boats. I shouted again, “Row, Row.” My voice didn’t carry far over the roaring sound the water, but it made me feel better so I kept on shouting, while most of the others in the boats kept on screaming.“Row, Row, Row.”
I filled with joy and relief as we all made it through safely. If we would have been experienced we would have known this section of whitewater was one of the calmest on the whole river, and most boats made it through without any trouble at all. The Indian in the canoe was right behind us now.
“He’s coming,” shouted Juan and started rowing like a machine.
Everybody rowed as hard as they could until we came around a long bend in the river. As we came around that bend the cabin came in sight and there were a group people lined up on shore that waved to us and were jumping with excitement.
When we got close enough to see who jumped up and down onshore, I almost shit. I’m sure Juan did, because there on the shore was Connie, Claire, Lydia, Luann and Karen. They all laughed, big joke. They fooled us all right, fooled Juan into committing murder. They’re telling how Wenona approached them one by one and explained how she wanted to make this an extremely emotional experience and had them board a motor launch that was following us with Wenona’s buddy, Virgil. Wenona succeeded in making this a tense experience. Something we’d remember the rest of our lives. Juan I know will never forget it.
The Indian in the canoe rowed right up onto the shore and stepped out of the canoe. “Where’s my sister?” he asked, his eyes blazing with anger.
Juan pleadingly looks at me, his eyes begging me not to say anything.
“We don’t know, Joe told us to leave the last campsite without her,” said Dave, from L.A.
Do I tell him what happened before I take the heat for dropping the rock on her? I look at Juan and his eyes are practically screaming, Please, Please don’t tell. I can’t decide to tell or not, I know he was scared and thought he was doing the right thing. Living with what he has done will be punishment enough and I don’t want to say anything. I’m still undecided, when I hear a voice from the grave, it’s Wenona laughing. I don’t know what to think, should I run or pray, I don’t know what to do when a blanket flies out of the Indians canoe that Wenona was hiding under, but she couldn’t hold her laughter in any longer. I looked at Juan, he was convulsed with laughter.
“All right Wenona, you sure as hell fooled me.” I said, and joined her and everyone else in laughter. It was more a laugh of released tension, but never less laughter no matter what kind is good for the soul.
###
Wenona told how she had stuck her head under a large boulder so it appeared to be smashed from above, and I used this information in my best-seller “Smashing Head and Sex on the River.”