“A trickster river.”
Below us, the now-black river disappeared into the ground. Heat-stunned, the six of us watched a log crowded with three large turtles pivot in a slow, broad circle on the river surface. The river turned unnaturally and vanished, swallowed by the earth. Above the vortex, the air hung still and peculiarly leaden, almost reverent.
“It’s like a big toilet!” Sarah said in a hushed voice.
“Not quite. It resurfaces about two miles from here.” Adam pointed to our right.
“Must be some surprised fish and gators popping up there,” Rosie observed.
We continued on the path and circled the river’s end. Returning to our car, we crossed a swampy area of black soil almost impassable for the clusters of cypress knees. The ground rustled with tiny dark toads that hopped away from our feet, clearing a path for us.
The disappearing river unnerved me. Rivers are supposed to lead us to the sea, not underground. I preferred the spring-fed rivers and pools to the blind waters of the dark rivers. We visited all of the area springs—Blue, Poe, Ichetucknee, Ginnie, Devil’s, Fanning—their cold waters so clear we could see the white sandy bottom. At Poe Springs, I stood, chin-deep in the chilling water, and edged along the spring’s lip, knowing from the intensity and purity of the blue generally where the drop-off would be but unable to be certain because of the glare of the sun and the water’s distortion. Then, suddenly, there was no toehold, and I trod, suspended, almost breathless, above the bottomless place where the water comes out, thousands of gallons per second. That first glance down past my own feet into the dark turquoise mouth of the earth echoed the moment I saw the pulse in Jennie’s neck stop, and the first time I saw death on my mother’s face. I had stepped off the edge of the earth, over an abyss that could have drowned me, yet I continued to breathe.
Adam wanted me to learn to snorkel. But every time I put my face in the water, I fought an instinctive panic. Unable to convince my body that I could breathe with my face underwater, I heaved and sucked air until I hyperventilated. Though I was a good enough swimmer and eventually learned to relax and enjoy snorkeling, the fear of having my face underwater never left me completely. Adam saw my panic, but he persisted, asking me to learn to scuba-dive and go cave-exploring with him. I could use Rosie’s equipment and everything would be fine, he kept telling me, but I refused each time. Going underground seemed too much for him to ask of me. When Adam and Rosie disappeared into the blue, the river and earth gulping them, I turned down the other girls’ invitations to play or swim. I sat on the shore, within sight of the guide rope tied to the roots on the bank, checking to see if it had been pulled taut, a sign that they were lost, blinded by kicked-up silt, or hurt and using the rope to find their way back.
At times, I felt left out, unable to share Adam’s love of this new place. I would have been jealous, but his enthusiasm for Florida was paralleled by his renewed desire for me at night. The jarring, fierce quality of grief lost its grip on our intimacy. The returning tenderness made it easier for me to forgive Florida its flat unfamiliarity, its alien, sandy soil, its odd weeds and grasses, and its endless wet heat.
The days thickened into full summer heat, and the rain came daily. Suddenly the girls were home all day and we were trapped inside by the oppressive heat and rain. The rain began in July and did not stop. Thunder rattled our little wood-frame house that stood like a lightning rod in the flat pasture. North Carolina had its summer storms, but they were a whisper to the shout and sudden fury of the Florida storms. Thick, heavy drops spat down from the sky onto hot sand. Everything sizzled, then steamed. We draped damp laundry over doors and chairs, anywhere we could fit it. The floors and beds were gritty with sand tracked in on wet shoes and boots.
The newspaper featured pictures of sandbagged houses and the top of a child’s swing set half-visible in a flooded backyard. I found little consolation in knowing the weather that summer was not the norm and I was not alone in my amazement under such a relentless sky.
In