Where the River Ends

by Charles Martin

  The shuffling downstairs faded into the kitchen. She stared at the floor. “They’re good people. They do this every day. We’ve only got to do it once.”

  “Yeah…and once is enough.”

  Our bed was one of those old, four-poster, Southern things that Southern women go gaga over. Dark mahogany, it stood about four feet off the ground, was bookended by steps on either side and Lord help you if you rolled off it at night. There were two advantages: Abbie slept there, and when I laid on my side, my line of sight was above the windowsill, giving me a view of Charleston Harbor.

  She stared out the window where all the world rolled out as a map, the green and red channel lights blinking back. Red right return. She slid her fingers into mine. “How’s she look up there?”

  I loosened the scarf and let it fall down across her shoulders. “Beautiful.”

  She rolled toward me, placed her head on my chest and ran her fingers inside my button-down where both my chest hairs grew. She shook her head. “You need to get your head examined.”

  “Funny. Your father just told me the same thing.” I stared back out across the water, blindly running my finger along the outline of her ear and neck. A shrimp boat was working her way out to sea. “Actually, he’s been telling you that for almost fourteen years.”

  “You’d think by now, I’d listen.” The boom lights of the shrimp boat rolled slowly east to west, seeming to skim the ocean’s surface as she reached the larger swells.

  Her eyes lay sunken, the lids dark and dim, as if eye shadow had been tatooed in. “Promise me one thing,” she said.

  “I already did that.”

  “I’m being serious.”

  “Okay, but not if it involves your dad.” She pressed thumb to index finger, snatched down and plucked out one of my chest hairs. “Hey”—I rubbed my chest—“it’s not like I’ve got a surplus of those things.”

  Her fingers, like her legs, were long. Now that they were skinnier, they seemed even longer. She pointed in my face. “You finished?” She fingered a circle around the opening in my shirt. “’Cause I see one more.”

  That’s my Abbie. Thirty pounds lighter and still making jokes. And that right there is what I held to. That thing. That finger in the face—the one that threatened strength, promised humor and said “I love you more than me.”

  She scratched my chest and nodded at the picture of her father. “You think you two will ever talk?” I studied the picture. We had taken it last Easter as he christened his new darling, Reel Estate. He stood, broken bottle held by the neck, champagne dripping off the bow, white hair ruffled by the sea breeze. Under other circumstances, I would have liked him, and sometimes I think he would have liked me.

  I glanced at his picture on her dresser. “Oh, I’m sure he’ll talk.”

  “You two are more alike than you think.”

  “Please…”

  “I’m serious.”

  She was right. “He still rubs me the wrong way.”

  “Well, me too, but he’s still Daddy.”

  We laid in the darkness listening to the footsteps of well-intentioned and unwelcome strangers shuffling below us. “You’d think,” I said, staring at the sound coming up through the floor, “they’d come up with a better name than ‘hospice.’”

  She rolled her eyes. “How’s that?”

  “It just sounds so…” I trailed off.

  We sat awhile longer. “Did Ruddy call?”

  I nodded.

  “All three?”

  I nodded again.

  “No better?”

  I shook my head.

  “What about the guy at Harvard?”

  “We talked yesterday. They’re still a few months out from starting that trial.”

  “Sloan-Kettering?”

  I shook my head.

  “What about the website?” Two years ago, we’d created a website for people with Abbie’s condition. It had become a clearinghouse of information. We gleaned a lot from it. Got to know a lot of people who led us to a lot of really knowledgeable people. A great resource.

  “No.”

  “Well, that just sucks.”

  “You took the words right out of my mouth.”

  Silence again, while she studied a fingernail absent of polish. Finally she looked at me. “Oregon?”

  The Oregon Health & Science University, or OHSU, was on the cutting edge of developing some new systemic therapy that targeted cancer at the cellular level. Real front-lines stuff. We’d been in contact with them for several months, hoping for some sort of clinical trial in which we could participate. Yesterday, they had established the parameters for the trial. Because her disease had moved out of her organ of origination, Abbie didn’t qualify. I shook my head.

  “Can they make an exception?”

  I shook my head a second time.

  “Did you ask?”

  It had taken so much. And yet, all I could do was sit back and watch. While I held her hand, fed her soup, bathed her or combed her hair, it had no quit. No matter what you threw at it.

  I wanted to take it back. Wanted to kill it. Slice it into a thousand painful pieces, then stamp it into the earth, grind it into nothing and eradicate its scent from the planet. But it didn’t get here because it was stupid. It never shows its face and it’s hard to kill something you can’t see.

  “Yes.”

  “And M. D. Anderson in Houston?” I didn’t answer. She asked again.

  I managed a whisper. “They called and…they’re still two, maybe three, weeks from a decision. The uhh”—I snapped my fingers—“oversight committee couldn’t meet for some reason. Some of the doctors were on vacation…” Looking away, I shook my head.

  She rolled her eyes. “Another holding pattern.”

  I nodded. A single piece of yellow legal paper lay folded in thirds on the bedside table. Abbie’s handwriting shone through, covering the entire page. Beneath it sat a blank envelope. A silver Parker ballpoint pen rested at ten o’clock and served as a paperweight.

  Eyes lost out over the harbor, she was quiet a long time. She said, “When was the last time you slept?” I shrugged. She pulled on me and I leaned back where she placed her head on my chest. When I opened my eyes again, it was 3 a.m.

  Her whisper broke the silence. “Doss?” Her gown had fallen off one shoulder. Another reminder of what had been stolen. “I’ve been thinking.” A horse-drawn carriage rolled down the cobblestone beneath the window.

  I’m not a vengeful person. I don’t anger easily and most will tell you I’ve got a rather long fuse. Patience is something I have a good bit of. If you have asthma, you understand. Maybe that’s why so many people ask me to take them fishing.

  She stared at the framed newspaper article, hanging on the wall, yellowed from the sun.

  IT WAS SIX MONTHS AGO. The Charleston paper was writing some feel-good stories about local celebrities and their New Year’s resolutions. Thought it might jump start the rest of us. They called and asked Abbie if they could interview her.

  The reporter came to the house and we sat out on the porch watching the tide roll out. Pen in hand, he expected her to rattle off the fantastic. Her responses surprised him. He sat back, studied his writing and turned up his list. “But…?”

  She sat up and leaned toward him, backing him off. “Did you ever see the beginning of the Jetsons cartoon?”

  He looked surprised. “Yeah, sure.”

  “Remember when George and Astro hop on the treadmill?” He nodded. “That’s been us for four years.” She tapped his legal pad. “This list is my best shot at cutting the leash.”

  He shrugged. “But there’s nothing…”

  “Extraordinary?” She finished his sentence. “I know. In fact, it’s entirely normal. Which is the point. ‘Normal’ is a memory.” She looked at me. “The last few years have purged us of extraordinary.” She slid on her sunglasses. “You spend enough time flailing just to keep your head above water and you’ll discover what you truly care
about. This list is my way of fighting back. That’s all. It doesn’t include climbing Mount Everest, running with the bulls in Pamplona or circling the world in a balloon.”

  She sat back and palmed the tears running off her face. “I need”—she grabbed my hand—“to sit on a breeze-swept beach, sip from little drinks decorated with umbrellas and worry about color combinations for somebody’s kitchen.”

  She thought for a second. “Although, I would like to do a loopty-loop in an old plane.”

  He looked confused. “What’s that?”

  She waved a large circle in the air with her hand. “You know…a loopty-loop.”

  “Can I add that to the list?”

  I spoke up. “Yes.”

  Rather than calling it Resolutions, she called it her Top Ten Wishes for the year. Something about it struck a chord with readers. Maybe it was the simplicity, the gut-level honesty. I’m not really sure. For the last five months, she’d been getting letters and a lot of traffic on the website. Wanting to remind her that she had once hoped and wished, I’d framed the article and hung it next to the bed. Only problem was that with all that we’d been through the first part of this year, we hadn’t really checked off any. She pointed at it. “Hand me that.”

  She dusted off the glass with her gown, her reflection staring back at her, then loosened the tabs on the back, pulled off the cardboard and slid the article from beneath the glass. Half laughing and mostly smiling, she reread the article then shook her head. “Still wishing.”

  “Me, too.”

  She lay back. “I want to give you your anniversary present.”

  “Five months early?”

  “I’m surprised you remembered the date.”

  “I don’t want anything.”

  “You’ll want this.”

  “I don’t need anything.”

  “That’s what you think.”

  “Honey…”

  “Doss Michaels.” She pulled me to her. “I’m not doing this here. Not like this.” She fingered my hair off my brow. Her game face had returned. “I won’t do it.”

  You see that? That right there? In the nearly fifteen years I’ve known her, Abbie has possessed and exhibited a trait that I’ve never been able to put my finger on. A prisoner on the tip of my tongue, no articulation gives it justice. Every utterance falls flat. But while the name escapes me, its power does not.

  I protested, “But…”

  “Not here.”

  There was no use arguing with her when she got this way. Sick or not. And although she’d argue the point, she got that from her dad. The only response was “yes, ma’am.” Strange how two words can change you forever. I laid the article across the bedspread in front of her. “Pick one.”

  She pointed without looking. “All the way from Moniac.”

  Number ten. Of the list, it was the most impossible. I raised both eyebrows. “You realize that we’re two days from the first of June?” She nodded. “And that officially marks the beginning of hurricane season?” She nodded again. “And the Jurassic-sized mosquitoes are just now hatching?” She closed her eyes and nodded a final time with a sly smile.

  I pointed to her parents’ house a few blocks down the street. “What about him?”

  She tapped the single yellow legal page resting on the bedside table.

  “And when he gets it, he’ll call out the National Guard.”

  “Maybe not.” She sat up, more focused now. “You could talk to Gary. He can prescribe something. Something to—” She pressed her fingers to my lips. “Hey.” She wanted my eyes. The edges were blurring and I knew that added to the weight she already lived under. I turned. “Have you ever broken a promise to me?”

  “Not that I know of.”

  She folded the article and stuffed it in my shirt pocket. “Then don’t start now.”

  Neither option was very good. “Abbie, the river is no place to—”

  “It’s where we started.”

  “I know that.”

  “Then take me back.”

  “Honey, there’s nothing but a bunch of hurt down there. It won’t be the same.”

  “You let me be the judge of that.” She gazed south out the window.

  I tried one last time. “You know what Gary said.”

  She nodded. “Doss, I know what I’m asking.” She tapped me in the chest. “They say we have reached the end.” She shook her head and pressed her lips to my face. “So let’s start over.”

  And so we did.

  2

  JUNE 1, 2 A.M.

  Rain pelted the windshield in sheets. Every few seconds, golf ball–sized hail smacked the hood and rooftop, thundering like firecrackers. I leaned forward and rubbed the backside of the glass with my palm, but that did about as much good as the wipers. Ninety miles ago, a semitrailer dragging a broken hydraulic line passed us in the left lane and sprayed the front of the Jeep with brake fluid and sparks. The oil-and-water smear, mixed with headlights and early-morning darkness, gave the world a Coca-Cola tint. The region was suffering a drought. The aquifer was down and people from South Georgia to North Florida were subject to watering restrictions. Few areas felt the effects more than the river. She was eight to ten feet below normal, and while this deluge was needed, most of it would never reach the river.

  In the 1950’s, before the federal interstate highways cut the U.S. in six-lane precision, wonder, efficiency and freedom, their smaller and less efficient two-lane twin brothers politely meandered through and around small-town America—careful not to upset the balance of pecan trees, live oaks and fourth-generation chicken farms. Dotted with concrete-block, mom-and-pop motels, full-serve gas stations and all-u-can-eat buffets, U.S. 1—something like an east coast Route 66—was the life-line of every traveling salesman and vacationing family from Maine to Miami. Between the free orange juice stands, junk stores, alligator farms and state-line souvenir stores brimming with stale Claxton fruit cakes and Mountain Dew, the route represented Americana in its heyday.

  Trying to stay awake, I clicked on the radio. A weatherman was in mid-report and hard rain smacked his microphone. He was yelling above the sound of the wind: “Four weeks ago, a tropical depression moved across the southern portion of West Africa. For the next seven days, the tropical storm system continued across the coast of Africa and the tropical Atlantic. After moving through the Caribbean Sea, satellite pictures on May twentieth showed an organizing cloud pattern over the south-central Caribbean Sea. And on May twenty-third, Tropical Storm Annie—so named as the first storm of the year—strengthened and moved northward. And at six a.m. this morning, Annie spun herself into a hurricane.” I turned it off and stared through the windshield. River guides, by default, become closet weathermen. We have to. It’s just the nature of the job. I wiped the backside of the windshield again. Towering pines now lined both sides of the road. I crossed her off. The rain we were experiencing had nothing to do with Annie, and given her location, she’d fizzle long before Florida.

  Stretching southward from Waycross, Georgia, to the Florida border, sits a seven-hundred-square-mile peat-filled bog that hovers like a poached egg inside a saucer-shaped depression that was, more than likely, once part of the ocean floor. When plants die, they fall to the swamp floor where they decompose—a process which emits both methane and carbon dioxide—producing peat. And because decomposition is a slow process, it takes fifty years to add another inch of peat to the base of the swamp. The thick web traps the gas, building pressure and forcing the islands upward—like corks floating to the surface. As they rise, the gas is released where it glows like Northern Lights in its rise to the surface. In the mid-1900’s, visitors claimed the existence of UFOs, established tours and sought to sell tickets until scientists showed up and proved otherwise. Since their formation, the peat masses have been unstable and trembling—sort of like the earth’s plates but a bit more fluid—causing the Choctaw Indians to so name the place “The Land of Trembling Earth.”

  In English, it s
ounds like “Okee-fen-o-kee.”

  On the surface, it’s primeval and untouched. Uninhabitable to most men. For all practical purposes, it serves as the drain for the southeastern part of Georgia and northeastern section of Florida.

  Drain is the key word here. Like all drains, there’s a limit to what they can get rid of in a given period of time.

  When the swamp fills up, the overflow spills out in two places. It’s a lot like New Orleans but with only two holes in the dike and with a lot less murder, gambling and prostitution. The larger pipe, called the Suwannee River, winds its way about two hundred miles southwest across Florida and dumps into the Gulf of Mexico. Her 130-mile little sister, the St. Marys, first snakes south to Baldwin, hovers across the top of Macclenny, turns due north toward Folkston, then makes a hard right eastward, where she finally spills her crooked self into the Cumberland Sound and the Atlantic Ocean.

  Given its tea coloring, the St. Marys is called a blackwater river. Two hundred years ago, sailors used to venture into the Cumberland Sound and run upriver some fifty miles to Trader’s Hill, filling their casks to overflowing because the tannic acid kept the water potable for long periods—like transatlantic voyages.

  In times of drought, the St. Marys River can be a few inches deep and a few feet across. At its headwaters in Moniac, it can be little more than a trickle. But prolonged rains—the lifeblood of the swamp—can swell the river’s banks, closer to the ocean, to more than a mile wide with “holes” thirty or forty feet deep. Normal flow rate might be a half a mile an hour, while flood flow might be as much as six or eight. Maybe even ten.

  Flooding here is a sneaky thing. When it floods, it does so from the ground up. Because the rain comes in from other places, the water rises beneath your feet without warning. One minute you’re asleep, moon bright, not a cloud in the sky with the bank sitting thirty feet from your tent. Six hours later, you wake to find your sleeping bag soaked and your tent three inches under water. Floods here don’t fall down around you. They rise up beneath you. Out of nowhere.