During one of the Rouses’ trips to Ginnie Springs, they were camped near Reekie, who was alone. Spotting the Buddha-bellied Reekie, Chris and Sue Rouse invited him over to their campsite. As Reekie strolled over, he noticed the large, boxy, old-fashioned brown canvas tent and the diving equipment spread about on blue plastic tarps. Reekie thought to himself that these must be the “tarp people” he remembered hearing about; this was the lighthearted way Ginnie Springs personnel referred to the family with the old-fashioned equipment and an artfully arranged array of tarps.
Chris grinned from ear to ear and stretched out his hand to John. “Hi. I’m Chris Rouse. This is my load, Junior, and my wife, Sue. Wanna join us for dinner? Come on, sit down and make yourself at home.” Reekie immediately felt a tinge of liking toward this gregarious person, but by nature he was skeptical, leery of making friends with anyone. Reekie had found out the hard way that though people could be friendly enough on land, inside an underwater cave system their true character traits would surface. The Canadian didn’t want to be disappointed, didn’t want to waste his time with another would-be diver. Sure, he’d talk to the Rouses, but he’d reserve judgment until he had administered his own special test. If they passed that, then he’d feel a lot more friendly.
Reekie had the reputation in the cave-diving community of being not just a serious diver, but “extreme.” His diving philosophy was quite simple: You didn’t end the dive for anything but a serious emergency, or until you had breathed one third of your gas supply. The Rule of Thirds—another piece of the Exley catechism—called for a diver to expend no more than one third of his breathing gas on the way into the cave, and then turn around. This would leave one third for the return, with the remaining third reserved in case of emergency.
Reekie’s absolutist philosophy of not ending a dive except in case of a full-scale emergency was in sharp contrast to the approach that was officially propounded in cave-diving classes. When Marc Eyring taught the Rouses cave diving, he stressed, “Remember, any diver can turn the dive at any time, for any reason.” The signal to turn the dive was a sharp thumbs-up. This would be acknowledged by the other diver or divers, and the team would turn around and head out of the cave. Eyring underscored the importance of this rule. “When the thumbs-up is given, I don’t want to see any hesitation. The dive’s over. Period. Acknowledge the thumbs-up with your own thumbs-up and then head out. If you want to know why the diver is turning the dive, have a discussion when you’re all safely out of the cave.”
John Reekie demanded that when you went on a cave dive with him, you had better not waste his time and turn the dive before you breathed every last ounce of your first third of your gas supply. Chris Rouse reveled in that philosophy. He would soon learn that Reekie was respected, feared, or viewed as a maniac, depending on the quarter. During one of Reekie’s cave dives, for example, a diver’s main dive light went out, he went to his backup, and with the thumbs-up signaled Reekie to end the dive. Reekie swam over to the diver, looked at him, and grabbed the diver’s pressure gauge to see how much gas he had left. With a grunt, he threw the gauge back at the diver and continued on into the cave. As Reekie figured it, the diver had not reached the end of the first third of his gas supply, and he still had two working dive lights left. When asked about it, Reekie responds with a “What are you, stupid?” expression and says, “Yeah, sure, cave-diving rules say ya gotta start the dive with at least three lights, but they don’t say how many ya gotta end the dive with. One stinkin’ light failin’ is no reason to call the dive.” Steve Berman, who dived often with Reekie, says with a slight grin, “Yep, Reekie’s a wild man. Ya better be real serious about divin’ if you’re gonna dive with him.” Berman’s nod and widened eyes reinforce the message.
Reekie tested Chris Rouse during their first dive together, in the Devil’s Cave System. As he often would in these situations, the large Canadian would “disappear” during the dive, usually hovering above his dive partner, sometimes in a recessed area of the cave. Then he would wait. And observe. If his partner noticed Reekie was missing, and—more important—if he initiated a search for the lost diver, the “wild man” knew that his new dive partner was a person who had awareness, skill, and the fortitude not to abandon someone in a cave. Over the years, Reekie had observed how many dive partners never noticed he was missing, and simply left the cave without him. He knew not to conduct serious dives with that person. During the unannounced test, Chris Rouse noticed right away that Reekie was missing, and he initiated a search for the lost buddy. Seeing this, Reekie descended with a slow, smooth grace and presented himself to Chris, making an O with his meaty index finger and his thumb in the universal diver’s “OK” signal. Chris acknowledged by returning the signal, then indicated the way out by making a child’s “gun” gesture, the index finger pointing forward and the thumb up. Reekie returned the directional signal, and knew he had found a competent diver he could trust underwater.
The friendship between Chris Rouse and John Reekie strengthened as the two went on cave-diving excursions together, sometimes driving for hours from Ginnie Springs to reach another cave system. Reekie and Rouse developed a mutual respect for each other, and each loved to tell stories about the other. Although they were about the same age, they were an unlikely duo from a physical standpoint. Where Chris was a trim, reasonably fit five feet ten, Reekie’s most prominent feature was his expansive belly, held amidships on a six-foot frame. When he walked into a restaurant that offered an “unlimited buffet,” managers who knew him would sweat as they imagined profits being absorbed in an endless stream as Reekie’s belly expanded. Chris loved to tell how Reekie ate so much at one restaurant that the manager came over and apologetically cut off the food supply. Reekie, of course, was indignant: “Doesn’t your sign say ‘Unlimited Buffet’? Man, I’m not done yet.” The restaurant manager refunded half of the buffet fee and asked Reekie to leave.
Despite their physical differences, both John Reekie and Chris Rouse shared an insatiable diving appetite. Chris would say, “Man, Reekie’s nuts in the water. When ya dive with him, you better be prepared to do really long dives, because he doesn’t want to turn around till he absolutely has to.”
Reekie preferred to dive with Chris Rouse alone, without Chrissy and Sue. He had noticed that Chrissy placed a priority on conducting two cave dives a day, no matter how long or short those dives were. Reekie preferred to conduct one long cave dive, instead of two shorter ones. When Chris accompanied Chrissy, the father felt obligated to go on every dive with his son, but when he was with Reekie, one long dive, lasting up to six hours, satisfied him. Reekie also noticed that strange things happened when all three of the Rouses—or even any two of the Rouses—dived together. Although all three were good, smooth divers, their equipment—and even Reekie’s equipment—always seemed to break down during the dive. Reekie knew that the Rouses were meticulous about keeping their equipment in shape, so he knew that the gear failures did not result from neglect. After a dive with the Rouses, Reekie would shake his head and say to the three of them, “I’ve never had equipment fail on me as much as I have when I dive with you! You guys have a black cloud over your heads.”
Chris Rouse was awed at Reekie’s ability, and after one dive he told Sue, “I don’t know how he does it, but he gets himself into places I can’t even get in. You’d figure that fat bastard would get stuck in a tight area like a cork in a bottle, but no. Underwater, he’s like Gumby. He just pours himself through the openings.” Chris also remarked that the chain-smoking Reekie had excellent gas consumption; his lungs expended air with surprising efficiency. This was important in cave diving, because the distance you could go into the cave was determined in great part by how efficiently you breathed. If a diver developed a reputation for being a “Hoover”—consuming gas at too great a rate because of poor breathing or propulsion technique, anxiety, poor fitness level, or perhaps genetic predisposition—he or she would not be invited to dive with the best divers, or have
the opportunity to do the top dives, because the diver’s safe gas supply would run out too soon. Divers like that brought a team back to the surface prematurely and curtailed everyone’s fun.
The Rouses had passed the test. They had taken to the cave training, to Eyring, to Berman, to Reekie, and to the entire group of cave divers who hung out around Ginnie Springs like surfers at Malibu. The other divers liked the Rouses’ energy and enthusiasm for the sport. Sure, they bickered and teased and taunted each other, but among this eclectic group who seemed to live for nothing more than to penetrate ever farther into the earth’s mysterious water-filled tunnels and map the winding passageways, the father-and-son grappling seemed natural.
3
Pretzel Logic
DECEMBER 1990. GINNIE SPRINGS, FLORIDA.
THE ROUSE ENCAMPMENT was always only a few steps away from the three mobile homes that Ginnie Springs management provided to any of its staff who wanted to live there for free. Their only housing-related expense was the phone bill. The trailers were hidden by bushes and a row of trees that lined the sandy road in front of the dive shop. The commute for Ginnie Springs staff was a few steps across the road.
The staff’s trailers were the headquarters for the off-hours parties and diving discussion groups that formed casually as divers wandered in and out. The interior of Steve Berman’s trailer was dark, and he always left the blinds and old curtains closed to discourage unwanted or curious visitors. The walls were covered with cave maps and posters. Diving gear in various stages of assembly was strewn everywhere: Heavier equipment such as scuba tanks and diver-propulsion vehicles rested on the floor, while more delicate items, like dive lights and diving computers, occupied both the kitchen table and the coffee table in the living room. A few empty beer bottles and abandoned bottle caps lay among them. Every available electrical outlet had something plugged into it, whether a household appliance or a battery charger for the diver-propulsion vehicles or lights. A musky, damp smell filled the air, and sand particles lodged themselves in the abused living-room carpet and on the linoleum floors throughout the rest of the trailer home. The heavy buildup of dust and mold around the sinks and bathtub in the kitchen and bathrooms suggested that they hadn’t been cleaned since the invention of the cotton gin. The linoleum floor around the perimeter of the bathroom was lifting. A stack of diving magazines rested on the toilet tank.
Steve Berman lived in the trailer that had once been Marc Eyring’s before Marc had gone off to pursue a doctoral degree. First the degree was to be in chemistry, then it was physics, then engineering: Marc changed his goal so often, none of us could be sure in what area of science he would finally get his doctorate, yet we were all confident that he would achieve some advanced degree, even if he had to invent a new field of science that encompassed all of his intellectual interests. Marc would still come around on occasion and teach a class, so he had left his huge television, two VCRs, and the high-quality stereo in the living room, where the devices formed a solid wall of electronics and the control panel for a lot of high-voltage partying.
From an appearance standpoint, not much had changed since the days in 1988 when the trailer had been Marc Eyring’s official home. The only thing that was noticeably different was the lack of pornography videos that Marc liked to have running in the background—with the sound off so as not to be too distracting. When Marc was in residence, both men and women would wander in and out of the trailer, glance at the television screen while on their way to the refrigerator for a beer, and usually make a remark like “What? This tape again? Hey, Marc, when are you going to get some new tapes?” Others might remember the tape fondly and ask if they had missed a particular scene. During the course of the night’s discussions about the finer points of cave diving, the tapes would still be running. When I stayed at Marc’s trailer as a guest I thought it odd for him to be playing the porn tapes constantly, but I took the “when in Rome” philosophy and did not say anything.
Sometimes, the background porn tapes would get to be too much and someone would turn on the second VCR, which would start playing a cave-diving tape. Slowly, sexual frustration would give way to an urge that felt just as primal and powerful: cave diving.
In December 1990, I was staying at Berman’s when the Rouses stopped in. Chrissy, Steve, Sue, and I drank beer, while Chris, who said he had never been much of a drinker, contented himself with juice. I was meeting the family for the first time, and I was struck by their energy, enthusiasm, and gregariousness. We were kindred spirits, and within minutes it felt like we had known one another for a long time. I was also impressed by how much father and son looked alike, as if I were seeing the Rouse men in a fun-house mirror that took age into account. Both men’s slim, athletic frames seemed wired for electricity, as if ready to plunge into whatever action presented itself. Chris’s faded blue jeans were slightly worn at the knees and had collected dust and dirt smudges to go with the permanent oil stains that blotched the front of the legs. His T-shirt depicted the devil smiling as he looked on at a cave diver entering the cave system named after him. The words GINNIE SPRINGS, FLORIDA ran along the bottom of the picture. Like his jeans, Chris’s T-shirt displayed obvious signs of wear and few signs of washing. His face was unshaven, with a dark, thick growth that looked almost a week old, in spite of rumors that Chris had battled with his facial hair only two days prior. His brown hair was unkempt, and just long enough to resemble a mop placed on his head. His hands were worn, with oil and dirt worked deeply under his skin and nails. Even his face showed streaks of oil, which I gathered was from recently working on some piece of automotive or even diving equipment. Chris’s appearance lent the distinct impression that he had just walked in off a construction job.
Chrissy was dressed in similar fashion. His youth combined with his tattered blue jeans, worn sneakers, wrinkled T-shirt, and brown, straight, shoulder-length hair to make him look as if he’d fit in more readily with a rock group partying in their dressing room after a performance than with a group of cave divers almost twice his age. Sue was relaxed, and seemed content to observe our interactions while enjoying her beer. An earth mother surrounded by the fiery spirits of her men, she was jolly but appeared tired from the combined exertions of diving that day and having to contend with Chris and Chrissy’s bickering, which I was witnessing for the first time and was mightily impressed by.
Steve Berman preferred to play only cave-diving tapes, and with this in the background, Steve, the Rouses, and I relaxed and discussed plans for diving together in several local cave systems.
When people talk about cave diving in Florida, it doesn’t take long for the name Sheck Exley to come up. The north-central Floridian who learned to dive in 1966, at the age of sixteen, became fascinated by the water-filled caves dotting the countryside. Soon he was spending every available spare moment cave diving. When Exley started cave diving, the world record for a linear cave penetration was 1,000 feet, set by the U.S. diver John Harper in 1962, in Hornsby Spring, Florida. It was a remarkable accomplishment, considering that the average cave penetration was only 200 linear feet. Exley became so proficient at the sport that he set numerous new cave-diving records, including the record for linear penetration. In December 1990, he had extended that record to 10,939 feet, diving in Florida’s Cathedral Canyon. Exley was strong, had great stamina, and tolerated the narcotic effects of air at depth very well. Other divers experimented with different breathing gases to ease their narcosis, but not Exley. He could be seen breathing air and swimming past them at depths down to 360 feet—over seven martinis!
During the 1960s and 1970s, sport divers gradually reached depth barriers in their explorations as a result of the Martini Law, and they sought breathing-gas alternatives to compressed air. Compressed air was easy to get, inexpensive, and widely used, but its riskiness increased as divers pushed their explorations ever deeper, thus intensifying nitrogen narcosis. Unfortunately, many tragic lessons about the hazards of compressed air and other aspects of deep-
water diving had been learned in the context of military or commercial diving operations, and were kept secret from the public. Sport divers were left with no alternative but to arrive at deep-water secrets without the benefit of elaborate research facilities available to the military and commercial diving establishments—without detailed knowledge of what had gone before, and why. As sport divers experimented with mixed-gas diving in the 1960s and 1970s, Exley watched unfolding events with justified skepticism.
Divers had to beware not only of the narcotic effects of nitrogen, but of the toxic effects of oxygen. As pressure increases, oxygen becomes toxic. The toxicity causes seizures that inevitably result in drowning as the diver convulses and his breathing regulator drops from his mouth at depth. In the 1960s, it was generally held that divers could descend to about 300 feet breathing compressed air before the oxygen in the air became toxic. Some divers, like Exley, could go deeper, whereas others encountered the toxicity at shallower depths. Various navies around the world had experimented and found that a diver might be subject to oxygen toxicity at different depths on different days. It was unpredictable. Recommended diving limits with compressed air have steadily been revised to shallower depths, and some people today advocate a limit on compressed-air diving of 150 feet—three martinis. Deep diving with compressed air is a time bomb, with either nitrogen narcosis or oxygen toxicity waiting to claim even the best diver.
The oxygen toxicity problem first reared its head publicly in the 1960s. At this time, American cave divers first started experimenting with helium in their breathing gas to lessen the martini effect of nitrogen in compressed air at depth. In order for the body to expel the helium at a safe rate on the ascent to the surface, divers concocted gases that had very high concentrations of oxygen: They would even breathe pure oxygen starting as deep as 60 feet. When several divers died of convulsions during their ascent, Exley grew even more convinced that mixed-gas sport diving remained too dangerous for him to risk it. Clearly, oxygen presented its own risks to divers.
The Last Dive Page 7