Blackwater

To my Thursday friends

T
HE BLACKWATER RIVER
flows through our town. I’ve lived with that river for thirteen years, ever since I was born. I’ve seen it run gently and I’ve seen it angry and hateful. My parents taught me to respect the Blackwater. I always knew how terrible it could be, but I didn’t know how, one summer, it would change my life. I didn’t know there would be deaths, and disgrace and misery, and that the river would be to blame for it all. Or am I blaming the Blackwater when I should be blaming myself?

T
he summer wasn’t turning out the way I’d planned. First and worst, my cousin Alex had come up from Los Angeles to spend the summer in Rivertown. He’d only been with us a week when I discovered that he’s a whiner and a show-off and I think probably a big liar, too. Because of him my friend John Sun and I couldn’t go downriver on the trip we’d been planning all year. We were going to camp along the banks, fish, snare rabbits and live off the land. At first we thought we might still go and take Alex. But that was before we met him. Anyway, Mom said we couldn’t take him. She was responsible for him and he was only twelve.

“So? We’re only thirteen,” I’d said.

“Yes, Brodie. But I know you and John can handle camping. I’m not sure about Alex.” And of course my parents said I couldn’t just go off and leave him here alone. So everything was messed up.

And then, just to make it worse, Dad asked me to be especially nice to Alex. “He’s been having such a bad time at home,” he said. “And he’s a nice kid, really. He just needs some normal living.”

Dad is pastor of our community church, St. Mark’s, and he’d actually believe a werewolf was really nice and only needed some normal living. If he ever met a werewolf.

I know about Alex’s “bad time at home.” Two years ago his dad went off and left Alex and his mom. The parents were getting a divorce now…a difficult divorce, my mom called it. Alex’s mom is my mom’s sister, so I guess this was supposed to be our way of helping out.

And then, and this was actually the all-time worst, Alex had spoiled a major summer hope of mine. There was this girl at El Camino, my school. Her name was Pauline Genero and she was so pretty, it made my mouth go dry, just looking
at her. I finally got up my nerve on the last day of school, urged on by John, and I asked Pauline if she’d like to go to the movies with me over summer vacation.

“My grandma sent me a pass for the Cineplex for two people for four times,” I’d told her, stammering and stuttering and sounding like a bozo.

Pauline had pushed back her long blond hair and opened wide her sky-blue eyes. “Are you asking me to go to the movies with you four times?”

I’d never in my craziest dreams hoped for more than one time but…“F…f…four would be great,” I said.

“Cool! OK. I like movies.”

John had to practically hold me up walking home from school. “Wow!” he’d said. “Four dates with Pauline Genero. She must like you a lot if she jumped at going four times like that.”

I’d felt myself go red. “Oh, she probably just likes movies, the way she said.” Still, I was jazzed and happy. “I can fit the times in easily with our trip,” I’d told John. “Don’t worry.”

But now there was no trip. And would Mom and Dad expect me to take Alex to the Cineplex, too? I wasn’t sure they’d realize the importance of
a date with Pauline Genero. I wasn’t sure they’d even go along with it. They’re big on having pals and doing things in a crowd. Already I’d had to call Pauline, mumbling and fumbling for words. I’d explained that we might have to wait a bit to use Grandma’s free tickets, till Alex got used to being here. And the awful thing was, Pauline had sounded real casual and said: “Whatever. No big deal.” As if it wasn’t. Why did stupid Alex have to come this summer anyway?

And now John had gone to his uncle’s ranch in Montana for a whole month. He’d shrugged. “Might as well. There’s not going to be much happening around here. My uncle has horses.”

So I was left with Alex—night and day. He was sharing my bedroom, grinding his teeth and whimpering all night long, which, I’m sure, was because of all that stuff at home. I felt sorry for him then. It’s just, when he was awake, he was not that easy to be nice to. Still, I told myself I had to try.

That night, listening to him sniffling in the other bed, I’d thought of one thing I could do that would make Dad happy. So I woke Alex up early.

“I’m going to teach you to swim,” I said. “We’re going to the river.”

He whined and complained, of course, the way he does about everything.

“Hey! Gimme a break! What time is it anyway?” He looked up at where my Star Trek clock shines its numbers (inside the shape of the starship) on my ceiling. “Six
A.M.
How come we have to go this early?”

“Because you have to learn to swim if you’re going to be here all summer. It’s just what all the kids do. And if we go now there won’t be anybody around. You don’t want them to laugh at you, do you? Twelve years old and not able to swim.”

I threw him the new swim trunks his mom must have bought for him before he left home. He complained some more, of course, but I paid no attention.

We let ourselves quietly out of the sleeping house and headed down the hill to the river.

I could hear the rush of it and smell its river smell. You can just about hear and smell that river from any place in town.

Six
A.M.
and nobody about.

I pulled my towel from around my neck, flipped it at a bee that was zooming toward me, and gave Alex a secret, sideways glance. He’s thin and white and slopey and his hair is stringy black. The first night he came he’d told me he belonged to a really tough gang in L.A. called the Vultures. Really tough. I’d tried not to laugh. A brutal gang of twelve-year-olds who looked like Alex. Sure!

“So what do the Vultures do?” I asked now.

“Oh, shoplift, steal purses, rob houses, stuff like that,” Alex mumbled.

“Yeah? Rob houses?” I said. As if I’d believe this baloney. Did he think I’d be impressed?

We’d reached the river path now, with the Blackwater powerhousing along beside us, crashing against the rocks, splashing itself high on the banks. The Blackwater is one mean-looking river, especially like now when it’s still swollen from the spring floods.

Alex took a step back. “Are you kidding? This isn’t the kind of place you learn to swim. This river’s way too fast. Anybody’d be crazy to go into it.”

I grinned. “She’s bad all right. Rapids. Whirlpools.” I waved my arms. “Blackwater Falls are about seven miles downriver. You don’t want to go swimming near them.”

Alex gave me a suspicious glance. “I didn’t think the river would be like this. I know for a fact that most people learn to swim at a Y or a public pool.”

“So how come you never learned? Don’t they have pools like that in L.A.?”

“We have everything in L.A. Dozens of Ys and pools, hundreds even. I couldn’t care less about swimming, if you want to know. I’m too busy. Swimming’s not important.”

“I guess you’re all jammed up, robbing houses,” I said, and then I remembered how I’d promised to be especially nice to Alex and I began thinking how hard it was for him not having a dad around and I softened up.

“Look,” I said. “I was only kidding about having to learn in the river. We have a real swimming hole. It’s just around the bend. When my dad was a kid, he and his dad and his friends dammed the river here. Everybody learns to swim
in Dinkins Pond. And there’s this great rock, halfway across between the pond and the river. It’s called the Toadstool because of the way it’s shaped. You can swim out to it and climb up on it and lie in the sun. It’s big, too. Once we had ten kids on there. But on the other side…!” I shook my head. “Man, everybody’s got to be careful not to go to the far edge. The old Blackwater runs real fierce out there. Dad says it’s mad because we tamed it.”

The sun was warm on my back, and I draped my towel like a cape. A plastic bag filled with light and air came cruising down the river, like a fat, fake, billowy jellyfish. “You wouldn’t believe what comes down the Blackwater when it’s in flood,” I said. “Drowned sheep, and cows, and once a great big wooden chest that we thought for sure was filled with treasure.”

Alex stopped. “Yeah? Did you open it? What was in it?”

“You don’t want to know,” I said mysteriously.

“A body?” Alex whispered.

“You don’t want to know,” I said again. There had only been a mess of soggy old clothes inside,
but it was such a kick to see Alex’s face, respectful for once.

We were almost at the bend where the Batman’s house sits well back from the river. The house had been flooded a couple of times, and the Batman always keeps sandbags piled in front, just in case. I looked to see if Hannah’s old black bike was there. Hannah usually leaves her bike thrown against the sandbags, but it wasn’t leaning there today so I figured she must be out somewhere already. She and her dad only stay here summers. Her dad’s writing a book and studying the bats that live around the river.

I used to think both Hannah and her dad were weird. I’d called her the Batgirl, and John and I used to flap our arms and droop our heads and pretend to be bats when we walked past her house. But we didn’t do that anymore, and I definitely didn’t think she was weird. I liked her a lot. We’d gotten to be friends the summer before. She and John and I had saved a dog that got hit by a truck. We took it to the vet’s and tacked notices on lampposts so the owner could find it, since it had no tags. It turned out to belong to a
homeless guy called the Colonel, and he almost kissed us when he got it back. Actually, we didn’t want to be kissed.

John teased me a bit after that. He said Hannah looked as if she wanted to kiss me, which was really sappy. I didn’t particularly want Hannah to kiss me either. The only kisses I wanted were from Pauline Genero. Hannah was pretty too, I supposed, in a different way. She was a brown girl—brown hair, brown eyes, smart and serious. But Pauline—Pauline was a golden girl, all shiny and polished. I could write poems about Pauline Genero.

I nodded toward the Batman’s house as we passed. “My friend Hannah lives in there summers, with her dad,” I told Alex.

“Don’t they ever get swept away?” Alex glanced over his shoulder at the rush of the river.

“Hasn’t happened yet,” I said.

Now we were around the curve in the path and there was Dinkins Pond, calm and dark, sun glittering on its smooth surface. On the other side of the Toadstool the Blackwater growled and roared.

There were two people out on the big flat rock.

“Hey! I thought you said there’d be nobody here,” Alex complained.

I didn’t answer. This couldn’t be real. Otis McCandless and Pauline Genero were sprawled on the Toadstool, their heads close together. My stomach wobbled. How could she be there with him? Did she like him? It couldn’t be. Didn’t she have four dates set up with me? And Otis McCandless. He was older than us and such a jerk. He thought he was some big lover boy, all the time going after girls, even girls in my grade.

I watched him.

He’d moved one hand so it rested on Pauline’s back. It was strange how weak I got inside, just seeing him do that. I could almost feel her warm, golden skin myself.

Alex dipped his toe in the water. “Man! It’s frigid. Maybe we should go home.”