The Enchanted Life of Adam Hope (40 page)

One river in particular excited Adam, the Santa Fe. The first Sunday after school let out for the summer, we drove out to O’Leno State Park and cooled ourselves in orange-brown water near the swimming dock. Then Adam announced that he had a surprise for all of us and led us down the trail that paralleled the bank.

When we reached an observation deck, he laughed and, holding his arms out, proudly announced, “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.

I
n early September, soon after the girls had started school, Adam had a rare weekday afternoon off and asked me to join him on a trip to the springs. We left a note for the girls, in case they got home from school before we returned.

We drove out near High Springs and down a sandy road. Then we parked beside another car in a clearing. A mother and two small children picnicking on a blanket nodded their hellos. The children’s wet hair clung to their heads. Otherwise, we were alone. There were no paved roads near the Devil’s Springs then, no concession stands or bathrooms, just a path, woods, and the water.

I followed Adam to the back of the truck to help unload his diving gear. I didn’t see a snorkel, but there were two scuba tanks.

“Where is my snorkel?” I asked, my hands on my hips.

He picked up the tanks. “It’s not much different from snorkeling. And I know you listened to everything I taught Rosie. Come on.” He strode off toward the water, tanks and belts in hand.

“Only in the shallow parts,” I warned, as I followed him with the masks and fins.

Adam shot me one quick glance, but no response, as he plunged into the chest-deep water.

“Only in the places where I would snorkel. Nothing deep,” I added.

He stopped rinsing the tanks and stepped over to the bank where I sat. He touched my cheek very softly, his cool, wet fingers sliding up to my temple. “Only the shallow? But you like it deep.” He grinned.

I rolled my eyes at him but returned his smile. “Not in the water.”

I slipped into the cold water next to him and let him hoist the tank onto my back. He showed me how to breathe, how to check the air, and how to share one mouthpiece if one of us ran out of air or got into trouble, repeating the lessons he’d given Rosie. The gear felt awkward, and heavier than I would have thought.

Scuba-diving in the chest-high river was pleasant. I had to admit Adam was right. Except for the change in buoyancy with the tank, it wasn’t all that different from snorkeling. Sunlight still warmed my back and shimmered silver-blue through the water. As I gazed down at the grasses, I knew I could surface in seconds. I was happy diving a few feet under to get a closer look at a rock or log, pleased with myself for having made my compromise with Adam’s enthusiasm for the river. Adam dived lower, glided along the bottom, and circled the small lagoon that surrounded the cobalt mouth of the spring.

When he surfaced and removed his tank and flippers, I assumed he was ready to go home, and began to take mine off, too. He held up his hand. “No, don’t. Not yet. I’m just going to the car.”

He came back with a light and a thick coil of rope. He had bought a new underwater flashlight recently. Seeing the expensive, shiny new light in his hand reminded me of how comparatively well off we’d been since selling that little corner of the farm before we left Clarion. But I was glad he had the new light. The old one had been secondhand and rusty. I hated to think of him suddenly without light, deep underground.

I leaned on the bank, watching him work his feet back into the flippers. I’d taken my tank off. It lay sleeping on the bank. I was done, I could relax. Adam smiled his happiest, most seductive smile as he adjusted his tank and checked the light. Sunshine streamed down through the trees, speckling the water.

He tied the rope to a tall, thick cypress knee, picked up my tank, and walked out into the water—I thought to rinse it. Instead he turned, holding it up toward me. “You just hold on to me. I’ll do the work.”

“Oh, no.” Panic tightened my chest. “You go on. I’ll wait here.” I was ashamed of my fear, even with him, and tried to keep my voice casual. But I had shrunk back, certain that he heard the unsteady jerk of my diaphragm in my words.

“It is no different from doing it right here. All you have to do is hold on to me and breathe.”

Tree roots and limestone dug into my back. I pressed my hands into the gritty, slick sand on either side of me.

“It is so beautiful, Evelyn. I just want to show you what I see when I’m down there.” He looked straight at me, not smiling anymore but waiting, holding one hand out.

I shook my head again. I wanted to say yes, yes for him, but my fear held like iron.

Adam spoke softly, his face resolved and patient. “I want to show you what I see. I want you to feel what I feel. Come on. For me.”

I curled my hands, digging my fingertips into the bank behind me. Suddenly I remembered how he had done the same, the nights after Jennie and Momma, when he lay under me, arms outstretched, shaking his head but letting me take him all the same. Letting me have him. I had felt the dense coil of pain in him then. But in the end he came with me.

I owed him the same.

I let go of the bank and took his hand. Without a word, he helped me into my tank and fastened the weight belt around my waist. We moved carefully and slowly. He adjusted my mask, smoothed my hair, and pulled me close. “Just relax. I have you. Hold on. Keep a good grip on my belt and swim behind me. Keep your head down behind my tank while we’re in the current. Once we’re in the first room and get out of the current, move your fins as little as possible.”

I nodded, but my heart pounded, and my skin felt numb and hard. Then we went under, into the silence of water and my staccato breathing.

Over the brilliant mouth of the spring, he handed me the light. He gave a few powerful kicks and we entered the current of the spring. Like a strong, silent wind, it pressed at the top of my head. I kicked hard and could feel Adam using his hands to pull us into the mouth of the cave. The rough rope coiling out from his belt slid against my hip. Beyond our feet was the silver surface of the air. I tightened my grip on his belt. Then there was darkness, and I closed my eyes.

The walls of the spring mouth scraped my arm and the top of my tank. In jerks, Adam pulled us in, gripping the walls of the opening and pulling us down. Down, down, down. I tried to make myself as light and small as I could, forced myself to think of nothing but my breath, my hands on his belt, and my kicking legs.

Adam turned right abruptly and reached back to me with one hand to pull me up beside him. We were weightless, outside the press of the current, released. Adam took the light from my hand. Above us, the cavern wall exploded in light, a wide band of yellow cutting through the silver-gray of limestone. He touched my leg, reminding me to soften the movement of my fins, then, taking my hand, swam us up close to the top of the cave. He held his arms out as if to say, “See, it’s beautiful.” And it was. More mysterious than beautiful in its mobile shadows, golden light, and silver-flecked silt.

To our right, the cave opened farther into a black hole. We swam once around the cave, our movements liquid and slow. The only sound was my breath, ragged, uneven. I was still frightened and stiff against Adam. I could not tell which way was up or down. But the beauty seeped around my fear.

Holding me tighter with one arm, Adam did something to my tank that I could not see, and unbuckled my weight belt, then he loosed his hold on me, opening his arms a little, and I began to float away from him up, up toward the ceiling of the room, or what I thought of as the ceiling. I pulled at him and shook my head. He took my arm and held his other hand up for patience. I held tight to him, digging my fingers into his sides.

Still weighted, he bent over me to keep me from moving and adjusted the light on the floor of the cave. Then he unbuckled his own belt and it slid awkwardly down in a smoky puff of silt as we began to rise. Adam twisted, turning so that he was perpendicular to me and held me across his chest as if I were his bride. He adjusted the guide rope still tied to his waist. Nearly blind with panic, I clawed at him. He grabbed my hands with his and clutched them firmly to calm me. His feet hit the cave surface in a small jolt and a sprinkle of sparkling flint. He stood on the roof of the cave, upside down, balanced between gravity, the water’s pressure, and our own natural buoyancy. From his arms, I looked up into his face side-lit by the light beaming from below us. At his feet, beyond the roof of the cave, was the surface of the earth. Had the earth’s skin been transparent, I would have been able to see past his feet to tree roots and, beyond them, the sky.

He spat his air hose out and smiled at me, a smile that cut through my fear. He opened his mouth and I reached out and put his mouthpiece back for him. He walked us, holding me in his arms around the ceiling of the cave, our shadows changing as we moved. Flecks dislodged by his feet drifted between us, tiny silvery flashes. We were, for a few moments, lovers in some alien airless underground world. All I could see were his eyes, almost black in the shadows, and the changing background of the cave, otherworldly umbers, golds, grays, and whites. I forgot my breath, my panic.

Then he knelt and loosened his arms as if to let go of me. I shook my head and he pulled his arm away to point to our belts on the cave floor. Slowly, he lowered me to the roof and I tilted there, propped against my tank, my legs sticking out awkwardly. The moment he let go of me, my breath lurched in my chest again. I sucked deeply on the oxygen, trying to breathe evenly, but the fear in my diaphragm hardened as I watched him return to the floor and put his belt on then, swim, light in hand, to bring me mine.

He pointed toward the dark end of the cave to another vein that led farther, deeper into the earth’s body. I pointed to the surface.

He nodded his head in agreement, but held his hand up asking me to wait. Then he cupped his right ear and cocked his head sideways as if listening. His forehead wrinkled above his mask as his eyebrows shot up in an exaggerated question.