Where the River Ends (8 page)

8

JUNE 1

I
steadied the boat and began paddling just as a muted voice rose up from beneath the tarp: “Hey, good looking.” I leaned in. “You have done this before, right?”

“Once or twice.”

She shifted to one side. “That sounded like it went well.”

She was smiling beneath the adrenaline rush brought on by the combination of fentanyl and Actiq. I knelt, sweat dripping off my face and nose. “Yeah, well, I never really liked Charleston anyway.”

She rolled her eyes closed, then open.

“We can still turn back.”

She shook her head. Her tongue was thick. “I’m with you.”

I felt her feet, which, despite the seventy-five-degree heat, were cold and clammy. “How you feeling?”

She shifted uneasily. “Never better.”

“Headache?”

She nodded and tried to smile. When the headaches had first started, she said it was like riding a roller coaster that never stopped while sitting next to someone who kept banging you in the head with their elbow.

Rigged with a stern-to-bow towline, the second canoe tracked behind, slipping serpentine across the water. Knotted and twisting, ancient live oaks rose up on either side and reached out across the water forming a canopy that spoke of Pat Smith’s forgotten land and maybe the ghost of Osceola. Cypress stumps spiked up through the river’s surface, while deadwood fell across, forming raccoon bridges and fishing-line snags. At this early point in the river’s life, where she was less than fifteen feet across, portage was a necessity. At her deepest the river was a foot and her shallowest an inch, so every few minutes, I’d step out, pull both canoes across a log or sand bar, then hop back in and shove off only to hop out once again and start all over. During one three-hour stretch, I fashioned a makeshift harness and sloshed ankle-deep along the bank and river bottom.

Unlike rivers out west that cut canyons down into and through rock walls, the edges of the St. Marys ebbed and flowed depending upon rainfall—making it difficult to establish a state line within a few feet. One day the river might be ten feet wide at a given point, but throw some rain in that equation and that can widen to thirty or forty feet in a day, only to recede back to ten or expand to fifty before the next day’s end. In the last few decades, home buyers and builders made sure they bought or built above the hundred-year flood line.

Once out of the swamp, the river travels through Moniac at Highway 94, then according to the map, some thirteen miles to State Road 121, but that’s a lie. Whoever made the map was smoking crack. Probably more like twenty-five. Riding her is brutal, tough work and yet a beautiful, mysterious, even somewhat prehistoric passage. To miss it is to miss some of the heart of the river. Abbie knew this. That’s why she’d said, “All the way from Moniac.” Taking a helicopter’s view north of Glen St. Mary, the river turns hard left, or due east, and runs across the northern tip of Macclenny. From there she bends north, where the winding river makes a crooked run up to Folkston—meandering some two miles for every crow mile. At Folkston, she bears hard right, and zigzags east by southeast to the coast. Crow distance from swamp to ocean is a little more than sixty miles. Total river distance is nearer 129 miles, give or take. Usually, more give than take.

But if you trace her lines, things are different. While the headwaters bubble only sixty crow miles from the ocean, she is in no hurry to get there. And while she may run under one name, she is, in actuality, four rivers. The first runs from Moniac, under Highway 121 to Stokes Bridge—maybe thirty-one miles. Think drainage ditch inside a bridge tunnel. It’s narrow, overhung with trees that interlock like fingers, crisscrossed by elevated railroad trestles, crawling with frogs, hanging with Spanish moss, slithering with snakes and given the nearly impenetrable maze of pickup-stick trees that have fallen across her, nearly impossible to paddle for very long. You can swim it, pull through it, push over it, walk around it or cut through it, but she will regulate your speed and it will not be fast. She has her own rhythm. Chances are, unless you’ve spent much time around here, hers is a good bit slower than yours—physically and emotionally. Her flow is unregulated, so while some corners are fast, others—given the topography—are slower. Maybe the water pools up, maybe her banks widen, maybe she has cut through the bed to the limestone and sped up, or maybe she U-turns and whips you around like a water-skier. Whatever the case, there is little consistency other than that she is moving toward the ocean. Whether you live or die matters not, but don’t think her impersonal and don’t doubt her. She is far more in tune with you than you are. Having cut all the way to the limestone, some of her banks are bluffs some forty feet high, others are root-webbed sand hills, while others are cow pastures who’s grass and mud roll into the water. Doing so has left holes that are teeming with warmouth, perch, smallmouth bass and water moccasins. When the sun can break through the canopy, her sides are dotted with Buick-sized white sandy beaches; leaning, tin-roofed, vine-covered barns; and screen-enclosed tree houses—but trickling down the middle is a copper blanket of sweet bronze liquid that in most places is also cool.

Part two of the river runs from Stokes Bridge to Trader’s Ferry—forty-four miles. Here she widens, offers stretches of paddle-ability, and runs nearly the entire length with bleached white beaches. Because she is constantly eroding her banks and floor, the ancient trees that line her inevitably fall inward. First they lean, almost bowing as she passes by, then they cross like swords in a military-dress procession, then they topple as she undercuts their roots in her way to the limestone. She ranges from a foot deep to maybe ten in a few of the deeper spots. Beneath her surface is an intricate and invisible spiderweb of branches, or arms, that pull at boats and those who wish to float her. Beyond the branches, tucked into the shadows, are white-tail deer, black bear, feral hogs, quail, turkey and horseflies with an attitude. It is also here that people have begun to populate her banks, built homes on stilts, swim in her shade, bask in her coolness, swing from ropes hung high in her towering arms, ride zip lines and litter her with beer cans, bobbers and bathing suits. From copper bronze, her color has darkened to that of iced tea. Depending upon the sun, maybe weak coffee. But don’t let the color fool you. Black does not equal bad. Or evil. Her sandy bottom filters her every hundred feet. Like everything on the river, appearances can be deceiving.

Leg three runs from Trader’s Ferry to the Coastal Highway, or Highway 17—a distance of thirty-six miles. From the railroad trestle at 17, the ocean is only another eighteen miles downstream, which means that tides begin to affect her. Her flow will actually reverse every six hours. Like a flushing toilet, she empties quickly and fills slowly. Her banks widen to some two to four hundred yards across. She brims with otter, beaver, water moccasins and alligators. Some ten feet in length, their heads nearly three feet long. Boat ramps, fish camps and long since rotted docks have replaced sandy beaches. Her banks now roll down into the water with pine trees and palmetto bushes making a nearly impenetrable wall. Approaching the bank is like petting a porcupine—you must pick your way in. And not quickly. Residents have sunk pilings into the bank, poured and fortified concrete walls and built getaways where they sit on the porch, sip mint juleps and listen as the river rolls by. Below, she has opened herself to recreation—motor boats haul skiers, fishermen, poachers or wildlife officers and Jet Skis buzz like hornets. Beneath them all, she has morphed once again. Here she hides her secrets and flows Starbucks black.

The final leg runs from the bridge at Highway 17, past the town of St. Marys to the Cumberland Sound where she empties into the Atlantic. Here she might reach a mile wide, maybe wider, and some forty feet deep—deep enough for the submarines at King’s Bay. Her brackish water has turned cloudy brown, stinging with salt and running with dolphins, sharks, redfish and trout. Her pluff mud banks crawl with fiddler crabs, razor-edged oysters and sporadic piles of English cobblestone once used as ballast. Here, her pace quickens, swirling undertows—water tornadoes that spin beneath the surface—can pull ducks below the surface, and while she winds and meanders, don’t let her crooked self fool you—her speed is deceiving.

While her landscape changes with every mile, so does her rhythm. Her cadence. And she will not let you get in a hurry. At first she slows you, allowing little more than a crawl. Once she has nursed you, she opens, allowing you to stand and walk. When she finds you willing, she grants you open water and lets you stretch your legs. Finally, if you’re worthy, and because you’ve lasted through the worst she could throw at you, she opens her arms, takes you into her bosom and mothers you. But she is a jealous mother. If you hesitate, if you doubt her, if you blink and take your eye off her, she will spit you out of her mouth, cast you out to sea and bury you in the deep.

Once the water hits the ocean, the sun lifts it to the clouds, only to spill it once again across the continent. In that cycle, certain molecules of water have made this journey from swamp to river to ocean thousands of times.

D
OWNED TREES,
stumps and beaver dams made the first five hours mostly miserable as paddling goes. The harness began cutting into my shoulders because I spent as much time out of the canoe pulling and portaging as I did inside and paddling. Abbie lay there and laughed. A little after noon, the rain let up, then stopped altogether and the sun poked a hole in the clouds. Steam burned off the water, which had begun moving slightly faster, and the heat jumped into the upper seventies. The change in barometer did strange things to animals—including snakes. They’d be looking for higher ground, which meant they’d be out of their holes and moving.

The river made a hard right turn, leaving a sandbar, so I took advantage of both the topography and the sun, beached the canoe and carried Abbie to a spot where she could soak in the sun and sink her toes in the river. She was feeling pretty good, so she sat up when I set her down.

One of the gadgets I’d bought from Gus was a little gizmo called a Jetboil, developed by high-altitude climbers. It was a self-contained, self-lighting propane unit, about the size of coffee can, that could boil two cups of water in less than ninety seconds. I clicked it on, started peeling a hardboiled egg and then poured the tea while Abbie licked the chocolate off a Snickers bar and fed the rest to the minnows nibbling on her toes.

She scanned the underside of the canopy, her skin white against the sun and her veins blue against the surface. “I think I remember it here.”

I nodded. “This canopy runs a few more miles and then the river widens, spreads the trees and lets in the sun, warming the water.”

She sniffed the air and pointed with half a Snickers. “And somewhere along here, a pasture runs down to the water’s edge. Seems like I remember something about some cows.”

“You do.” I thumbed a fleck of eggshell off my thigh. “There’s a chicken farm not too much further. Depending on the wind, we’ll either get the cows or the chicken. Sort of a hit-or-miss thing.”

She chewed slowly. “How long before you’ll remarry?”

Abbie was far more comfortable with her not being here than I was. “What kind of a question is that?”

“Come on, this is not a news flash. You’ve had four years to get used to the idea.”

“That doesn’t mean I am.”

“So?”

“So what?”

“Have you?”

“Have I what?”

“Gotten used to the idea.”

“Yeah, honey. Just peachy.”

“Seriously. You could live another fifty or sixty years.”

“And?”

“What’re you gonna do?”

“To begin with, I figured I’d start smoking and drinking like a fish to cut the time in half.”

She saw she wasn’t getting anywhere. A minute passed. “You should, you know.” It was a statement, not a question.

I handed her a mug. “Next time, you can make your own dang tea.”

She hovered above the steam. “Seriously. We need to talk about this. Now”—she batted her eyes—“here are the names of five people I think you should consider.”