Where the River Ends

by Charles Martin

  It took me a second to recognize him. Television does funny things to a person. The senator was right. Wayne Massey was a good doctor. Had more plaques on his wall than he had space for them. He was a specialist studying the blood-brain barrier and had approached us hoping Abbie would join his study. The senator leaned forward. “Dr. Massey is one of the leading researchers in the country in studying conditions such as Abigail’s.” I noticed how carefully he chose his words.

  Within the last month, we’d called him—we were covering all our bases. Dr. Massey listened to us, asked thorough questions and at the end of the day, he could only recommend a course of treatment that would not change the outcome, only prolong it a few weeks. And even that he couldn’t guarantee. Those were his words, not mine. The choice not to enter into that course of treatment was Abbie’s. The end of the phone call sounded something like, “The medical community I represent simply cannot help her. I am sorry.”

  At what point do you stop fighting? At what point does some quality of life take precedence over the possibility of a few more incoherent and painful, or at least more painful, weeks? I don’t have the answer to this, but I do understand the question.

  The senator knew that we knew Dr. Massey. And we knew that he knew, because he’d arranged it through his office. He also knew that Dr. Massey could offer us nothing. Standing in front of the cameras, Dr. Massey was little more than a prop. A stunt. The public did not know. Hence, the reason he was there.

  The senator continued, his face growing more pained: “Dr. Massey would like another opportunity to assess Abigail’s condition and consider a new course of treatment. Possibly…” He held his hands out like the scales of justice. “Well, we just have no idea what is available or might be in the days to come.” He patted Dr. Massey on the shoulder. “We’re not finished fighting.”

  He was shrewd. In the span of a few seconds, the senator had raised an unspoken question: Was I—the sketchy, jealous son-in-law riding the coattails of the world-famous model—keeping Abbie from a possible treatment and cure? Was my kidnapping—because that’s what this was—motivated by the intent to murder? In so doing, he was circling the edges of a bold-faced lie, yet what did he care? He knew that the best way to enlist the public’s help was to dangle the question and create the perception. Because in the court of public of opinion, perception equals reality. I might as well have had a rope around my neck.

  The senator gathered his composure. “Doss…please bring my”—he placed his arm around Abbie’s stepmom—“…our daughter back to us…while there’s still time.”

  Cameras returned to the newswoman, who tapped her pencil on the desk in front of her. She turned to her male counterpart who had been quiet throughout her report. “When I was fighting breast cancer, Abbie Eliot was a great encouragement to me. Even”—the woman’s eyes glossed over—“writing me a note of encouragement when I lost my hair.” The guy behind the counter mashed the mute button and threw it on the counter. “I hope they catch the son of a—” The ice machine dropped a tray of ice and drowned him out but I got the picture. A trial before the court of public opinion would not be lengthy. I quietly set down my groceries while the conversation ramped up. I slipped out a side door, walked down the boat ramp, untied the canoe and pushed off with unusual force.

  Abbie sat up. “You okay?”

  I dipped my hat in the water, soaking the brim, slid it back on my head and let it cool me from the top down. I nodded.

  She pressed me. “What?”

  “Your dad.”

  “What’s he doing now?”

  “What he’s good at.”

  “Press conference?” I nodded.

  She chewed on her lip. “That bad?”

  “Denim shirt. Front porch of the house. Katherine standing behind him.”

  “You’re not serious.”

  “Yep.”

  “You know…he really doesn’t like you.”

  “Tell me about it.”

  To be honest, I’d be doing the same thing if some guy I didn’t like had my daughter off on some river when she should be at home with me. Only difference was, I knew what was best for Abbie. He didn’t. And deep down, he knew that, too. ’Course, he’d never admit it.

  The problem with the senator tracking us down was that he would exert his will over ours. He’d stick Abbie in some sterile bed surrounded by people she didn’t know in an environment she did not like. For some thirty-two years now, he had counted the votes of people who’d told him he knew best. After so long in politics, he had grown to believe that if he knew what was best for his constituents, then he obviously knew what was best for everyone. And that “everyone” included his family. No power on earth could convince him otherwise. I didn’t doubt his intentions. The senator wasn’t evil. In truth, he really didn’t have a bad bone in his body. He was arrogant, but I knew he loved his daughter. But loving her and knowing what was best for her, or what she wanted, were entirely different things. “Honey, I think he’s just trying to protect you.”

  “From what?”

  That part was easy. “Me.”

  AFTER A LONG STRAIGHTAWAY, the river morphs again. Subtlety. Close your eyes and you’ll miss it. The long, cool sections of bleached beach become fewer and shorter, giving way to darker mud and the occasional fiddler crab. Palmettos mixed with poplar reach over the bank and dip their fronds in the water, protecting the bank, making access more difficult and requiring you to pick your way to the bank. A twelve-strand powerline crosses the river, buzzing with currents strong enough to reset your wristwatch and make your hair stand up when you pass beneath.

  The Ralph E. Simmons Memorial State Forest starts a half mile south of Scotts Landing and runs seven miles along the river. It’s seven thousand–plus acres of sassafras, water hickory, yellow poplar and endangered plants such as hartwrightia, toothache grass and purple baldwina. Sprouting up amidst the long leaf pine and live oaks are blueberries, blackberries, sweet pepperbrush, cinnamon fern, orchids and, along the riverbank, pitcher plant colonies. Wildlife is rather plentiful. Everything from otters to gopher tortoises, deer, bobcat, turkey and ribbon snakes—not to mention cottonmouth moccasins and eastern diamondback rattlers. Locals claim to have seen black bear and the endangered Florida panther. Inland, the ground is sandy, with patches of dark musky earth that gives rise to gardenias, wild roses and the smell of turpentine.

  For us, the Ralph E. Simmons brought rest because few people are found along its banks. We floated as much as the tide would let us.

  CAMP PINCKNEY is a Georgia-side boat ramp a long way from nowhere. Regular visitors include kids on four-wheelers looking for a place to skim rocks or smoke dope. The tide is stronger here. And river tide is a lot like the flushing of a toilet—fast going out but slow to fill. Paddling downstream, we could easily manage four miles an hour. Five for shorter distances and only if I was focused. Against the incoming, we’d be lucky to average one and a half. Two would be a miracle. Add a headwind to the equation and we’d be backing up.

  Abbie slept while I kept the paddle in the water and slung the canoe on the outside of the river where the current was faster. The less time I spent trying to steer, the more time I spent pulling. We passed Cooneys Landing, Elbow Landing and Horseshoe Island before rounding the last bend just north of Prospect Landing.

  I pushed back my hat, scratched my head and watched the river slip beneath us.

  If you’ve spent enough time in the river, you can tell the difference between when the flow pushes you along and when the tide pulls you out. Usually, if you’re coming around a corner and your stern swings around—or fishtails—you’re being pushed. If you come around that same corner and your keel cuts the water like it was on a rail, you’re being pulled. The difference is key: you can fight the push, but you’ve got to ride the pull.

  The river can be a magical place. As much as I’ve been here, I still don’t quite get her. No matter how you hurry or how hard and fast you pull on the paddle, the
river controls the tempo. She stretches every minute and steals back every lost second. Rivers do this naturally. They don’t give two cents about the destination, only the journey. It’s why they’re crooked. Name one straight river and I’ll show you a man-made canal. People make a big deal about how their watch automatically sets itself to atomic time from a tower somewhere in Colorado, but if we were smart, we’d set our watches to river time. We’d wrinkle less and wouldn’t grow old as quickly.

  Abbie knew this. It might have been the one thing I’d taught her. She had looked at her list and then chosen the river not because it was her favorite place in the world or because she was a closet river rat but because it was the singular place on earth where time slowed down. Where each second counted. Where, if you paid attention, the sun would stop long enough to let you catch your breath.

  Near lunchtime, I lifted the paddle out of the water, lay down next to Abbie and counted the clouds that slipped overhead.

  Then I tried to stop the sun.

  27

  Two days later, we drove to the oncology center—the last day of summer break before school started. We walked through the sliding electronic doors and into the chemotherapy waiting room. That first second did a lot to combat the two-day pity party we’d been having. People of all shapes and sizes were waiting. Old, young, pretty, heavy, skinny, healthy, sickly, bald—all of America was sitting in that room. The chemo room is a big circular room filled with comfortable rockers, colorful cushions, colorful walls, colorful nurses and pale and yellowy-looking patients. The healthy and the damned. It is a weird, parallel universe. The sick live one foot in here, one foot out there.

  Chemotherapy is a systemic therapy, meaning it attacks fast-growing cells all over the body. So while it attacks the cancer, it also attacks the cells that grow hair, heal wounds, color your skin, etc. It’s the reason why so many chemo patients look like the walking dead. Because parts of them are.

  We signed in and sat next to a woman about Abbie’s age. They began talking and their stories were similar. That’s another thing we learned pretty quickly. While the types of cancer were different and in different stages, everybody’s stories were similar. Their diagnosis surprised them and, depending on lots of factors, they either had been or were fearful. Fear is the primary mode of transportation for cancer because cancer is the one six-letter word none of us ever wanted to hear. And if I had any doubts before, a quick look around the room confirmed what I’d already suspected. Cancer is the ultimate identity theft. It’s a vulture—it doesn’t care how old you are, where you’re from, who your daddy is, how much money you have or how important you think you are. It is no respecter of persons.

  About half the women wore a hat, scarf or wig that some loved one had told them didn’t look fake. Most had lied. Those who still had their hair looked around the room as if afraid that they were next. And because cancer is a vulture, most were. A few of the women wore baggy shirts that had not been baggy when they bought them. Some wore bright colors, some neutral. All wished they were someplace else.

  We’d been going there here a few weeks when it finally hit me. Admittedly, I can be a little slow. I thought to myself, Where are all the boyfriends and husbands?

  Finally, I asked Abbie. She shook her head. It was one of those intuitive things that she knew without having to ask. “They left.”

  Apparently, some do. Not all, not most, just some. I did meet some super-dads who were wearing three hats and had soccer-mom stickers plastered on the backs of their Suburbans, but I never got used to that picture of a pale, skinny, gaunt woman wearing a scarf, baggy clothes and connected to a clear plastic line with the empty seat next to her. A powerful statement about them and a pitiful statement about the men who had left them.

  So I asked Abbie. “Well…” She looked slowly around the room. “If you married a face, a set of boobs or a couple of curves”—she turned to me—“and those are gone…” She shrugged.

  Behind Abbie’s statement loomed a much larger question. One she was too afraid to ask. I had a feeling that the answer she was looking for might take months, even years, and was not verbal.

  28

  JUNE 5, AFTERNOON

  The distinguishing feature of Prospect Landing is not the elegantly sloped concrete boat ramp, the Florida Cracker houses that bookend either side of it, the cows or their pastures that lead down to it, or the manicured rows of cathedral pine trees whose needles have been raked and sold to the home mulch market, but rather the back end of the yellow 1957 Chevrolet station wagon that rises up out of the water like a channel buoy. Word has it that a disgruntled housewife had come home to find her husband entwined with the neighbor. In revenge, she backed his ’57 Chevrolet out of the garage, punched the accelerator and in a move reminiscent of Sally Field in Smokey and the Bandit, tried to jump the river. It was his pride and joy and this was payback. Only difference was she had no bridge to launch her heavenward. Only incline she had was a mound of dirt next to the ramp. She hit it going about sixty-five, maybe seventy miles an hour, and pitched the hood upward only to quickly have the back end hit the same bump, which drove the front end downward. The car flew through the air like a plow, cut into the water and lodged into the pluff mud of the far bank, looking a lot like an errant Soviet-issued missile. It’s been there ever since. Locals dubbed it the “buttugly” station wagon, but that didn’t stop them from capitalizing on their neighbor’s bad fortune and stripping it for parts. Now it’s a rusted shell, no glass, no taillights or hubcaps, no tires and no engine. Somebody even took the steering wheel. Over the years, the weight of the steel frame has driven it further into the muck.

  For me, the frame served as a marker. That may seem simple, but federal game and fish officers routinely used Prospect as a launch for their twenty-two-foot Pathfinders. They frequented it because it was seldom used, tucked out of the way and gave them quick access up-and downriver. We slowed, rounded the bend and I cut us in closer to the bank, skimming across the tops of paper plate–sized lily pads to slow our speed more. The rusted tailpipe of the station wagon came into view first, followed quickly by the boat ramp. The game warden’s truck and trailer sat parked against the far fence. He was nowhere in sight but his trailer was empty, which meant he and his boat were touring the river. I said nothing to Abbie, but started thinking about a place to spend the night.

  We slipped past Walker’s Landing, McKenzie Landing, Colerain, Gum Stump Landing, Orange Bluff, Mallets Landing and the Flea Hill boat ramp. The problem with all of this was not our speed—in river terms, we were flying—but the number of people I’d seen. Houses rose up on stilts or were buried into the bluffs in nearly every square inch of river frontage. And down here, people expect you to wave. It’s like two cars passing on a dirt road. You wave. It’s just the way it is. Boats on the river are the same way. Wave and you’re noticed little. Don’t wave, and you’re noticed a lot. I waved without bringing attention, but sooner or later, somebody would put us together with the news reports. If we caught the tide right and my body didn’t give out, we could be in St. Marys in thirty-six to forty-eight hours. Miss the tides and it was anybody’s guess.

  LIKE TRADER’S HILL, Kings Ferry is a favorite among boaters, campers and joyriders. At its widest, it’s maybe a hundred and fifty yards across. They have a large floating concrete dock—because high and low tide can fluctuate by as much as five feet—a store and several houses built up close to the ramp. I didn’t want to pass it in the daylight. We floated until dark and passed through on the far side as the moon cracked over the treetops. That was both good and bad. Good because no one saw us. Bad because we missed the store and any chance at food.

  Compounding the problem was the fact that I was deteriorating fast. I’d eaten sporadically and yet I was probably burning six to eight thousand calories a day. I’d long ago started eating away at my fat reserves. Not only was I growing weak, but huge blisters had come up across my palms, popped and were now raw and oozing. My sweat drip
ped down into the cracks, as did the water. And because the water was now tidal, it was also salty. Every time I dipped the paddle in the water, then flipped it over the opposite gunnel, the water trickled down and flowed across my hands.

  While salt water hurt, it was not all bad. Salt water meant crabs. Blue crabs. And around here, blue crabs meant crab traps. It was a mortal sin to steal from another man’s trap. People had been shot over such a thing. I spotted several numbered white floats down the center of the river, lifted them over the side and stole every crustacean I could dig out. Five traps later, I had twenty-eight crabs. Abbie poked open an eye and said, “Isn’t that illegal?”