Chapters
cracked the boathouse door at 5:00 a.m. and smelled Noxzema. Charlie didn't like a sore butt, so he rubbed Noxzema on the chamois of his shorts before we got into the boat. It was dark, but I could see his stumpy form sprawled across the boathouse floor, stretching. I could also see the wet footprints shining through the dark, showing me where he'd climbed out of the water and into the boathouse. He had been doing Pilates for years and could pretty well hook his heel behind his head when he wanted. Most limber human being I'd ever met. Also one of the strongest.
Next to him sat Georgia, his yellow Lab. He never went anywhere without her. Her tail flapped the wooden floor and let me know she was happy to see me.
The wood floor creaked below me, telling Charlie of my arrival, but I imagine he'd heard me coming before I cracked the door. The edge of the lake lapped the rock bulkhead below and sounded off the hollow chamber of wood three feet above it. I turned on a fluorescent light above one of my workbenches, and Charlie smiled but didn't say a word.
On one side sat the two-man scull. I tapped it, and Charlie nodded. It weighed only about eighty pounds, but at over twenty-five feet long, it took two of us to get it into the water. Charlie grabbed the bow and I the stern. He backed down the ramp and slid his end into the glassy, still water.
I pulled the boat alongside the dock and patted Charlie on the shoulder.
He said, "'Morning to you too."
He grabbed the ladder, found the boat with his toe, and climbed down, strapping his feet into the bindings in front of him. I grabbed the oars and slipped carefully into the seat up front. I strapped on my "spare" heart-rate monitor while Charlie tapped his fingers on the oars-Morse code for I'm ready to go nozu! We pushed off, dipped the oars in, feathered as the water droplets from the blades painted the lake in half circles, and pulled out of the small finger that accented the northern tip of Lake Burton.
The silence hung warm around us. Charlie whispered over his shoulder, accompanied by a half smirk, "You had a long day yesterday."
"Uh-huh." Another dip, another pull, another feather.
The muscles in Charlie's back rippled down from his neck, around his shoulders, and into his ribs in a concert of taut human tissue.
"What'd you wear?" he said, now with full smirk.
"Same thing," I said.
Charlie shook his head and said nothing more as we folded and unfolded into a rhythmic pulse.
Tip to tip from Jones Bridge to Burton Dam is nine miles. Most mornings we do all of it. Down and back. Charlie and I are a pretty good match. I'm taller and leaner, he's thicker and stouter, but I'd never cross him in a dark alley. Whereas my V02 max is greater-meaning I have a larger heart and lung capacity and can consume more oxygen over a longer period of time-Charlie's got another gear in his body that's not subject to the laws of physics or anatomy, the kind that's buried deep down and allows ordinary people to do extraordinary things. Like win a state wrestling championship by pinning the number-one-ranked wrestler in the country-twice.
It was a double-elimination tournament, and since his oppo nent had never lost in high school matches, Charlie had to wrestle him twice. The first time he pinned him in the second period, and in the second match he tied the guy in a knot like a pretzel and pinned him in the first minute. What made it even more impressive was that while his opponent was a senior, Charlie was a sophomore. Starting with that one, Charlie won three state championships and never lost another match in high school.
With the current of the Tallulah pushing us along, Charlie sank his oars in, pulled hard, and shot us southward. The jolt told me he was feeling pretty good and that today would hurt. And if it hurt this much with the river, it would hurt that much more coming back against it.
Canoeing or sculling the river can be tricky after 7:00 a.m. when the motorboats appear, so we go in the early morning. Sudden changes in weather are as common as the sun, but nobody knows when to predict them. Because of the surrounding mountains, unexpected gusts and tornadoes can rip across the lake and sink any- and everything. In 1994, some years before we moved up here, a "supercell" of tornadoes known as the Palm Sunday Killer ripped through here, and everybody remembers not only the sound but all the debris that floated down the lake for days afterward. The bodies that once lived in the homes didn't float downstream, because most of them were so full of holes from flying limbs and shingles that they sank to the bottom where the old town of Burton used to sit.
Rowing is a sport unlike any other. On the surface, it's the only one where you don't constantly look ahead. More often than not, where you've been-your hindsight-tells you where you're going. In track and field, sprinters and hurdlers look like locomotives at full speed-their arms and legs pounding the track and air like rods and pistons. In football, players spin about like battering rams or bumper cars. And soccer is an anthill of players caught between a ballet and a bullfight. But in rowing, the man in the scull is something of a spring.
To understand this, open the back of a wristwatch while the coils of the hairspring open and close. In rowing, the body falls into a groove, albeit a painful one, whereby the rower repeats exactly the same pulse over and over and over again. He crouches into a spring, knees tucked into his chest with arms extended, having sucked in as much air as his lungs will allow. He digs in, pushing with his legs and starting the long pull with his arms, expelling air throughout the pull. He reaches full extension, spent, and gorges on air as deeply as his lungs will let him. At the top of his pull, the rower lifts his blades and pulls his knees into his chest once again, sucking in air the entire way back down the boat, only to return and unselfishly empty himself once again.
It is much like the beating of a human heart. So demanding is the action of rowing on the human body that some rowers pump half again as much air through their lungs during the course of a race as most any other athlete in the world. That's why rowers tend to be giants with broad wingspans and lungs like zeppelins.
Which is a good picture of Charlie. If he were a bird, he might be a condor. Or better yet, an albatross.
The joy of rowing comes in the movement. The scull is long and narrow, so it glides across the water at terrific speeds. The combination of blades, outriggers, and gliding seat combine like a percussion section to create a clink-clunk-hiss noise that sounds a rhythmic tempo across the water. Even though you sit backward, you're somehow aware of your surroundings, guiding the bow with the eyes in the back of your head. Steering is as much a feel as it is a response. Every few pulls you look behind you to print the panorama like a photograph in your mind. Then, turning back, you watch the wrinkling line where your keel has cut the water and the big round pools of ripples poked into the lake by your blades. With every successive pull, the pools you're making grow and grow until eventually they overlap and combine.
We settled into our rhythm and glided through the mouths of Dick's Creek, Timpson Creek, and Moccasin Creek. Beads of sweat cascaded off my nose. My heart-rate monitor told me I was near the tip of my target zone, and Charlie's sweat-soaked back and expanding lungs told me he was too. The feeling of rowing in concert with another, soaked in sweat, painful but comfortable with your own effort, is a feeling unlike any other. It's the "runner's high" times two. Maybe three.
Just because I sit in front and am technically responsible for steering doesn't mean that Charlie doesn't know where he is. We had passed Murray Cove and Billy Goat Island and pulled past Cherokee Creek when Charlie asked, "You see the dam yet?"
"Five or six more pulls."
"We're getting slower. We'd better pick it up if we're gonna try to win the Burton Rally this year. I hear those Atlanta guys are coming back."
The Burton Rally was a bridge-to-dam race that Charlie and I had competed in for the last four years, placing third the first year and second every year since. Our nemesis was a duo of exOlympians from Atlanta. They were good, but we were gaining. Or at least they were letting us think we were. Their advantage, aside from t
he fact that they were just better, was a Kevlar boat that weighed about half as much as ours. But we liked our boat. For one race a year, the HMS Emma managed just fine.
Charlie pulled hard and jolted us forward.
I asked, "You feeling rested this morning?"
Charlie leaned in closer and placed one finger in the air. "I am only one, but still I am one. I cannot do everything, but still I can do something. I will not refuse to do the something I can do."
I smiled. What Shakespeare did for me, Helen Keller did for Charlie.
Gliding atop the water is a freeing experience-it's all future, all possibility, where the record of the past lasts only a few seconds and then is gone forever. At the dam we sat up, coasted, and drank the air. The only sound was the alarm on my heart-rate monitor telling me I was outside my target zone. Charlie heard the alarm and smiled, but said nothing because his alarm was sounding too. I turned us as sunlight began to light the water and burn off the morning steam. Spirals like miniature tornadoes rose in swirls all around us, forming little clouds and adding to the warm sweat that draped us like a liquid blanket.
It was a common sight, and one that reminded me that, despite all the ugliness and all the horror, beauty survived, and Emma would have loved it. It reminded me of another such morning, when I woke early, boiled the water, brought her a cup of tea, and then helped her down to the bank. She sat with her knees tucked into her chest, hugging me with one arm and her cup with the other. I wrapped her feet in a fleece blanket while she just shook her head at the sight in front of her. Taking a sip of tea, she kissed me, leaned her head on my shoulder, and whispered, "That which we cannot speak about, we must pass over in silence."
At the time I had not read Wittgenstein, but I have read him many times since.
Charlie felt me pause and whispered over his shoulder, "A pretty morning."
"Yeah." I paused, drinking it in again. "She would've loved it."
Charlie nodded and sipped from the air as the water and history slid beneath us.
Back at the dock, he climbed out of the scull and felt his way along the sides of the boathouse until he got his bearings.
"You got it?" I asked.
"Yup, I'm good. Just seeing where I am."
Charlie sees mostly with his hands and ears because his eyes are useless. Other than lightning during a storm, fireworks on the Fourth, or looking directly into the sun, he's as blind as a bat. That too happened five years ago, but we don't ever talk about it. The reason for his sudden blindness is well-known between us, but the reason behind the reason is not.
And this explains Georgia. She's a seeing-eye dog that I got for him as a Christmas present, once we were certain his sight wasn't returning. I tucked her under the tree, and Charlie agreed to keep her, quickly falling in love. She's supposed to lead him, but it seldom works out that way. Charlie also owns a walking stick, a white one with a red tip, but he rarely unfolds it. It stays in the corner of his house or folded up in his back pocket. As blind as he is, he's just not that blind. As for me: No, I'll not weep: I have full cause of weeping, but this heart shall break into a hundred thousand flaws or ere I'll weep.
Charlie found the edge of the dock and lowered himself to the guide wire. Starting to pull himself across the forty yards of water to his home, with Georgia swimming close alongside, he turned and asked, "You still having that dream?"
"Yeah."
"You figured out what it means?"
"Not really."
"You need an interpreter?"
"Think you can?"
Charlie shook his head. "No, but if you sleep any less, you'll turn into an owl."
"Thanks."
Charlie smiled, treading water. "Well, every time I get up to pee during the night, I can hear you over here tinkering with something."
"Yeah ... well, school taught me a few things, and how to live without sleep was one of them."
"Yeah, but that ain't healthy. It's twisted."
"Tell me about it."
"I don't know how she ever put up with you."
"Thanks. Don't let that shark bite you."
Charlie hummed the theme song to jaws and began pulling again. He wanted to say more, I knew, but he let it go. It was often what Charlie didn't say that spoke the loudest.
Chapter 6
grew up in a hundred-year-old house just a few blocks from the Vinings town square. It was a no-frills, two-story wooden house that rose up out of the earth, tall and narrow, like it had been squeezed during construction. It was surrounded by two wraparound porches-one on each floor-and framed by eight magnolia trees that provided shade regardless of the time of day. From the street, you could barely see the house.
It wasn't large, only three bedrooms, but had almost as much square footage in porches as it did inside. The huge, sprawling limbs of the magnolias spread about the house like giant arms. When the trees were in bloom, my mother opened every window and reversed the rotation of the attic fan, sucking in the outside air and the scent that emanated from the canopy under which we lived. Some of the limbs swayed and bent in under the porch or rubbed up against it house and trees almost like an old married couple who had grown comfortable with each other's company. We spent a lot of time playing in the coolness on the porch or climbing along the miles of magnolia limbs.
My father hung bird feeders in every tree, making bird-watching easy. From finch to cardinal, mockingbird, blue jay, crow, hummingbird, martin, and even the occasional owl or red-tailed hawk, our life on the porch was an education in the flying, singing, nest ing, and mating habits of every common bird in northeast Georgia. The most common were the cardinals; at one time we counted eleven nests. The laser-bright male stood proudly and protectively alone against the dark green and brown backdrop, never far from the darker, more blood-colored female with whom he would mate for life. Come nighttime in the spring, the walls of our house echoed with the concert of male and female cardinals, sending out their voices like submarines sending sonar pings from the dark depths of the ocean's floor.
EMMA AND I MET ON THE PLAYGROUND IN SECOND GRADE. I had just crossed the jungle gym without touching the ground and was still hanging there when I spotted her watching me. She was the new kid, had just moved to town, quiet, usually drawing something in a sketch pad and always watching everything out of the corner of her eye. She was small for her age, maybe even a bit frail, and during recess, when the other kids were playing kickball or climbing on the jungle gym, Emma would sit at the picnic table, open her sketch pad, and take pictures with her pencil. What she could do with fifteen minutes, a pencil, and a blank sheet of paper was almost uncanny.
One day at the end of recess, she nonchalantly handed me a sketch and returned to her seat on the far side of the room. It was me, dangling like a monkey with a silly look on my face. And she was right, I had been trying to show off. Her sketch had captured that. The next day during lunch, she offered me her chocolate chip cookie, and I gave her my milk. The following week, we moved our seats together in Mrs. Wilson's music class, and I even skipped a kickball game to watch her sketch. At the beginning of our thirdgrade year, her folks moved into a brick home around the block from us, so I had to walk past her house on the way to school. Most mornings I'd bump into her and her little brother, Charlie.
Charlie was four years younger and had unusually big arms for a kid his age, which explained why Emma affectionately called him Popeye. Charlie loved to build things and, even more, beat stuff with a hammer. And due to the size of his arms, he could swing it too. He was also real protective of his big sister, and for the first couple years he too watched me out of the corner of his eye.
Charlie was adventuresome and didn't always think things through, so when he tried to swing from one of our magnolias using his Stretch Armstrong action figure as the rope, he ended up with an ugly amputation and a real mess. Lying in a pile of magnolia leaves next to the porch with Stretch's arm in one hand and Armstrong goo leaking everywhere, Charlie looked to me fo
r help.
"Curious" and "plays well alone" defined me as a child. From the time I learned that Legos snapped together, I had transformed my room into a maze of my own private construction projects, forcing my mom to all but give up on getting me to clean it. Model airplanes hung from fishing wire pinned to the ceiling, Lincoln Log houses five and six stories high stood in the corners, toothpick forts like the Alamo rested on overstuffed bookshelves, and houses of cards held together with glue took up too much space on my desk. I had taken apart wrecked Matchbox cars and rebuilt new ones with pieces from fifteen different cars; built my own slingshots out of surgical tubing; improved the cranks, gearing, and brakes on my own dirt bike; increased the high speed on the fan in my room; and improved on the rate of twist in a Slinky so that it actually would cascade down a series of steps the way the commercial touted. In short, I liked to tinker, and what's more, I had an insatiable need to know and understand how things worked.
Especially the human body. If buildings and vehicles were interesting, even fascinating, then the human body was an allencompassing obsession. The walls of my room were covered in posters and diagrams demonstrating everything from bone structure and muscular growth to organ systems and the electronic neural pathways of the brain. Because my hands played a large role in educating my mind, by the age of seven I had already dissected and sewn back together two giant frogs, one fish, a neighbor's cat, an armadillo, and a long black snake-all of which were dead, or quickly dying, before I got hold of them.
At that age, my dissecting could more accurately be described as digging around, but my sewing showed promise. In order to improve, I practiced. I sliced the skin of an orange and then sewed it back together, careful not to spill the juice. When I had mastered oranges, I graduated to French bread, because the skin is delicate, brittle, and tears easily.