lather.
The creek eventually turned narrow, just wide enough and deep enough for a boat to go on. I recalled it widened again at the bridge, then, not far beyond that, narrowed enough to jump across, and went like that a long ways.
We got past all the undergrowth and came to the second widening of the creek. There was plenty of bank to stand on now. The water was dark and spotted with stumps and lily pads. Great trees leaned out from the shoreline and spread branches over the water thick as macrame, dripped vines and moss. Past all that, where the water was less dark and less riddled with stumps, was the Iron Bridge.
Half a bridge, really—what was built before the money played out. It sagged, and was covered with vines and moss. The metal, where it was visible, had gone red-brown with rust.
'Why would they build here?' Leonard said. 'Back a ways they could have thrown a bridge across in an afternoon.'
'They were going to widen all this, entire Sabine and its tributaries, I think. Make one gigantic river out of it. They had, as the Baptist preachers say, grandiose plans. Thought they'd be getting so much oil they'd be using river barges. Tools and machinery coming from the northern end of the river, oil in barrels heading South. But it played out before they got started good. There're abandoned wells all through these woods.
'You know,' Leonard said, 'I'm a wee bit excited. If there's a car down there, just might be a boat with money in it. Finding the car would be a way of checking. We got an hour before dark. What do you think?'
'Now's as good a time as any,' I said.
We went back to the car and opened the trunk. The tanks were well packed in foam rubber so they wouldn't bang together and blow us to hell. And they could. They were highly explosive.
Leonard got in the backseat first and took off his clothes. He had this tube of grease for bonding the dry suit to the flesh, and he rubbed the grease all over his body and pulled on the suit. He got out of the car and put on the tanks and mask.
Then it was my turn.
I hated the grease part.
We put our clothes in the trunk, got a fifty foot coil of thin rope out of there, and went down to the water carrying our flippers.
Leonard fastened the rope to his belt and went in first, and I fed the rope out to him, keeping just enough slack in it.
After a few minutes, he came out of the water and shook. He took the regulator out of his mouth and pulled his mask up. His face looked gray.
'No car?' I asked.
'Fuck the car,' he said. 'Goddamn.' He sat down on the shore and took in some deep breaths and shook. His teeth chattered.
'Chilly, huh?'
'Whoever called these bastards dry suits had to be kidding. I got water all inside, and it's cold, buddy boy, I will assure you. My balls are the size of grapes.'
'Before you went in, or after?'
'Funny. Look, it's deeper there than you think.'
'I remember it as deep,' I said. 'Used to fish and swim here.'
'There's a mild suck hole too.'
'That I don't remember.'
'It isn't bad, but it could trick you. It's about where I came up. Damn, I'm freezing.'
'I won't be down long.'
'Not telling me nothing I don't know. You think it's cold up here, this is the tropics compared to that water. And it's dark. So dark, you'll come up and it'll seem like the goddamn world's bright enough to be on fire.'
'If you had listened in your science classes, Leonard, instead of beating your meat under your desk, you would know that it takes more energy to warm a square inch of cold water than it does a square inch of cold air. And absence of light makes it dark.'
'Just listen, smartass. You're gonna feel numb at first, little confused. Think you're getting too disoriented, don't wait till you're so messed up you don't know what you're doing, come up, or yank on the rope and I'll help you up. I'm not jacking with you, Hap. Water like that will screw you around. Play some serious tricks on you.'
'Gotcha.'
I put the rope through my belt and tied it loosely in case it got tangled. Leonard took hold of the other end but kept his seat.
I pulled the mask down, put the regulator in my mouth, pulled on my flippers, and eased under the water.
It didn't hit me for a second, but when it did I felt a wave of blackness and paralysis all over. The cold went right through the suit like some kind of freeze ray. It was a feeling like you have when you get something cold on the wrong tooth, only it was my entire body.
It was all I could do to make myself breathe the oxygen.
The wave of blackness passed, though, and I could feel something like cold bug feet creeping through my dry suit; it was water seeping in, of course.
I got organized best I could and swam down deeper. I could feel Leonard letting out the rope.
