Ralph owned a summer camp on the Greenbrier River, not far from where Grandpa held the baptisms in water that ran cold and deep. Sometimes when we went to Ralph’s place on the river, I’d think of Grandpa standing in a suit in that numbing water, a few converts waiting their turn. People on the bank sang,
There is a fountain filled with blood,
drawn from Emmanuel’s veins,
and sinners plunged beneath that flood
lose all their guilty stains,
lose all their guilty stains.
Images played in my head like a moving picture show.
The summer camp wasn’t a camp at all; it was actually a frame house. A big room across the front held a dilapidated divan and several beds, and one end had been partitioned off to make a separate bedroom. The enclosed back porch was now a kitchen with an old Frigidaire, the kind with the motor poking up through the top, and an oilcloth-covered picnic table. Some of the back porch had been sectioned off to put in a bathroom that opened into the big front room. Next to the house, a weathered rowboat lay upturned against the trunk of a massive tree that leaned so low over the river we could walk out on the trunk. Vonnie and I spread a towel and ate our lunchmeat sandwiches there, balancing cold bottles of Dr Pepper between our legs. We ate strange foods like pickle loaf, baloney, liverwurst, sliced white bread, and Little Debbie oatmeal cakes.
Grandma didn’t think that stuff was fit to eat.
Ralph painted KATY’S FIRST YACHT on both sides of the boat in wavy blue letters that ran front to back. My mother’s name was Kathleen, but Ralph called her Katy from the start. When he put the boat in the water, he broke half a bottle of ginger ale on the front for good luck. Mother wouldn’t let him waste the whole bottle. Although he’d patched up the bottom of the boat until it looked like a crazy quilt, the river still seeped in. Every now and then Vonnie and I bailed with an old coffee can we kept fishing worms in. After a few trips, Ralph came up with the idea of tethering the boat to a tree and leaving it in the water. That made the wood swell up so it didn’t leak as bad.
While Vonnie and I splashed in the river, Mother sat on a quilt rubbing suntan lotion made of baby oil and iodine on her legs. Vonnie laid back until her whole body was under water except her face. She held her arms out and floated, toes just breaking the surface. She was showing off, so I ignored her. Mother had sent her for swimming lessons at Waterdale, the community pool near downtown. She promised me I’d be big enough next summer.
I stuck my toe in, gradually wading up to my knees. The cold always took me by surprise. Fed by icy mountain streams, the rivers and lakes never warmed up, no matter how hot the summer. Buttery yellow clay oozed between my toes. Silver fish no more than an inch long nibbled at tiny air bubbles on my ankles. I hopped from one leg to the other to keep them away. I imagined crawdads waiting to grab hold of my toe, but I’d stirred the water up too much to see them. The seat of my bathing suit, a green checkered one of Vonnie’s I hadn’t quite grown into, filled with silt. Holding the elastic out and wriggling my bottom back and forth under water helped, but I was still gritty.
Naked as baby mice, Vonnie and I hurried to spray each other down before the hose, warmed like a coiled snake in the summer sun, ran cold again. Teeth chattering, we wrapped chenille housecoats around us. We thawed out on a quilt that smelled of mothballs and fell asleep to the river slurping at the muddy bank.
Ralph was just back from picking up the Sunday paper.
“Fellow at the filling station told me there’s something down the river we need to see before we head back,” he said to Mother. “This is likely our last boat trip this summer, so pack up a picnic and we’ll make a day of it.”
We loaded the boat up to the gills, making it ride low in the water. Ralph paddled down the river a piece and around the bend. There, not a mile from our place, a swinging bridge swagged over a narrow place in the river.
“Can we walk on it?” I asked Ralph, sure the answer would be no.
“I don’t see why not,” he said, “that is, if it’s okay with your mother.”
Ralph tied the boat off, and we walked over to examine the bridge, which hung ten feet or so above the water. Truth be told, it looked downright shoddy up close. The ropes were grayed and stiff. Some of the boards were missing or rotted through. I didn’t want to step a foot on it, but I couldn’t back out now.
Ralph started over first, with me, Vonnie, and Mother following close behind.
The bridge was narrow enough to hold on to the ropes on both sides. It swayed and creaked as we walked, scarier than any rust-scaled ride I’d been on at the carnival. Vonnie, who wasn’t a fraidy-cat like me, leaned over the side to look down at the water. The ropes groaned as the bridge tilted to a dizzying slant.
“Quit doing that!” I complained. “You’re gonna make me fall.”
But it was too late. My foot slipped and one leg plunged through a space between the boards. I tried, but I couldn’t get my leg out of
