vituperation

I stood outside Publix on the other side of Madison this morning, waiting for the manager to come open the door. It was 6:30, opening time. I was there because this Publix, being near the interstate, opens a half-hour earlier than the one by our house.

She entered the cart area — the vestibule, I think of it — and flicked the switch over the automatic door to turn it on. As I walked through, I noticed she was looking at me, a puzzled expression on her face.

She’s trying to figure out why she’s seeing me over here, I thought. For the longest time, she was the assistant manager at the Publix near our house, and I saw her every Saturday morning when I went for groceries.

“I’m used to seeing you at the other store,” I said, smiling.

She looked at me for a long second.

“Did I…” she began. “Did I see you on a TV show the other day?”

Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck.

Mentally, I rolled my eyes. Not at her, because it’s not her fault, but at the fact that every time I think it’s all over, something like this happens.

“Maybe,” I said, wondering what the hell would be playing again.

“I thought you looked familiar!”

“What was the show about?”

“Weight loss.”

“Oh. Yeah, that was probably me.” I thought about it for a second. “Was it a Penn and Teller show?”

“Yeah! That’s what it was! I knew I’d seen you and your wife before!”

Remember, boys and girls: you can never escape your past.

Reflections on an inflatable kayak, after two trips in one:

• Not having to spend half the day getting a hardshell centered and tied down on top of your car (because you were too cheap to buy a rack) rocks
• It rides lower in the water, which makes it seem more stable and less ‘tippy’.
• Even better than the first point, getting it out of the water, popping a couple of valves, and folding into the back of your car ROCKS.
• There’s but a single downside: it’s a little narrower, and harder to get in and out of. Imagine an elephant trying to fold itself into a Beetle and you’ll have some idea. Once in, it’s great, but getting in is sure to cause laughs from those around you.

I love it.

I spent my most formative years - from 11 to 13 - in a neighborhood at the edge of Decatur Alabama, called Hickory Hills. Across highway 67 from that subdivision sits a section of Tennessee River backwater, lovely in the summer but something nightmares are made of in the winter. My friends and I called that place “the holes.”

The holes are in a harbor of sorts, set apart from the rest of the backwaters by a narrow finger of land. In the winter the water level drops to a depth of less than a foot, exposing a bed of mud and the location’s namesake. Since there never seemed to be as much rain in the winter as in the summer the water stayed settled, almost clear, and you could easily see down into it.

You could see the holes.

Scattered all across the cove just under the surface were pits, like pockmarks in the acne-scarred face of an adolescent. Most were small, three or four feet across, but there were a couple of whoppers as big as swimming pools - only deeper. We never saw the bottom of those holes, not even on bright days when the sun was high overhead. As clear as the water was, it wasn’t that clear. The holes swallowed the light, changing it first to a muted green and then to black.

Fish swam out of that darkness from time to time - sunfish, bream, and the occasional barracuda-like gar - as if they wanted to catch a glance of the strange creatures peering down at them from another world. We tried in vain to catch these fish but were rarely successful. On one memorable occasion I was at the holes with my friend Mike, hoping to gig a fish, and we spotted a large bass in the shallows on the far side of the cove. After carefully working our way around the perimeter we threw rocks at it, driving it into water so shallow it became trapped.

We worked our way out to the fish and quickly became trapped ourselves. The mud was like quicksand, grasping and sucking until we were in it - literally - to our waists. We got close enough to the fish to spear it with the gig, but we almost didn’t make it back to the rocky shore. To this day one of my knee-high rubber boots lies a good two feet under that mudflat. We ate the bass, Mike and I, later that same day at my house. We were cold and muddy and covered with scales and fish blood from the cleaning, but it was one of the finest meals I’ve ever had.

Two holes - one huge and one small—were close enough to the edge of the water where we normally fished that falling in was a distinct possibility if one wasn’t careful. The edges of those holes looked decayed, waiting (hoping) to break away if a wayward boy got too close to the edge. An old stump jutted out of the water like a broken tooth next to the smaller of the two. My friends used to stand on that stump, which hung gnarled roots out over the hole, to fish. I never did; I was too scared of what might happen.

Sometimes at night when the house is quiet and I can’t sleep, I think of the holes. In my mind I see myself standing on that blackened stump looking down into the dark. Soundlessly it breaks and I plunge into the water, the rotten wood crumbling away under my feet as I flail my arms, frantic. I descend in a cloud of silt in that vision, sliding into the mouth of some leviathan. Above me I see the light fading as I sink deeper. Bubbles stream from my mouth and race toward the surface like hundreds of tiny balloons. Such thoughts ensure that sleep keeps its distance.

Last Sunday I kayaked over the holes, and took pictures. The water’s up a couple of feet from its lowest point, which is usually in December / January, but you can still see them there, waiting. They look hungry.

They’re still scary, but not quite as scary as when I was a kid. The rotted stump is gone now. I wonder if maybe the holes finally claimed some boy, perhaps a chubby little kid from Hickory Hills who thought it would be a good idea to stand on the stump and try his luck.

I realize now that the holes are formed by a spring bubbling up from deep in the earth. It has apparently split the bedrock in several places, and the holes formed above the splits. You can actually see the water swirling where the main part of the spring comes up out of the biggest hole. When I took the kayak over it, it felt like fingers tickling up my legs.

I didn’t go over it a second time.