Aquifer: A Novel (21 page)

A week earlier he had phoned his colleague, Dr. Bart Welton of the astrophysics department, reminding him of his standing invitation to come bass fishing. Dr. Welton did not need any arm twisting to accept the invitation and immediately made plans for the trip. He had arrived at Clayton’s Jack’s Fork River campsite late the previous evening.

*

The hot, sunny August afternoon found the foursome floating down the Current River in two canoes: Clayton and Welton led the flotilla while Larry and Tina lagged somewhat behind in the second canoe. Welton was fishing with spinners, spoons and other lures while Clayton was casting with a dry fly. Tina had a fly rod also. Larry was the sole holdout. He had never understood trying to tease a fish into biting bits of plastic, metal and feathers. He used worms. A
purist
, he fancied himself, even though the fly fishermen of the world would strongly argue that point.

They had put in at Two Rivers Ranch late in the morning. For the past three hours they had unsuccessfully float-fished, placidly drifting downstream with the lazy current. By late afternoon no one had caught anything. In fact they hadn’t even had a nibble. Even the worms were not working. Though everyone was having a good time just being out on the river, they nevertheless taunted Clayton, good-naturedly, about the lack of fish.

“So where's all the lunkers I heard about?” teased Welton. “ I thought this river was so full of them that you could almost walk from bank to bank without getting wet. Ya can't have a fish fry without the main course!”

“Can I help it Welton if you keep scaring all the fish away with your constant casting and reeling? That lure of yours sounds like a brick hitting the water. What do you call that yellow and red thing-a-ma-bob?”

“It’s a
Five of Diamonds,
and it’s one of the best bass lures made.”

“Well, I suggest you return it and get your money back. Besides, a true fisherman uses flies, right Tina?” protested Clayton, hoping to get some backup support.

Tina laughed but refused to take sides in this battle of wits. She playfully responded, intentionally pretending a deep hillbilly accent. “It don’t much matter how ya do it. There’s more ta fishin’ than whachya ketch, though by now we should’a had a whole mess of ‘em, less’in a course, somethin’ big, ‘n yeller, ‘n red done scairt‘em all away,” she added, as she looked directly at Welton with a broad mischievous smile.

At that, everyone, including Welton, burst out laughing.

As they drifted, Clayton’s attention was drawn to another canoe that had kept its distance, constantly trailing about 100 yards behind them for the past half hour. The lone canoeist had all the equipment for fishing but seemed more intent on observing Clayton’s party than on catching any fish. Clayton had the distinct impression that he had seen this man before, but the oversized fishing hat the man was wearing shaded his face such that Clayton couldn’t be sure. His mind searched for something familiar, some framework on which to hang this man’s identity.

Just then Larry, who had maneuvered his canoe along side of Clayton’s, brought his paddle down hard in the water, flat, so that it created a tremendous splash spraying Clayton and Welton. Jolted back from his wondering thoughts, Clayton returned the favor and a big water fight ensued.

The good-natured water fight continued while the river’s current lazily drifted the canoes past Owl’s Bend and downstream for another half-mile. Everyone was laughing and having a very good time trying to soak each other, though no one had gotten drenched. At one point Larry tried ramming Clayton’s canoe to swamp the professors, but being a novice at canoeing, he overcorrected his steering and missed by mere inches. The professors were equally inept in their attempt at retaliation. The fine art of canoe navigation was not one of the prerequisites for either graduate school entrance or granting of tenure.

Just then Tina pointed to the left bank where the Blue Spring tributary merged with the Current River and yelled, “Wait, stop! Stop! Tie up over there. I want to show you something.”

The water fight ended as quickly as it began and both canoes headed for the far bank. The canoeists tied up, disembarked, and headed down the one-fourth mile long footpath.

The lone observer secretly beached his canoe about fifty yards farther upriver and sneaked into the woods to continue his observations. The sudden departure of Clayton’s party from the river seemed to have piqued the observer’s curiosity as he hastily, yet stealthily, closed in on his subjects.

The foursome stood at the edge of a large artesian spring that rose from the base of a 100-foot high white limestone and granite bluff. The crystal clear pool was about seventy-five feet in diameter. The water’s surface was calm and glassy smooth, creating a large reflecting pool, mirroring the bluff which rose majestically above it. The bottom of the small lagoon gradually sloped from the shore toward the bluff on the far side, till it reached a depth of about forty feet at the lagoon’s midpoint. Then the bottom dropped abruptly over a sheer, vertical drop-off. The waters of the deep abyss reflected back a rich, royal, turquoise blue.

Tina and the three men walked out onto a wooden observation platform built at water level extending fifteen feet into the pool so that tourists could look straight down into the seemingly bottomless pit of the spring. In the shallow water, near the edges of the lagoon, long tresses of underwater grasses gracefully undulated with the gentle current of the spring’s flow. The edges of the pool were rimmed with watercress.

“Eighty-three million gallons of water a day,” said Tina. “There’s about a dozen springs this size along the Current River but this one’s my favorite. It’s the world’s largest single outlet spring. The first settlers of the area named it
Blue Spring
, but the Cherokees and Delawares that used to live here called it
Spring of the Summer Sky
.”

“I can see why they called it that. It’s so blue and yet it’s also so clear. You can almost see to the bottom,” responded Larry.

“Not quite,” said Clayton with a slight chuckle. “This plaque says they’ve had divers go down over 400 feet and they still haven’t hit the bottom. At that depth the spring is still going straight down, but standing here on the platform you can see objects down to the depth of about 200 feet.”

“And as you dive down the wall of the bluff there are a number of caves that go back into it,” Tina added.

Larry seemed mesmerized by Tina and was totally oblivious to Clayton and Welton, even though they were all standing within five feet of each other. Surprised by Tina’s comment he asked, “You dive?”

“Of course, don’t you?” she responded playfully.

“Well, I’ve never had an opportunity.”

“What? You lived by the ocean and taped whale songs and you’ve never dived? Well, we’ll have to change that!” she said with a laugh. Then composing herself, Tina pointed to a flat wooded area fifty yards behind them, near the brow of a low hill. “See that flat spot on top of the hill over yonder? Before this area became a national park my Granddaddy’s cabin was over there. When my Mom was a girl one of her chores was to fill the drinking buckets with spring water and lug them back up to the cabin.”

Then she pointed in the other direction across the lagoon to a cleft in the bluff wall. “See that triangular grotto over there behind the boulder? My mother used to go there as a little girl to be alone and to think. I go there myself when I want a place of solitude to think through things.”

There appeared to be no way to get to the grotto since it was on the far side of the spring with a bluff wall to the left and the spring's outlet river to the right.

“So how do you get over there?” asked Larry.

“Come on, I'll show you,” responded Tina as she started off the observation platform. Stepping onto the dirt path she started to jog and called back over her shoulder, “Last one up the trail jumps first.”

“What . . . ?” said Larry quizzically.

“Come on. This’s great fun. You’ll love it,” Tina shouted back.

The three men started jogging down the trail trying to catch up with Tina who was extremely quick and agile. The trail started out through the woods and headed away from the spring. Then it circled back to the right and ascended up the back side of the bluff. About halfway up the hillside the trail forked. They took the right fork, which doubled back to the face of the bluff, where it opened onto a narrow rocky ledge that crossed the bluff’s midpoint, about fifty feet above the water.

Tina stopped midway across the ledge, where it widened out slightly and was directly above the center of the spring. When the men caught up to her she pointed down the length of the trail before them, “This trail continues across the bluff then down to the grotto. But now that we're here,” she gestured out over the spring, “who's going to jump first?”

There was total silence for about three seconds. Larry was the first to speak. “You’re serious?”

“Well, its against the law since we’re in a National Park. But before that, this land was in our family for seven generations. My family’s been swimming in this spring for almost two-hundred years. Ain’t no better way to cool off on a hot day.” She stepped to the edge of the bluff, bent her knees, leapt forward, and free-fell fifty feet into the spring's lagoon, creating a tremendous splash.

Underwater, her plunge into the spring took Tina to the depth of about fifteen feet. There was a cave five-feet below her legs, where an alien amphibious creature the size of an extremely large alligator lurked in the shadows.

Suddenly, the creature lunged from its hiding place with gaping jaws. They clamped shut, just missing Tina’s feet in the swirling mass of bubbles.

Tina felt an eerie, whooshing, jet of water rushing past her feet and legs. She knew that the powerful up-surge of the spring’s water-flow created currents but this was an extremely unusual sensation. Instinctively she turned her head and glanced down, but she could not see anything in the frothy bubbles created by her plunge into the spring. Unaware of the creature’s presence, or the danger she had just escaped, Tina shrugged off the sensation, dismissing it as an anomaly of the spring’s current. Eager to be out of the cold water, she began to swim for the surface.

Having missed its prey, the creature retreated back into the darkness of the cave.

Tina broke the surface of the water with her head tilted back so that her long blond hair trailed behind. Treading water, she called up to Larry, “Come on Larry, you’re next!” Then she began swimming for the edge of the pool.

“Oh no, not me,” Larry exclaimed.

Clayton stepped to the edge and glanced over. With a wry smile he nudged Larry in the ribs with his elbow. “Come on, Larry. It’s not so far!”

“Not more’n fifty feet I’m sure,” added Welton. You'll be in the water before you know what happened.”

As Tina walked in knee-deep water through the watercress, she turned to look at Larry on the bluff wall and yelled to him. “You going to jump or discuss it in committee all day?”

“I’ve never done anything like this before, so don’t laugh at my style,” Larry yelled back as he stepped to the edge of the ledge, curled his toes over the lip, spread his arms, and beat on his chest, letting out an ear-piercing Tarzan yell. Then he powerfully yet gracefully propelled himself upward and forward into a perfectly executed swan dive.

Tina watched in awe at Larry’s impeccable form as he plummeted downward with his back arched, head up, and his arms spread wide apart. Then, at the last second, he brought his arms together, straightened his back, tucked his head, and knifed the water with a perfect entry, hardly causing a ripple in the spring’s glassy smooth surface.

Underwater, Larry plunged to near the depths of the cave where the creature had been lurking, though it was no longer patrolling the cave’s dark opening. Larry righted himself and streaked for the surface. He broke the surface and yelled, “Wow! That’s cold!” Then he gracefully swam for shore as effortlessly as if he and the water had been one.

The doctors’ faces registered surprise and amazement but they cheered him on, then they turned and walked back down the trail.

Tina realized that she’d
been had.
As Larry stepped out of the water she confronted him, “What’s with the
I’ve never done anything like this before so don’t laugh at my style
comment?”

“It’s truthful,” Larry smilingly came to his own defense. “I’ve always used a diving board and swimming pool before.”

She glared at him playfully, with a wry smile.

“Captain of the dive team,” he offered. “When I said I didn’t dive, I meant scuba . . . but what’s the temperature of that water? I thought I was going to freeze!”

“It’s about forty-six degrees. I told you it would cool you off,” she playfully sneered.

*

That night the canoeists camped on a gravel bar across the Current River and about one hundred yards downstream from Blue Spring. A number of the canoe-rental float-trip companies used that particular gravel bar as a pick-up or drop-off point.

Two Rivers Ranch, one of the largest canoe rental companies in the area, and from which Clayton had rented their canoes, often had its clients park their cars at the gravel bar, then picked up the patrons in vans and transported them upstream to the ranch to begin their float. Then the Ranch would pick up the canoes at the Blue Spring gravel bar at the end of the float, leaving the tourists to camp, fish, or swim as long as they liked. When they were ready to leave, their cars would be parked there waiting for them.