Chapters (20)
You imagined that, I told myself. It didn’t give any.
And then I knew it had.
As the middle section collapsed, the other two folded in like playing cards. A wave broke over Wolf Cliff Falls. People downstream scrambled up banks as an explosion of water surged past. Up on the cliff the river rats didn’t yet realize that Randy hadn’t gotten out. They began to cheer.
Ronny pulled on the rope, his neck veins bulging as he dug his feet in sand and leaned backward. For a few moments the rope stretched taut between the pool and shore. Then the rope whipped out of the water like a broken fishing line.
Ronny fell backward, landing on his back, his head hitting as well. He got up slowly, sand on his wet suit, his palms seared by rope burns. Then he was stumbling down the river edge shouting for his brother. He searched fifty yards downstream before he turned and ran back toward the pool.
When Luke’s group saw the rope they quit cheering. They knew as well as anyone present what it meant. The people downstream realized something terrible had happened as well. The explosion of water had drenched some of them. Knees and elbows had been scraped raw by rocks and sand. Children screamed. A woman clutched her forearm against her stomach. Walter Phillips stood among them, the walkie-talkie pressed to the side of his face as he gave directions to EMS.
Brennon had not moved. He stared where the dam had been as if it were still there and everything he’d just witnessed a mere hallucination. The Kowalskys stood beside him. Herb Kowalsky stared at where the dam had been as well, but his wife’s eyes were on the pool. She raised a tissue to the bridge of her nose and wiped away a tear.
“It should have held,” Brennon said, more to himself than the Kowalskys. He turned to the Kowalskys. “It should have held,” he said again. Only then did Brennon move, sending his men into the shallows to look for Randy. Wading in himself as well.
Allen still stood behind me, but I didn’t turn or reach my hand back to grasp his.
Ronny was in the pool’s tailwaters, looking for bubbles. There were none, though the white water would have made them hard to see. He ran to where his gear lay and strapped on his tank before Sheriff Cantrell and Hubert McClure pinned him to the ground.
Ellen Kowalsky stepped into the pool, water covering her shoes and rising to her shins. Allen waded out and turned her away from the falls. His hand rested lightly on her elbow as they moved slowly, almost ceremoniously, back to shore. The crumpled tissue fell from her hand. It looked like a dogwood blossom as it drifted toward the pool’s center, then sank.