The Teacher

Part 23: Floating on the Current

(Author's note: I posted a youtube video above about a place in East Texas called Blue Hole that helped inspire the local swim hole Miss Park visits in this chapter. If you're a fan of country boys, fast forward to 01:04 ... you're welcome lol!!)

She lay on her back in the sun, feeling its heat envelope and slowly bake her in a way that was oddly pleasant, as though she were a Christmas ham, or a turkey carcass perhaps, popped into the oven and surrendering to its one purpose in life, which was to be cooked and eaten.

Scratch that, that was a terrible thought. She had come out here to the local creek to relax and, for a few hours at least, escape her morbid thoughts and the ominous peach walls of her bathroom, and as usual her mind's perverse take on things made that difficult. She took a deep breath and tried again, squeezing her eyes shut and trying to lose herself amidst the deafening chorus of cicadas and the distant cries of other swimmers and sunbathers farther upstream. She had never been here before, but she had long known of its existence thanks to the chattering of her students on Friday afternoons when they made plans to meet up at the spring fed "swim hole" where most of them congregated, usually, according to their Monday morning recaps, to drink beer, have furtive sex in the woods, and start fist fights.

She had also heard about the creek's clear, crystal beauty, and its cool, ice blue waters from the other teachers and staff, and had promised herself she would one day go and swim there. Her plan had always been to call in sick on a school day and head out there to minimize the chance of running into one of her students, but desperate times called for desperate measures, and sitting on that toilet with that pee stick in her hand, she knew she needed to go there. Immediately. That the sunlight and the trees and the crisp cold spring water being pumped up from deep beneath the earth's surface would provide her with something that she craved, perhaps an answer, perhaps not, but it would give her something. It was all she had.

So she threw the insolent pee stick into the little plastic trash can (also peach), read Cam's text message one last time before turning her phone off, and headed to her bedroom to put together something that might pass for a bathing suit. Because of course she didn't own one, or if she did she had no idea where in the world it might be. So after digging through piles of laundry both clean and dirty she pulled on a pair of running shorts and a black sports bra, slipped on her flip flops, and headed out with a towel, a New Yorker magazine she had swiped from her sister's coffee table before leaving for the airport, and an overwhelming desire to run, not walk to her car and get away from that damn pee stick and its terrifying announcement.

Of course when she pulled in to the small dirt parking lot it was jammed with cars and trucks, no doubt many of them driven there by former students, future students, or their families. She cringed, but refused to turn around. She had as much right to be there as anyone else, although she did hunt around for a path through the brush that might lead her farther down river and away from the crowds. A hand painted wooden sign that said "Satan's Hole" pointed toward the springs and the main swimming area, and she could hear the excited whoops and loud splashes of laughing, overgrown teenagers. Yup, she definitely needed to find that path.

Ten minutes later she found herself about 100 feet down river, and she carefully spread out her towel behind one of the enormous cedars that lined the creek and laid down on it. She tried reading her magazine for a few minutes, but even underneath the leafy cover of the cedar tree the sun's bright, early afternoon light made it almost impossible to see the words without squinting so much her face hurt. So she threw the magazine aside and closed her eyes, amusing herself with the way the tiny veins in her eyeballs etched themselves across the pink, sunlit insides of her eye lids.

But now she was really cooking in the sun, and though it really had been pleasant for awhile, the sweat trickling down her face was beginning to annoy her, and to make things worse a bunch of gnats had decided to give her trouble.