Light

From bed at night, as I try to sink my neck between the two pillows and wash my hips into the mattress, I gaze through the open blinds to the building that rises above the bank on the corner, above the library just beyond. The BB&T building, Spartanburg's lone skyscraper, stands as my nightly beacon. Rectangle with a rounded top, blinking red bulbs at either end, with jutting sculpted ledges near the top on each length, the building is the last face I see before sleep.

Always, there are lights high in the stories peeking out in the dark, somehow shaded and sketched into curves and, with eyes, a face. The first night I noticed him, from the horizontal angle of my bed, the face grinned, eyes steady and bright, with even a crease on the left side made by a phantom cheek. I smiled back. This friendly and familiar face warmed me, and I slept. Spartanburg seemed to be saying, you're not lonely, you're not alone. In the morning, at dawn, the eyes were gone but the grin remained, awaiting the sun at its back as the orange deepened. 



My first weekend in South Carolina was Jedsen's last, and we spent that Saturday on the French Broad River in a raft. Neither of us had been white water rafting before, and we decided that we wanted to live our last days together until our next visit (not thinking it would be a full ten weeks) among water and trees and mountains--all of which we had little of in Kansas. In Arkansas over New Years last year, our fifth anniversary, we had stayed in a cabin on Petit Jean Mountain in Arkansas, walking along Cedar Creek and hiking in our winter coats down to Cedar Creek Falls after breakfast on our last morning. We had been at peace there, in the cool but not cold, and among the ledges, cliffs, and water flowing downhill into more water and over falls. The water had been a wonder to us, a force that calmed and excited, bellowed and hushed, and, of course, claimed Jedsen water bottle.

On the French Broad, allegedly the third oldest river in the world, we rooted our feet in creases of the raft, seated across from each other and between two other couples and, at the back, a ten-year-old and Lilly, our guide. Lilly had been our entertainment on the bus ride down from the Nantahala Outdoor Center to the river, telling jokes about the road, the tobacco growing in rows, and the way the bus driver took the switchback turns. Though she instructed us perfectly--"All forward." "All back." "Forward 3." "Rest."--she didn't stop the jokes on the water.

"What's the difference between a raft guide and a large pizza? A large pizza can feed a family of four."

I would slowly turn my head around to her and smile, but my eyes rose with the tips of trees. I wanted to tell her to hush, let us hear the water and the leaves. I could tell Jedsen felt the same way. His chin jutted out from the strap of his helmet as if he were grinding his teeth while smiling. At once annoyance and peace.

Before each rapid, Lilly explained its name, its class, and how we might have to get through it. I learned to yearn for the Class II rapids, the biggest on our trip, and the rush of a small wall of white aimed at me. I wanted to be hit by the crushes of water, dip into them at the edge of falling over and rise, wet and beaming at the living.

Then again Lilly would speak, during the quiet between rapids, when the water lapped lightly and I watched the wash of boulders affect the surface of the water.

"How do you know when your raft guide is lying to you? When her lips are moving."

That much we had learned on the way down, that the stories were largely false and the knowledge of the river itself, the way it pursed and swayed, was the only truth.

About halfway down our stretch of the river, a five mile wrap through ancient pines, we ran our rafts to the side and stopped for Jump Rock. A skinny path of wet rock led up to a small ledge, jutted out over the river. The young ones were the first to jump. And Jedsen, who cannonballed off without much thought. I hung back in the water, walking chest-deep with my life jacket on and waiting in the pulse of the river. I have never been a jumper--fine and please at heights but not experiencing the distance between the height and below. Jumping wasn't really an option, the purposeful suspension of weight and the give in to gravity. But then the guide at the ledge, pushing people off and counting down to release, called for second rounders. And Jedsen said, "You're going to do it, right?" "No, no, no." "Well I'm going again." And then that feeling of life returned, that one that soaked my $5 canvas shoes from Walmart on that one spot on the French Broad, with Jedsen, and at the start of this new Southern life. So I climbed.

It was much higher from the ledge, and the water looked like thirty feet below, a muddy and unforgiving surface licking the rocks. I felt like if I jumped I would land instead on the rocks below, impaled or gasping for breath. The guide started counting. Three. "Oh God." It was one of those times, yes, of anticipation and fear and doubt and the knowledge that in two more counts something would happen, you didn't know what, and you would feel what you have never felt before, whether it be pain or laughter or love. And by the last count you know you're going, his hand is on the small of your back, and you might scream but you don't know, and you don't feel his push, but you see brown and more brown and then hear the clap around your ears and the turmoil of turning over in the water to again see the sky and the next person on the ledge as you shake your head of water and flap to find a balance and flap to get out of the way of the next jumper whom it takes a few seconds to realize is the man you love jumping too, after you.



Tonight the smile in the dark has no eyes, has left before the moon. And there are no stars here, here in the middle of the city of kudzu and crape myrtles, only parking lot lamps and the frequent blast of swirling red from neighboring firetrucks and ambulances. But the two warning lights still blink together, in unison though apart, above the limestone and asphalt, above my heart and his heart too, until I leave this week, in the air once more, to land Kansas, the rude, beautiful surface of my youth.