That worked well for fifteen minutes. Then we got separated. I’m still not sure how it happened. Maybe one of us got into an eddy, a boil, a whirlpool, something—but we lost sight of each other, and in the fog voices proved hard to track. The treachery of the Mississippi lies in its currents, which flow at different speeds and depths. This process creates dangerous surface effects. I’d thought I could handle them, but I was growing less sure as time passed. For the first ten minutes of the swim, I’d heard the Mathesons yelling and cursing, hooting insults. But for the last five minutes I’d heard nothing. Even stoned, they must have figured out that wasting energy in the river would kill them.
Tiring more quickly than I’d expected to, I started to worry about Adam. Certain he was behind me, I swam back and started a zigzag search, calling his name every ten seconds. The effort cost me two minutes, but I felt better after I collided with him in the fog. Then I saw that he looked pale, and he was panting in a way I’d never heard before. When I asked if he was okay, Adam told me somebody had been pulling at his legs, dragging him under. I was pretty sure the Mathesons were ahead of us, not behind, so I had no idea what might have been bothering him. An alligator gar? A big catfish? Both were unlikely.
I managed to stay close to him for another five minutes, but then we got separated again. Adam called out that he was okay and I should keep going. I did, but much more slowly than I could have, and I did a voice check every twenty seconds or so. I risked going a little ahead because I wanted to sight the opposite shore as soon as possible, to correct our course if we weren’t moving aggressively enough across the current. The sun had cleared the horizon by then, but with the fog it didn’t help much. As I swam, I realized my teeth were chattering. I wondered how long I had been shivering. I also sensed a vibration in the water, a subsonic rumble that felt more like my body was generating it than some external source. When Adam cried out for help, I turned back instantly, but again it took some time to find him in the fog.
As soon as I did, I saw he was in trouble. He was doubled over in the water, struggling even to stay afloat.
“My legs cramped up,” he choked out. His face was gray, his eyes glassy, and his teeth were chattering. “My calves. I can’t get them loose!”
I knew what had happened. The past thirty-six hours—which included the state track meet, serious alcohol intake, the foot race on the levee, and the long tower climb—had depleted Adam’s potassium to the point that his skeletal muscles wouldn’t function properly. I tried diving to massage the cramps out, but it did little good. I needed to get him to shore.
“Trey!” I shouted. “Dooley! Adam’s in trouble! We need help!”
“They won’t help,” Adam said. “They’ll be lucky to make it themselves.”
“Listen, I need you to go limp. Try to relax. I’m going to put you in a buddy tow and swim you to shore.”
“You can’t tow me that far. Not in this river.”
“Bullshit. You know I can. Do what I say.”
“I can make it,” Adam insisted, trying to pull himself through the water.
“Not cramped like that, you can’t. Lie back! I’m going to tow you to Louisiana.”
“Just gotta wait for my legs to . . .”
He fell silent. Adam had heard what I had. The rumble I’d barely perceived before seemed suddenly upon us, around us, beneath us. Somewhere in that fog, not far away, a string of barges was being pushed by a tugboat. Pushed toward us. Panic bloomed in my chest, and Adam saw it in my eyes.
“We’ve gotta move!” I cried. “Lie back!”
I’d never seen my brother’s eyes fill with fear, nor his face look so exhausted that I doubted his ability to continue. I had never seen him helpless. I couldn’t have imagined it. No one in Bienville could. But in that river, on that morning, our golden Apollo was as helpless as a newborn baby. Worse off, actually, since I could have easily hauled a baby to shore, whereas dragging 190 pounds of muscle would be like trying to swim an anchor through the water. Nevertheless, I dove and swam behind Adam, then surfaced and got my arm around his neck, up under his chin, and my left hip beneath his lower back. Then I started the “combat stroke” I’d been taught by my swimming coach, a former navy rescue swimmer. I had long since abandoned any thought of the Mathesons. From that point on, our lives depended on me.
The tugboat was closer, I could feel it. That meant the barges, which might extend a quarter mile in front of the tug, could run us over any second. Abandoning the alternating scissor-kick-and-pull stroke, I kicked constantly, with all the power in my legs. But as I did, I realized something that took my fear to a higher pitch: I was shivering; Adam wasn’t. His core temperature had dropped. The combination of cold water, exhaustion, dehydration, and alcohol was killing him. If I let go, he could sink without even struggling.
Summoning every atom of energy in my body, I kicked with focused violence and pulled water with my right hand, vowing I could do the work of two. But after the long day’s exertion, this was akin to hauling my brother up a mountain on my back. Worse, the diesel rumble had steadily grown louder, yet the fog still prevented me from determining the exact direction of the threat. I only knew it was upstream from us.
“You’re fading!” Adam gasped in my ear. “You can’t do it, Marsh.”
“Bullshit,” I panted, worried I was hyperventilating.
“You’re gonna kill us both. That barge is coming downstream, hauling ass.”
“Shut up, why don’t you?” I snapped, kicking like a madman.
“Can you see the shore?”
“Not yet . . . can’t be far, though.”
Before Adam spoke again, a gray wall as tall as a house appeared out of the fog to my right. It was the flat bow of the lead barge, maybe thirty-five yards away, growing larger by the second. I couldn’t scream or speak.
“Let me go,” Adam coughed.
I suddenly realized that I’d stopped swimming. I started kicking again, searching the fog for the edge of that wall.
“Let go!” Adam screamed. “You can still make it!”
Tears streaming from my eyes, I kicked with everything I had left, but it wasn’t enough. I felt five years old. The next time I looked up, the barge was twenty yards away. In that moment Adam bit into my neck. As searing pain arced through me, my brother punched me in the face, then kicked free of me. Separated by three feet of water, we looked into each other’s eyes with desperate intensity. Then a mass of water lifted us both, shoving us several feet downstream.
“Go,” Adam said with a calmness that haunts me to this day. Then he smiled sadly and slid beneath the surface.
For some fraction of time that will always be eternal, I stared at the empty space where my brother had been. Then my brainstem took control of my body. Freed from Adam’s weight, I cut across the water in a freestyle that felt like flying. The barge’s bow crashed past my feet so closely that the wake lifted me like a surfer catching a wave. A vicious undertow grasped at my lower body, pulling me back toward the steel hulk, but terror must have granted me superhuman strength. I fought my way clear.
After twenty more strokes, I spied the low shore of Louisiana 150 yards away. White sand, gray riprap, waist-high weeds. When I reached the rocks, I didn’t have the strength to climb out of the water, only to get my head clear and rest my weight on the submerged stones.