Dark Rivers of the Heart

was there to see. His perception had been hampered as much by his expectations as by his befuddled senses. The canvas wasn't blank after all. Spencer needed only to alter his point of view, lower his gaze from his own plane, to see the thousand-foot chasm into which the river plunged.
        The miles-long spine of weathered rock that he had thought marched across otherwise flat desert terrain was actually the irregular parapet of a perilous cliff. On his side, the sandy plain had eroded, over eons, to a somewhat lower level than the rock. On the other side was not another plain but a sheer face of stone, down which the river fell with a cataclysmic roar.
        He had also wrongly assumed that the increased rumble of rain was imaginary. In fact, the greater roar was a trio of waterfalls, altogether more than one hundred feet across, crashing a hundred stories to the valley floor below.
        Spencer couldn't see the foaming cataracts, because the Explorer was suspended directly over them. He lacked the strength to pull himself against the door and lean out the window to look. With the flood pushing hard against the passenger side, as well as slipping under it and away, the truck actually hung half in the narrowest of the three falls, prevented from being carried over the brink only by the jaws of the rock vise.
        He wondered how in God's name he was going to get out of the truck and out of the river alive. Then he rejected all consideration of the challenge. The fearfulness of it sapped what meager energy he still had. He must rest first, think later.
        . From where Spencer slumped in the driver's seat, though he had no view of the river gone vertical, he could see the broad valley beneath him and the serpentine course of the water as it flowed horizontally again across the lower land. That long drop and the tilted panorama at the bottom caused a new attack of vertigo, and he turned away to avoid passing out.
        Too late. The motion of a phantom carousel afflicted him, and the spinning view of rock and rain became a tight spiral of darkness into which he tumbled, around and around and down and away. and there in the night behind the barn, I'm still spooked by the swooping angel that was only an owL Inexplicably, when the vision of my mother in celestial robes and wings proves to be a fantasy, I am overcome by another image of her. bloody, awkward, naked, dead in a ditch, eighty miles from home, as she had beenfound six years before.
        I never actually saw her that way, not even in a newspaper photograph, only heard the scene described by a few kids in school, vicious little bastards. Yet, after the owl has vanished into the moonlight, I can't retain the vision of an angel, though I try, and I can't shed the gruesome mental picture of the battered corpse, although both images are products of my imagination and should he subject to my control.
        Bare-chested and barefoot, I move farther behind the barn, which hasnt been a real working barn for more than fifteen years. It's a well-known place to me, part of my life since I can remember-yet tonight it seems different from the barn I've always known, changed in some way that I can't define but that makes me uneasy.
        Its a strange night, stranger than I yet realize. And I'm. a strange boy, full of questions I've never dared to ask myself, seeking answers in that July darkness when the answers are within me, if I would only look for them there. I am a strange boy who feels the warp in the wood of a life gone wrong, but who convinces himself that the warped line is really true and straight. I am a strange boy who keeps secrets from himself and keeps them as well as the world keeps the secret of its meaning.
        In the eerily quiet night, behind the barn, I creep cautiously toward the Chevy van, which I've never seen before. No one is behind the wheel or in the other front seat. when I place my hand on the hood, its warm with engine heat. The metal is still cooling withfaint ticks andpings- I slip past the rainbow mural on the side of the van to the open rear door Although the interior of the cargo section is dark, enough pale moonlight filters back from the windshield to reveal that no one is in there, either I'm also able to see this is only a two-seater, with no apparent amenities, though the customized exterior led me to expect a plush recreational vehicle.
        I still sense there something ominous about the