Falls

We went to a state park in Georgia one summer. Anna Ruby Falls, it was called. It was a Saturday, I remember. It was a warm summer, humid and hot and sticky, sticky, sticky. Heat of the day, mosquitoes and tree frogs whirring. Dad's hydraulic lift was buzzing too. If you lay your head on it, it made your teeth shiver in your head.

Park visitors were looking at us like we were crazy, Dad in his red wheelchair. He looked hot in his brown hat and his big brown beard with silver shining hairs around his mouth, a red paisley bandanna around his neck to soak up the sweat.

He was planning to sit in the parking lot and wait for us. He said he didn't mind. It hadn't occurred to me that he couldn't come up with us. Sitting on the patio beside the gift shop, stretching up to rest his chin on the railing, his beard hanging over. He was watching the creek below us. I could picture him still sitting there, waiting, staring at that little creek while we were looking at the falls.

The ranger was frowning under his khaki-colored hat when he told me the path was paved all the way up. I think he considered lying to me about it. But I have two sisters. We could do it, I was sure. Still, Dad was heavy and there was only room for two behind him to push, taking turns, the third one walking behind. Our limbs started shaking after a while but we kept going anyway.

I was grateful for the paved path. It wouldn't have been possible otherwise. It was curvy though and curled back in on itself like a sidewinder. Switchbacks, they're called. They're steep, too. We had to chock Daddy's wheels with our feet whenever we took a break. The mountain would have shrugged him off like water if we hadn't.

They were narrow, the switchbacks, and sometimes we had to stop to let people pass us by. Some of them stopped to encourage us. We didn't want it, but I reckon it made them feel good to do it. We'd smile at them, and they would go away. They'd always say it was only a little further. It didn't matter how far it really was. It was always just a little further to them.

They thought we were admirable, but we were just sad because Dad had lost what he loved the most. Maybe I was a little guilty that I had it and he didn't. He was a woodsman and a hunter and a hiker but now he programs computers.

And it seemed such a long, long way to the falls. Trees were on one side and a steep bank on the other like walls and pieces of gravel in the path to get stuck in Daddy's tires. Mostly I remember the blue-gray concrete and white sneakers walking on it. After about an hour you can't tell if the throbbing in your feet is from the pounding pavement or your pulse.

And the path was always rising, steeper and steeper. Soon you'd fall into such a rhythm of lurching forward, forward, forward, that you'd feel like a set of pounding feet and arms without a head or a heart. Then someone would speak and you'd see in front of you Dad's shoulders, bouncing with every shove. You'd feel the stretching in your calves from going always up, the sticky sweat on your hands. For a while the porous vinyl back of his chair soaked up the sweat from our palms, but soon it was slick. Dangerous, that. Slimy, too.

The air was still, hot and close, even up in the mountains. Maybe it was just because Dad was so heavy. It's distracting, your clothes sticking to your sweat and mosquitoes practically watering themselves off you. An itch nibbling at you all the time, but you ignore it.

Daddy cried when we got to the top. He didn't say anything, but I know it was because of what we did. I didn't even look at the falls, I was so tired. My eyes looked at them, but I didn't really pay them any mind. I did feel the coolness, though. We waited until it was almost dark to start back down, but not on purpose. The sun sets earlier in the mountains.

It was a good thing we had an extra kid to watch where the other two were going, since we took the whole way down backwards. If we'd rolled him down facing forwards, he would have slid out of the chair. I'll admit it wasn't very safe, though, with such sweaty palms and him being so big. My sisters almost lost him once. Daddy didn't say anything about it, but we slowed down after that. I didn't realize it then, but he had to have trusted us a lot.

The foxfire was coming out, but I couldn't look at it because my eyes were on the concrete. It was dark by then and hard to see. I was glad that no one else was coming up. I wouldn't have heard their chatter over the high cricket voices pounding in my head. I might have let Daddy roll straight over them.

I do remember yellow flashes after dark. I thought they were lightning bugs, but that might have been blood pounding in my eyes from working so hard. Still, I didn't care that I didn't see the falls or the foxfire. Daddy saw them. I told him I saw them.

It was full night when we got back down. The rangers who had seen us go up were about to come to get us. They gave us free t-shirts for our effort. Probably we just stank and they wanted us to change. The younger ranger said he hadn't thought we'd make it. Probably it was because we were girls. I don't know why he told us, though. Maybe he thought it was a compliment.

There was a group of boy scouts gathering in the parking lot. They were going up to see the foxfire, I heard them say. It started to rain, but they were going up anyway.

I didn't care about the boy scouts. My ankles were covered in wet grass and dirt and they itched. My sweaty clothes were cold on me, then. I just wanted to take a bath and forget about Daddy crying at the falls.

When I got home, I burned a tick out of my ankle with a match. I also had poison ivy, but I didn't know it yet. That was okay, though, because Daddy had seen the falls, and he bought me some calamine lotion, anyway.