BLACKWATER:The Mysterious Saga of the Caskey Family by Michael McDowell

water—or at least he performed the motion of leaping, for he succeeded only in initiating a tumbling motion below the surface of the water. He was not only going around and around, he was being tossed head over heels in a dizzying succession of somersaults—and being inexorably drawn nearer the center.
    The current was so swift at that center, the whirlpool so pronounced, that there was a depression in the surface of the water more than a foot deep. Quite suddenly, Buster was there, at the top of the downspout that was the entrance to the watery hell below. He managed to get two gulps of air, and to open his eyes. The surface of the river was at a level above his eyes. He tried to scream, but at the moment that he drew in one last breath, he was sucked straight down toward the bottom.
    The thing Ivey had warned him against grabbed him. Buster's arms were pinned to his sides with such force that the bones splintered inside them. His breath was squeezed out until none was left, and he braced for the coarse black tongue that would lick out his eyeballs. Unable to refrain, he opened his eyes, but so far beneath the surface he could see nothing at all. Then he felt a thick heavy coarseness press over his nose and mouth. As it licked up toward his eyes, Buster Sapp slipped into a blackness that was deeper and darker and more merciful than the cold Perdido.
    No trace of Buster was ever discovered, but no one expected it to be otherwise. Elinor Dammert, unable to sleep and up early, said she had seen Buster dive off the mooring pier into the Perdido. Unquestionably he had been swept down to the junction and drowned. So many persons had been drowned at the junction and their bodies never located, either in town or much farther down the river, that no one even thought of attempting to assure the bereaved Sapps that the corpse of their little boy might be recovered. "He had no business getting in that water by the light of the moon," said his mother, Creola, and she took comfort in the eight children who remained to her.
    After Buster's disappearance, Mary-Love set Bray to poor Buster's monotonous task. Bray so little liked it, thinking the job beneath his dignity, that he drove his common-law wife, Ivey, out to the Sapp cane field one day and requisitioned one of Ivey's sisters, a ten-year-old called Zaddie. Zaddie took up residence in Baptist Bottom with her sister and brother-in-law and was presented with her unfortunate brother's rake.
    And however it was, whether her system became suddenly accustomed to the local climate, or whether Roxie Welles began to feed her better, Miss Elinor no longer looked peaked. Her face regained the healthy color it had had when she was rescued from the flooded hotel. Miss Elinor looked as if she were settling in.
    The school year began on September 2. On that day Miss Elinor assumed charge of the fourth grade, and tiny Grace entered the first. And when that morning, after a large celebratory breakfast, James Caskey asked Miss Elinor if she and Grace didn't want a ride to the school in his automobile, she thanked him but declined.
    "You know how to get there, don't you, walking?"
    "Of course, I know," Elinor replied, "but Grace and I won't be walking."
    "Well," said James Caskey, smiling at Roxie who was bringing in a plate of hot biscuits, "how do you intend to get there? Is Escue gone take you down there in the back of his wagon?"
    "Grace and I are going in the boat," announced Miss Elinor, and she looked at Grace, who grinned and nodded her head in excitement.
    "A boat!" cried James Caskey.
    "Bray's boat," said Miss Elinor. "I have his permission."
    James Caskey sat still and perplexed. "Miss Elinor," he said at last, "you know you got to get past the junction in order to get from our mooring dock down to the school. How do you intend to do it?"
    "I intend to paddle hard," replied Miss Elinor im-perturbably.
    "Let me remind you," said James in a tone that seemed only mildly protesting considering