The Case of the Drowning Men (6 page)

Interstate
s
like
9
0
and
9
4
in the
American
north
are fairly recent fixture
s
on
the
landscape, making it
much
easier
,
and certainly
a lot
faster
,
to travel
from
state to state.
Decades in the planning,
when they
first
began to be implemented in the
late
1950s,
r
oad construction crews
had to blast through
mountains made of solid stone
in some
places to
create
these straightaways
for us
, defy nature to ensure the
y’d be
the most direct routes possible
.

Yet
, even so,
these
amazing
feats of
engineering
were
themselves
con
strained
by natural
forces
,
each
shaped and
limited to some degree by the
vast
waterways that existed here long before the
ir
installation
.
So
,
al
though
it
may
be a
fact of modern life that
superhighways
have become king
to us
, nevertheless,
the rivers are
still
their
masters
.
Rivers like the Mississippi and the
Wabash
and the Hudson
can
no
t
be
shove
d
out of the way for
the
sake of convenience
,
and they can’t
be
ignore
d
either.

In fact
,
everything in this
watery
region
of ours
must, in one way or another, bend to the will of a river,
make a conscious effort to
accommodate its presence
somehow
,
to
acknowledge and
obey its
course
and
character
.
Right down to
the people.

I came of age beside
a
decent
-sized
river.
In the warm months, r
an
and
biked
next to it
almost daily
,
boated it, fished in it, crammed for
important
exams
on its shady banks,
and, in the winter
time
, skated
along
it
s smooth surface
for miles and miles in both directions.
This was before things started heating up
climate-wise,
before forty-degree
temperature spikes in
winter
became
commonplace.
It was
much
, much
colder
way
back
then
,
back
in the days of my
more adventuresome
youth,
and the ice was several feet
thick
.
Perfectly
safe
to walk on
.

T
here’s a
weird
sigh a frozen river makes
at
times
to relieve the pressure of all that ice
that’s
building
in it, a
kind of
low
,
taut
twa
aa
ng
that
comes from
above you and beneath you and all around.
That sound serves as
a subtle reminder of
the
frigid but still
liquid chambers
concealed
well be
neath
its
icy
veneer
. A reminder to always
be alert and
pay
very
close
attention.

Usually
when
I skated
on the river I did so with
a pal or two. But not always. Sometimes my classmates
and I
—as many as a hundred
at a time
—
would throw a skating party
down
there. Deposit a
half dozen
beer balls
or so
, maybe even a
full
keg
, and then build a huge bonfire
so we could hang out all night if we wanted to. In fact,
summer
and
winter
,
we
fearlessly
partied at the river’s edge
or on it
, or
else
in lakes and
in
quarries and
in
swimming
-
pool
s.

And guess what?
Drunk
or
stoned,
or a
ny
inventive
combination thereof,
n
obody
ever
drowned.

As a young person, my
scholastic
interests were primarily in the
a
rts and
literature, but at one point I had seriously considered a career in law enforcement. Being athletic, I guess I was attracted to the physicality of that profession. Attracted by the intrigue, too, so I was thinking
of
maybe
training for a job with the
FBI
or the
CIA
.
As fate would have it, however, it
would be
those
colleges
which
specializ
ed
in the arts and sciences
who
would
woo me. That being the case, I followed the money, so to speak, and, truthfully, never regretted th
e
decision.

Not coincidentally, the university I
ultimately
chose
to attend
, though
far,
far from home,
was also situated near a river. A different one
this time
. Bigger.

Brainiacs and creative types
as opposed to jocks
and preppies
,
my fellow students
were
n’t
exactly
the
classic party
-
school crowd by any means, but
, no matter,
we sure partied
our hearts out. A
nd it wasn’t unusual at all to stumble in
past
dawn
, having clubbed
through
most of the night and
,
much
too wired for sleeping,
having
hopp
ed
all
the after
-
hour
spots
we could find
,
too
. We’d
do that
till
the
sun
came creeping over the metropolis and there was no
bar
left
to crash
, or
none
that would have us
.

Water, water everywhere
,
of course,
in every
single
place
we
str
utted
or
staggered
to
, and
, again, nobody drowned.

As a matter of fact,
whether it’s a river
or a
creek or
a
lake,
you’d be hard pressed to find any
university
, any
village
or
town,
any
municipality in this particular
“
neck of the woods
”
that didn’t straddle or cozy up to a major body of water
.
It’s a powerful part of our collective experience,
having all this water around
us
, and because it can both give life and take it away
in a flash
, we are taught to enjoy and respect it.

Or
else
reap the devastating consequence
.

From police to private eyes,
from drunkenness to murder,
t
he modern
-day
mystery of the drowning men has generated many
types of
theories over the past fifteen years, but
,
to this date
,
it
has never been solved. The public’s interest in this
saga
waxes and wanes, peaking at times when clusters become
more
prominent, fading when
,
predictably
,
the
disappearances and
deaths
can’t be adequately
or satisfactorily
explained and the authorities
raise up their hands in protest
declining
to
entertain any more
speculation
.
They’ve had it with all the talk of murders and conspiracies, they complain.

I
myself have to admit I’m
not
too
big
a
fan of conspiracy theories
, either
. That’s because I discovered early
on
in life that most, if not all of them,
usually
led to a gaping hole
about
as wide as the Grand Canyon.
Yet there’s such a pronounced pattern in these “accidental drownings” that, once
I finally
took notice
and
began
analyz
ing
th
em
, I just couldn’t
, with any ease,
wrap
my mind around the concept of
a
mere
coincidence.

With
another
new
year
having begun a
nd
well over a
dozen
new cases emerging already, all
having
the same
physical and personality
profile, all
missing
under
the same
circumstances, it raised my suspicion
that
, whether
due to
alcohol
or
to
repetitive
acts of
malice
, something was definitely going on
here
.

Moreover, with
hundreds of such fatalities having now been documented
in newspap
ers and police
blotters, I
believe
any reasonable mind possessing a healthy curiosity would
have to
agree, it’s
awfully
odd
.
And b
eing
as
familiar
as I am
with the geography and
the
lifestyle of this
particular
region just made it seem all the more
peculiar
.

In trying to get to the bottom of the rivers’ riddle, to find which theory provides the answer to
so much
tragic
loss of life, I thought I’d take th
os
e professors’ joint appeal to heart, apply an objective and critical
view toward
each
argument
and see where it
all would
naturally
flow to.
This would be an easier task for someone
in my position
to achieve
because
I have no ties to
any
of
the victims, no affiliations wi
th
any of the
investigating
parties and
agencies, no relationship to the news
organizations
that covered any of the events.
Nothing
at stake
,
and nothing
to prove.