I'd read about the Honey Hollow swimming hole on a naturally dammed section of Cunningham Creek in the Baltimore Sun's travel section, and I'd never heard of it before, even though it was just up the road from Thurmont, where I lived. I'd heard of the Honey Hollow Reservoir, of course, because it provided water to Thurmont. It was up in a fold of the Catoctin Mountains, and the paper said it was a beautiful mile and a half hike up beyond the reservoir to a naturally fed, rock-bottom swimming hole that harkened back to our grandfather's era. I decided right there and then I'd check that swimming hole out. I did so first in July, and although the hike lived up to its hype, the swimming hole was crowded with families with young children and a group of smart-alecky high schoolers, and so I put swimming there on a backburner.
Today I'd gotten my chance, though. After a mid-September cold snap the previous week warning us of the approach of autumn, this week was in the 80s. The apple picking had been wrapped up at Collins's farm, so I'd settled on today to make another go at the swimming hole. It was mid week and the families would be busy doing something else and all of the kids would be back in school anyway.
As I pulled up to the parking area above the reservoir dam and at the foot of the fire trail leading up into the fold in the mountains, I had to pull in close to a humongous black Dodge Ram, because a large tree had fallen into the parking area and had left little room for parking. Still, there was only one vehicle here, so chances were good that I'd be able to get in a swim without fighting a crowd. My Toyota pickup looked tiny and vulnerable beside that big old Dodge Ram, and I couldn't help but think of Sydney Collins, the farmer who had hired me since spring to work in his orchard. He had a Dodge Ram too. It wasn't black, though; it was red. It had a logo on the side like this one. I looked at the logo as I wedged myself out of the driver's door of my pickup, but I was too close in the scant space between the two vehicles to make it out.
Anyway, seeing that truck, especially there nudged up to my small pickup, reminded me that I was going to have to do something about Sydney Collins pretty soon. He was beginning to crowd me in; I'd have to decide.
I crossed the boulder-strewn creek bed that would be under an impassable torrent down to the reservoir on rainy days. And as I started the ascent up the rock-bedded fire trail running through a forest of lush oaks, hickories, and tulip poplar trees, already starting to change color, I thought about where I was—and how I'd gotten here.
I'd graduated from high school in June and was all ready to enter Mount St. Mary's this fall, when the roof caved in on my family. My dad's military police unit, the 115th, that had been on security duty up at the president's Camp David retreat, had been called to Iraq. My mother had taken his absence and the danger he was in so badly that her nerves had forced her to cut back her hours at the supermarket. So, I'd done what I had to do. I'd put off going to college to stick with the family until Dad could get home and had gotten a job as quickly as I could.
Mr. Collins had been a godsend—well, in that respect, at least. He'd taken me on immediately to work in the orchard and said he'd find something for me to do even after the harvest was in. He said it was the least he could do to support my dad and the rest of the troops that were over there in Iraq. The pay was all right, and the work helped me to trim down and muscle up better than spending money at a gym would do.
I'd caught on real fast, though, what Mr. Collins's real interest in me was. He wasn't married and had some of the other guys working for him living up at the house. I overheard them talking and I paid some close attention to how they related to each other, and so I knew pretty quickly what Mr. Collins was like and what he expected of his hired hands. I wasn't shocked or put off, really. Just conflicted. I'd had some confusion about what I wanted and was like myself in high school, but I'd never been brave enough—or fool enough—to go anywhere with some of my thoughts.
Sydney Collins brought those thoughts back, though. He was old from my perspective, but he probably wasn't all that old. And he was a rangy, solid guy. Not handsome by any means, but not ugly, either. I guess a woman would have called him sexy enough. I just didn't know.
What I did know that Sydney Collins was, though, was a touchy-feely sort of guy and one with something on his mind that included me in his plans.
The day before I'd come up here to check out the swimming hole again, he'd more or less trapped me at the fence while I was watching the new, sleek black mare he'd bought trotting around at pasture and put his arm around me in that real friendly manner he had.
"You like her, Jake?" he asked. "I hope so. She cost me a good penny."
"Yep," I answered. "She looks mighty fine. Ridden her yet?"
"No," he responded. "She's still mighty skittish about that. She's fine quality and needs to be brought along proper. I'm bringing in a horse handler to break her in for me. I want her to want to be ridden by me when I first mount her."
We paused, admiring the mare—in fact admiring the whole beauty of the green pasture land on the gentle slope between valley and mountain, with its white fences and azure-blue sky. Everything would have been perfect if I wasn't so aware of that arm Collins had draped around my shoulder.
"Why don't you come on up to the house with me, Jake?" Collins suddenly said in a low, husky voice. "There's something I'd like to show you."
"Sorry, I can't today, Mr. Collins," I answered. My mind raced for a reason. "My mom needs me to pick up the girls at school this afternoon. She can't do it today. Maybe another day . . ."
"Fine," Collins said a bit stiffly and removed his arm from around my shoulder. "Maybe another day. It can wait. But not tomorrow. I understand you aren't coming in to work tomorrow."
"That's right," I said. "I need to do some thinking and I've heard there's an old-fashioned swimming hole up above Honey Hollow Reservoir. I'm thinking of hiking up there tomorrow afternoon."
"That sounds like fun," Collins said as he turned to walk on up to his house. "It's supposed to be a hot day; do some skinny dipping up there for me, you hear?"
Skinny dipping at the watering hole. That reminded me as I picked my way over the rocks of a stream bed intersecting that fire trail that I hadn't thought about bringing a swim suit. Well, we'd just have to see what was what, I thought, as I passed the half-way point between the parking area and the swimming hole. A brush-choked clearing was off to my left by the fire trail. The remnants of a stone fireplace told me that someone had once lived up here—maybe had been born in a cabin here and lived their whole life here and died here, leading a normal, dull life. I wasn't sure I wanted to do that. I wanted some risk and danger in my life. I wanted to know that I had lived life to the hilt. That was kind of hard to do in Thurmont, Maryland, though.
And speaking of that, as soon as I came up onto the swimming hole, I knew I wanted to swim in it. It was deserted today. The creek bed was a good bit down from the fire trail, and it would take some risk and effort just to get down to it. The swimming hole was in a gorge of sorts lined with great slabs of gray rock that jutted out here and there at square angles, like it had been quarried. But it had been nature, not man that had quarried it. The swimming hole itself was just a slightly wider section of the creek bed and had three chambers that I could see from the trail far above it. Three different rock-walled "rooms," the first one down more private than the lower two. I couldn't see what was farther up the creek from this cascade of rocks, because what would be the wall on that side of the upper chamber was maybe a twenty-five-feet high rock cliff with a waterfall noisily feeding the upper swimming hole. At the same level, naturally arranged piles of large, square-sided slab of rock separated that chamber from the next. And then there was another drop of about fifteen feet, with a waterfall down to the lowest swimming hole. The middle chamber was the largest and looked like the cleanest and the most easily assessible one from here, so I picked my way down the side of the ravine to the terracing of solid rock surrounding that area and stripped off my shorts, T-shirt, and briefs and eased myself into the water.
