Read A Fever in the Heart: And Other True Cases for Free Online

have made it much past forty. It happened on one of the river trips that Morris and Gabby often took. The day began like any other. The two men had parked one of their cars near Olive's place close by the Yakima River and driven the other up to Ellensburg. There, they pushed off in a boat and headed down river toward Yakima. They had made this trip dozens of times before. But this time something went wrong, and their boat capsized in a powerful undercurrent, scattering its occupants and their gear alike. Both Morris and Gabby were plunged beneath the surface of the river, sucked deeper and deeper, down where the sunlight was swallowed up and they had to dodge floating debris and sunken logs in an underwater obstacle course.
    Morris was the strong swimmer and he quickly fought his way to the surface. Somehow Gabby ended up beneath the bank along the river's edge, his feet entangled in the clutch of vines and roots that flourished in the deep water. There was no way he could ever have gotten out of their death grip by himself and he was virtually invisible from the surface of the river. Morris wasn't worried about himself, he was like an otter in the water. As a younger man, he had tormented his friends and his mother by swimming underwater so long they were sure he had drowned. But he was only "counting" until he was confident he had broken his own record for holding his breath. Satisfied, he then would burst up triumphantly just as they were all running for a lifeguard to pull him out. Now, in the white water that overturned their drift-boat, Morris dove again and again, looking for Gabby. Finally he saw him flailing his arms helplessly, his feet held in the vise of the underwater vegetation.
    Morris wrenched Gabby free and took him to the top. Gabby flopped on the bank like a dying fish, throwing up. But he was breathing and he was alive. "I wish he'd never made it," Olive Blankenbaker would say with quiet bitterness many years later. "I wish Morris had left him there in the river." Olive would remember that she had felt an aversion to Gabby Moore from the first time she met him out there at her river place. She never said anything to Morris, because she couldn't put her finger on what it was about Gabby that set her teeth on edge. Morris was unaware that his mother didn't like Gabby. The two men remained fast friends.
    They hunted and fished and sometimes worked out at the YMCA together. Morris was flattered when Gabby sought his advice on football plays. Morris attended a number of Gabby's teams's wrestling matches and he sometimes helped coach the heavyweight wrestlers. The two men talked often, almost every day. In December of 1973, Gabby confided to Morris the shocking news that he and Gay were getting a divorce. He said he would be moving out of his family home after Christmas. Morris was stunned. Gabby and Gay had been married almost two decades, and Morris had had no idea they were having problems. From what Gabby told him, it was Gay who wanted out of the marriage, and Gabby who was fighting to keep it together. Gabby asked Morris if he might move in with him and Jerilee for a few weeks, just until he and Gay tried to settle their problems. Morris was all for it if it would help Gabby salvage his marriage.
    A "time-out" might be just what Gabby's marriage needed.
    Jerilee Blankenbaker was definitely not enthusiastic when Morris approached her with the suggestion that they invite Gabby to stay with them until he pulled himself together. His divorce was hurting him bad and he wasn't taking it well, Morris explained. Gabby was lonesome and lost outside the family he had been used to. Jerilee didn't really know Gabby Moore. At twenty-seven she had two little children to take care of, not to mention her full-time job at a Yakima bank, she had more than enough to do without helping Morris baby-sit his old coach. It wasn't that she was selfish or uncaring, it was simply that she and Morris were just getting their own lives