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head against the wall, screaming, “I’m going crazy! I’m going crazy!”
    I rushed to her room and stood in the doorway, watching. Remembering the scene now, I see that she looked like an enormous child having a temper tantrum, not unlike those that Bubba had when he beat his head on the floor as a toddler. But looking at Mother from the perspective of a child, I saw her as frighteningly fragile, while Bubba and I had the power to shatter her.
    Maybe this time
, I thought,
she is really going crazy
. As young as I was, I’d already been filled with horror stories of the state insane asylum in Milledgeville—bloodcurdling screams heard in the street, and inmates shouting scary things while pacing behind barred windows for passersby to see.
    “I’m going crazy!” Mother screamed, beating her head on the wall. I felt like a lead weight was pressing against my heart and lungs, suffocating me with the fear that someone would take Mother away to Milledgeville, leaving us forever abandoned.
    Finally she stopped banging her head and began to collect herself. But another attack could start at any moment. I persuaded Bubba to come with me to our bedroom, where I knelt down with him on the floor and prayed aloud to Jesus, asking him to please help Bubba and me to be good and not drive Mother crazy.
VIII
1945
    ABSOLUTELY NO DIGGING FOR BURIED TREASURE . This message, painted on a board and nailed to a pine tree, was the first thing I looked for after Daddy turned off the Tallahassee highway onto the narrow dirt road that cut through the woods to Wakulla Springs. The sign was nailed to a live oak, followed by another sign, signs scattered through the woods. I looked at the sandy soil with renewed wonderment each time we went to Wakulla, where Bubba and I swam in the clear springs and the family had picnics in the woods near the water and ate ice cream at the soda fountain in the Lodge. We went often in the summer.
    Daddy parked the car behind the Lodge, and Bubba and I went to the bathhouse and changed into our bathing suits. Then we walked down the path to the springs. In front of us, glass-bottomed boats for the Wakulla Springs Cruise and boats for the Jungle Cruise on the Wakulla River were tied up at the dock. Thick vine-filled woods grew on the other side of the springs. Alligators slept along the cypress-lined bank. I watched one slide into the water and swim slowly near the shore with only its snout and eyes above the surface.
    Bubba and I turned to the left of the dock and walked down to the beach. Mother and Daddy were already sitting in low wooden chairs at the edge of the sand in the shade of trees hung heavy with Spanish moss. Baby Mercer was parked in his stroller beside Mother, squirming to get out. Mother picked him up, gave him his tin bucket and spade, and set him on the sand in front of her. Bubba and Ispread our towels on the sand and then raced to poke our feet into the water that was always as cold as the coldest ice water imaginable.
    Farther down the beach, enormous old cypress trees rose from the shallow water. Cypress knees erupted from the sand and water around the base of the trees. Farther down still stood the diving tower with its three levels. Neither Bubba nor I dared to jump from even the first level. At two he was too young, and at nine I was too afraid. Mostly we played in the water across from Mother and Daddy. Or, after our lips had turned blue from the icy water, we sat in the sun making sand castles.
    When I swam, I swam back and forth in the shallow water where the bottom was sandy. Swimming out to the raft meant leaving the security of the sandy bottom and swimming over long grasses, which frightened me, for I couldn’t see what might be swimming through them. Swimming anyplace where my feet even threatened to brush along the top of the grass made my heart pound.
    This turned out to be our most wonderful day at Wakulla. Part of a Tarzan movie starring Johnny Weissmuller was being filmed