Read When Crickets Cry for Free Online Page B

be tricky after 7:00 a.m. when the motorboats appear, so we go in the early morning. Sudden changes in weather are as common as the sun, but nobody knows when to predict them. Because of the surrounding mountains, unexpected gusts and tornadoes can rip across the lake and sink any- and everything. In 1994, some years before we moved up here, a "supercell" of tornadoes known as the Palm Sunday Killer ripped through here, and everybody remembers not only the sound but all the debris that floated down the lake for days afterward. The bodies that once lived in the homes didn't float downstream, because most of them were so full of holes from flying limbs and shingles that they sank to the bottom where the old town of Burton used to sit.
    Rowing is a sport unlike any other. On the surface, it's the only one where you don't constantly look ahead. More often than not, where you've been-your hindsight-tells you where you're going. In track and field, sprinters and hurdlers look like locomotives at full speed-their arms and legs pounding the track and air like rods and pistons. In football, players spin about like battering rams or bumper cars. And soccer is an anthill of players caught between a ballet and a bullfight. But in rowing, the man in the scull is something of a spring.

    To understand this, open the back of a wristwatch while the coils of the hairspring open and close. In rowing, the body falls into a groove, albeit a painful one, whereby the rower repeats exactly the same pulse over and over and over again. He crouches into a spring, knees tucked into his chest with arms extended, having sucked in as much air as his lungs will allow. He digs in, pushing with his legs and starting the long pull with his arms, expelling air throughout the pull. He reaches full extension, spent, and gorges on air as deeply as his lungs will let him. At the top of his pull, the rower lifts his blades and pulls his knees into his chest once again, sucking in air the entire way back down the boat, only to return and unselfishly empty himself once again.
    It is much like the beating of a human heart. So demanding is the action of rowing on the human body that some rowers pump half again as much air through their lungs during the course of a race as most any other athlete in the world. That's why rowers tend to be giants with broad wingspans and lungs like zeppelins.
    Which is a good picture of Charlie. If he were a bird, he might be a condor. Or better yet, an albatross.
    The joy of rowing comes in the movement. The scull is long and narrow, so it glides across the water at terrific speeds. The combination of blades, outriggers, and gliding seat combine like a percussion section to create a clink-clunk-hiss noise that sounds a rhythmic tempo across the water. Even though you sit backward, you're somehow aware of your surroundings, guiding the bow with the eyes in the back of your head. Steering is as much a feel as it is a response. Every few pulls you look behind you to print the panorama like a photograph in your mind. Then, turning back, you watch the wrinkling line where your keel has cut the water and the big round pools of ripples poked into the lake by your blades. With every successive pull, the pools you're making grow and grow until eventually they overlap and combine.
    We settled into our rhythm and glided through the mouths of Dick's Creek, Timpson Creek, and Moccasin Creek. Beads of sweat cascaded off my nose. My heart-rate monitor told me I was near the tip of my target zone, and Charlie's sweat-soaked back and expanding lungs told me he was too. The feeling of rowing in concert with another, soaked in sweat, painful but comfortable with your own effort, is a feeling unlike any other. It's the "runner's high" times two. Maybe three.

    Just because I sit in front and am technically responsible for steering doesn't mean that Charlie doesn't know where he is. We had passed Murray Cove and Billy Goat Island and pulled past Cherokee