As a boy, he’d nearly drowned in a river near his home. Since then, he’d been terrified of the water.
Now he drove to his hometown and went down to the river. He stood on the bank and looked out at the spot where foam-lipped eddies had pulled him under, the spot whose memory had haunted him all these years, the source of his greatest fear.
He had come back to face it. Looking at it now, he realized how small and tame it really was. He realized he had let this one little spot deprive him of so much.
The river looked so beautiful to him. He had never really seen a river.
He sat down on a big rock, took off his shoes and socks and rolled up his pant legs. Then he got up and slowly waded in.