I was six years old when I first saw the hole in the lake, out near the dam—that was the year we left the campsite at Putah Creek to be closer to Spanish Flat; that was the year I saw my mother for the last time. Auntie and Uncle parked the camper, disallowing us kids to sit inside it during daylight, and backed the orange speedboat into Lake Berryessa before driving out to the dam in the brown pickup. The hole went unexplained. It interrupted the placid surface, water entering its maw, as though the earth had given way with geometric precision—a bending of physics; a miracle shoved where no one would see.
