The Nealy We Didn’t Know

The Nealy We Didn’t Know

a Carolina Paddler article

by Alton Chewning

-William Nealy is one of the most cherished figures of whitewater yore.  William “Not Bill” Nealy is our teacher, our class clown, our artist, capable of turning kayaking into an elevated form of child’s play, like rolling down a hill in a cardboard box or swinging on a Tarzan vine and letting go…  Nealy helped us to understand the fun, the devil-may-care joy of doing something a little reckless and wild.  He also taught us about water: the runs and rapids of some of the most beloved rivers of the South.

Many a boater’s walls are decorated with his epic cartoon maps of classics like the Lower Haw or Chattooga IV.  His “Kayak” and revised “Kayak: the New Frontier” are the go-to instructional books for paddlers hoping to move past novice status.  Together the books and maps have sold over 100,000 copies and have been translated into many languages.  His explanations of the dynamics of water and rocks and incline help us to see what lies below the water and what the movement of the water might be.  His offbeat humor and reckless enthusiasm still charm us after decades of change.  We love William Nealy as much as any icon in our sport.

I came to Nealy late, only learning of his work in the last few years.  Like so many of you, I was delighted with his visual clarity and wit and his what-the-hell humor.  His cartoons recall an earlier time in the hazy eighties and nineties, but the insight and instruction are solid and still current.  When I learned he had died from suicide in 2001, I was struck with the eternal question of a person taking their own life:  Why?  Why did this seem the best option to someone who had accomplished so much, and with such vigor?

Somewhere along the line, I learned William had been a long-time companion of Holly Wallace.  They shared crazy love and wild adventures in their teens and early twenties, and when Holly was diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis at age 21, their bond deepened into a more tempered and resilient relationship.   About this time, I learned Holly was sister to Daniel Wallace, the acclaimed novelist, perhaps best known for his first novel, “Big Fish,” and the resulting Tim Burton-directed movie of the same name.  Together they made a heady trio:  Holly, the effusive driving spirit; Daniel, the accomplished novelist; William the wildman cartoonist and “fun-hog.”  Now, Holly is dead, claimed by her debilitating disease; William, dead from his own hand, and Daniel, alive and left to make sense of it all.

“This Isn’t Going to End Well” is Wallace’s first non-fiction book. He explains his youthful worship of all things William and how betrayed he felt when William abandoned Holly by committing suicide. For all of us who have loved William “Not Bill” Nealy, as he often signed his books, it’s a look into the complex history and psychology of a person who could make the reading of water seem so simple and clear compared to the opacity of his personal life.

The cover of “This Isn’t Going to End Well” has a set of aviator sunglasses, turned on end.  The book is a memoir, a collection of memories drawn from Wallace’s life and the people who influenced him.  A way of investigating his relationship with Nealy, his object of adulation, and how Nealy shaped Wallace and molded his own life.  The sunglasses on the cover belong to William, a pivotal part of his guise, his costume, his disguise.   He wore them often, even in dark places.  Like many people who don’t want to have their eyes seen, maybe William was covering something incriminating:  his bloodshot eyes, dilated pupils, and dulled gaze.  Or maybe he was just being cool.  Maybe it was for outward appearance, not a cover up, but an enhancement, an accessory, like earrings or a wallet chain.  Or maybe the world was too bright.

Daniel Wallace lives in Chapel Hill and teaches creative writing at UNC.  He followed Holly and William to Chapel Hill after they left Alabama as “political refugees.”  William, a high school dropout, had been working at an outfitter’s store in Birmingham. The shop and its hippie patrons ran afoul of some local folks and the building burned.  William and Holly fled town, heading for a more inviting area with lots of rivers and a more embracing climate.

Holly started school at UNC and William approached Howard Du Bose at River Runner’s Emporium about employment.  William offered to work for little money and unlimited hours; he needed a job.  Howard liked the sound of this arrangement and William became a part of the Triangle paddle scene.  Du Bose said despite William’s initial enthusiasm for a job, he spent much of his time drawing or writing.  Du Bose liked him and tolerated it.

Many people were coming to River Runners and asking for advice on the rapids of the Haw River.   William suggested they produce a map that would show the rapids and the best routes through them.  Howard and William noted the features and William did the drawing, adding his comic style and deft understanding of the movement of water.  The first map was born.  The Haw was a small start. Later the rivers would get bigger, the maps larger, the market greater.  The next breakthrough in Nealy’s mapping and marketing was a side trip to Nantahala Outdoor Center, returning from a visit to Birmingham.  Nealy asked the manager, John Barber, if he was interested in buying a few.  Barber ordered 1000.  Nealy was surprised and emboldened. Maybe he could make a living doing something he liked.

Most of us in the paddling community know this origin story.  Holly, William, Bob Sehlinger and Holly’s dad start Menosha Ridge press. Nealy goes on producing more river maps, about a dozen in all, and ten books. His book, “Kayak” is one of the best advanced kayaking instruction manuals of all time.  Some of the books were skills based, always with his clear drawings and distinctive printing. Others were more for laughs.  Nealy had a genius for presenting a rapid or hydraulic from multiple viewpoints, both physical and emotional.  In a drawing of paddlers scouting a rapid, some characters find the prospect terrifying.  Some are jazzed.  Others confused.  His drawings often included someone who has done the wrong thing and is trashed in the process.  Often, William was the model for each of these behaviors.

Daniel Wallace was Holly’s younger brother and like many others, he idolized his sister’s boyfriend.  Nealy was smart, daring, and handsome in a knock-off, casual way.   Wallace quotes a story, told by a friend of William’s. The friend’s fiancée observes, after meeting William and seeing him dive in a pool and then towel off, he was the most handsome man she had ever seen.  This was said to her betrothed.

William projected cool, a risk-taker and rule-breaker.  He drank freely and did drugs, but he knew how to do constructive things, too.  He volunteered on the rescue squad. He could build houses and fish and climb and play drums.  And Daniel’s sister adored him.  Holly and William were an idyllic couple, not chained to each other-they had other lovers- but devoted in a soulful and rooted way, like the weaving of trunks of trees, separate but leaning on the other.

“This Isn’t Going to End Well” is a story of how Daniel loved Nealy and loved the relationship William and Holly had, until it all started to change.  Holly developed rheumatoid arthritis and William struggled with his own depression and uncertain purpose.  William cared for Holly, cooking and cleaning, tending to the house and animals and to her, trying to ease her pain and to make her feel loved and appreciated.  At the same time, he found it increasingly difficult to console himself.  He was doubting his being; he always had.  Growing up with childhood traumas and severe asthma had left him uncertain of his worth and his path.  William had built the house where he and Holly lived near New Hope Creek.  He had also built a public image of a hip adventurer, an adrenaline junkie.  The posturing of toughness and cool had helped him endure his early adulthood but entering mid-life, his armor was wearing thin. Back injuries suffered while biking ended his whitewater paddling.  Alcohol and tobacco and other drugs carved into his drive and expressiveness.  The childhood asthma resurfaced with a vengeance. He was becoming incapable and depressed. Again and again, in the private journals he kept, he surveyed his options and thoughts of suicide gathered weight.

This story takes so many turns.  William’s best friend, Edgar Hitchcock, a hobbled and endearing writer and drug dealer, had been murdered, back in Birmingham.  William and Holly move back and spend a year trying to unravel the case, at first with the support of local police.  The investigation becomes a crusade for Nealy, and he embarks on a scary, ill-conceived plan of befriending the main suspect.  Ultimately, the case goes unsolved, and William and Holly’s sleuthing perhaps contributes to the lack of a clean case against the suspect.  William is flattened by his impotence in avenging his friend.  He couldn’t bring the suspect to justice and he didn’t have the temperament to seek his own revenge. Nealy couldn’t let it go and move on but was at a loss on how to continue.

Life back in Chapel Hill fell into a rhythm at times pleasant and consoling.  William and Holly had the beautiful house built by William, single level to accommodate her arthritis.  Single level except for William’s study, his retreat where he would go to write and draw and ponder.  And work on his private journals.

New Hope Creek was nearby and sometimes William and Holly would load up their pigs and other pets and go there for a picnic.  The pigs were Asian, with fierce samurai faces but gentle dispositions, a trait William surely loved.  It was tranquil and refreshing and removed from the cares of the world.

Holly’s health was declining, and William became her full-time nurse.  One wonders if he should have sought more help in caring for her.  Often more help brings complications, and he may have felt he could handle it all by himself if he tried hard enough.  He was a creature of routine.  For example, his rigorous journals, written late at night, index the day’s events in a terse shorthand.  Back pain level: 1-5, dinner menu, chores accomplished, all the notes in the same printing as in his books. Sometimes he ventured into his internal realm, a dark chamber of fears and failures and voices that told him what he was not.

Ten years after William’s suicide, Holly dies and the hidden journals, accumulated over many years, fall into the possession of Wallace.  Wallace was reluctant to read the journals but couldn’t throw them away either, so they sat on shelves in his study, an unrelenting reminder that more was to be learned about William if he could bear the knowledge.

William couldn’t find redemption through bringing Edgar’s killer to justice.  And he finally realized he would never find redemption through saving Holly’s life.  She would ultimately die from her disease and all his love and caring would not change this fact.  William would be left with himself, his constructed life fallen like a decaying shed of hopes and memories, left to be overtaken by vines.  Instead, he would burn it down.  But not all of it, not the journals.

The critical question in the how and why of William’s suicide is this:  If William loved Holly, how could he kill himself, leaving her with grief and regrets and her own slow demise.  It’s not an easy question.  Wallace could find no reasonable excuse and develops a pure and consuming hatred for William, the man he had idolized for so much of his life.  Wallace does many things to remove William’s presence, to exact a revenge.  Here is one.  Holly and William had often stated that when their time came, they would like their ashes to be mingled and cast together for eternity.  This was not done.  Holly’s ashes are buried next to her father’s, a man who never much cared for William.  Then, one angry night, Daniel unceremoniously casts William’s ashes into a dark place in the woods.

“This Isn’t Going to End Well” could end here, with Daniel’s bitterness and hatred of William. Instead, he reads more and more of the journals, 1200 pages in all, and he begins to appreciate the traumas and defeats that tormented Nealy:  the recurring asthma, the back pain, the addictions, the failure to save Holly or Edgar, the voices speaking to him, the final orders.  This book is much like the belated ceremony Daniel conducted at Holly’s gravesite, as an absolution of sorts:  a combining of ashes, an offering of grave goods, a willingness to forgive.  A veil of secrecy lifted in compassion.