We Only Get Drier

We pulled up to the beach as storm clouds rolled in. Bunching up in the sky, they looked like piles of dirty clothes, and the shade they cast atop the water left a hollow feeling in my gut. Being ten years old I didn't know a lot, but I knew fear, and I knew it reared up as a hollow feeling sometimes.

It was a Saturday in July, one of Mom’s every-other weekends. She’d been looking for ways to entertain me and my younger brother, Jeremy, during our visits to keep us from climbing the walls of her basement apartment. On this particular weekend she decided to take us swimming at a small lake in town, her and her new boyfriend. It was more like a large pond, though, in Lion’s Park, across the parking lot from the softball fields. On the other side of those fields was a small zoo, or something like a zoo. Just two bison, an elk, one deer, a thicket of pines and a dried-up mud hole enclosed by a chain link fence. Anytime we were in proximity to it I couldn’t help but look, hoping to catch a glimpse of some wild thing in its unnatural habitat. They were usually hunkered down, hidden in the trees, so seeing one was like seeing a movie star on the street.

Things in Cheyenne were smaller, less desirable versions of bigger and better things. A lake, a zoo, a mall—Cheyenne itself. We called it a city, but it was definitely a town. The least populated capital in the nation, in the least populated state. Cheyenne, half-assed city of the plains still trying to hold onto its glory days of 1886.

As soon as we parked, my brother was out of the car running down to the shoreline and into the water, splashing and making friends with kids he didn’t know. Before I made any move, I had to play the situation out in my head. Plot my way around the danger that may or may not come my way, have an escape route planned. Jeremy’s confidence was something I admired. He had the heart of a mountain lion in that chest of his, while mine was a cricket’s. A cricket heart thrumming away in fear of water and noise and people and things.

A day at the beach wasn’t a day at the beach for me, it was torture, but we didn’t get to see Mom often, and I missed her. Somehow I got it in my head that I needed to impress her. And what was it that impressed women in the eighties? Bravery. At least, according to the TV shows and movies of the time. Women held hostage by crazy Russians. Women hanging from ledges screaming and crying. Screaming and crying women waiting on an oiled-up, jacked-up and jerked-off action figure of a man to save them. If Mom saw that I wasn’t afraid, perhaps it would persuade her to come back home, and we could go on living as a real family who sat down and ate real meals together and had sheets on our beds and clothes that fit and there’d be a love that wasn’t always a lesson, but tender and present when it was needed. I knew my father loved us greatly. Taking custody of me and Jeremy showed me that, but the love he showed was a tough love, a “don’t be a little girl” kind of love. Still, it was love, and this type of love would pull me through later in life when there was no other kind.

And my big plan to show Mom how brave I was? I’d face one of my many fears, the fear of water. This was my grand idea. To wade out until I couldn’t touch the bottom. I’d plug my nose and put my head under, probably. How could she stay away from a kid who had the balls to do that?

Her and her boyfriend laid out towels in the sand. This guy, Bob, I liked. He had a mustache and sideburns, smoked a pipe, and was an expert on everything plant and insect. He was head of the city’s weed and pest control, and I thought that was a pretty cool job. Bob was the first guy that seemed good for Mom in a string of boyfriends after the divorce.

“Aren’t you going to get in with your brother?” Bob asked.

“Yeah, but I’m going to go out further than him. Where it’s deep,” I said. “It’s too dangerous for him.”

“Are you a good swimmer?” he asked.

“Not really,” I said.

“You can’t swim at all, can you?” Mom asked.

“Not really,” I answered.

I took my time stripping down to the swim trunks under my jeans. I was the skinniest kid in my grade or any grade and hated showing my scrawny legs or taking my shirt off in front of people. Begrudgingly, I made my way towards the water, treading carefully across the beach, around large families splayed-out like seals, arf, arfing and batting beach balls into the sky. A cloud of cigarette smoke hung above them, and old cigarette butts got stuck between my toes. The sand burned the bottom of my feet. Quietly I went, Ouch! Ouch! Ouch! all the way to my brother, but there were too many kids over there, so I turned around and walked along the edge of the water to the very end of the roped-in area where I found my own little lane. I stepped in and toddled out a bit. The water was cold and murky, weeds brushed against my ankles. My dumb-kid imagination went wild, the creatures that could be down there.

Fangy, black-eyed fish.

Translucent fish.

Deep-down fish.

Fish of dark water humbly waiting for the toes of children.

Fish.

Across the lake, a Ferris wheel lazily spun round. I could see it from the water—a small one, no more than eight feet to the top. Fun City they called it, an amusement park that never seemed to be open. Or perhaps that’s just what Dad told us when we’d ask him to go. It was nothing special anyway, just a Ferris wheel, bumper cars and a carousel. More half-assed Cheyenne shit.

The water rose past my knees. Jeremy was doing handstands with some kids, his legs sticking up out of the water. Thunder crashed far off, then it crashed closer. A gust came up, cold water lapped up against my balls. It took the wind right out of me. When I regained my breath, I screamed, “Mom. Mom. Watch! Wait! Not yet!” She glanced up from her book—some Stephen King paperback—took a drag of her cigarette and said, “That’s great,” before looking back down. Pop music played over a crackling speaker on top of the snack shack. When the song ended the DJ said something like, “That was Billie Jean by Michael Jackson. You’re listening to Q98. Ninety-eight point six on your FM dial.” Then something like, “There’s a seventy percent chance of thunderstorms this afternoon.” I looked up at the dark clouds rolling in and thought, this guy knows what he’s talking about.

I kept going, water rising above my waist. The ping of an aluminum bat rang out from the softball field. It sounded like a good hit because there was clapping and a lady whistled the kind of whistle you do with two fingers in your mouth. The kind of whistle that makes you want to slap the shit out of the person that whistled. A rotten stench blew in with the breeze, and I wondered if anyone else could smell it. It didn’t seem like it, nobody was making the stank face. There was a marshy area of cat tails and other aquatic plants on the other side of the ropes. Over the years, people let their pet goldfish go free in the lake, and with all that space, those fish just kept growing. I figured one of those big bastards was belly-up in there somewhere rotting away in the heat.

It was getting harder to feel the bottom. For a moment I panicked, and I was sure everybody could tell I was panicking. Thinking of them watching me panic, seeing how weak I was, made me panic even more. There was an overwhelming urge to turn around and swim back to shore, except I never learned to swim, couldn’t even dog paddle or tread water. Dad tried to teach me the summer before then. Out at another lake, him and his railroad buddies were drinking beer, smoking weed and waterskiing. I was riding around in the boat with them, raising a bright orange flag in the air when the skier fell. Dad kept pushing to get me on the skis.

“Your brother gave it a shot. Your baby brother,” he said.

And I said, “He knows how to dog-paddle.”

“We’ll throw a life jacket on you,” he said.

“It’s too big for me. I’ll slide right out,” I said.

We went back and forth like that, and after getting the same answer for the tenth time, his frustration got the best of him I guess, because he picked me up over his head, said, “You gonna’ learn today,” and tossed me overboard. I went under. I flailed and squandered. I swallowed water. I was going to drown.

It’s been fun, I thought.

Well, sometimes.

I didn’t drown, of course. Dad just liked to scare me once in a while, get me out of my comfort zone. That’s how I try to look at it now, as an adult. He pulled me back in the boat. I didn’t learn to swim, but I was okay. I survived. I was a survivor. People think of themselves in this grandiose way all the time, as survivors, and I guess we all are if we made it through yesterday and the days before.

Water up to my neck. It was time to prove myself. I yelled to the shore, “Mom! Mom! I’m ready. Watch!” And when I was sure she was looking, I plugged my nose, squeezed my eyes shut, held my breath and dropped under. Two seconds later I shot back up. I took one, two, three steps forward, wiped the lake from my eyes, then I opened them. Mom and Bob were smiling and clapping, and for that moment I felt what it was like to have heart like my little brother. What had I been so afraid of in the first place? We exist in water before we ever touch our feet to land, sloshing around in our mother’s body for nine months. From that point we only get drier, until one day we are dust.

I was standing out there basking in the glory, when a frantic splashing brought me back to reality. There was some sort of commotion going down just feet behind me. The same spot I had been standing in seconds before. A voice back there screamed, “Everybody out!” I turned, there were two men, life guards I assumed. “Get the fuck out of the water,” one said, looking right at me with a face distorted and drained of blood. They must have spotted something bad out there, I thought. A man-eating goldfish perhaps.

The life guards were right on my heels until I made it out of the water. Out of breath, I collapsed onto the sand. People on the beach were shouting and running around, trying to find their kids. The life guards passed me, dragging what at first looked like a huge bag of garbage. A few feet ahead of me they let go of it. Then I could see what it was, not garbage, but a man, a man draped  in a suit of sea weed. (Lake weed? Pond weed?) A man with a distended stomach. A bloated man ready to explode. And I couldn’t take my eyes off of him. I saw where small chunks of flesh were missing from his body, like something was had been eating him. I couldn’t get a good look at his face, but his hair was long and brown, full of sand and vegetation. Most of his shirt had rotted or been torn off. If you had seen him from far off, you might have thought he was doing yoga on the beach. Frozen in a riding position—arms straight out in front of him and legs bent, sticking up in the air. Later I learned that he rode his motorcycle into the lake, got wrapped-up in the weeds and they held him under. They weren’t sure if he did it on purpose or not. I was mere feet, maybe inches from where they pulled the body from. No wonder it smelled so bad out there. Now I watched one beach goer to the next plug their noses or cover their mouths. A stench like that burrows down in the creases of your olfactory. It’s a smell you’ll never forget.

“Oh god, there you are,” a voice said. I looked up and saw Mom standing there. “When I couldn’t see you I thought maybe it was you they were dragging in,” she said. She was trembling. I stood up and hugged her. “It’s okay, Mom,” I said. Tears filled the edges of her eyes, I wanted to cry, too, but I needed to be strong for her.

“I couldn’t find you,” is all she said and she hugged me harder. The clouds broke open then. Thick drops of rain bounced off of the drowned man’s chest. We had to walk around him to get to the car. I made sure to hide the terror I felt inside. If she saw me freak out, she’d freak out herself. “Don’t look, Mom,” I said. I wasn’t scared of the actual dead body, or his ghost, or the gore, what scared me was the unknown. What was it that called him into the lake? Was he trying to prove something to somebody? In a strange way I felt protected by my anxiety. My stupid fear of water didn’t seem so stupid then. I saw what it could do to a human body.

Bob and Jeremy were already at the car when we got there. Seemed like every police cruiser in town descended upon the parking lot, blocking us in. None of us spoke, just sat there listening to sirens blare in the rain and the rain pounding the metal Subaru roof. I gazed towards the half-assed zoo with the hopes of seeing an animal. Something in me yearned for something beautiful. And it was then that a buffalo lumbered out into the clearing. It raised its massive face to the sky and let the storm wash over it.