Hit Man

So maybe he’d just forget about evening classes at Hunter, and field trips to Brooklyn. If he wanted to get close to nature he could walk in Central Park, and if he didn’t know the names of the flowers he would just hold off on introducing himself to them. And if-Where was the kid?

The boy, the swimmer. Keller’s companion in solitude. Where the hell did he go?

The pool was empty, its surface still. Keller saw a ripple toward the far end, saw a brace of bubbles break the surface.

He didn’t react without thinking. That was how he’d always heard that sort of thing described, but that wasn’t what happened, because the thoughts were there, loud and clear.He’s down there. He’s in trouble. He’s drowning. And, echoing in his head in a voice that might have been Dot’s, sour with exasperation:Keller, for Christ’s sake, do something!

He set his glass on a table, shucked his coat, kicked off his shoes, dropped his pants and stepped out of them. Ages ago he’d earned a Red Cross lifesaving certificate, and the first thing they taught you was to strip before you hit the water. The six or seven seconds you spent peeling off your clothes would be repaid many times over in quickness and mobility.

But the strip show did not go u

Searching for the boy. Groping, searching, then finding him, reaching to grab hold of him. And pushing off against the bottom, lungs bursting, racing to reach the surface.

People were saying things to Keller, thanking him, congratulating him, but it wasn’t really registering. A man clapped him on the back, a woman handed him a glass of brandy. He heard the word “hero” and realized that people were saying it all over the place, and applying it to him.

Hell of a note.

Keller sipped the brandy. It gave him heartburn, which assured him of its quality; good cognac always gave him heartburn. He turned to look at the boy. He was just a little fellow, twelve or thirteen years old, his hair lightened and his skin lightly bronzed by the summer sun. He was sitting up now, Keller saw, and looking none the worse for his near-death experience.

“Timothy,” a woman said, “this is the man who saved your life. Do you have something to say to him?”

“Thanks,” Timothy said, predictably.

“Is that all you have to say, young man?”

“It’s enough,” Keller said, and smiled. To the boy he said, “There’s something I’ve always wondered. Did your whole life actually flash before your eyes?”

Timothy shook his head. “I got this cramp,” he said, “and it was like my whole body turned into one big knot, and there wasn’t anything I could do to untie it. And I didn’t even think about drowning. I was just fighting the cramp, ’cause it hurt, and just about the next thing I knew I was up here coughing and puking up water.” He made a face. “I must have swallowed half the pool. All I have to do is think about it and I can taste vomit and chlorine.”

“Timothy,” the woman said, and rolled her eyes.

“Something to be said for plain speech,” an older man said. He had a mane of white hair and a pair of prominent white eyebrows, and his eyes were a vivid blue. He was holding a glass of brandy in one hand and a bottle in the other, and he reached with the bottle to fill Keller’s glass to the brim. “ ‘Claret for boys, port for men,’ ” he said, “ ‘but he who would be a hero must drink brandy.’ That’s Samuel Johnson, although I may have gotten a word wrong.”

The young woman patted his hand. “If you did, Daddy, I’m sure you just improved Mr. Johnson’s wording.”

“Dr. Johnson,” he said, “and one could hardly do that. Improve the man’s wording, that is. ‘Being in a ship is being in a jail, with the chance of being drowned.’ He said that as well, and I defy anyone to comment more trenchantly on the experience, or to say it better.” He beamed at Keller. “I owe you more than a glass of brandy and a well-turned Johnsonian phrase. This little rascal whose life you’ve saved is my grandson, and the apple-nay, sir, the very nectarine-of my eye. And we’d have all stood around drinking and laughing while he drowned. You observed, and you acted, and God bless you for it.”

What did you say to that? Keller wondered.It was nothing? Well, shucks? There had to be an apt phrase, and maybe Samuel Johnson could have found it, but he couldn’t. So he said nothing, and just tried not to look po-faced.

“I don’t even know your name,” the white-haired man went on. “That’s not remarkable in and of itself. I don’t know half the people here, and I’m content to remain in my ignorance. But I ought to know your name, wouldn’t you agree?”

Keller might have picked a name out of the air, but the one that leaped to mind was Boswell, and he couldn’t say that to a man who quoted Samuel Johnson. So he supplied the name he’d traveled under, the one he’d signed when he checked into the hotel, the one on the driver’s license and credit cards in his wallet.

“It’s Michael Soderholm,” he said, “and I can’t even tell you the name of the fellow who brought me here. We met over drinks in the hotel bar and he said he was going to a party and it would be perfectly all right if I came along. I felt a little fu

“Please,” the man said. “You can’t possibly propose to apologize for your presence here. It’s kept my grandson from a watery if chlorinated grave. And I’ve just told you I don’t know half my guests, but that doesn’t make them any the less welcome.” He took a deep drink of his brandy and topped up both glasses. “Michael Soderholm,” he said. “Swedish?”

“A mixture of everything,” Keller said, improvising. “My great-grandfather Soderholm came over from Sweden, but my other ancestors came from all over Europe, plus I’m something like a sixteenth American Indian.”

“Oh? Which tribe?”

“Cherokee,” Keller said, thinking of the jazz tune.

“I’m an eighth Comanche,” the man said. “So I’m afraid we’re not tribal bloodbrothers. The rest’s British Isles, a mix of Scots and Irish and English. Old Texas stock. But you’re not Texan yourself.”

“No.”

“Well, it can’t be helped, as the saying goes. Unless you decide to move here, and who’s to say that you won’t? It’s a fine place for a man to live.”

“Daddy thinks everybody should love Texas the way he does,” the woman said.

“Everybody should,” her father said. “The only thing wrong with Texans is we’re a long-winded lot. Look at the time it’s taking me to introduce myself! Mr. Soderholm, Mr. Michael Soderholm, my name’s Garrity, Wallace Penrose Garrity, and I’m your grateful host this evening.”

No kidding, thought Keller.

The party, lifesaving and all, took place on Saturday night. The next day Keller sat in his hotel room and watched the Cowboys beat the Vikings with a field goal in the last three minutes of double overtime. The game had seesawed back and forth, with interceptions and runbacks, and the a

Keller supposed they were right. It had all the ingredients, and it wasn’t the players’ fault that he himself was entirely unmoved by their performance. He could watch sports, and often did, but he almost never got caught up in it. He had occasionally wondered if his work might have something to do with it. On one level, when your job involved dealing regularly with life and death, how could you care if some overpaid steroid abuser had a touchdown run called back? And, on another level, you saw unorthodox solutions to a team’s problems on the field. When Emmitt Smith kept crashing through the Mi