Left Drowning

It’s during the third hour of this increasingly strenuous task that his resolve starts to crack. There is no part of his body or mind that does not hurt to all hell. It’s just water; it’s just water. How can carrying water be so bad? It can’t. Just breathe into it. Breathe into it and keep going. But every step becomes more burdensome, the act of pulling his feet from the sand more and more grueling. Every muscle in his arms feels like it’s going to tear each time he lifts up a new bucket of water. But if he stops, it will be worse.

He should have killed his father. He still could. He could kill him in his sleep with one of the hunting rifles in the house. Or he could poison his food. Maybe he’ll do that. For a moment Chris fantasizes about actually doing this, but despite all the reasons it would be justified, he knows that he isn’t capable and that it’s not right. And that having a dead father is a sure way to guarantee separating the kids.

He holds tightly to the vague plan in his head, which is merely that there is a future outside of this house. He will get his siblings to that future no matter what.

As his arms fatigue even more, the buckets drop down in his arms. He must make a conscious effort to keep his arms bent so that he doesn’t keep battering his thighs with the weight. Chris keeps a steady pace, though, because if his father should choose to look out from the upper windows of their sprawling house and see imperfection, one of the kids will pay the price later. As he mulls over the idiocy in perfecting such a meaningless task, he trips and spills half a bucket of water. Panic grips him, but he continues on.

Sweat drips from his upper body. Chris can feel the sunburn on his shoulders and back. It’s going to make sleeping tonight terrible, but he should be exhausted enough that nothing will keep him awake. Still he feels near to fainting. If he doesn’t take a quick break, he’s not going to make it. His father is going to ring a bell from the deck to signal when he can stop, but that won’t be for hours, he’s sure of that. Chris turns to the trees and looks to the upper deck of the house by his father’s studio. If he’s checking on Chris, he will probably be looking from there. He leans his head to the side to look past one large branch of a tree, and seeing no one, he drops the buckets and leans over, placing his hands on his knees while he dry-heaves. Damn it. He needs water badly. Man, what he’d give for just a little water. Chris turns and wades into the ocean up to his mid-calves. As tempting as it is to gulp down ocean water, he’s not that dumb. He shakes his head. No, he’ll just make himself sicker.

Maybe he has no future after all. Maybe none of them do. Maybe the four of them are already broken beyond repair. Can they really have any sort of life after this? Probably not.

Chris looks out where the ocean meets the sky. He could swim to another shore, run off, and never come back. He contemplates the idea of immediate freedom. Maybe he really should swim out there and never come back. Give himself over to the dark water of the Atlantic. But he would never leave his siblings. Never.

Suddenly, Chris realizes that he is making eye contact with someone. She stands on a floating dock in the cove and looks back at him.

She is beautiful. He can’t even see her clearly because of the distance, but he can feel her beauty. He guesses that she is around his age. She probably has a wonderful, normal life, the way every teenager should. Exhaustion, sadness, and despair overtake him.

The girl gives him a small wave, and he waves back. He knows that he shouldn’t do this because his father might flip, but he can’t help himself. He is drawn to her. Wait, does he know her? No, that’s not it. Yet there is a familiarity about her presence.

She cups her hands to her mouth and yells across the water. “Hi.”

“Hi, back!” Chris replies.

“Are you … okay?”

Chris drops his hands onto his hips and looks away. Shit, she’s been watching him. He must look crazy. “Yes, I’m fine.”

“What are you doing? With the buckets. Are you in training for something?”

Chris can’t help but laugh. It wasn’t a bad thought. Maybe he could pretend he is conditioning himself for a triathlon or something. Instead he is training for survival. “Sort of.”

The girl calls out over the lapping water, insisting that he needs a T-shirt because he has a horrible sunburn. She pushes him to at least go get a shirt. Her yelling could be echoing up to the house, Chris realizes, and he glances back to make sure that his father isn’t coming. She refuses to take no for an answer, and when she starts to untie her rowboat from the dock so that she can come to him, Chris immediately yells, “No! Don’t do that!” If she comes to the shore and he is seen talking with her … God, he doesn’t know what would happen. He checks behind him again. Still safe. He feels awful yelling at her like this. She is kind. She knows something is wrong, he can tell, but he doesn’t want her worrying about him. “Just … No. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

Chris and the girl stand silently until he suddenly feels that they understand each other. He can’t explain his situation to her, and now she all at once seems to accept that. Chris struggles to fight back tears while they maintain eye contact. Perhaps it’s because he needs something, needs someone, but he is convinced that she is the reason he is not dropping to his knees and surrendering. This girl, he is sure, is his salvation, and he can practically hear the strength that she is sending him, the exact unspoken words that she hurls over the water. I’m here. I’m right here.

Part of him wishes she would leave. Stop looking at him. No good can come of this, he knows. But Chris can’t bring himself to ignore her, or be rude, or do more to push her away than he already has. When he tells her that he has to keep going, he can see her thinking, pondering what his actions mean. She knows he is in trouble, Chris can tell.

“I have to keep going,” he says desperately.

“I’m going to stay with you,” she tells him.

These are the kindest words Chris has ever heard, and it’s all he can do to answer her. “Thank you.”

He refills the buckets of water, walking them from one side of the shore to the other, emptying and refilling them. He treks endlessly through the mud, his feet often digging into shell shards. He recognizes that physically, he is near collapse. Mentally, too. She is the reason he can continue. He pauses once, noticing something in one of his buckets. A sea urchin. He is reminded how much life is out there in the ocean, in the rest of the world, all of it waiting for him. Maybe even she could be waiting for him. Who knows? But only if he can just do this. He takes the little green creature out gently and walks a few feet deeper into the water, letting it float to the bottom. With the current, maybe it will find its way to her.

Chris looks to her as he walks, nodding a bit. She is now in her bathing suit, having tied her red shirt to a life vest. Wait, what is she doing? Chris is moved beyond words when he understands.

“The tide is coming in,” she calls.

He watches as the current carries the life vest to shore. When it is close enough, he stops walking and puts down the buckets. Because his fingers tremble so horribly, it seems to take forever to undo the knots. She made sure they were tight enough so that the water bottle, in particular, would reach him. The red T-shirt that she has sent him feels like heaven when he puts it on, the cold fabric cooling off his shoulders and protecting him from further sun exposure. He glances at the house, and then he downs the bottle of water, raising it when he’s done.

He looks down at the shirt as it drips water over him. Matthews College. He doesn’t know where this school is, but it’s immediately clear to him that he will go there. All of them will go there. There will be college, and family, and joy. It’s a goal; it’s a future. It’s a goddamn plan. He smiles for a moment. Maybe he will even get the girl.