The Twilight Swimmer (7 page)

“Do they know who started the fire?” asked Brandi, trying to sound casually interested. Her voice caught in her throat, however, and she sounded so guilty in her own ears that she didn’t dare look up from her plate. “I mean, did you arrest anybody?”

“Lots of tire tracks in the lot out back, but nobody at the warehouse by the time I got there. The kids at school been talking?”

“About the fire?” asked Brandi, stalling. “Not to me.”

“This time of year, thank god, not much chance of that fire spreading. But if it had? Not much of a fire department. One truck and a kinked, cracked hose I wouldn’t use on the lawn. Last fire I can even remember was Mac Daughtery’s trailer, and he fell asleep with a cigarette burning between his fingers. Lucky he made it out of there with his skin still attached to him.”

Sherri gasped. “Conrad! This is the dinner table! We can do without the graphic imagery, don’t you think?” She turned to Brandi. “Two more bites of the lamb. Don’t argue with me.”

Brandi speared another slice and tucked it in her mouth. It had gone cold, and the drizzle of fruit juice was sickly sweet.

“That’s one bite,” said Sherri. “Don’t think I’m not watching.”

Conrad was focused on the fire now, unwilling to acknowledge that his wife had steered the conversation back to her food. “There may be homeless living out in those woods, outside of town. If I was them, I’d look for a building like the cannery to hole up in. And there were bottles in there, some rubbish that looked like food wrappers. Sounds like homeless. But it wasn’t a cold night. They’d have no reason to build a big fire like that.”

“A big fire?” asked Brandi.

“Big pile of wood, some chopped, mostly branches and such. It was a bonfire, like they were camping. No vagrant camps in an abandoned warehouse, not when there’s a better chance a patrolmen cruising by will spot it and roust them.” He turned to Cody. “Which means?”

Cody shrugged.

“Come on, bud. Do some detecting.”

“That it was somebody else.”

Conrad sighed audibly. “Well yes. But who? If it wasn’t bums holing up, if it was a bonfire like at a campsite—”

Brandi watched her brother, waiting impatiently for him to suggest it was teenagers so she could promptly deny the likelihood. Or would that be too obvious? Maybe if she agreed that it could only have been teenagers, it would seem, to her father, less likely that she had been personally involved. She was still thinking about the best way to handle Cody’s comment when her father answered his own question.

“Punk kids, that’s who. And believe me, we’ve got ‘em in this little town.” He turned to Brandi. “Right?”

She gulped hard and nodded, not trusting her voice to come out right.

“But I’ve been holding out on you. There’s one more piece of evidence.” Conrad looked back and forth between Cody and Brandi, trying to assess their level of anticipation, milking the moment for everything it was worth. “A stereo. There was a stereo. Melted all to hell, but—”

“Conrad! Don’t swear!”

“—but obviously a stereo, and not an old piece of junk like some bum might have pulled out of a dumpster. It had a docking station for one of those mp3 players. And no tape deck.” Again, he turned to his son. “That’s detective work, Cody. Kind of fun, isn’t it?”

Cody shrugged.

“If only it didn’t take reckless kids engaging in criminal activity to afford us the chance to investigate. And burning down an abandoned building is arson, a serious crime. But if only it was just for fun, who wouldn’t want to be a policeman?”

No one responded.

Sherri pushed back her chair, jumped to her feet and began clearing uneaten food from the table. She looked down at Brandi’s plate, still half full of food. “One more bite. I know my cooking is terrible, but you can choke down a few more calories.”

Cody’s eyes opened wide all of a sudden, a thought inspiring him. He slipped off his chair and bolted into the next room and up the stairs. Conrad and Brandi watched him go, amazed with his child’s speed. Only seconds later, it seemed, he sped back down the stairs with his hands hidden behind his back. He was breathless from his mad dash, but smiling.

“Mom?”

Sherri didn’t seem to hear him.

“Mom? Brandi and me got these for you.” He brought his hands around, both fists clenched around a thick tangle of stems. It was the wildflowers from the warehouse, most of them still in good shape but some of them already losing their color.

“Brandi and
I
,” Sherri answered, correcting his grammar without turning around.

Cody’s smile disappeared. He dropped the wildflowers on the dinner table and strode slowly back out of the dining room.

CHAPTER FIVE

The Swimmer could not abide water that didn’t move. On many nights, he had ventured inland through river systems, and could adjust to the lack of salt as he progressed from brackish water to fresh. But when he found himself in lakes, it was the lack of movement that made him uncomfortable. He needed a current to wash over him. Even while he slept. In the sea, he might burrow into the sandy bottom with only one side of his face and neck exposed, the gill line below his jaw fluttering as the oxygenated fluid entered his body. If there was no suitable place to anchor himself, he could shut off his mind and drift off while his body involuntarily held his position. He could gently kick against the current for hours, without breaking his sleep. If there was danger approaching, an animal with a vicious appetite and the power and size to indulge it, it was his sense of smell that alerted him. Every animal, large or small, produced small amounts of oil, each of them distinct, each of them perceptible against the salty sameness of the ocean water. Even while sleeping he could pick up a malevolent odor from a mile away. And if the predator somehow advanced close enough to imperil him, the Swimmer used his speed and agility to dart away, charting a path through the water that the larger animal was incapable of following.

The waters here, so close to shore, were cool even at the height of the day. He stayed as deep as was necessary to avoid the sunlight, moving slowly upward toward the surface with eager anticipation. When the sun finally dipped below the horizon he could comfortably venture into the shallows. And there, hidden just below the waves, he thought of her.

His sense of smell was not refined enough to break down the complex onslaught of odors from the land. There were too many different smells, so unlike each other and so unlike anything he encountered in the sea. Many of the smells were pleasant, emanating from the greens of trees or the reds and violets of a field of flowers, but they were so potent that he couldn’t enjoy them for long. Many other smells were repugnant, unnatural, emanating from the straight lines of gray buildings and paths carved into the landscape, metallic creatures racing along them as if hunting, growling and coughing as they hurtled by. He found it simpler to seal off his olfactory glands and shield himself from these smells. And so he couldn’t detect the smell of her, even from the shallows, unique and unforgettable though it was.

But he could listen. And he did.

His ears were perhaps the most sophisticated part of his body, designed to withstand the never-ending chorus of sounds that stitched together the ocean. The water gathered these sounds greedily, then flung them in every direction. Sounds layered against sounds, bouncing off each other, chaotic and in competition but somehow cooperative. Together, to his ears, this multitude of sounds was musical. And his ears were capable of parsing the complex, orchestral music and picking out individual notes. He could count the silver bullet herring in a school as they darted manically. He could envision the crabs picking through a carcass on the sea floor by listening to the tapping of their claws. Each animal was an instrumentalist or vocalist contributing its small part to a song that never changed but never repeated itself.

At the surface, however, the song was still unfamiliar.

The birds above, moving air with the flapping of wings. He could hear it rustling through their feathers. He could hear their beaks clacking and the shrill calls as their beaks parted and their throats stretched. The hoarse barking of dogs, sometimes joyful as they ran to greet a familiar human, sometimes menacing as they defended their homes from anyone unfamiliar. The breaking of glass, the squealing of tires, the compacting of trash, the ripping of paper, the scratching of tree branches and the crack of distant thunder. He heard it all, consuming every sound like a new flavor, building stories around them, visualizing the source, often incorrectly. The first time he saw an infant, he was enormously surprised to match its hew and cry to a tiny human form. He had heard the sound many times before, utterly convinced it was produced by some sort of animal, either dying or mating. He had seen several infants in the years since, but the incongruent squall had not yet lost its power to awe him.

Human voices captivated him more than any other sound. He had learned to discern the differences between young voices and old, between male and female. He eavesdropped on these voices, striving to master his understanding of their words, yes, but also the meaning behind the words. He identified peculiarities in intonation, enunciation, emphasis, all of which could change the meaning of a phrase or sentence in dramatic ways. He detected the rise at the end of a question that suggested uncertainty, the lowering of volume and timbre that suggested secrecy, and the peculiar cadence that suggested dishonesty.

Through language, he absorbed the human experience.

And with practice, he learned to recognize specific human voices: The stocky captain of a fishing boat off Puget Sound; the slender Indian girl who sang sadly on the beaches of Goa;
 the surfing brothers, twins, who never missed a predawn wave and chatted incessantly about escaping Auckland. They became as familiar to the Swimmer as the jigsaw edges of the shores he traveled, as comforting as the sight of colorful fish darting in and out of their coral homes, as haunting as the sight of massive ships gliding by overhead, their massive hulls casting underwater shadows. The human voices seemed, somehow, to bind together all the disparate elements of his life in the water. And as his feelings of kinship with humans grew stronger, his isolation from them became more clear and more severe. He pushed away the malaise their voices sometimes brought and kept listening, unwilling to deny himself the pleasures that came with the pain.

But
her
voice. Her voice hurried the beating of his heart and the racing of his mind. It sent shivers through him even as it warmed him. For too many nights to count, he had strained his ears to hear her, even when she was far from shore. He blocked out the white noise the land produced, blocked out the orchestral music, to focus on her voice alone. Over water, past rocks, through dense trees and walls, he sought her voice and he found it.

For months, her voice had been a beacon, and difficult to resist. Now that she had seen him, walking upright, the warehouse fire casting light on his pale face… he found her voice impossible to resist.

The clothes she left for him at the water’s edge were the first he had worn, but he’d seen men of every shape and size pull similar items over their bodies. With some difficulty, he slid his legs into pants and arms into sleeves. The fit was good, but the sensation of restriction made him feel claustrophobic. He dove deep, feeling the drag the fabric made against the water. He kicked hard, stretched his arms, twisted and rolled. With every movement, the clothing denied him mobility. And yet, she had given him this gift. He would not ignore the kindness.

By the time he climbed out of the water, the sun was a memory and the moon was at its zenith.

Past midnight.

Brandi was in bed, but she wasn’t sleeping. Her covers pulled up to her chin despite the warmth of the night, she wore oversized headphones blaring classical music. Bolero. Staring at a patch of moonlight on the ceiling, she drummed her fingers against the wall, following the music as it gathered complexity and built toward crescendo. She played no instruments, but she loved music. Anything without lyrics, which only got in the way.

Spider had called that evening, after dinner. The house phone. Brandi didn’t know how he got the number, but supposed that phonebooks weren’t quite obsolete yet and her father no doubt had them listed. Her mother took the call and handed Brandi the receiver, watching Brandi’s face for some sort of evidence as to the nature of her relationship with a boy who would proudly announce such a strange name. Classmates working on a school project, she probably hoped. Brandi took the receiver without revealing a single clue to her mother, marching outside to the deck to speak privately.

Spider had called to apologize. “I was yelling at you to get in the car, get in the car, get in the car. But you were like, entranced. Like some kind of zombie. I mean, flesh attached and intact, but you know what I mean. Just staring, hypnotized. Have you ever been hypnotized? Because I’m serious, you’ve got the look down perfect.” He droned on for several minutes, finding various ways to say he was sorry for leaving her behind, inventing more ways to describe the strangeness of her behavior in that crucial moment when she should have climbed into his wagon. “I’d have jumped out and dragged you in if this ankle wasn’t shot to hell. It’s better now, by the way. Cold compress technology. Thanks for asking.”