The Twilight Swimmer (9 page)

Right there, Brandi thought. That’s where we waited for someone to drive by and take us to the gas station to call Mom. She pictured her father and sister leaning against the hull, filthy with mud and grass, while they waited for help to arrive in the form of an irate woman in a severe ponytail, hands on hips and mouth turned down in an intentional frown.

The memory only stayed with Brandi for a moment, though. She remembered her passenger.

The Swimmer sat awkwardly at the back of the kayak. He was so long in the legs that he couldn’t fit in the rear seat. Instead, he sat on the stern, off-balance and obviously uncomfortable, his knees up near his chest and his hands perpetually groping for a grip. Her father’s wet clothes had mostly dried, and no longer clung to him so tightly. The cool night air ruffled the torn fabric of his shirt and gave him the appearance of a giant bird perched on a precipice.

“I’ll get you more clothes when I get a chance,” said Brandi. “Something warmer?”

The Swimmer tilted his head and regarded her curiously. Like his shirt, her hair was riding the wind. He raised one hand and reached out to touch it.

“Whoa!“ Brandi caught on to his intention and leaned forward to dodge him. She tucked her hair inside her sweatshirt and continued paddling. “Okay, that’s flattering I guess. I’m flattered. But you can’t just reach out and, and… and you can’t just show up at somebody’s house in the middle of the night, uninvited and unannounced.”

“
Your
house,” said the Swimmer, confidently.

“Yes, but so what? My house, somebody else’s house. You can’t just walk in and throw open doors and watch people sleep. I mean, I wasn’t sleeping. I was just lying there. But that’s obviously not the point. The point is that you have to be asked inside someone’s house before you barge in. Then it’s not barging. Then it’s socializing, which is completely normal and won’t result in screaming and panicking and angry parents who may or may not be armed. It’s that last part that should concern you the most, by the way. And if we’re talking about my father, there’s no ‘may or may not’ about it. He is. Always.
Armed
.”

She spoke very quickly, so the Swimmer had a hard time understanding most of what she said. She seemed insistent, however, so he nodded his head vigorously to show her that he was in agreement. She nodded her own head in answer, both of them satisfied that they’d reached some sort of understanding.

“You didn’t tell me yet, how you found my house.”

The Swimmer smiled, exposing brilliant white teeth. “I listened for you,” he said proudly. “Your voice.”

“My voice? What, like outside my window? It was open I guess. Was I humming or something?”

“Humming?” asked the Swimmer, confused.

Realizing that he didn’t understand the word, Brandi demonstrated. She hummed a few bars from Bolero, getting more embarrassed with each note. The Swimmer was staring at her, absolutely rapt, as if witnessing a great performance of surpassing musical beauty.

“Humming,” he said to himself, closing his eyes to listen more intently.

“I’m not very good at it. Don’t judge me.”

The Swimmer reached over the side of the kayak and dipped his fingers in the water. The cool fluid was restorative for him, and he leaned over farther to submerge his entire hand and forearm. Brandi watched him, concerned that he could fall in at any moment. She quickly realized how foolish a concern that was.

“We’re almost there. Sorry it’s taking so long,” she said.

“There?” he asked.

“The hunting cabin. More than a shanty, less than a cottage. Anyway, almost there.”

Without warning, the Swimmer leaned back and toppled over the edge of the kayak with a mighty splash. He disappeared beneath the surface with one strong kick. Brandi jammed her paddle straight down to produce drag and brought the slow-moving kayak to a stop. She spun the vessel around, scanning the water for any sign of the Swimmer, for air bubbles or ripples. She saw nothing.

“No! Come on! I didn’t come all the way out here just to be ditched!” She leaned over the side of the kayak, her face near the water, straining in the dim moonlight to see into the blackness. “Hello? Mermaid guy? Wait, no, I mean merman. Man! Don’t be offended! I’m not exactly used to this, to your, er, your kind.” She slapped her forehead. “Not your
kind
, like you’re some kind of alien species. Unless, are you? If you are, that’s fine! I’m not judging. I would never judge a person, or a mermaid—aggh! Merman. Man. I would never judge you on where you’re from, earth or wherever. Or the ocean. Obviously, you’re from the ocean. Your kind is from the ocean. Aggh! Hello? Are you even there? Can you even hear me? Merman?”

She felt the kayak pull away underneath her, suddenly moving very quickly through the water, the stern facing forward. Her body, lodged in the pilot seat, was facing backward. She twisted around and looked toward what was now the functional bow of the kayak and saw a pale hand gripping the wedge-shaped hull. She climbed out of her seat with difficulty and slid on her belly toward the pale hand, looking down into the water. The Swimmer was next to the kayak, just below the surface, holding on with that single hand. And he was swimming. With tremendous power that suggested no effort at all, he dragged the boat through the water like a tugboat. He didn’t surface, didn’t need to. He just swam.

“Oh… my… god,” Brandi whispered. She slid into the passenger seat, her jaw hanging and her eyes closed.

He dragged the kayak through the shallow water, over sandbars, past sunken trees, through heavy, tangled swamp grass. Trees rushed by on both sides of the waterway. Moonlight flashed like a strobe through dark branches, the pattern changing constantly as the kayak raced by. Frogs croaked, owls hooted, fish darted and beavers slapped their tails to get out of the way of this strange, silvery creature hauling its human cargo.

In no time at all, they reached the cabin. It was a one-story structure, constructed of wood her father had reclaimed from the marsh with a tractor and heavy chains. The remaining product of a long-dead logging operation that had thrived in this region when he was a boy. The water hollowed out some of the submerged timber, but other logs were preserved by the chemical balance of the water. Something about the sediment, her father had explained. She didn’t understand the explanation then, and couldn’t remember it now. She could not deny, however, that the wood was all the more beautiful for its age and unique pedigree.

She reached forward hesitantly and touched the pale hand gripping the boat frame. So much warmer to the touch than she had expected. She could feel the blood pumping through his veins. The Swimmer stopped kicking and popped up from below the water. “We’re here,” Brandi said, pointing to the shore and the cabin perched securely above the flood line.

The cabin was a simple design. The red cedar door opened inward on the main room, about the size of a two-stall garage. Brandi’s father had measured their own garage while working on the blueprints. On the back wall, a second door opened into a sleeping room, complete with one queen-size bed and a raised platform that two people could stretch out on in sleeping bags. Conrad had insisted on everyone sleeping off the ground, no matter what. It was a sign of civilization, he argued. However, he found himself in the unusual position of being teased by his wife and daughters for being too delicate to rough it. Only Cody was on his side, and even his opinion seemed more principled than genuine; the men in the family had to stick together. But to prove his mettle, Conrad inevitably ceded the bed to his girls and curled up on the hard platform instead.

The front room featured a beat-up couch that used to reside in the family’s basement, overstuffed, brown and lopsided. One of its three remaining legs wobbled severely and seemed certain to give out. The family had decided not to remove the legs. Instead, they treated the couch like a game of Russian roulette. Whoever was unlucky enough to be sitting on the couch when the leg finally gave out and it thundered to the floor would have to run outside, no matter the time or the season, and jump into the murky water fully-clothed. The prospect was so horrifying to Brandi’s mother that she insisted on bringing a lawn chair to the cabin and would not abandon it for the more comfortable couch under any circumstances. There was a hook above the couch where Conrad intended to hang a kerosene lamp, but during their first night in the cabin the burning of the kerosene was so noxious that the family voted, in the dark, to invest in a small generator and a pair of floor lamps. All three purchases remained in the cabin, years later, though one of the lamps long ago lost its shade to an enterprising raccoon that picked the window lock and burgled the cabin in search of edibles. They found the shade in shreds, surrounded by conspicuous paw prints and a few kernels of caramel popcorn the raccoon hadn’t been able to choke down. They left the lamp bare as a reminder of their nocturnal visitor, and Conrad built a heavy cabinet to lock up food in the future.

On the back of the cabin, Conrad constructed a makeshift showerhead connected by a rubber tube that curled through the rear window to a standard drinking water jug. It was meant for cleaning fish, and was much too low for an adult to stand under, but the family had learned methods for bathing. When they were young enough, the kids crouched and spun under the showerhead in their bathing suits, brought to the cabin for this purpose alone. The adults took advantage of the temporary privacy inside the cabin to wet washcloths and scrub down, standing on an extra shower curtain liberated, like the couch, from the family house. The kids were forbidden from reentering the cabin until Brandi’s mother had rapped on the window to alert them the adults were once again decent.

These memories, and many more, raced through Brandi’s mind as she pushed open the unlocked cabin door. The room was very dark, but there was a flashlight just inside the door. She turned it on and used the beam to find the generator, tucked in the back corner of the room, which she flipped on. As it rumbled to life, she turned on the floor lamp that still had its fabric shade, illuminating the room and her guest, the Swimmer, where he stood at the door.

“Your house?” he asked.

“Hunting cabin. Like a second house, but way more luxurious. No television, no fridge and no bathroom. If you have to go, you can take the flashlight and walk out by the trees. Just make sure you bury—“ Her face went flush, remembering who – and what – she was talking to. “I guess you can do whatever you normally do.”

She slipped off her hoodie and tossed it over the back of the couch, which she plopped down on. She beckoned for the Swimmer to sit beside her, but he hesitated. With his long, thin fingers he pulled at the wet clothing that still clung to him.

“Oh, that’s okay. This couch has been abused by way worse than a little water. My brother Cody once got some kind of crazy jungle flu and lost about twenty pounds of intestine on this couch. On this cushion I’m sitting on, matter of fact.” With a grimace, she slid over to the center cushion. Then she realized she was leaving no space between her cushion and whichever one the Swimmer chose. With an embarrassed smile, she slid back to the puke cushion and leaned back, faux casual. “Really, you have to sit down. You’re making me feel like a terrible hostess.”

“Hostess?”

“You’re my guest. Socializing. So have a seat, seriously.” She wagged her thumb at the opposite end of the couch, and the Swimmer finally stepped forward and lowered his body onto the cushions. The softness of the couch seemed to surprise him. He shifted his weight repeatedly, as if testing its ability to hold his weight. He patted the brown fabric as well, running his textured palm over the center cushion, his gray eyes wide and curious.

Suddenly, the bizarreness of the situation caught up with Brandi. She was sitting in her family cabin, on her family couch, next to a merman. It would be laughable if it wasn’t so unsettling. There he sat, in her father’s clothes, his gray eyes wide and curious. His pale hands probing every surface, exploring textures. His bare toes curled involuntarily, as if trying to grip the wooden floor. And there, below his jaw. That pink line. It rose and fell in the steady rhythm of breathing, but she could see his nostrils subtly flaring as well. She could see his chest rising and falling. Perhaps he normally breathed through his neck, when in the water, but out of the water the movement at his jaw was unnecessary. Merely a habit. He had no more control over it than a fish out of water. That’s all he was, she reminded herself. A creature. An animal.

And like any wild animal, he –
it
– could be dangerous.

The thought came to her like a cold wind, sending shivers up her spine. She leapt away from the couch as she would a hot stove that had just burned her. A fraction of a second later, the Swimmer, sensing her alarm, leapt away from the couch as well. His eyes had narrowed in icy focus and he scanned the room for whatever threat had startled Brandi. He suspected the couch, and glared at it warily.

“No, no,” she said. “You sit. You…
socialize
. By yourself. There, on the couch.”

Reluctantly, the Swimmer followed Brandi’s gestures and retook his seat on the soft cushions. But now he was uncomfortable, sitting at the edge of the couch with arms held aloft and legs tense, ready to spring away again at any moment.

Brandi paced the room, shaking her head without realizing, much as her mother would. “What am I doing? This is crazy. I told you my father has guns. Not one gun, singular.
Guns
, plural. Including hunting rifles. That he uses to kill… things that aren’t human. So what’s he going to think about you? And why would I bring you here, the place he goes to shoot things that aren’t human? That’s like inviting Bambi to the hunting lodge. Poor, unsuspecting Bambi. I mean Bambi’s mother. Whoever it was who got shot at the beginning of the movie. By hunters. Like my father. And not even to protect a loved one, which would be the main reason for my father to point a gun at you. I mean, walking into his house in the middle of the night, walking straight into his daughter’s room? How do you expect him to react? Ha!”