The Year of the Storm (4 page)

Now I watched again as Ronnie slammed Seth into the soft sand. Just like all the rocks I'd thrown, Seth began to sink.

By now, Jake was on his feet, wiping the blood from his nose. “Your ass is next,” he said to me, and walked over to the quicksand. Ronnie glanced at him because he wanted Jake to tell him what to do. Seth was sinking fast, and all his flailing didn't seem to be helping much.

Jake knelt and reached one hand back, motioning for Ronnie to hold on to him. Ronnie took his arm, and Jake leaned out over the quicksand. He shoved Seth's chest hard, pushing him all the way under. Ronnie pulled Jake back and helped him regain his feet.

I watched all this through blurred vision. I knew what I was seeing wasn't right—that you couldn't make somebody sink so easy, that quicksand didn't work like that—but the knock on my head had been a doozy. I guess later, I chalked it up to that. Either way, at that moment, only one thing was clear:

Seth was gone.

Ronnie shifted, and I could tell he was nervous. He kept looking at Jake.

Jake shook his head. “Not yet.”

“Jake,” I said. “He's going to die.”

“Shut up, Walter. Shut up or you'll be next.”

“Ronnie,” I tried. “Come on.” Ronnie turned and looked at me. He was torn between doing the right thing and his loyalty to Jake.

The sand gurgled and Seth's right arm flailed up, waving wildly. I tried to reach for it, but Jake held me back. It didn't matter, though. The only hope I had of helping him would be if I were willing to fall in myself. Jake must have understood this because he let me go.

I turned back to Ronnie. “If you don't let him up now, he's going to die,” I said. “You don't want that. None of us do.”

He just looked at me. Jesus Christ.

“Take my hand,” I said. If I could get one of them to cooperate, I'd be able to lean over and grab Seth. Then together, we could pull him out.

Jake shot Ronnie a look. Ronnie dropped his head.

The sand gurgled again and his arm was gone. How long had he been down there? At least two minutes, probably more. How long could a person go without breathing?

An idea hit me. It was my only chance.

I picked up a rock. It was the perfect size. Fit my hand like a baseball. Jake saw what I was planning and lunged at me. I knocked him upside the head with the rock, hit him right in the temple. The blood came fast and covered his face like a veil. His knees wobbled, and I smelled the stench of urine as he pissed himself.

Ronnie winced and slid away from me. I dropped the rock to show him I meant no harm. “You need to hold me, Ronnie. Don't let me go in.”

He looked from me back to Jake and back to me again.

“He's going to die,” I said. My voice cracked. I was about to cry, something I usually would have tried to hide, but not this time. This was too real, too in my face to pretend I didn't care.

I think Ronnie must have seen this and decided it was time to act, maybe past time. He nodded. “Okay.”

I laid out on the ground, my elbows sinking into the sand. “Take my feet,” I said, and instantly felt Ronnie's big hands around my ankles. The pull of the sand was strong, and for a minute I thought I'd plunge in headfirst, and no matter how strong Ronnie was, he wouldn't be able to pull me out. But the moment passed, and I realized if I was still, the sinking wasn't as fast.

“I need to go farther out,” I said. “Do you have any good ground left?”

Ronnie moved me closer. I dug in with all my strength. I was moving my arms through the sand. It felt like moving them through wet cement. I finally touched something, a pant leg. I grabbed it just as my own chin hit the sand. I tasted the salty muck and tried to yell. I'm not sure I made much sense with the sand in my mouth, but Ronnie got the message. He pulled me back just as I got a decent grip on Seth's leg.

A few minutes later, the three of us lay on solid ground, panting. Well, not Seth. Seth was coughing up a storm. Each breath he tried to take seemed riddled with sand and grit. His lungs rattled like they were full of broken glass, but he was alive, by God.

I stumbled to my feet and stood there looking at what was left of my life. Seth—breathing, but barely. Jake—he might be dead—there was so much blood and it kept on coming. Ronnie—shaking hard, like somebody with a fever, doubled over, plumb exhausted from pulling both of us out.

At the time, I had no idea that what I'd done had set into motion the events that would shape the rest of my life.

—

T
hat night after I ate my supper and kissed Mama on the cheek while she listened to her radio programs, I went to the hall bathroom and locked the door. I heard my daddy outside the window with one of his buddies, popping the tops off their jugs of moonshine and muttering curses about the heat. Nobody had to tell me how that was going to end.

Thanks to a botched land deal several years ago, we were one of the few houses in this region that had running water. The lines had already been run, and we'd been ready to move—to escape what Daddy called the “city folk”—when the deal fell through, and we were left with the best of both worlds: indoor plumbing and very few neighbors. Thanks to this, I didn't have to go out to the pond to try my little experiment. That's all it was—an experiment. That's what I told myself.

But like most of the things we tell ourselves, it was a damned lie.

I stopped the sink up and let the water run until it was almost to the top. I thought about how Seth had been in the quicksand for all that time, and when he came out, he wasn't drowned or anything. Not even passed out. He was alive, maybe coughing like crazy, but he was alive.

I closed my eyes and lowered my head. The water came up around my ears and the world took on that echoing, faraway feel. My pulse throbbed in my temples, and I kept imagining hands on my back, pushing me down. I began to count.

I made it to seventy before I knew my lungs were going to explode. My pulse hammered. Ten more seconds. Twenty. Thirty. I stopped counting and opened my eyes. The white of the porcelain sink was bright. I wanted to breathe so bad, but I kept my head under anyway. I'd read somewhere that you passed out before you died when you were holding your breath.

The world shook. It was like the water was moving in the sink and not just the water; the sink moved too. I was fading, slipping away, or maybe it was the world that was slipping. The last thing I saw before sucking in a lungful of water was the sky over tall trees at dusk. Then my lungs filled up, and I began to choke. I pulled out of the sink and fell back against the window. Outside, I heard my father. “What the—?”

Coughing didn't seem to help. I couldn't remember what I had been trying to prove. I just knew I wanted to live.

Daddy lifted me off the floor, hugging me from behind. His big hands balled themselves under my rib cage, and he squeezed hard, sending the water out of my lungs and all over the bathroom mirror. He dropped me.

“Next time,” he said, “try a gun.”

After he left, I stayed on the floor. There was a part of me that wanted to go get his gun—I knew right where it was—and hold it under his chin and make him squirm before I pulled the trigger. But there was another part of me that was too glad to be alive to do anything as stupid as that.

I
t was October when I heard about it. I was sitting in English class. Mrs. Harris had forgotten to pull the shades down, and outside it was one of those special fall days Alabama has: bright blue sky and red leaves, every tree blazing like a fire. I was watching a baby rabbit hop across the grass when I heard a girl speak.

“She's been gone since Saturday night. My uncle said she was just going out to check on the puppies in their barn. That was just about dark, Saturday night.”

I turned around and saw Meredith Garrigan across the aisle from me. She was talking to Tina Bray, a girl I'd liked since the sixth grade.

“How old is she?” Tina asked.

Meredith shook her head. “Ten.”

Tina made a face, wrinkling her nose like she was disgusted.

“I know. It's terrible.”

Seth sat in the desk right in front of me. He had his head down, his usual position. Since the stuff that happened with Jake and Ronnie back in the summer, Seth and me had become casual friends, and I got used to seeing him like this in class. School was so easy for him, he barely paid attention. Once the teachers realized how smart he was, they pretty much left him alone.

Seth seemed like he wasn't listening until Meredith said, “It's terrible.” Then he sat up.

“What's terrible?” he asked.

She looked a little put off. “We were talking about my cousin.”

“What about your cousin?”

Just then, Mrs. Harris looked up from the essays she'd been grading. Her gaze fell on our group. I'm sure we must have looked like we were having quite the conversation, leaned over across the aisle like we were.

“Something you'd like to share with the class, Miss Bray?” Mrs. Harris always went for Tina first. I believed it was because Tina represented a lot of things in a girl that Mrs. Harris didn't like. Things like brains. Not get-the-right-answer kind of brains, but the think-for-yourself kind. To make things worse, Tina was something of a looker. First girl I can ever remember fantasizing about that wasn't in the pages of that '59
Playboy
.

“Yes, ma'am,” Tina shot back.

Mrs. Harris smiled and got up from her desk. She walked to the front of the room and addressed the rest of the class, the ones who had at least been pretending to quietly work on the sentences they were supposed to be diagramming. “Please listen, class. Miss Bray has something that she deems more important than learning the correct functions of our language.” She turned to Tina. “You have the floor, Miss Bray.”

Tina stood up. “Thanks. Well, a lot of things are more important than diagramming stupid sentences, but this one is especially important. Meredith was just trying to spread the word that her ten-year-old cousin is missing. Has been missing since Saturday night, as a matter of fact. Considering today is Tuesday, this is a heck of a lot more important than your brainless sentences.”

A lot of things might have happened after that. I'm sure they probably did. I heard later that Mrs. Harris almost had a come-apart. She gritted her teeth and broke her ink pen. She gave Tina a look so evil that a month later when Tina herself went missing, people actually muttered about Mrs. Harris being a suspect. Truth was, I didn't notice anything at that moment except Seth. Seth broke. Right in front of us all, though I'm sure nobody else was watching, being too preoccupied with Tina and Mrs. Harris.

He started by shaking his head, slowly, side to side. It was like he refused to believe what he'd heard. His mouth dropped open and just hung there, slack. He groaned and closed his eyes. He was gone, his eyes vacant, as he dropped his head to his desk. He didn't move until the bell rang.

After school, I followed Seth to the park downtown. I realized this was the second time I'd followed him. I hoped this one turned out better than the first.

—

T
he park was already getting dark. Phillips Park. It's still there, just nobody goes anymore and the swings are all rusty. Truth is, they were rusty back then too, and on this particular day it was pretty much empty. It was the perfect place for Seth to go.

I found him huddled under a dogwood tree, arms wrapped over his knees. Damned if he wasn't shaking.

I sat down beside him and didn't say a word. He knew I was there but didn't look at me.

I waited for him to stop crying and said, “This is the second time I've chased you down.”

He didn't even look at me.

“You know, you never even said thank you.”

He shook his head. “You shouldn't have bothered, but thanks.”

I shrugged. “You're welcome. Jake and Ronnie don't like new kids. That's all.”

Seth let out a sad kind of laugh. “Is that all? Jesus, they tried to murder me.”

There was an awkward pause. I didn't know what to say.

“You should have died that day,” I said finally. “How'd you stay under so long? You were sunk for a good four minutes.”

He brushed his long bangs out of his face. “Is that what you followed me down here for?”

“Not really, but I do wonder. I mean, that night, after it all happened, I filled the sink up with water and, you know, tried it. I barely lasted two minutes.”

“That's a good way to die.”

I didn't respond, and I think he realized he'd hit pretty close to home.

“You were probably thinking on the bad stuff. The way your lungs ached. How bad it hurt. That sort of thing.”

I shrugged. “Nothing else to think about. You don't have much choice.”

“I've got this thing,” he said. “It's something I've learned. You go somewhere else. You know, inside. Once you do that, there's nothing you can't endure.” He smiled weakly, and I wasn't sure if he believed his own words.

“I'm not following.”

He plucked some grass and tossed it out in front of him. “You train yourself after a while to think about positive things. Here, let me show you.” He reached out and grabbed the fat of my arm between his thumb and forefinger, pinching so hard I jerked away.

“Ow! What was that for?”

“To show you. All you thought about was the pain. You let it overwhelm everything else. Now, think about something that makes you really happy.”

“Huh?”

“Just do it. It doesn't matter what it is, just make sure it's something good. And picture it. I mean really see it in your mind.”

I thought of Tina Bray. I imagined me and her walking together in the park, her hand in mine. I saw her leaning her head on my shoulder, whispering in my ear.

“Got it?”

“Yeah, I got it.”

He pinched me again.

“Holy shit, that hurts!” I said.

“But not as bad as before, right?”

I shook my head. I didn't feel a difference.

Seth shrugged. “It takes practice. The point is, the world is a different place when you come at it from in here.” He tapped his forehead. “Everything sort of opens up. You look hard enough, you can find a way to escape anything. Even pain.”

I rubbed my arm. “So that day, you thought about something besides drowning, something besides all the sand and grit in your mouth and lungs, and that helped you stay under longer?”

“I guess, if that's the way you want to look at it. I wasn't really there, so I don't remember.”

I took this in. Truth be told, I thought he was full of shit, but there might be something to it. He had managed to stay under much longer than I ever could.

“So where did you go that day, when Ronnie held you under?”

“Same place I always go. The swamp. But it was only a brief visit. I call it a glimpse. It's like a catnap instead of a long night's sleep.”

I had no idea what he was going on about. I decided I liked Seth fine, but he was weird. I couldn't shake the sense that he believed every word he was saying.

“The swamp? A swamp doesn't sound very nice.”

He shrugged. “Well, it is. It's beautiful.” Maybe he saw the doubt in my face, because he added, “You wouldn't understand.”

“What's that mean?”

“Nothing. I just doubt you would understand.”

I stood up. “You act like your life is so hard. How bad can it be?”

He closed his eyes. I don't know, maybe he was thinking of the swamp, maybe he was just trying to decide how to answer my question. Finally, he said, “It can be bad, Walter. Really, really bad.”

I believed him. Any fool could see his life was hard. I'd seen some of it firsthand. The rest was in his eyes, the way he carried himself, but I was still put off by him because I hurt too. It wasn't like he had cornered the market on pain.

“What's so bad? What about today?” I asked. “You know something about this missing girl?”

“No.” The instant he said it, I knew he was lying. It was the way he ducked his head when he answered, the way he looked away and then back at me after the lie. I'd seen my daddy lie to my mama so many times, I felt like a polygraph test.

“So what's eating you?”

He shook his head. “My mother disappeared years ago. It just reminded me of her. That's all.”

I could tell there was more, but I didn't want to push him. Hell, he was pretty much the only friend I had now. Jake wanted to kill me for what I'd done to him, and Ronnie would always be with Jake as long as he never learned to have a will of his own. He was the kind of person Jake lived for. I had other friends at school, but those kids were more like acquaintances because even back then, these woods were isolated. School was the only time I saw anybody besides Seth, Ronnie, and Jake. So I didn't push Seth. I figured time would eventually tell all. We sat there, talking about other stuff—movies and books, mostly—until the sun was gone and the park was completely dark.

The last thing I remember before starting home that evening was getting that feeling again. I knew Seth from somewhere. He carried it in his face, his hair, the slope of his shoulders, the same traits of someone I knew but had somehow lost.