Twenty-One Mile Swim (9 page)

Mary nodded. “Yeah. That’s okay.”

“See you all later,” he said.

He thought he sounded a little bitter. But maybe they hadn’t noticed it. He couldn’t explain what had come over him. He just
didn’t care about going swimming today. That was it. Period.

He ran all the way to the ball park some two miles away and sat through nine innings of a game that had both exciting and
dull moments. It was between the Lions Blue Sox and the Moose Barons. The Lions won, five to one. By
the time he got back home he was ready for dinner, just as if he had burned up a lot of energy and it needed replenishment.

He didn’t go swimming the next day either, or the next. And each day he didn’t go made the thought of swimming less and less
desirable. He had never dreamed that he would see the day when swimming would get to him, but that’s what had happened.

He cut down on his exercises, too. But not much. He enjoyed fooling with the barbells. He could exercise with them anytime,
day or night, and they kept him in shape.

But swim the twenty-one-mile long Oshawna Lake? He had second thoughts about it now. Now, the year he had planned to swim
it, he was having second thoughts!

It was the continuous grind that had gotten to him. The grueling daily exercises. The almost daily swims, even if they were
only during the summer.

The rewards? What rewards?

Maybe the feat would créât a lot of excitement for a while. But once that excitement died down, who would remember the swim
except him and his family? Eventually his family, too, would forget it. Only he would remember it.

Heck, he had a right to change his mind, didn’t he? It was his mind. He was older now. He knew better.

Twenty-one miles.
Crazy
.

Aunt Liza was outwardly pleased when one day in early September Yolanda told her that Joey had second thoughts now about swimming
Oshawna Lake.

“Second thoughts?” she echoed. “You mean he has changed his mind?”

“I think so, Aunt Liza.”

“Is that right, Joey? You are not going to swim the lake?”

He was watching an old John Wayne movie on television. He didn’t want to go into a lot of explanation about what had gone
on in his mind, because he was a little confused about what he really intended to do in the future, anyway. But he had to
be honest with her, so he said, “I don’t know for sure, Aunt Liza. But it isn’t because I’m afraid to try it. It isn’t that.”

“No matter what it is, Joey, I’m just glad you are not going to swim it. Twenty-one-miles!
Isten
! Only a crazy person would want to swim a lake that long!”

“That’s what I’ve begun to think, too, Aunt Liza,” he confessed.

“If you’re not afraid to try it,” Yolanda cut in, “what is your reason for quitting?”

He didn’t like the word
quitting
. He didn’t like the sound of it. It was like calling him a coward, and he was no coward.

“I got tired of it,” he said irritably. “I got to thinking that I’ve wasted two full summers doing nothing else but exercising
and swimming. I’m not getting ready for the Olympics, you know.”

“I thought that swimming the length of Oshawna Lake was almost like that for you,” said Yolanda, her voice noticeably quieter.

“Maybe it was, at first. But no more. It’s nothing. It’s just a big, long lake sitting there. It’s been there for thousands
of years, and it’ll be there for thousands more. Not me. I’ll be here for a short while, then pssssst! I’ll be gone. So who’d
give a good darn if I swam it, or if anybody else swam it?”

“But you had a reason to swim it,” she said firmly.

“Not anymore.”

“You wanted to prove to people —”

“Not anymore.”

“And to yourself —”

“Cool it, Yo,” he snapped. “I don’t want
to prove anything anymore to anybody.”

“You’ve chickened out.”

“Yo!” he cried, staring at her.

“Okay,” she said, raising her hands, palms outward. “Okay. I won’t say another word.”

HARDLY ANYTHING more was said by any body in the family — including Aunt Liza — during the late fall and winter about Joey’s
change in attitude concerning his swimming the length of Oshawna Lake. There were plenty of things going on at school that
kept him occupied — football, wrestling matches, basketball — sports he didn’t participate in but attended competitions. But
he roller skated when there were roller-skating parties, joined the chess club, and became an avid reader of war stories.

He kept exercising because it gave him one thing he was especially proud of: a well-developed, healthy body. He’d like to
keep it that way
if he could without working his tail off as he had done during the previous two years.

The new school had been finished late in the summer, in time for the students to start in the fall. It was a big, sprawling,
red-brick structure that covered acres of land. It had a new football field and around it a track where meets with the various
schools in the district were to be held. There were also a new baseball diamond and a tennis court. All it seemed to lack
in the way of sports facilities was a swimming pool.

Joey’s father was still working at the same old place and still griping about his foreman. He hadn’t looked for another job
during the winter. Most of the time the weather was too lousy to drive to work in, let alone drive around seeking a new job.
He hadn’t given up, though. He had promised his wife that much. He’d be damned if he’d spend the rest of his life working
for that fat-bellied so-and-so. The word he used in Hungarian was funnier, Joey thought, than the English equivalent he used
sometimes.

Joey went out for track and was encouraged by the track coach, Bill Harris, to concentrate on sprints. When the first competition
came around in April, he entered the one-hundred and two-twenty yarders and came out third in both.

Meanwhile he kept running three miles each
day, except Saturday and Sunday, and one day Coach Harris pulled him aside and said he’d like Joey to run the mile and the
two miles at their next meet.

Joey agreed. On the day of the meet, he entered the mile and two-mile events and came out first in both.

His picture was in the
Gatewood Courier
the following day, with an article about him accompanying it.

Little Joey Vass, participating for the first time on Gatewood High’s track team, has proven to many experts that size and
stature are no detriments when it comes to running track meets.

This is his first year on Coach Bill Harris’s team, and although he came in third in the one-hundred and two-twenty yard meets,
his performance in the mile and two-mile events deserves praise. He won both events, the first time that a single runner from
Gate-wood has ever done so in its track history.

It seems that Little Joey Vass has found his niche.

There it was, thought Joey. ‘Little Joey Vass.’ The allusion to his size again. Would it ever
end? Perhaps not. It had never ended for his father; it might never end for him, either.

Paula called him on the telephone that same evening that his picture and the article appeared in the paper.

“Hey, man, you’re a celebrity!” she said. “Beautiful!”

“Thanks, Paula.”

“I didn’t know you liked track.”

“Well, I had never thought about it. Not until this year, anyway.”

“I hope it’s not going to stop you from swimming altogether.”

“It won’t.”

She knew. She had known about it since last fall. Yolanda had told her after Paula had wondered why she hadn’t seen Joey in
the water much anymore, even on some of those hot days in the fall.

“Okay. See you at school, Joey,” she said.

“Thanks for calling.”

On Sunday afternoon, he got a phone call that hardly went on for three seconds before he recognized the speaker’s voice. It
belonged to Ross Cato.

“Hi, Peewee. How you doing?”

“Okay. What are you doing here? Aren’t you in college?”

“Yes. But my father had a stroke, so I came home for a few days.”

“Sorry to hear that,” said Joey.

“Thanks. But he’ll be okay. Hey, great publicity you raked up, man. Nice going. But you sure surprised me.”

“Why?”

“I didn’t know you were in track.”

“This is my first year,” explained Joey.

“So I read. And doing darn well in it, too. Hey, this is
the
year, isn’t it?”

Joey frowned at the wall picture he was looking at. “
The
year?”

“Yes. The year of the long swim.”

He didn’t know, Joey thought. No one, not even Paula, had told him that he had changed his mind about swimming the lake.

“Oh,” said Joey. He made a sound like a laugh.

“You haven’t chickened out, have you?”

“Me?” That stupid sound came out of his mouth again. “Well —”

“Well what?”

“Just well, that’s all.”

Ross laughed.

“You mean you’re thinking of forgetting the
whole thing? Hey, man, you’re not worried that a small guy might not be able to make it, are you? I heard you were a regular
pint-sized dynamo.”

Joey’s hand tightened on the receiver. He hadn’t thought about the swim for weeks. He didn’t believe Ross was still teasing
him because he was short.

“Size has nothing to do with it,” he said, his throat tightening.

“Don’t tell me you really have chickened out,” said Ross. “Why don’t you admit it? You know what? I suspected all along that
you would.”

Joey squirmed. He felt sweat come to the palm of his hand, sticking it to the receiver.

“I’ve got to go, Ross,” he said, feeling himself losing control.

“Hey, Joey, wait a minute.”

Sweat beaded his upper lip, tickled it, and he wiped it off.

“Yeah?”

“Look, I’m sorry. Don’t get mad. I didn’t mean to insult you. Really, I think what you’ve already done took a lot of guts.”

Joey frowned. “What do you mean?”

“Paula told me about those practice swims you made last summer. Five miles, seven, even
up to fifteen miles, just doing that should be a feather in your cap.”

Is he pulling my leg, or is he serious? Joey wondered.

“Thanks, Ross,” he said.

“Take care.”

“You too.”

He heard the phone hang up on the other end, and hung up, too.

You’ve chickened out
, Ross’s words echoed in his mind.
Why don’t you admit it
?

Joey closed his fists and cursed Ross up and down for talking to him like that.

The hell with you, Ross! he said bitterly to himself. The hell with you!

THAT VERY NEXT EVENING he began to get serious about training again, multiplying the time he had spent on the back press,
the half-knee bends, the sit-ups, the leg stretching exercises, because he had cut down on them all. It was May, and the water
was still too cold to go in swimming, so he jogged on the road, running two miles one way, two miles back. The next day he
would increase the distance to three miles one way, three miles back.

He worked on the bench in his room, lying on it and taking long, freestyle strokes as he would do were he swimming in the
water.

His family became aware that he was back into full training again, and let him go without
trying to discourage him. They hadn’t tried to before; they weren’t going to now.

As a matter of fact, his sisters and brother seemed more enthusiastic about his ambition now than they were before. Gabor
would come into his room and watch him exercise, something that previously seemed to have no appeal to him whatever. Now the
kid, ten years old on his last birthday, had become so interested he began to do the same exercises Joey did, though for fewer
repetitions.

“I thought sure you had given up the idea of swimming the lake for good,” Yolanda said to him one day. “You seemed very depressed.”

“I guess I was,” he admitted.

“What made you change your mind?”

He thought for a moment.

“That handsome Adonis, Ross Cato,” he confessed.

“Him? How could he —?” She was staring at him, wide-eyed.

Joey grinned. “It’s hard to believe, isn’t it? But I owe my change of mind to him, my nemesis.”

“Nemesis?” She looked at him puzzledly.

“Oh, never mind,” he said.

She smiled. “I think I know. Paula. Right?”

He shrugged.

“She have something to do with your change of mind, too?”

“No. It’s just what he had said to me over the phone one day. He said he knew I would chicken out.”

“Strong words. So that’s why you’ve changed your mind. He challenged you.”

He nodded. “Yes. But not only him, either. I’ve reconsidered my values. I’m going to do it for the same reason I had planned
on doing it in the first place.”

“You’re going to prove you can perform a feat that a lot of guys in this world can’t.”

“Not only guys,” he corrected. “Girls, too. After all, a woman swam across the English Channel. Maybe someday a woman will
swim the twenty-one miles of Oshawna Lake.”

“Maybe it’ll be me,” she said, and smiled. “In a pig’s eye! I wouldn’t even swim
across
the lake.”

“Why not?”

“I have no desire to. It’s not my worldly ambition.”

“What is, Yo?” he asked her. “What is your worldly ambition? ‘ ‘

They never had talked about ambitions before. Hers or his.

She lifted her shoulders, swung around so that
her dress spiraled around her legs, “Teach music. Getting married. Having a couple of kids. Preferably one of each.”

“Nothing wrong with that,” he said, and suddenly imagined two tiny tots running around, shouting at him, “Hey, Uncle Joey!
Look!”

“Yeah, that’ll be fun,” he said, smiling.

That Friday evening Joey’s father said that he was planning on going fishing the next morning if the weather was fair.

“Want to go with me, Joey?” he asked.

“I will, Dad!” Gabor piped up fervently.

“I asked Joey,” said his father.

“Sure, Dad,” replied Joey. “I’ll go. I haven’t been fishing for a long time, anyway.”