The Cartoonist

by Sean Costello

  And that was when he slipped. His right foot skidded off the algae-scummed rock he was standing on, and the rock rolled back along the steep incline of the lakebed. It came to rest against the boulders behind it, pinning Scott’s lower leg.

  Galvanized by a lightning bolt of panic, Scott gaped down at his leg. A precious portion of air escaped in an unheard shout and rose boiling to the surface.

  He gave his leg a solid tug. Pain torched up through his ankle, but his leg did not move. He tried rolling the big rock away, first with his free foot, then with his hands, but the push was uphill and the rock was too heavy.

  Scott froze in disbelief. Weeds wound his chest, his arms, his legs. The cold undercurrent grew even colder. He tugged again, still holding on to some kind of control, still unable to accept the gravity of his predicament. He tried planting his opposite foot, twisting and pulling, but it was no use. His leg wouldn’t budge.

  Horror dawned like a sunless morning.

  Jesus, I’m really stuck.

  His hand released the camera and it bobbed end-over-end to the surface. Around him, tendrils of weed swayed like doomdancers in the undercurrent...touching, brushing, coiling.

  Scott’s eyes widened behind his diving mask. Sonofabitch, his mind shrieked in pointless anger. I’m stuck. God. Why didn’t I have someone standing by?

  Airhunger tapped like an impatient finger at his throat. He went down on one knee, searching for leverage, wrapping his leg in his hands and heaving until his muscles cramped with the effort.

  But he could not free his leg. It was rooted.

  The rocks had him firm. He wrenched his leg again, until the sustained effort burned like brand-iron in his tendons. And this time, at the expense of twin strips of skin, he gained five or six inches, freeing his leg to mid-calf.

  Relief swept over him—he would be out and away in one more tug...

  But his next pull gained him nothing. Again the rock shifted, seating itself more firmly against the low wall of boulders.

  The need for air was fast becoming a physical thing, an irresistible force, and Scott knew that soon he would unstopper his throat and draw in lakewater; he would be powerless to prevent it.

  Darkness pressed in, fogging the rims of his vision. In the midst of that darkness, a terrible image crystallized—the gnawed-off limb of an animal twitching in a trap—and Scott lurched again, as much to escape that image as to liberate himself from the lake bed. He leaned back against the boulders, wedging his heel against the rock and pushing...but the rock was too slippery and his foot skidded off, goring the pulp of his heel. He tried again, and again his foot slipped away.

  He hung there motionless, transfixed, terrified into momentary inaction. More air squeezed out and bubbled wasted to the surface.

  This can’t be happening, his mind screamed in the green-black silence. How can I be stuck in the lake no this is insane no NO come on pull pull!! PULL!!

  An inner dam lifted then and rage flooded in. Scott began a wild dancing struggle—flailing, pin-wheeling, digging his free foot into the grasping lakebed, creating blinding mud-swirls around him. In answer to his struggle, asphyxia spawned furiously in his chest. Every muscle demanded that he open his mouth, his lungs, suck in air. He looked up dizzily to the surface, to the light, the air...so damned close! And he fought, spending himself and his precious reserve of oxygen.

  But it was pointless. He was stuck. And the rotations of his body as he thrashed frantically about were entangling him in weeds like a fish in a net.

  Another gulp of air escaped the tightening vise of his chest.

  Why doesn’t somebody come? Bob! Krista! Please! PLEASE!!

  Scott Bowman thought about dying. He was twelve feet below his own dock and he was going to drown.

  There was a greenstick snap! inside his head then, and his mind went white with something pure and primitive, beyond the simple images of fear. The need for air would no longer be denied. It was everything now, the center of a shrinking universe, and Scott’s body obeyed its bellowed command. Helpless, he opened his mouth and inhaled. Water found passageways it had never been meant to find.

  Scott’s eyes bulged as suffocation roared like a brush fire through his brain. His chest clamped down furiously in an effort to expel the water from his lungs. Distantly he heard the mechanical clatter of Anderson’s outboard—or maybe it was the rattling bones of the Reaper, he no longer cared, was no longer capable of rational thought. Wholly desperate animal now, he lunged with a fierceness that flayed tendons from their bony tethers.

  But his leg would not move.

  His brain started to swell. Myriad bright-colored images capered crazily in. Water replaced air.

  He was drowning.

  Through darkening mists Scott saw the anchor, cutting the water like some macabre sea creature, all silver scales and spear-headed fins. Beyond understanding, edging on some oddly seductive and deadly euphoria, he watched its approach with idiot awe.

  Then he saw the yellow nylon rope.

  Bob Anderson’s boat was passing directly overhead. And it was dragging its anchor.

  Spurred by that most compelling of instincts, Scott fixed an eye on the rope and lunged. And when he had it, when it grew taut in his grip, he planted his free foot against the pinning rock and pushed, one last time.

  Topside, Anderson gunned the outboard.

  And Scott’s leg came free.

  6

  RELEASING THE ROPE, SCOTT THRASHED blindly upward, seeking the light and the healing air. He surfaced beneath the dock, rapping his skull on a barrel, and thrust his face into the meager foot of air space. His fingers poked up between the cedar slats and dug in like gaffing hooks. Hacking and sputtering, he opened his mouth and sucked greedily at the air...the exquisite air, the living air. The sound of his daughter’s voice—high, hectic, shrieking his name in a pitch of terror—filled him with a strange kind of exultation. Hearing it meant he was alive. He hadn’t expected to be.

  Now Kath was on her knees, squinting down between the dock slats, grasping Scott’s fingers. Then Krista was there, her voice escalating hysterically, echoing her daughter’s terror.

  “Scott, Jesus Almighty, are you all right? Oh, sonofabitch, you scared me. Can you get out of there? Oh, God...oh, God.”

  Then Bob Anderson and Fred Mills were above him, and Scott could see them all, peering down at him through the cracks with fish eye-lens faces. Lunatic laughter bubbled up in his throat and he coughed it out. He spluttered out mouthfuls of lake water, stared up with burning eyes between the dock slats...and breathed.

  The panicky gallop of female voices was interrupted by Anderson’s booming command: “That’s enough. He’s okay. We got to get him out from under there, that’s all.”

  “Oh, Scott...I thought you were...I...”

  “Fred, take the missus up to the house—”

  “No,” Krista said, clutching Anderson’s jacket sleeve. “I’m okay. I want to help.”

  Bob went down on one knee and gazed at Scott with his calm brown eyes. “Can you get your ass out from under there, Scotty?”

  Scott hacked violently as he tried to answer, the sound like an animal’s bray. “I don’t...can’t move...”

  He was shivering helplessly, his muscles already seizing from the immense strain they had suffered. Agonizing cramps racked his arms, his legs, his belly. So tight was his grip on the dock, he felt as if the individual pads of his fingers had been nailed there. He didn’t think he could let go.

  And, of course, there was the fear. The fear was still there, the terror, fresh as a bleeding wound. Getting out from under the dock meant that he would first have to submerge into that dark envelope of water again. And right now, he simply could not do that.

  “No...” he sputtered, still gasping for air. “Stay here awhile...”

  Dressed in her Danskin leotards, Krista dove into the lake. She came up under the dock and swam in next to her husband. She placed a hand on his forearm; the muscles
were iron-stiff.

  “Come on, honey,” she said. “Let’s get you out from under here.” There was a series of four partially submerged joists that had to be passed to reach the dock’s outer edge. “We’ll go one section at a time.”

  Krista clasped his wrist and tugged, gently but firmly. She could see the fear in his eyes, a dull, winking shine, like headlights in a shrieking blizzard.

  Reluctantly, Scott let go.

  “Deep breath, babe, then let’s do it, okay?”

  Gasping in air, Scott slowly nodded. Then, with Krista at his side, he submerged.

  In a flash they were up on the opposite side of the joist, Scott lunging out so violently he struck his head again, this time on the edge of a metal joiner.

  “Careful, sweetheart,” Krista said. “Everything’s gonna be fine. Three more to go, just three...oh, God, Scott, I thought you were...” Tears burned in her eyes. “Come on, babe, just three more.”

  And one by one, they did it.

  At the outer edge of the dock, Scott slapped up an arm and grabbed on. Utterly spent, he rested his cheek against the rough surface of the wood. Krista remained in the water beside him, stroking his hair, whispering. Bob and Fred crouched on the dock in front of him.

  “Okay, chum,” Bob said. “Let her go and we’ll pull you up out of there.” He gripped Scott’s wrist. “C’mon, Doc. Leave her go. You’re okay now. C’mon.”

  Slowly Scott’s fingers peeled away. Aided by Krista, the two old gentlemen lifted Scott’s stiff and shivering two hundred pounds out of the lake.

  Scott flopped like a dead fish onto the water-slick surface of the dock. Shallow wounds like racing stripes branded his leg, but there were no obvious signs of a fracture. Krista knelt next to him, kissing his face, fingering his tangled hair. Temporarily forgotten, Kath stood on the shoreline away from the dock, two fingers poked into the curled-down corner of her mouth. After a while Scott noticed her there and felt his heart ache along with the rest of him.

  Gradually that raw, mind-abrading panic abated, and he extended an open hand. Slowly, almost shyly, Kath came forward and took it.

  They stayed that way awhile, Scott and his girls, Bob and Fred standing silently by. Then they all helped him to his feet and up the hill to the rec room, where you could still catch the faintest whiff of artist’s oils.

  * * *

  “I want to thank you guys,” Scott said, his face open and terribly vulnerable. He was still breathing too fast. “You saved my life out there. You really did.”

  A half-hour had gone by. Bob had suggested they call an ambulance, but Scott vetoed the idea, insisting between sputters and coughs that he was fine, he just needed to rest. Krista had dressed his injured leg with snug-fitting gauze and Fred had gone upstairs to brew some tea. Scott had tried sipping his—he’d needed Krista to hold the cup for him, his trembling fingers still useless—but he’d vomited immediately, dry, gut-ripping heaves.

  Outside, the sky had darkened to the color of slate, and now the first spits of rain dappled the patio flagstones. In the gathering squall the birches and spruce stirred restlessly, as if trying to flee their roots. In the hazy distance, thunder grumbled like an empty belly.

  Scott lay on the hideaway bed in the rec room, cocooned in a comforter that reeked of mothballs and cedar. Krista sat next to him on one side, Kath on the other. Kath looked pale beneath her summer tan, and her eyes were too bright. She was in shock, Scott realized, and even through his own discomfort he was deeply disturbed by it. Bob and Fred stood between the hideaway and the color TV, decked out like Field & Stream centerfolds. The two old gents looked uncomfortable there, oddly out of place. Fred shuffled in his gum boots. Bob chewed nervously on his pipe.

  Now Bob removed the pipe from his mouth, and as he spoke, he tamped a thumb into its empty bowl. “Our part was luck, Scott.” He pointed at Kath with the stem of his pipe. “It was your girlie there. She’s the one saved you.”

  Scott touched Kath’s waist and she jumped, startling back from some gloomy place in her mind. She tried a smile but couldn’t quite manage it. After a moment her eyes went glassy again.

  Frightened by Scott’s first dive, Kath had stood breathless vigil following his second, waiting for him to resurface. When the camera bobbed up in a rush of air bubbles, she realized something was wrong and began yelling for help. The fishermen had already docked over at Bob’s and were just climbing out of the boat. In response to Kath’s screams, they hopped back aboard and gunned the motor full throttle, cutting across the short stretch of open water between Anderson’s place and the Bowmans’.

  “If she hadn’t piped up when she did...” Bob said, letting his words trail off. He clapped his partner on the back. “It was old Fred here thought of draggin’ that anchor.”

  Grinning sheepishly, Fred looked down at his boots. “Did you get stuck down there, Scotty?” he said. “On the bottom?”

  Scott nodded and the nod turned to a brief convulsion. Feeling it, Krista hugged him closer. Even Kath came back from that dark place in her mind long enough to stroke Scott’s quivering arm.

  Between still-labored breaths, Scott did his best to describe to his rescuers the horror of his last dive. Then he fell silent.

  Bob placed a hand on Fred’s shoulder, indicating Scott with a thrust of his chin. Scott was still shivering, but his eyes were trying hard to close. He was physically exhausted, a condition Bob Anderson understood only too well. He had experienced it himself more than once in his lifetime, after sixteen hours of farm work under a punishing, mid-July sun.

  “Let’s get along,” he said to his friend, and Fred nodded grimly.

  “Thanks again,” Scott mumbled as the two old-timers let themselves out.

  Then his head was on the pillow, heavier than he’d ever known it, and a welcome darkness was falling. As the first spreading web of electricity shattered the vexed summer sky, Scott slid willingly into that darkness. He slept fitfully through the storm that raged through the balance of that morning, then well into the afternoon.

  * * *

  He awakened with a muffled shout, feeling the clutch of the lake at his throat. But it was only a pillow he’d dragged across his face while he slept, its feathery weight triggering the hideous dream-illusion of drowning. Hearing his cry, Krista came stomping down the carpeted staircase, calling his name in alarm.

  “I’m all right,” Scott said, his voice thick and low. “Scared myself, is all.” He rolled over onto his side, then tried shifting to a sitting position.

  It wasn’t until then that he realized how much damage had been done during his brief underwater struggle. Sometime during the inactive hours of his sleep, gravel-laced cement had been mysteriously deposited inside his joints and had hardened there. Muscles everywhere shrieked in an almost audible chorus of agony. When he leaned over to push himself up off the bed, his abdominal muscles bunched into an exquisite cramp. To relieve it, he had to have Krista draw his legs out straight. Finally, with Krista’s help, he perched on the edge of the bed, where he began a grim personal inventory.

  The stiff and tender muscles proved to be much the least of it. The pain had worked its way right into his bones. With the slightest movement came the feeling that jagged metal filings had been packed into each moving part. His spine was a jouster’s lance, driven down through the top of his head and out through his tail. His leg throbbed beneath Krista’s snug dressing. His hip was a stiff and tender swelling: with his last effort to free himself, Scott had torn the joint capsule and some of the surrounding muscle fibers, an injury he knew would engage him in annoying, damp-weather conversation for years to come. As well, the circulation had not yet returned to his limbs; they were still cadaverous-looking and cold. His fingers hurt. His toes hurt. His teeth hurt...even his scalp hurt.

  He moaned.

  Krista became mothering and he let her.

  “Oh, you poor thing,” she cooed. “That must have been horrible.” She stroked his stubbled cheek. “I didn
’t know what to think when I heard Kath screaming like that. I thought she’d hurt herself or something. Her friend Lita ran off like a scared rabbit.” She hugged him closer and he winced. “Thank heaven you’re all right. Do you want anything? Something to eat or drink? How’s your tummy feel?”

  Scott smiled, discovering that those muscles hurt, too. Krista was in a low-grade state of panic, and Scott imagined that if someone were to slam a door behind her just now, she really would leap out of her skin.

  “My throat hurts from coughing, hon,” he said. “I don’t think I could swallow much yet. I’d like to get upstairs, though.”

  Krista helped him to his feet. His head spun and the room wowed a little, but then everything was all right again. His feebleness as he negotiated the steps, leaning hard against Krista on one side and the banister on the other, made him think again of the Cartoonist, of that old and wizened body.

  And that made him think of the Minolta.

  At the top of the steps, where the hallway gave an angled view of the living room, Scott saw Kath sitting on her haunches in front of the Bugs Bunny-Road Runner Hour. He saw, too, that her eyes were not on the screen but on her hands, which lay in a slowly writhing knot in her lap. Startled by her parents’ approach, she snapped her head around, giving a wan smile as they shifted cautiously into the room.

  Professionally, Scott recognized his daughter’s behavior as a manifestation of severe emotional trauma. During the three or four minutes of Scott’s battle against drowning, Kath had for the first time in her life experienced terror, that purest of all emotions; and like a junkie after a fix, she was still coming down from it. Though Kath’s reaction worried him, he believed he knew how she was feeling. Terror had pushed him to the very rim of sanity down there at the bottom of the lake.

  “I’ll lie here on the couch awhile,” he said. “I want to visit with my girl.” Kath helped her mother lower Scott to the couch.