Swim That Rock

by John Rocco

  Vito yells over his shoulder. “Paul, give Hedge a hand with the kid.”

  Paul comes in and throws one of my arms over his shoulder, takes me from Hedge, and guides me to the door.

  “You’re a little wobbly, that’s all. You’ll be all right.” He looks at my eye. “That’ll go down tomorrow. I’ve had a hundred of those.”

  When he gets me to the door, I drop the ice and break into a run. I’m dazed and wobbling. I must look like I’m drunk.

  I stop beneath a streetlamp in front of the liquor store and open my eyelid, exposing my eye to the light. The brightness burns, so I guess I’m not blind in that eye. My other eye is tearing, and it takes me a second to get my bearings. I start to jog down Water Street toward home.

  My entire body is shaking as I move down the street, and in my head I’m playing out a hundred different scenarios that all end with me punching Vito so hard in the face that my hand comes out the other side like the way it happens in a cartoon. Each time I imagine it, the vision becomes goofier. By the time I get to the Riptide, I’m imagining I have these giant quahogs for hands and I’m batting his head back and forth like one of those blow-up punching dolls that keeps wobbling upright no matter how hard you hit it.

  I’m laughing to myself as I open the screen door to the kitchen and step inside. Robin and my mom are there. My mom has her car keys in her hand. She drops them to the floor, runs over, and pulls me in so tight I can hardly breathe.

  “Oh, thank God.”

  “It’s okay, Mom.” My voice is muffled in her hair.

  She pulls away and twists my face into the light. “What happened to you? We were worried sick. Dave Becker came by to check on you hours ago. He said you started in from the beach at the same time he did.”

  “I’ll get some ice,” Robin says, grabbing a dishtowel from the counter as my mom leads me into the restaurant like a Seeing Eye dog.

  “How did this happen? Did you get into a fight?”

  “No, nothing like that.”

  Robin comes back and hands me the dishtowel filled with ice. “Twenty minutes on . . .”

  “And ten minutes off, I know,” I say, taking the ice and holding it to my face.

  Outside, a cop car pulls up to the front and Robin unlocks the door. The cop, who I recognize as Sergeant Justy, gets out of his car and pokes his head inside. “So you found him? He’s okay?”

  I hide my face behind the dishtowel and give him the thumbs-up sign.

  “He’s okay.” My mother waves him off. “Thanks, Ralph.”

  Robin and my mom are all smiles at Sergeant Justy as he gets back into his car and pulls away.

  Then they both turn on me.

  “So now we want some answers, buster,” Robin says.

  “Tell us what’s going on, Jake.” My mom has her hand on my shoulder, and her eyes are pleading.

  So I tell them how I worked the beach in Gene’s boat and how Tommy was there and how we did really good and made almost twenty-seven hundred dollars.

  “And then you went to the Italian-American Club, didn’t you?” My mom’s hand goes up in front of her mouth.

  “I thought I could convince Vito to give us some more time.”

  “He did this to you? I’m going to kill that son of a . . .”

  “No, Mom, it’s not like that. He didn’t do anything. It was an accident. I was such an Unco, I fell over his chair and smacked my head on his desk.” I’m pleading with her to calm down.

  She grabs my chin between her thumb and forefinger and turns my head to face her. “You swear to me those guys didn’t touch a hair on your head. You swear to me, Jake Cole.”

  “I swear, Mom. I fell.”

  “You pull a stunt like that again, and I’ll bust the other eye,” Robin says, heading back to the front door and turning the lock.

  My mom pulls me into her arms, and I rest my head on her shoulder. “It’s okay now. It’s over, Jake.” She starts rocking me slowly, and I just want to sleep right here. I feel myself drifting off, and the next thing I know, Robin and my mom are helping me up the stairs.

  I climb into the tiny bed and I’m gone.

  I force my good eye open and stare at my alarm clock through the crust and film of a hard night’s sleep.

  3:45.

  I am not sure if it is a.m. or p.m., but the sun shining through my window nudges me out of my haze. I feel like I could sleep through the night, but I know my mom, Darcy, and Robin have been working hard getting ready for the cabaret, and I should probably get downstairs and help out. The problem is, I feel like I’ve been run over by a tractor trailer. As I swing my legs over the side of the bed, my feet drop to the floor like anchors. My hands are clenched together as if they are still holding the rake, and I’m afraid to look at them. Searing-hot pain shoots up each arm as I work my fingers open. There are smudges of blood on the sheets. I’m not sure if it’s from my blistered hands or the cut above my eye.

  I’m a mess.

  After taking inventory of the damage to my body, I take a hot shower. The water in the bottom of the tub is a mixture of mud, salt, sweat, and blood. I watch in a trance as it swirls down the drain. I dress and head downstairs.

  Mom, Darcy, and Robin are running around, setting up everything. They have Christmas lights strung from the ceiling. The tables and booths have white cloths over them with candles stuck into old mayonnaise jars filled with sand.

  “Afternoon, sleepyhead.” Darcy zips past me, shaking some paper streamers in front of my face. “Wow, you look . . . you don’t look so good.”

  “The last twenty-four hours have been a little rough.” A humongous understatement, but I don’t want to be a bummer right now because they all look really excited about this cabaret thing.

  “How are you doing?” My mom comes rushing over and touches my face tenderly.

  “I’m okay.”

  “So what do you think, Jake?” she asks, surveying the room.

  “It looks nice. Festive. What can I do to help?”

  “Well,” she says, clapping her hands together, “I need you to run over to Tom Brennan’s and pick up the lobsters. He donated fifty lobsters for tonight; isn’t that great? Take the wheelbarrow. And when you get back, I need you to help build the stage for Robin.”

  “Stage?” I look over at the pile of wood in the corner.

  “Of course. She’s gotta have a stage. This is her big debut.” My mom smiles at Robin as if Robin were her daughter. “Look, I even had the jukebox fixed, and Angelo from across the street lent us his sound system.”

  I must have a depressed look on my face because my mom pulls me over to one of the stools, and as I sit, she takes hold of my shoulders and looks me right in the eyes.

  “Jake, I know this is all a little over-the-top, and it’s probably a silly idea, and maybe I’m crazy for thinking we are going to raise enough money tonight to keep this place, but at least we can go out with a bang, right? What I am trying to say is, let’s just have fun tonight. It’s a party.” She pulls me into a hug, and I can feel her tears on my cheek. “Oh, Jake, I know how hard you worked to save this place, and I know how much it means to you, how much your dad means to you. He would be so proud of you right now.” She pulls back and runs her fingers through my hair. “I am so proud of you. You’re the best son a mom could ever have.”

  I don’t want to get all mushy with my mom, especially with Darcy there, so I get up to leave. “I’ll go get those lobsters now, but I don’t know how to build a stage.”

  “I don’t need a stage. I’ll probably sing only a couple of songs,” Robin says.

  “You are going to have a stage, Robin, and I don’t want to hear another word about it,” Mom says, wagging her finger like a conductor. Then she turns to me. “And somebody will help you, Jake, I am sure of it.”

  I head out the back door, and I can hear Darcy running after me. I slow down, and she catches up at the side of the house.

  “Jake Cole!” she yells out like the princ
ipal at our middle school.

  “Darcy Green!” I say back to her in a similar tone, but I don’t look up as I empty the rainwater out of the wheelbarrow.

  “Tommy said you were amazing out there yesterday.”

  “He did?” I glance back, and she’s got her hands stuffed into her pockets.

  “Yeah. He came by earlier looking for you, but I told him you were sleeping, which you were, and he told me to tell you that next time, he gets to be the captain.”

  “He said that?” I laugh.

  “So much for the whole I gotta do this alone thing, huh?” she says, imitating me from yesterday. “Oh, and he was also blabbering on about this Janna girl that was out there, but he must have been seeing things, right? You told me yourself there weren’t going to be any girls out there.”

  “Aw, come on, Darce,” I plead for forgiveness.

  “I’m just messing with you.” She laughs. “I actually just wanted to come out and tell you that I’m proud of you too. I heard things didn’t go so well at the Italian Club.” She’s pointing her finger to her eye and staring at mine.

  “Yeah, not so good.”

  “Bastards.” Darcy kicks some shells on the ground. “How much do you still need?”

  “Too much,” I say, walking away from her with the wheelbarrow. As I’m walking, I know it’s wrong, but I can’t face her. I feel shattered.

  “Jake?”

  “I gotta go.”

  Walking over to Tom Brennan’s with the wheelbarrow, I’m totally depressed. There is a hole in my stomach that all the fried-egg sandwiches in the world could never fill.

  Getting back to the Riptide with more than a hundred and twenty pounds of lobsters in a wheelbarrow is not easy. I have to stop every fifty feet or so to pick up the escapees. I push the wheelbarrow over the curb in front of Muldoon’s, losing control, and dump half of them onto the sidewalk. A couple guys from inside come out to help.

  “Where you going with all these beauties, Jake?”

  “The Riptide’s having a cabaret tonight. It’s twenty bucks a head. We’re having lobsters, chowder, stuffies, and live music. You should tell your friends inside.” They look a bit doubtful, so I add, “And all the beer and wine you can drink.”

  “I thought you guys didn’t have a liquor license.”

  “Who’s going to complain, you?” I press.

  “Not me.” He laughs. “You gonna complain, Sam?”

  “Definitely not,” Sam says, “I’ll be wearing my drinking shoes!” Sam looks down at my hands. “Jesus, those mitts of yours look like raw hamburger. I heard you worked the beach yesterday. I didn’t see you out there.”

  “That would be like finding a needle in a haystack,” I say.

  “How’d you make out?” he asks.

  “I did fine, I guess.” I don’t really want to say. Gene always says don’t ever talk about what you caught, because if it was even one more quahog than they caught, they’ll be on you like flies on dog crap the rest of the week. So I don’t say anything more than that.

  “Fine? Bainsey said you hauled in forty-eight bags, almost sunk Gene’s boat. That’s what Bainsey said. Is it true?”

  “Something like that. Listen, thanks for your help with the lobsters. I gotta get ’em back to the Riptide before they die in this heat. Don’t forget to tell your friends about the cabaret tonight.”

  As I wheel away, I can still hear them talking.

  “There’s no way that kid caught forty-eight bags. I only got thirty-eight myself, and I was out there until dusk.”

  “Quit your bellyaching and go buy me another drink, ’cause I only got thirty-five bags, you peckerhead.”

  I just continue wheeling those lobsters down the street, but I can’t help smiling the rest of the way.

  With the lobsters in the kitchen and my mom working away on the chowder and stuffed quahogs, I head out front to tackle building a stage. I swear to God, I am going to drop dead by the time the cabaret starts. Every muscle in my body aches.

  Next to the jukebox I see five long two-by-fours leaning up against the wall and two sheets of plywood on the floor. Honestly, I don’t know where to begin. I’ve never built anything out of wood in my life, and now I have an hour to build a stage for Robin’s singing-career debut.

  I know there are some nails and a saw and hammer in the basement, but as I turn to get them, I freeze. Standing in the doorway is Gene. He looks weak, but he’s smiling and holding his toolbox with his good arm.

  “I heard we got us a stage to build,” Gene says.

  “Gene, you’re home!” I run over to him and want to give him a bear hug, but I know he’s weak, so I give him a half hug and a pat on the back. I want to tell him all about the beach and how I caught forty-eight bags and almost sank his boat but didn’t, and that I was sorry I took his boat without asking, and how I got back too late to get a good price, and how crazy it was out there on the water, but I can’t actually say anything. I have a fist-size lump in my throat, and I just want to bury my face in his flannel shirt and cry, because I’m so glad he’s here right now.

  “You look like you’ve been through the wringer. What happened to your eye?”

  “Oh, that? I just fell. It was stupid, really.”

  Gene takes both my hands in his and turns them over for inspection. He winces. “Did you slay ’em out there? I heard you slayed ’em.”

  Gene and I spend the next hour putting together the makeshift stage. I do most of the sawing and hammering, while Gene is the brains of the operation. The whole time we talk about the beach as he lobs questions at me one after another.

  “Were the quahogs layered up on each other?” Gene asks, handing me the pencil.

  “Yeah, just like you said. It was mud but it felt like hard bottom, they were so thick.”

  “And what about off of the seventeenth hole?”

  “Yeah, as soon as the wind picked up, I went over there, right up by Rumstick Rock, just like you said. It was perfect.”

  “I knew it.” Gene has a faraway look in his eyes.

  “You should have been there, Gene. You would’ve caught a hundred bags.”

  “Well, you were in my boat, using my rake, so it was just like I was there. And I don’t know about a hundred bags. That old Hawkline would’ve sunk for sure,” Gene says. I hammer in the last nail.

  “It better not fall apart when Robin hits her high note.” Darcy gracefully leaps onto our newly built stage. I am currently eye level with her bare knees as she pretends to be doing a guitar solo, and Gene and I whistle as she bounces around like a rock star.

  I grab a Coke and head toward one of the stools by the counter. I choose the one that’s got silver tape across the top holding the cushion in place, figuring if I sit on this one, the rest of them don’t look so bad. My mom swishes from table to table, lighting candles and humming to the song on the jukebox. Trax and Robin are rolling silverware into paper napkins. Darcy is helping Gene carry his toolbox.

  I wish it could stay like this forever.

  There’s no way we’re going to get forty-three hundred dollars to Vito by the end of the month. I’ve done the math in my head a bunch of times. It’s over, and I’m trying to accept it, but the feeling is like someone has just drained all the fluid from my body, and I’m moving through life in a dry, brittle shell. The slightest breeze is going to carry me off in a million pieces, like dust in the desert.

  Here I come, Arizona. Dad, I hope you can find me there.

  I pedal slowly down New Meadow Road toward Gene’s house. I can’t see much out of my right eye, and I don’t want to crash my bike. I don’t think my body can take any more punishment.

  Ten minutes later I drop my bike onto his shell driveway and start jogging down to the dock.

  Good. They’re still there.

  I climb aboard the Hawkline and carefully remove my dad’s glasses from the bungee cord holding them to the console. The lenses have tiny circles of salt on them, and I lick them clean and
wipe them off on my shirt. The salt tastes good on my tongue. I’m sure I have salt water in my veins now too.

  “I’m sorry, Dad. I wanted to save the Riptide, but I couldn’t.” I’m sitting on the gunwale, staring at the glasses in my hand. “I know that if you were here, you wouldn’t let this happen, but you’re not.”

  I miss you, Dad. I miss you so much.

  I put the glasses on and everything goes blurry. I slump down onto the deck so I don’t fall overboard, and I let the tears come.

  It feels good to cry until there’s nothing left. I’m dried out like that plant in the window my mom keeps forgetting to water. Empty.

  And then something happens. It feels like the tide is coming into my body and filling me up. I can feel the strength returning to my arms and legs, and that empty feeling is starting to leave me. I stay there like that, without moving for a while.

  Suddenly, I feel a peck on my leg. I take the glasses off and see that it’s Jessy. She’s staring at me as if she wants to say something.

  “Hey, girl.”

  Jessy cranes her head around, pecks at the knots of fishing line wrapped around her leg, and then stares at me expectantly.

  A final test.

  I reach into my pocket for my knife. I open the blade and place it on the deck. “It’s okay, girl. I’m just gonna cut that fishing line off your leg. It’s all right.” I’m inches away, closer to her than I’ve ever been, and Jessy hasn’t moved at all. I touch the feathers behind her head, and she jumps a little bit, but stays within reach. On the next try, I start behind her head, then move my right hand farther down her wing feathers and gently cradle her under my arm. She seems calmer as I stroke her head with my hand. I shift her body to expose her chafed leg, which is red and raw. The clear fishing line is thick and knotted but loose enough to slip the knife blade beneath. She kicks her other leg as if she’s paddling while I work the knife blade. The fishing line is cut through, and I remove the monofilament cuff from her leg. She’s ready to fly. I leg go, and she catches herself in the breeze, just off the starboard side of the boat, hovering there for a few seconds. With a shrill caw, Jessy lifts to the sky, and now, we are both free.