Southampton Spectacular

by M. C. Soutter

  Then she was gone.

  The Savior

  Devon crept out late in the afternoon on the fourth day. She wasn’t feeling any better, but she had cried enough. Agonized enough. She had gone over in her head all the unbelievable things her parents had told her too many times now. And all the thinking in the world wasn’t going to change anything.

  Anyway, she was getting stiff. And antsy. She wanted to go outside.

  She put on a bathing suit – a one-piece, for swimming – and a wide-brimmed hat, and packed a canvas bag with a book and a towel and snacks, and hustled out to the car. She felt strangely apprehensive about being discovered. As though she were a prisoner leaving without permission. She drove to Cryder Lane instead of the Beach Club and hiked down to the water line with her hat pulled low. Not quite in the style of Duane at the carnival, but good enough to give her a sense of security. She glanced to her left, toward the Beach Club. It was only a quarter mile away, and she could see that there was almost no one left on the sand in front of the club. She wanted to go swimming, but the water was rough today. She’d have to see if the lifeguards were still on duty.

  She began walking cautiously, trying to look very un-Devon-like. She was out of her room, yes. But she wasn’t looking for conversation.

  When she was just within the boundaries of the club’s property, she put down her bag and spread out her towel. She would take a minute to soak up what little sun was left before jumping in the water. It was almost five in the afternoon, but there was still enough heat to warm her up.

  She lay down and closed her eyes, and she immediately realized that she would not be able to wait for long. She had been doing almost nothing but lying in her bed for the last three days, wrapped in layers of sheets and down comforters. She had too much energy for just lying in the sand, so in a minute she would go ask the lifeguard if –

  “Hey, there.”

  Devon opened her eyes a crack. Her hat was shielding her eyes, but the sun was low in the sky, and so she was having difficulty seeing. It looked as if a group of three teenaged boys had materialized in front of her. But that was impossible, because she had been lying here for no more than thirty seconds.

  She shook her head at them, trying to give the universal signal for “Please, no, go away, for the love of God.”

  True to form, the message the boys received was, “Hey, guys. Good to see you. What’s going on?”

  “Want to come walking with us?” one of them said.

  “No, thank you,” Devon answered. Very clearly.

  “Oh, come on,” another one called out. “We’re cool, and you’re obviously cool, and – ”

  “Hey. Get lost.” This was a new voice. A gruff, much older-sounding, much grumpier voice.

  Devon grinned and closed her eyes.

  The boys tried to hold their ground. “Who are you, her father?”

  “That’s right,” the lifeguard said, and now his voice was closer. Almost right on top of her. “I’m her father. And her brother. And her over-protective uncle, you little shit.”

  A pause, in which the group of boys did not respond.

  “This young lady is looking for some rest,” Kenny went on, in a tone just shy of full-on growling. “So stop bothering her, or I’ll bother you.”

  Devon heard the soft sound of footsteps in the sand. Retreating quickly.

  She waited a minute to give Kenny a chance to go back to his perch. When she heard the lifeguard chair creaking, she opened her eyes and stood. And removed her hat. She gazed out at the ocean, which she now realized was in a truly fierce mood. Red flag, surely. Maybe black.

  She called out without turning around. “Kenny.”

  “Ms. Hall.”

  Now she turned to face him, and she took her time. Out of respect. And gratitude. “I’m thinking of taking a swim,” she said. “How do we feel about this?”

  Kenny’s brown, weather-beaten face opened slowly into a smile, and his eyes creased at the corners. “We feel just fine, Ms. Hall. Strong set moving to your right as you face the water, see it?”

  Devon turned and watched the ocean for a moment. Then she nodded.

  “Start far left, please,” Kenny said.

  “It’s getting late. You’re not about to pack up?”

  “I’m going nowhere, Ms. Hall. You take your time. That hand of yours is going to be okay in the water?”

  Devon looked down at her injured left hand, which still had the splint connecting her middle and index fingers. She barely noticed it anymore, and she knew it wouldn’t be a problem in the ocean.

  The ocean itself was the thing.

  She put up the hand in a reassuring wave, nodded once more at him, and then gave herself a last chance to back out. The waves were coming with a good, predictable regularity this afternoon, but the swells themselves were far bigger than normal. And Kenny was right about the current. There would be churning, difficult areas, Devon knew.

  But if she stood here much longer, someone else might come over. And it might be someone from the club. Someone Kenny could not shoo away without political fallout. Then she would have to have an actual conversation about where she had been for the last few days. About how her friends were doing, and were they okay? And everything else? And meanwhile, underneath it all, she would be searching this person’s eyes – no matter who it was – and wondering whether they knew.

  She didn’t want to have a conversation like that. So Devon took another moment to time her approach, and then she sprinted for the water.

  Kenny watched her go, his eyes as sharp as ever. He noted, in a detached, critical way, that Devon Hall had the strong, lithe legs of an Amazon, and that she ran like the damned wind, and that in the low light of the five o’clock sun, she was stunning.

  Detached, was our friend Kenny. Detached and critical.

  Devon hit the water hard, and then she was swimming as fast as she could, pulling herself past the breakers, out far enough to where she could ride the swells like a toy boat in a tub. Then she was through, and she ran one hand over her face and down the back of her head and hair. She looked back at the beach and saw Kenny up on his chair, already so far away. Her heart was beating fast for the first time in four days; she liked the feeling. She could see that she was moving in the current now, and she began to swim hard to the east, fighting to stay in one spot. Now a big set came through, and she was lifted high into the air so that the beach and Kenny were suddenly far below her. She gasped with the rush of it, but she was not frightened; it was something she had done many times before, and as the swell passed she was lowered back down gently. She began swimming easily now, keeping pace with the current, holding her position relative to the lifeguard chair and Kenny.

  It was a soothing exercise, and yet it was exhausting. Devon was still watching the beach, and now she felt that it was time to start moving toward the shore. She saw Kenny stand up on his chair suddenly and wave to her. She waved back –

  And then she understood that he was not waving. He was pointing.

  She turned around and saw the swell coming, a set of four much larger waves, which meant that she had to swim. She had to swim fast. Because the place where a wave breaks is directly related to the size of that wave; the larger the swell, the sooner the break. And while Devon had placed herself perfectly to avoid the breaking point of all the waves that had come so far, she was badly out of position for the set now approaching.

  She swam as hard as she could, but she saw that she would not make it in time.

  The first wave broke less than ten feet in front of her, and she was already diving down, as sleek and quick as a seal, and still she was nearly caught; she felt the pressure spike as the wall of rolling water passed over and around her, but she kept her bearing and kicked for the surface.

  She was an experienced ocean swimmer, so she knew what to expect: the second wave in the set was right on top of her. She took a quick breath and dove again, this time with only a second to spare, and the trailin
g edge of the wave tried to suck her up into the backside of the curl, which would have been a disaster. She surged forward and down, under the suction, and made it through.

  Now back up for another breath.

  This time she was not fast enough.

  Devon took a breath and opened her eyes to see how close the next wave was, and it was already there. She tried to dive, tried to duck under the power and the rolling force of the third and largest wave in the set, but she was already caught in the swirl. It sucked her back for a moment, and she felt herself hurled up into the crest of the wave itself. Then she was pitched over and down.

  Into the chaos of the froth and whitewater.

  The panic came like a bad idea, like something she didn’t want to think of, but which refused to go away. She tried to think of waiting. Of being calm, and letting herself float up toward the light and the surface. But the wave had rolled her too many times, and she was disoriented in a way that did not allow patience. She could not make herself wait. Her arms were flailing, churning uselessly, and she could tell, even as she floundered in the water like a bug trying to skitter out of a swirling drain, that she was behaving exactly the way all those other drowning people had behaved. Those ridiculous, panicked people Kenny had been forced to save.

  So now, the one clear thought in Devon’s head was a name.

  As if he had heard her, his arms were suddenly around her. She was being lifted up quickly to the surface, and then the sun was on her face. She coughed and shook her head back and forth quickly, blinking and pawing at her own face as though wiping drops of acid from her eyes. Kenny held her there, and he gave her a minute to recover instead of simply dragging her out of the water. She calmed herself, opened her eyes, and looked at him.

  It was not Kenny. It was Austin.

  There was a great deal of relieved laughter then. And exclaiming, and splashing. So much that Devon forgot that she had been scared. Forgot that she was still out in the middle of a red-flag ocean. Austin was so calm in the water – as he was everywhere, somehow – that there no longer seemed to be any reason to be scared. About anything. She realized, finally, that Theo Mahlmann had been right: Austin was not a problem. He was everything but a problem.

  And maybe she would go to Spain with him next month, or maybe not. But it didn’t matter.

  He escorted her out of the water. They swam in slowly, with Austin watching the horizon and announcing when they should wait or go. It was effortless. They made it back to the beach, and Devon was laughing again. About nothing. About seeing him here again, after what seemed like a stretch of weeks. She asked him where he had been all this time, and he said that he had been back since two days ago, back from the city. He added, gently, that maybe she had some explaining to do on the question of where certain people had been for the last few days, and Devon fired back – in a relaxed, uncaring way – that she’d been very busy cleaning her room, and that he’d better watch himself because there was some shit going down around here that was serious, and she needed to be treated delicately.

  Austin said that she didn’t look delicate. Not at this particular moment.

  She stuck out her tongue at him, and then she asked him, still giggling, what had been so important, so goddamned important in New York that he couldn’t have been here. Because they could have used his help with a few things.

  He smiled. “Had some long talks with Mr. Berducido,” he said.

  “About?”

  “About postponing the Spanish trip until next summer.”

  Devon tried not to overreact. For many reasons. But it was difficult.

  I just finally got myself comfortable with that whole thing, she didn’t say. You put off Spain? And here I was, just starting to pick out dresses.

  Instead she said, “Good to hear.”

  “Just good?”

  “Great to hear. Thank you.”

  “I still think you can do better than that.”

  She shook her head at him and went to collect her towel and bag. She looked up and called to Kenny, to thank him for keeping an eye on her. Austin looked up, too. And waved. Kenny nodded once at each of them, and then he returned his attention to the ocean. As if more panicked swimmers might appear at any moment.

  Devon and Austin linked their arms together, and they walked back up toward the club.

  “I didn’t see you come in,” Austin said.

  “My car’s down at Cryder Lane.”

  “What a sneak.”

  “Me a sneak? When were you planning on letting me know about your Spain postponement scheme?”

  “I just did,” he said, as if it were nothing. “When are you going to give me the straight story on what happened while I was gone? I’m getting all kinds of conflicting gossip from people.”

  Devon smiled again. She didn’t know why it felt so easy now. The facts were no less upsetting. “It’s a long story,” she said. “My dad isn’t my dad. How about that? And apparently James is my half-brother. Ned and Frankie, too. Let’s start there and work our way back.”

  Austin shrugged as if Devon had just told him that there were two new movies in town, neither of them any good. “That reminds me,” he said. “Tracy Dunn gave me a message for you.”

  Devon raised an eyebrow.

  “She said, ‘Ask her who taught her to speak.’”

  Devon stopped walking, and she nodded at the sand. Then she smiled. “Never mind,” she said to him.

  “Never mind what?”

  “Everything. The things I just said. The only important stuff was that Pauline died, and James and Barnes got hurt. The rest is crap.”

  Austin nodded. “That’s what I thought. But it’s good to hear you say it.”

  They made it all the way up to the club. Devon paused at the bottom of the stairs, turned Austin toward her, and gave him a kiss. “Thanks for everything,” she said.

  “My pleasure, believe me.”

  They walked together up to the mezzanine, where they found Devon’s parents. Peter and Cynthia Hall were sitting at a table overlooking the pool, just as they always did. Watching the pool and the entrance to the club.

  Watching the entrance with perhaps a bit more focus than usual. With more hope.

  They saw Devon, saw her turn and walk toward them with her straight back and her cautious smile, and they reminded themselves not to say too much. Not to say that she was the only thing they had been thinking about for three straight days, or that the sight of her made them want to fall to their knees.

  So they simply turned and smiled through the tears that they could do nothing to stop, and they held their arms out to her.

  With obvious love.

  Past Quitting Time

  Kenny waited until he was sure Devon and Austin were gone from the beach. He checked his waterproof watch, saw that it was past quitting time, and climbed slowly down from his perch. He took a moment to look up at the club, in case he might catch another glimpse of Devon Hall from afar. Then he nodded to himself and headed back to the lifeguard shack to collect his own things. He had been a hero many times, and on many days, over his long career as a guard at the Bathing Corporation, but he had never run a save quite like the one this afternoon, in the late hours of a quiet Tuesday in July. He had seen Austin come down to the beach, and he had known who he was. So when Devon had fallen into trouble, he had urged Austin on.

  “You,” he barked. As if Austin were an employee arriving late for work. “Go get her. I’ll be here.”

  Austin did not wait, which Kenny was glad to see. He ran for the water before he even saw where Kenny was pointing.

  Kenny watched him go. He knew it would work out. Knew that Austin could make the save. Even though Kenny himself would have been happy, so very, very happy, to run and go and be the one who brought Devon Hall out of the waves. To be the one holding her when she opened her eyes and smiled and laughed out her relief, magnificent with the residue of fear washing off of her in rivulets of salt water, giving way to the exalt
ation on her face, the ecstasy of being safe and alive and breathing.

  What a thing it would have been, to be holding Devon Hall at that moment.

  So on this day, for a sacrifice of which only he was aware, we acknowledge Kenny.

  And we nod once more in his direction.

  The End

  James and Barnes were together. Their parents made sure they were put in hospital beds next to one another, and it was a strange scene: two massively trussed-up patients, both looking as if they had been hit by a train or crushed under a Steinway Grand.

  More strange was that they always seemed to be laughing.

  Barnes kept up a monologue of remembrances and one-liners, and James filled in the spaces with derisive judgments on Barnes’s low intelligence and moral fiber. The nurses liked coming over to talk to them, especially since neither one ever seemed to need anything except a steady drip of painkiller.

  It was several days before Barnes actually related the details of his crash with Pauline; he wanted to be sure that James was ready. Ready to discuss her.

  On their third day lying in beds next to each other, James said, in a forced-casual tone of semi-interest, “So, what happened?”

  “Tell you tonight,” Barnes said. He didn’t want to incriminate himself if he could avoid it, and the quiet of the nighttime hours would make it easier to hear the approaching steps of the nurse.

  That night he went through it. Step by step. Barnes wasn’t sure which parts would be upsetting or not, so he simply told James everything. Even the parts at the very end. Because Pauline had deserved exactly what she got, for one thing. Also because Barnes was proud of himself. He even told James what he had said to Pauline just as they were about to go flying off the edge of the turn.

  “Dude,” Barnes whispered, talking very softly now. As if this next part of the story were particularly secret. Particularly incriminating. “I looked right at her, and I said, ‘Why don’t you suck on this?’ And then I popped it down to third, spun the wheel and floored that thing again, and we went fucking flying.”