Infinite Blue
Page 12
hawked a coin-sized glob. It touched down centimeters
from Clayton’s toes.
“Hey!”
Blythe and Clayton turned toward the voice. Ash
emerged from under the dimly lit canopy of a nearby
cigar store. “Walk away,” she said.
Blythe grinned and hiked a thumb over her shoulder.
“You heard her, boy.”
“I wasn’t talking to Clayton, Mum.”
“What?”
“I was talking to you. Walk away now. Or there’s no
swim.”
“You don’t mean that.”
“Try me.”
“Ash—”
“I dare you.”
A rogue wave pounded the Malecón seawall, sending
a primal thump through the pavement and a slingshot of
brine toward the last of the night stars. Blythe stiffened, lifted her chin and clawed at her neck, like a dog straining against its leash.
“This is ridiculous,” she muttered.
She strode over to her daughter, grasped the armrests
of her chair and leaned forward, hoping to touch forehead to forehead. Ash rebuffed the advance by moving back,
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the sudden movement yanking the armrests from Blythe’s
grasp and causing her to stumble. Blythe straightened
and flicked the hair out of her eyes.
“You don’t get to do this,” she said, zipping the
sponsor’s jacket all the way to her throat. “I am your
mother! I made you. Everything you were, everything
you are, and everything you ever will be is my doing.
You understand that?”
Ash nodded. “I do.”
“Don’t you ever forget it.”
Ash shook her head. “I won’t.”
Blythe gave a satisfied grunt, threw one last kill-shot
glare in Clayton’s direction and stormed off to prepare
for the day she so richly deserved.
Ash crossed the dock to where Clayton still stood.
She gestured for him to lean down, then held a hand to
the back of his head as she kissed him.
“You couldn’t let go,” she said once they had released.
“I just want to be here.”
“You’re shaking.”
“Am I?”
“I love you.”
“I know.”
Ash watched the first sunlight breach the horizon.
“Let’s go down to the water.”
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Thirty-Two
The early-morning procession—dog-walkers, joggers,
happy-snapping tourists—moved in both directions
along the Malecón. Few gave a second glance to the
couple in among the coral outcrops—a lovers’ embrace
was hardly an oddity on the famed seven-kilometer
stretch. Those who did look were drawn to the scene by
the wheelchair, a rare sight amid the buskers and fish-
ermen and 1950s cars, let alone at the water’s edge.
Ash sat on a small flat shelf, legs dangling in the
Atlantic. Clayton knelt beside her, then eased into a
seated position. Ash slipped her arms around his waist,
rested her head on his shoulder. The sunrise nestled at
eyeline, orange and bleeding.
“Will you remember me?” asked Clayton.
Ash smiled. “Of course.”
“How do you know?”
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“Because we’re forever.”
A puff of spray leaped out of the ocean and fell upon
the pair. Ash felt the mist enter her pores. It trickled through her, seeping, soaking in. She drew Clayton close and pressed her damp cheek against his. She touched him, savoring every nuance, casting a net over her memories.
Clayton looked down at the water. Ash’s feet were fluid, refracting in the shallows.
“Are you scared?” he asked.
Ash buried her face into his shoulder. “Yes,” she said,
her voice small and strained.
“Don’t be,” he replied.
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Thirty-Three
Later that morning, when Ash entered the shark-proof
cage and performed the first of 100,000 strokes that
would carry her to the United States, Clayton was below
decks. He ignored the excitement of the handlers, their
cheers and whistles and the odd “Come on!” as Wake the
World got underway. He disregarded the sights swirling
past the porthole: the news helicopter in the sky, the
honking flotilla chaperoning his beloved’s journey to
the open sea. When Coach Dwyer sat down beside him
and attempted to make conversation, he said he wasn’t
feeling well.
A half hour after launch, the commotion died away.
Clayton closed his eyes and began to draw.
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Q
Open.
He exhaled.
Open eyes.
His lids flickered.
Open eyes like Mummu said.
Fighting instinct, Clayton took a peek at his work.
It was the familiar landscape. Peace reigned. The ocean
was a crystal plain. The colossal wave had withdrawn,
leaving the beach alone.
And Ash?
She was gone. A memory. Seamless with the sea.
At one with her sacred medium.
Clayton powered down the tablet.
It would remain down for 180 kilometers.
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Thirty-Four
At 7:13 am, approximately 25 hours and 58 minutes after
commencement, the Wake the World swim ended at Fort
Zachary Taylor Historic State Park in Key West.
The first inkling of concern was felt with the opening
of the shark-proof cage. The team member monitoring
Ash’s vitals reported several data glitches, though these were disregarded as wireless-equipment failures. A disagreement took place between the two “watchers,” the people charged with observing Ash from the support vessel’s deck. One
lost sight of her in the water. The other saw what he would later describe as a “shadow” swimming toward the shore.
Less than a minute after the cage’s opening, the small
crowd that had gathered on the beach to witness history
encountered a sight they would spend a lifetime trying
to explain. A junior reporter from the Miami Herald, standing at the edge of the group, was the first to notice.
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He dropped his phone, shouting like a banshee, and
pointed a shaking finger at the shallows. All eyes fell
upon the impossible spectacle in his crosshairs.
A translucent female form, seemingly conjured from
the blue-green depths of the Gulf Stream, crested a wave that carried her out of the surf and onto the sand. Surrounded by tufts of foam and strips of kelp, she paused for a moment, head bowed. Then she lifted herself out of the wash.
Some of her liquid form was human in shape. Bare, broad
shoulders. Whorls of dark hair. Long, serpentine arms.
Her heaving torso was lean, the sculpted abdominal
muscles rolling like a set of breakers. Other features
entered the domain of pure imagination. Sprouting from
her upper back were wings, aqueous folds more delicate
than a spider’s web. Swathed over her obscured legs was
a gossamer-thin wrap, dotted wit
h pale blue half circles.
The morning sun refracted through her. The
horizon, though distorted, was framed by her rib cage.
She extended an arm, reaching tentatively toward land.
Fear and confusion gripped the crowd. Some turned
to Team Drum for answers. They had none.
Len looked skyward, reciting his words of refuge:
“…forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who
trespass against us, and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil…” Prayer would be lost to him after that day.
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I N F I N I T E B L U E
Coach Dwyer watched in stone-faced silence. The
vision of Fort Zachary Taylor would haunt him until his
dying day. He never spoke of it though. Not even to the
hundreds of swimmers he coached in the Paralympics
and Invictus Games.
Blythe stood, eyes wide, mouth gaping, fingers poking
at her shoulders, pained squeaks eking out of her throat.
Over the next ten years, she would scour every fathom
of the Gulf Stream for her lost girl. The ten following
she would unsuccessfully sue everyone and everything
connected to Wake the World. Her last five would be in
the care of a mental-health facility.
Among the shell-shocked group, Clayton was the
only one to move. He ran to the water’s edge. Heart
flailing in his chest, he dropped to his knees and threw his arms around her. She was rapidly losing form.
The wave carrying her had withdrawn, exposing her
to the light and to the air. He pulled close, shut his
eyes and kissed her. Tears were swamped in the deluge.
Water was on his tongue, in his throat. Entering him.
Filling him. Washing away flesh and bone. He opened
his eyes. For a fleeting moment he was the ocean.
An infinite blue.
Then she was gone, melted, sliding back into the sea.
Several cameras—video and still—attempted to
capture the moment. They failed. Ashley Ray Drummond
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was elusive to the lens, a wrinkle that could easily be
dismissed as shadow or digital artifact.
Clayton wiped his face, his eyes. His arms throbbed,
crying out for a connection lost. He bowed his head.
Nestling against his right knee was a dash of silver.
He plucked the object from the sand and held it to
his lips. The water-lover ring.
He knew Ash was home now.
Knew it as true love knows eternity.
174
Thirty-Five
Clayton opened the front door of his townhouse and
drifted over the threshold. A newspaper wrapped in
plastic lay beside the tervetuloa mat. On the breakfast bar, a bunch of white roses craned from a crystal vase filled almost to the brim with water. In the living room, the
tv prattled. Clayton shrugged the bag off his shoulder as familiar aromas from the kitchen teased his red, blotchy nose. Onions and peas, milk and pepper. Kesäkeitto.
He found Tuula standing in the hallway, her eyes glis-
tening. She shared no words—just a look that cradled
his aching heart. After several seconds she opened her
arms, and he fell into them. Her tears were cool on his
cheek. He was grateful for them.
Like wounded soldiers, they leaned against each
other, shuffling down the hallway. The tv grew louder at the end of the passage. The news was on.
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“… The whereabouts of swimming champion Ashley
Drummond remains a mystery seventy-two hours after her dramatic disappearance at Key West in Florida. An extensive search-and-rescue operation has found no trace of the former world-record holder, leading to theories that she may have been attacked by a shark close to shore. Local author-ities are still reaching out to eyewitnesses to try and provide some clue as to what happened—firsthand accounts to this point have been, according to police chief Pedro Mosqueda,
‘unusual and erratic’…”
“Ay, lapsi,” said Tuula. “Stay here.”
She patted Clayton’s hand and, with a spryness
not ordinarily associated with seventy-three-year-old,
chain-smoking grandmothers, scampered into the living
area to snatch up the remote control from the coffee
table. She stabbed button after button, then hurled the
remote at the nearby bookshelf. The screen went blank.
“Agh,” she said. “That show is shit. Not the shit. Just
shit. You okay?”
“I’m good,” replied Clayton.
“Yes?”
“Yes.”
“Good.”
“Actually,” added Clayton, “I have a story like that
one on the tv. Have I told it to you before, Mummu?”
“Ay, you have.”
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I N F I N I T E B L U E
“How many times?”
“Heaps.”
“How many?”
Tuula closed one eye and counted the nico-
tine-stained fingers on her right hand. “One hundred and twenty-seven times.”
Clayton nodded. “Not enough.”
Tuula laughed. “Come,” she said, taking hold of his
elbow. “Tell me after you rest.”
Inside his room, Clayton sat down on the bed. Tuula
asked if he would like to cover up—he declined.
“I need to check on the soup,” she said. “But I will
be back minuutissa.” She squeezed his shoulder and
retreated. At the door she paused. “I like the beautiful new ring on your thumb, lapsi.”
Tuula exited, quietly singing a tune: “I’m gonna wash that man right out of my hair…I’m gonna wash that man right out of my hair…”
Q
Prior to sleep Clayton opened his tablet and drew. No
semiconsciousness needed for this piece, no whimsical
artistry required. It was focused, intended.
The canvas was layered in rich watercolor textures
of deep blue and green, the hues of a forbidding wave
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caught at its peak. The figure in the center was little more than a delicate outline. Her back was turned and she
faced outward, directly into the blue. She wore a racing swimsuit cut low on her back. Arms extended. Feet apart
and planted. Her hair flowed like faint, thin tentacles, more ocean than human. She was translucent, at one
with the water.
More subtle, though, was the second presence—a
boy, looking on from a rocky outcrop in the distance,
barely there. One hand on his heart. The other waving
goodbye.
The image had a title, applied by the app, though
there’d been a glitch in its standard numbering system.
The filename read Source__.
Clayton smiled. It wasn’t something missing, that tiny
open space. It was a presence, constant and connected.
A marker of infinite possibility.
178
Acknowledgments
We’d like to infinitely thank our mighty editor, Sarah
Harvey, and the wonderful team at Orca; our agents
on both sides of the Pacific blue, Tara Wynne and John
Pearce; our mates and colleagues at Queensland Writers
Centre, past and present; our families, friends and
supporters of the Brothers Groth;
Petra Talvio; Cheryl
Whiting; Susie Maroney; and the island of Cuba.
D A R R E N G R O T H is the author of six novels, including the acclaimed ya works Are You Seeing Me?
and Munro vs. the Coyote. He was the winner of the 2016
Adelaide Festival Award for Young Adult Literature
and has been a finalist in numerous other prestigious
prizes, including the Governor General’s Literary
Awards, the Sheila A. Egoff Children’s Literature Prize
and the cbca Book of the Year. Darren is a former
special-education teacher and the proud father of a
son with autism spectrum disorder (asd). He lives in
Delta, British Columbia.
S I M O N G R O T H is a writer and editor whose books include Off The Record: 25 Years of Music Street Press and Hunted Down and Other Tales. Simon’s work and reporting on the future of the book with Queensland
Writers Centre has seen him travel the globe to discuss
and explore the challenges and opportunities for writers and readers in a digital world. He lives in Brisbane,
Australia.
For more information, visit darrengroth.com and
simongroth.com. Follow them on Instagram
@thebrothersgroth.
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Darren Groth now lives in Vancouver,
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