The Medicine Show (pt 4).

He pushes open the gate to the swimming pool, crossing the patio, stepping over a kid’s forgotten Big Wheel and setting upright one of the lawn chairs. Rainwater and drowned bugs pour out of the piping. He sits; the plastic strapping is cold and the sun is hot, and they go to war on the field of his skin. The pool, still in the shadow of the willows that grow against the fence, is too blue, like it’s filled with paint rather than water.

Ruben, the maintenance man who takes care of the complex, unclogging the toilets and mowing the plots of grass that grow to the left of every doorway, enters the pool gate, singing in Spanish. He’s stocky, Latino, and wears a dirty straw cowboy hat; he raises a hand and Kyle does likewise. Some storm, eh? He says as he produces a trash bag from his back pocket and shakes it open, pulling free wet pieces of newspaper that are lodged in the links of the fence. His song is low and sweet, wavering like Theremin music, working unhurriedly as he makes his way through the litter blown up against the chain link fence.

When he’s gone to some other part of the complex Kyle gets up from the chair, the slats leaving dents in his legs, and steps to the edge of the pool, sitting, slipping his legs into the cold water, resting his arms on his knees. It’s too early yet – the water’s not even treated yet and it’s as cold as meltwater. And when he jumps in the shock is fantastic, and the current swirls around him with bugs, leaves, and an action figure dressed in a military uniform. The gauze is unspooling by the time he breaks the surface. He shakes loose of the material, irritated, and lets it sink, joining the rest of the storm debris on the bottom of the pool tile. This is his first good look at what he’s done since he did it, when the wounds were laid open ugly and bleeding: the stitches cross his wrists like the indications of railroad tracks on a map – that he’d cut straight across rather than lengthwise was of great interest to everyone, because apparently this meant he wasn’t serious. That’s why they let him go home with a surprising lack of fuss. People who really mean to do it, he was told, just do it.

Two strokes take Kyle back to the bottom; the pool’s drain cover, a large circle of plastic with long slats across the middle, has been pulled free. The kids do this, daring each other, coming up with it in their hands like oyster divers. The cover backs away as he reaches for it; he snags it and positions it over its hole, pushing down. It resists docking so he tries harder, and as it slides into place his hand slips through the slats, stuck there suddenly like a button through its hole. His fingers are deep in some sort of slime. His hand will not come free.

He braces himself and pulls but now the drain is as stubborn coming out. One of the knots on his wrist breaks; he’s bleeding again. He looks up at the sky; his fingertips just break the surface. And this is when he sees the shark: it’s enormous, three times as large as he is and arcing around the curved edge of the pool, tail flapping as it propels forward, mouth slightly open to reveal those teeth. It’s a Great White by the look of it, and the impossibility of it is lost in the primal fear that takes over his mind. There are many things in this world, he’s come to learn, that shouldn’t be, but are, that shouldn’t happen, but do.

He yanks hard on his hand and the shark makes a turn, halfway out of the water, its dorsal fin spearing through the canopy as its underside drags along the bottom, aiming right for him. The skin on his wrist rips and curls into mini scrolls as he frees himself, firing his body to the surface, choking, pulling up onto the concrete lip and then heaving his legs clear of the water, narrowly avoiding the huge surge of water splashing over the side of the pool that is created by the shark snapping on empty space. The water knocks the recently uprighted chairs to their sides.

Kyle gets to his knees; shivering, he looks down into the water. There is no shark.

He stands, taking his shirt from the chair and wrapping it tightly around his wrist, roses of blood blooming through the fabric. With his arms crossed in front of him, one hand keeping the shirt tight, he pushes the gate open with his foot. When the news interviewed him they called him a hero for jumping in after the Indian – he wasn’t going to say anything but somebody saw him do it, somebody who was up on the bridge who didn’t want to give their name. Kyle doesn’t think you can be a hero by doing nothing, and he tried to tell them that but people don’t want to listen, they just want to buy you a cup of coffee like he was a good luck charm. He ran but he didn’t run fast enough; he could hear the guy who wasn’t an Indian all the way down to his dreams no matter what he did. No matter what. But it won’t last forever: in two years he will be killed when he gives a ride to a drifter who tries to rob him, and when the car crashes and Kyle is killed and the drifter is not, he has the sense of mind to make the motions of saving Kyle when the police arrive. And they will call him a hero, too.