Semper Prixus (pt 7).

The public pool is named after a football coach who was killed in a car wreck when Kyle was a freshman; he and his nephew file into the locker room with the parents and their kids who are yelling and running and diving and being told to knock it off by every adult they see. Stevie spots his friends and flees, leaving Kyle to arrange their towels on the pool chairs awkwardly. He can feel the eyes of the parents on his back and practically hear them talking about him, and on some level he has to agree with them. What the hell is he doing here? How dare he show his face?

Talk to my dad, Kyle thinks, shaking the towels out and rearranging them unnecessarily. This is all his idea.

He looks inside the striped beach bag loaned by his sister, packed with extra everything as if they might get shipwrecked on the way home. The cube of bread is at the bottom, the size of a deck of playing cards and wrapped tightly in tin foil. His dad wants him to get the Shark to eat it. And he has to do it there, at the pool, his dad said, I don’t know why it’s gotta be that way but it does, that’s just what they said.

Who is they, Kyle wonders, rolling the bag closed; he shades his eyes and looks for his nephew but doesn’t see him. It’s still early in the season and the temperature plummets each time a stray cloud fragment drifts across the sun, but otherwise the day is postcard gorgeous. He sits on the chaise and starts to pull off his shirt but thinks better of it; he starts to apply lotion to his arms but decides not to. The parents are still watching him and there’s so many kids here; one of them is going to say something to him before too long, one of the dads, Kyle expects.

He’s surprised to find him so quickly. He’s in front of the four foot marker, the kids piling around him with their arms outstretched for their turn as he lifts them out of the water and tosses them backward several feet, laughing and doing over and over, the shark on his bicep twitching with every throw. Some of the parents wave at the Shark and he calls out pleasantries back, and the kids jump on his back and jump from his shoulders, and he takes it all with a smile so real that the parents nod at one another as if to say, He’s so good with kids, it’s really sweet. The Shark gives one of the kids a long hug, kissing the top of his head before launching him away, and Kyle feels sick.

It wasn’t this pool where the Shark got him – that was in a YMCA five miles east of here that no longer exists; there’s a bank there now.

Stevie is one of the kids in the Shark’s arms. He flies into the air and splashes back down to earth, and when he comes up he sees his uncle and gives him a thumbs-up. Kyle gives one back, but folds it up when he sees the Shark watching him. There’s no way he would know him, but it sure seems like he does.

Hey, somebody says. I think it’d be a real good idea if you got out of here.

Kyle looks up and sees one of the dads, barrel chested, narrow eyed, Hawaiian shirt unbuttoned and elected by the mothers clutched together in a huddle across the pool.

I’m here with my nephew, Kyle says to him. I’m staying right where I am.

I can’t believe they let somebody like you around a kid, the guy says. You know what I would do if I was like you? I’d kill myself, that’s what I’d do. You make me sick.

Kyle stands up; he is much taller than people think – they are always surprised.

Know what I would do if I was you? he says, his tone even but sharp enough to make Tough Guy back up a step. I’d be grateful my life wasn’t totally over. I’d be glad I could still hold my head up. I’d have some peace and quiet. But I’m not you, so leave me the fuck alone or I’m going to hold you underwater until you pass out and then jump on your neck until it breaks, you pile of idiotic shit.

Hey! Tough Guy wasn’t expecting this. You can’t talk to me like that!

He goes on but Kyle isn’t listening; he lays back on the lounge chair, forgetting all about Tough Guy – he was sent away once to a place where guys like him were not well regarded, and what he learned was to hit first and hit fast; talking tough was a form of that, as long as you understood that you better back up what you say. It was funny, he thought, he figured he was a dead man because he just didn’t have it in him to stay alive, but it turned out he did, and not just that but he was good at it. There are those who can run, and those who can marathon, and evil is just a muscle that everybody has that won’t be kept from rupturing by a good life; you have to use it. You have no choice.