Christopher sighed. Then forced a smile to his face. A long way from the smile he had worn before, but it still gladdened Ken to see it. “You only live once, right?”
He jumped in. Dove right over Buck’s head, into the canal. His bucket was the only thing that didn’t disappear below the water. In a moment he surfaced, clutched the bucket, and was swept away.
Ken reached out a hand.
Maggie took it.
Buck was halfway into the water. The current grabbed him as well. Dragged him off.
Ken helped Maggie switch the carrier and Liz around to its back-carry configuration, hitching it as high as he could. He tried to take it from her halfway through the process, but she bared her teeth. Half-joking… but half-serious.
Ken pushed his bucket at her.
“No,” she said, pushing it back.
“Take it,” he insisted. And bared his teeth in a mockery of the expression she had just made. It made him wonder what she thought of his new Beverly Hillbillies look, the gap in his front teeth no doubt presenting quite the sight.
She didn’t seem to notice. Just kissed his cheek as she took the extra bucket.
She slid into the water. And slid away.
68
Sally looked at Ken with an expression that he couldn’t help but think looked exasperated, as though the snow leopard were saying, “Don’t you know cats don’t bathe?” The cat loped off on the side of the canal. Apparently rain was acceptable, but jumping into an irrigation ditch was an unreasonable demand. Still, Ken didn’t worry about the cat’s ability to keep pace.
He moved to the edge of the bank himself.
Gunfire barked. He didn’t know if Aaron was firing at him, or just shooting in the air. He hoped it was a warning shot. But it didn’t change his next move. His family was sweeping down the canal, so he was hardly going to wait where he was, hands up and hoping for mercy.
He jumped the last bit and landed in the canal.
The water swept over him.
As a kid he had always thought it would be fun to do this. To jump in with an inner tube, maybe a snorkel. Or just go with nothing but his arms and legs and skill as a swimmer. Every kid he knew thought it would be cool.
Every kid, as it turned out, was wrong.
The water invaded his mouth and nose, turning him into a sputtering wreck. He thought he would be able to swim, at least in a rudimentary fashion, but his feet resisted his mental direction. Instead of kicking behind him they kept stabbing down, feeling for ground that was too far to reach. Still, they kept trying, and kept dragging Ken below the surface as they did.
His hands swept back and forth. And like his feet they seemed more intent on finding something to hold than they were on swimming.
He was going to drown unless he could get himself under control.
Ken struggled. His clothes, already saturated when he jumped in, dragged him down. His shoes had somehow converted to lead-soled diving boots.
A Bruce Lee quote came to him: “Be formless… shapeless, like water.” The old master had been talking about fighting forms, and Ken wondered how he would have felt being dunked in an Idaho ditch.
He went under. Came up for a moment. Went under again. Felt himself tiring.
And slammed into something. Hard.
69
Ken hit it with his right side, a bruising impact that probably would have sent him into a tailspin of agony if it hadn’t been just one more of a thousand pains he’d already suffered.
As it was, he barely felt it. More so because when he hit the obstruction the water surged and pushed him upward. At first he wondered what was happening, then realized: the gate! He had hit the concrete box of the flow control gate that they had earlier crossed. A lateral move that had taken long minutes on land had spanned short seconds in the canal’s torrent.
Ken reached the top of the gate, pulling himself over. He gasped for air. Oxygen mixed with the water in his lungs and the moisture in the air, but it was sweet all the same.
He looked forward. Couldn’t see much, but he thought he spotted a few forms floating down the canal. Maybe something slinking next to it. Seemed like they were a long way away. He couldn’t tell if they were moving under their own locomotion. If Maggie or the others hadn’t been watching, they could have hit the concrete headfirst and been knocked out. Drowned seconds later.
Then he realized if that had happened they likely wouldn’t have gone over the gate. He would have found them here, floating on this side.
He looked behind him. No sign of Aaron. Or none that he could see. But he doubted the cowboy had just given up.