Ken got his palms on the slick top of the gate. He pulled himself up, sliding across on his belly, feeling the concrete bite him through his shirt. He was still wearing the shirt Dorcas had given him days ago, that ridiculous, long-sleeved thing that said, “I went to BOISE and all I got was this STUPID SHIRT (and a raging case of the CLAP)” across the front. The sleeves were in tatters. He couldn’t tell if the words remained. He suddenly hoped the concrete was scratching them off; suddenly hoped that none of his old students would catch him wearing it.
He realized how foolish both hopes were. He switched to hoping that his friends were still alive, and that he himself would survive the next minutes.
He made it halfway over the concrete. Then a bit more than halfway. A tipping point. He slid like a fish over the top, splashed down on the other side.
The current held him once again.
70
He was the world’s slowest, wettest, most unwieldy pinball in a machine designed by a sadist.
Bouncing back and forth from bank to bank, mud getting into his ears each time he collided with land, water ripping past his eyes so fast he was blind, the sound of the current and the splash of the rain so loud hearing was impossible.
Somehow Ken found the presence of mind to realize that he had never specified a point for him and the others to get out of the canal. No rendezvous point to shoot for, to try and meet up.
No plan is perfect, Ken.
Then he was under again. Kicking frantically, hoping he was kicking up instead of down. Knowing it probably didn’t matter. His clothing and his shoes kept pulling him, pulling him.
His hands were cupped. The one swim teacher he’d had – a young woman named Carrie who seemed so old to an eight-year-old boy but who was probably all of nineteen – would have been proud at the way he tried to catch the water. “Pick an apple and put it in your pocket,” she always said.
Only the frigging apples kept falling apart in his hands, kept disintegrating in a frothy flow that was impossible to catch or use to pull himself forward.
At last, in desperation, he let himself go limp.
“Be water, my friend.”
Maybe good ol’ Bruce had gone for a dunk or two in an irrigation canal at high tide. The second Ken loosened up and stopped struggling, the sinking sensation, if not disappeared, then lessened significantly. His body lengthened out, his feet actually felt like they were trying to surface instead of bury themselves in the muck at the bottom of the canal.
He caught his first apple. Carrie would have been proud.
Look, Mom! I did it!
Ken’s parents had been dead for a decade. Mom died of breast cancer, Dad died in a car accident a year later. They died before Derek was born. Why was he thinking of them?
Not ready to meet you yet, Mom and Dad. Hope you understand.
Put an apple in his pocket. Pick another.
The swimming was clumsy. Awkward. But the rain he felt on the occasions he managed to turn up his face and grab a quick breath sounded like the applause of a beautiful older girl in a blue bathing suit. “Great job, Kenny! Pick those apple trees clean, kiddo!”
Another thought intruded into the almost-pleasant dream. It cast away the remembrance of something that might have been a first crush if he’d been old enough to understand the concept. Ripped it in two like old cloth.
Gates. Other gates.
The flow control gates came in all shapes, all configurations. Ken didn’t know if the next one would be anything like the last one.
He switched back to his previous attempts to right himself. The water grabbed him again, trying to push him down like the one big boy in the pool had done every time Carrie’s back turned.
What was his name?
Does it matter?
He saw the gate.
Unlike the first one – the one he slammed into – this one extended well out of the water. Ken couldn’t see past it, didn’t see how any of his friends could have gotten past it.
Then he realized that the water level wasn’t nearly high enough for this to be a closed flow control gate. That would be a dam, with water surging high against its back.
He had time for a quick breath. Then the water dragged him completely under.
Into the concrete box.
71
Ken passed from twilight to midnight in an instant. One moment he was in the green-gray of the rain and the speeding sluice the canal had become. The next moment he was in blackness as he passed into a concrete tunnel.
He collided with the sides of the box. Piece of skin came away. He screamed. Couldn’t help it. Bubbles rose. Had nowhere to go. Clustered around his nose and face, but gave no light to his eyes.
The dark lasted forever, and Ken knew that sometimes canals shifted sideways. Passed under street intersections or long stretches of empty land. He hoped this wasn’t one of those moments.
No. Can’t be. Saw the others.
But had he seen them before the gate – in which case this could be a sideways, subterranean shift – or after?
He had just enough time to panic.
Be water.
He floated. Began to sink. It was a good thing: his body stopped hitting the concrete.
Twilight came again. Or perhaps the dawn.
A hand grabbed him by the hair. Yanked him up.
A voice.
“Look at this. The big fish that didn’t get away.”