Before the Fall

“Stop,” says the boy, afraid suddenly that his survival is in the hands of a crazy person.

“Okay,” says Scott, trying to reassure the boy. “It’s okay. Just a joke I thought of. We’re going now.”

It takes him a few minutes to find his stroke, a modified breaststroke, pulling water more with the right hand than the left, legs kicking hard. It is a noisy mess, his left shoulder a bag of broken glass. A gnawing worry settles into his gut. They will drown, both of them. They will both be lost to the deep. But then somehow a rhythm presents itself, and he begins to lose himself in the repetition. Arm up and in, legs scissoring. He swims into the endless deep, ocean spray in his face. It’s hard to keep track of time. What time did the plane take off? Ten p.m.? How much time has passed? Thirty minutes? An hour? How long until the sun comes up? Eight hours? Nine?

Around him the sea is pockmarked and ever changing. Swimming, he tries not to think about the great tracts of open water. He tries not to picture the depth of the ocean or how the Atlantic in August is the birthplace of massive storm fronts, hurricanes that form in the cold troughs of undersea gorges, weather patterns colliding, temperature and moisture forming huge pockets of low pressure. Global forces conspiring, barbarian hordes with clubs and war paint who charge shrieking into the fray, and instantly the sky thickens, blackens, an ominous gale of lightning strikes, huge claps of thunder like the screams of battle, and the sea, which moments ago was calm, turns to hell on earth.

Scott swims in the fragile calm, trying to empty his mind.

Something brushes against his leg.

He freezes, starts to sink, then has to kick his legs to stay afloat.

Shark, he thinks.

You have to stay still.

But if he stops moving he’ll drown.

He rolls over onto his back, breathing deeply to inflate his chest. He has never been more aware of his tenuous place on the food chain. Every instinct in his body screams at him not to turn his back on the deep, but he does. He floats in the sea as calmly as he can, rising and falling with the tide.

“What are we doing?” the boy asks.

“Resting,” Scott tells him. “Let’s be real quiet now, okay? Don’t move. Try to keep your feet out of the water.”

The boy is silent. They rise and fall with the swells. Scott’s primal reptilian brain orders him to flee. But he ignores it. A shark can smell a drop of blood in a million gallons of water. If either Scott or the boy is bleeding they’re done. But if not and they stay completely still the shark (if it was a shark) should leave them alone.

He takes the boy’s hand.

“Where’s my sister?” the boy whispers.

“I don’t know,” Scott whispers back. “The plane went down. We got separated.”

A long beat.

“Maybe she’s okay,” Scott whispers. “Maybe your parents have her, and they’re floating someplace else. Or maybe they’ve already been rescued.”

After a long silence the boy says:

“I don’t think so.”

They float for a while with this thought. Overhead the fog begins to dissipate. It starts slowly, the clearing, first a hint of sky peeking through, then stars appear, and finally the crescent moon, and just like that the ocean around them becomes a sequined dress. From his back, Scott finds the North Star, confirms that they’re going in the right direction. He looks over at the boy, eyes wide with fear. For the first time Scott can see his tiny face, the furrowed brow and bowed mouth.

“Hi,” says Scott, water lapping at his ears.

The boy’s expression is flat, serious.

“Hi,” he says back.

“Are we rested?” Scott asks.

The boy nods.

“Okay,” says Scott, turning over. “Let’s go home.”

He rights himself and starts to swim, certain that at any moment he will feel a strike from below, the razor grip of a steam-shovel mouth, but it doesn’t come, and after a while he puts the shark out of his mind. He wills them forward, stroke after stroke, his legs moving behind him in figure eights, his right arm lunging and pulling, lunging and pulling. To keep his mind busy, he thinks of other liquids he would rather be swimming in; milk, soup, bourbon. An ocean of bourbon.

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