“Finish strong,” Scott says, as much for himself as the boy.
He gives one more look to the sky, then starts to swim. He uses a sidestroke now, scissoring his legs, one ear submerged in the salty murk. His movements are clumsier, jerky. He can’t seem to find a rhythm. Both of them are shivering, their core temperature falling with every passing second. It is just a matter of time. Soon his pulse and respiration will slow, even as his heart rate increases. Hypothermia will quicken its pace. A massive heart attack is not out of the question. The body needs warmth to operate. Without it, his major organs will start to fail.
Don’t give up.
Never give up.
He swims without pause, teeth chattering, refusing to surrender. The weight of the boy threatens to sink him, but he kicks harder with his rubbery legs. Around him the sea is bruise purple and midnight blue, the cold white of the wave caps glimmering in the moonlight. The skin of his legs has started to chafe in the spots where they rub together, the salt doing its insidious damage. His lips are cracked and dry. Above them, seagulls chatter and glide like vultures waiting for the end. They mock him with their cries, and in his mind he tells them all to go to hell. There are things in the sea that are impossibly old, astonishingly large, great undersea rivers pulling warm water up from the Gulf of Mexico. The Atlantic Ocean is a nexus of highways, of undersea flyovers and bypasses. And there, like a speck on a dot on a flea, is Scott Burroughs, shoulder screaming as he fights for his life.
After what feels like hours, the boy shouts a single word.
“Land.”
For a moment Scott isn’t sure the boy actually spoke. It must be a dream. But then the boy repeats the word, pointing.
“Land.”
It seems like a mistake, like the boy has mixed up the word for survival with the word for something else. Scott lifts his head, half blind with exhaustion. Behind them, the sun is starting to rise, a gentle pinkening to the sky. At first Scott thinks the landmass ahead of them is just some low-hanging clouds on the horizon, but then he realizes that he is the one who’s moving.
Land. Miles of it. Open beach curving toward a rocky point. Streets and houses. Cities.
Salvation.
Scott resists the urge to celebrate. There is still a mile to go at least, a hard mile against riptides and undertow. His legs are quivering, his left arm numb. And yet he can’t help but feel a surge of elation.
He did it. He saved them.
How is that possible?
*
Thirty minutes later a graying man in his underwear stumbles out of the surf, carrying a four-year-old boy. They collapse together onto the sand. The sun is up now, thin white clouds framed against a deep Mediterranean blue. The temperature is somewhere around sixty-eight degrees, gulls hanging weightless in the breeze. The man lies panting, a heaving torso ringed with useless rubber limbs. Now that they’re here he cannot move another inch. He is done.
Curled up against his chest, the boy is crying softly.
“It’s okay,” Scott tells him. “We’re safe now. We’re gonna be okay.”
There is an empty lifeguard station a few feet away. The sign on the back reads MONTAUK STATE BEACH.
New York. He swam all the way to New York.
Scott smiles, a smile of pure, joyous fuck you.
Well, hell, he thinks.
It’s going to be beautiful day.
Chapter 4
A walleyed fisherman drives them to the hospital. The three crowd together on the worn bench seat of his pickup, bouncing on battered shocks. Scott is pantless and shoeless, without money or ID. Both he and the boy are racked with bone-deep chills. They have been in sixty-degree water for almost eight hours. Hypothermia has made them slow-witted and mute.
The fisherman speaks to them eloquently in Spanish about Jesus Christ. The radio is on, mostly static. Beneath their feet wind whistles into the cabin through a rust hole in the floor. Scott pulls the boy to him and tries to warm him through friction, rubbing the child’s arms and back vigorously with his one good hand. On the beach, Scott told the fisherman in his limited Spanish that the boy was his son. It seemed easier than trying to explain the truth, that they are strangers drawn together by a freak accident.
Scott’s left arm is completely useless now. Pain knifes through his body with every pothole, leaving him dizzy and nauseous.
You’re okay, he tells himself, repeating the words over and over. You made it. But deep down he still can’t believe they survived.