The crying stops.
“Hey,” he shouts, kicking against the undercurrent, “where are you?”
He looks for the wreckage, but whatever pieces haven’t sunk have floated off in any number of directions. Scott strains to hear, to find the child.
“Hey!” he yells again. “I’m here. Where are you?”
For a moment there is just the sound of the waves, and Scott starts to wonder if maybe it was gulls he heard. But then a child’s voice comes, sharp and surprisingly close.
“Help!”
Scott lunges toward the sound. He is no longer alone, no longer a solitary man engaged in an act of self-preservation. Now he is responsible for the life of another. He thinks of his sister, who drowned in Lake Michigan when she was sixteen, and he swims.
He finds the child clinging to a seat cushion thirty feet away. It is the boy. He can’t be more than four.
“Hey,” says Scott when he reaches him. “Hey, sweetie.”
His voice catches in his throat as he touches the boy’s shoulder, and he realizes he is crying.
“I’m here,” he says. “I’ve got you.”
The seat cushion doubles as a flotation device with arm straps and a cinch belt, but it is designed for an adult, so Scott has a hard time getting it to stay on the boy, who is shivering from the cold.
“I threw up,” the boy says.
Scott wipes his mouth gently.
“That’s okay. You’re okay. Just a little seasick.”
“Where are we?” the little boy asks.
“We’re in the ocean,” Scott tells him. “There was a plane crash and we’re in the ocean, but I’m going to swim to shore.”
“Don’t leave me,” the boy says, panic in his voice.
“No, no,” says Scott. “Of course not. I’m taking you with me. We’re just going to—I have to get this thing to stay on you. And then I’ll—you’ll lie on top and I’ll pull you behind me. How does that sound?”
The boy nods, and Scott gets to work. It’s hard with only one working arm, but after a few torturous moments he manages to tie the flotation device straps into a weave. He slips the boy into the harness and studies the results. It’s not as tight as he’d like, but it should keep the boy above the water.
“Okay,” says Scott, “I need you to hold on tight and I’m going to pull you to shore. Can you—do you know how to swim?”
The kid nods.
“Good,” says Scott. “So if you fall off the cushion I want you to kick real hard and paddle with your arms, okay?”
“Dog and cat,” says the boy.
“That’s right. Dog and cat with your hands, just like Mommy taught you.”
“My daddy.”
“Sure. Just like Daddy taught you, okay?”
The boy nods. Scott sees his fear.
“Do you know what a hero is?” Scott asks him.
“He fights the bad guys,” the boy says.
“That’s right. The hero fights the bad guys. And he never gives up, right?”
“No.”
“Well, I need you to be the hero now, okay? Just pretend the waves are the bad guys and we’re gonna swim through them. And we can’t give up. We won’t. We’ll just keep swimming until we reach land, okay?”
The boy nods. Wincing, Scott loops his left arm through one of the straps. His shoulder is screaming now. Each swell that lifts them adds to his sense of disorientation.
“Okay,” he says. “Let’s do this.”
Scott closes his eyes and tries once again to feel which way to swim.
Behind you, he thinks. The shore is behind you.
He rotates carefully around the boy in the water and starts to kick, but just as he does moonlight breaks through the fog. A patch of starry black is briefly visible overhead. Scott searches desperately for constellations he recognizes, the gap closing quickly. Then he spots Andromeda, and then the Big Dipper, and with it the North Star.
It’s the other way, he realizes with a sickening vertigo.
For a moment Scott feels an overwhelming urge to vomit. Had the sky not cleared, then he and the boy would have set out into the Atlantic deep, the East Coast receding behind them with every kick, until exhaustion overtook them and they sank without a trace.
“Change of plans,” he tells the boy, trying to keep his voice light. “Let’s go the other way.”
“Okay.”
“Okay. That’s good.”
Scott kicks them into position. The farthest he has ever swum is fifteen miles, but that was when he was nineteen, and he had trained for months. Plus the race was in a lake with no current. And both of his arms worked. Now it’s night, and the water temperature is dropping, and he will have to fight the strong Atlantic current for who knows how many miles.
If I survive this, he thinks, I’m going to send Jack LaLanne’s widow a fruit basket.
The thought is so ridiculous that, bobbing in the water, Scott starts to laugh, and for a moment can’t stop. He thinks of himself standing at the counter of Edible Arrangements, filling out the card.
With deepest affection—Scott.