swimmers
I saw a man die today. He couldn’t have been more than thirty, twenty five maybe. His feet didn’t move as he dried on the dock. His friends had lost track of him in the water, I’m not sure where or when. They said about ten minutes. I have suspisions. I’m sure someone who probably doesn’t know his name knows the truth of what really happened, and I’m not sure if they’ll ever tell anyone. Or they might. How many therapists they’ll have to recite it to, again and again. How the lifeguard was off-duty and the signs prohibiting jumping off of the diving boards had been moved, how kids were jumping off the boards one after the next, before the wake had settled and the previous jumper was coming up for their first air - yes, then, I think, it must have been. And before people would fight over who would pump his chest, whether it was 15:2 or 30:1 ratios for recussitation, someone would spot his legs beginning to float and scream, there would be more screams, but it wasn’t enough to startle him. It was so quiet down there. If we could have pulled him up with our cellular net, the dozens of cell phones arrested to ears and impatient strangers begging for the paramedics, we would have fished him out to easier air. And did the next diver shudder, thinking their feet had hit a floating log, deep down there in the trajectory of his dive? Another would take a turn to pump his chest even harder. He would vomit up blood that would not flow. His feet rocked as they shook his body on the floating dock, rocking in the waves of wake of passing yachts with women sunning on rooves and he rocked, in line with the motion of the water, when that last thought of the hot sun on his body melted into the splash of the water and the quiet, that deadened quiet, as he tried to resurface.