“I know. You did good. You did real good. You hung on.”
“Is Lily dead?”
I didn’t know. Up on that ramp, a man I’d ridden with for nineteen years was pushing on her chest, and I didn’t know if she was coming back.
So I told him the only true thing I had.
“There’s a man up there right now who’s an Army medic, and he’s taking care of her. He’s the best there is. But she’s gonna want her big brother when she wakes up. And I can’t get you out of here unless you let go of that pipe and hang onto me instead.”
He shook his head hard. His teeth were chattering so bad I could hear them clicking.
“I’ll go under,” he said. “I can’t go under.”
He was right that we’d have to. The only way out was down and sideways, about four feet underwater, past the edge of the barrels. For a six-year-old who’d just nearly drowned, that might as well have been four miles.
I’ve thought a lot since then about what made him finally trust me. I think it was the next thing I said, which I hadn’t planned to say, and which I hadn’t said out loud to anybody in a long, long time.
“Caleb, when I was a little bit older than you, my baby brother fell in a pond. And I was scared, just like you’re scared now. And I didn’t go in after him because I couldn’t swim.” I had to stop for a second. “So after that I learned how. I learned real good. I learned so I’d never have to be scared of the water again. You understand? I’m the best swimmer you’re ever gonna meet. You hold my neck and close your eyes and count to three, and when you open them, we’ll be out.”
He looked at me for a long time.
Then one of his little hands let go of the pipe and grabbed a fistful of my beard.
“One,” I said. “Two…”
I didn’t wait for three.
We came up out of that hole into the daylight, and the first thing I heard was the most beautiful sound God ever made.
A baby screaming her head off.
Lily was alive. She was on her side on the concrete with Dutch kneeling over her, and she was coughing up lake water and wailing with everything in her little body. Dutch had his hand on her back, and his shoulders were shaking, and I realized he was crying too. Dutch, who did two tours. Dutch, who I’ve never seen so much as wince.
Rooster took Caleb out of my arms and carried him up the ramp. I couldn’t have done it. Somewhere under that dock, my knee had quit on me completely, and I crawled the last few feet on my hands like an old dog.
The grandmother saw Caleb and made a sound I won’t try to describe. She tried to stand up and fell back down, and Rooster just put the boy right into her lap. She wrapped both arms around him and rocked and rocked, and she kept saying, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry,” and I couldn’t tell if she was saying it to him, or to God, or to the lake.
Shorty came down from the road carrying every jacket we owned. He wrapped the baby in his flannel and the grandmother in his leather, and he gave Caleb his vest, which hung down to the kid’s ankles like a dress. Caleb looked down at the big skull patch on the back of it and then up at me.
He didn’t look scared anymore.
The ambulance took twenty-two minutes. That’s how it is out there. The lake’s a long way from anywhere.
We used those twenty-two minutes the best we could. Tank and Rooster built a wall around the grandmother and the kids with their bodies to block the wind. Dutch never took his hand off that baby. Shorty walked up and down the road, flagging so the ambulance wouldn’t miss the turn.
And I sat on the concrete next to the grandmother with my leg stuck straight out in front of me, and somewhere in there, she started talking.
Her name was Margaret. She was seventy-three. Her daughter had dropped the kids off with her for the weekend so she and her husband could go to a wedding in St. Louis. First time Margaret had ever had both of them overnight by herself.
“We came down to look at the boats,” she said. “Caleb loves the boats. And his hat blew off, and he ran after it right to the edge, and I just let go of the stroller to grab him. Just for one second. I thought the brake was on.”
“The ramp’s slick,” I said. “All that algae. Brake doesn’t mean much on a slope like that.”
“It rolled so fast. Caleb saw it and he grabbed the handle and it pulled him right in. And then I grabbed it and it pulled me in too.” She looked down at the boy in her lap. “He was trying to save his sister. He’s six years old and he went in after her.”
“He’s a good brother,” I said.
“I couldn’t get her out. Her strap was caught on something. I kept pulling and I couldn’t get her out and I couldn’t get back up and I couldn’t see Caleb anywhere.” She closed her eyes. “I remember thinking I’d killed them both. That was the last thing I remember. I thought, my daughter trusted me, and I’ve killed them both.”
“You didn’t let go of that stroller,” I told her. “You were out cold, and you still had both hands on it. You kept it from floating out past the drop-off. That’s why we found her so fast.”
She looked at me then, really looked at me, for the first time.
And her face did something I didn’t understand right away. Something like shame.
“I saw you,” she said quietly. “This morning. At the gas station in Hermitage.”
I remembered. We’d stopped for coffee and a fill-up. A woman with two kids had been coming out of the store as we were going in.
