by Mike Ramon
Chapter Nine
The car sat idling at the curb as people went in and out of the North Side Sports Complex. Inside of the car, a mother and her son. After being prodded by his father for the past week that maybe he should go out and play with his friends, maybe he should go see a movie, maybe he should do something, anything, that any normal twelve year old boy does on long summer days, Frankie had announced over a breakfast of scrambled eggs and buttered wheat toast that he wanted to go swimming. Frankie’s mother had been quick to tell him that he didn’t have to go swimming if he didn’t want to, but he told her that he did want to. It was a lie, of course; Frankie just wanted to make his dad happy. Mary Gardener had insisted on driving her son to the Sports Complex herself.
“Are you sure you don’t want me to come with you?” Mary asked as they sat in the car.
“I’m sure, Mom. I’ll be fine.”
She smiled a painful smile and touched his face lightly before looking away from him.
“I’ll be back at one o’clock, okay baby?” she said.
“Okay.”
Frankie opened his door and stepped out into the summer sunshine.
“Wait,” Mary said as Frankie was about to shut the door.
Frankie held the door open, leaning into the car to look at his mother, his towel draped over one shoulder. He had his swimming trunks on under his pants.
“Yeah, Mom?”
“Just…I love you.”
“I love you too,” Frankie said.
He shut the door.
“Be careful,” Mary said.
Frankie heard her through the closed window, and he raised a hand to give her a reassuring wave. He turned and head for the entrance of the Sports Complex. He knew that his mother would wait and watch until he went inside, and maybe even for a little while after that, but he didn’t turn back again. He walked through the doors into the cool interior of the building. He walked up to the front desk, and the lady sitting behind it greeted him with a smile.
“How can I help you?” she asked.
“I’d like to go swimming.”
“Okay. Resident or non-resident?”
Non-residents had to pay a little more to use the pool and the Sports Complex’s other facilities--an indoor ice skating rink and a fitness center.
“Resident,” Frankie said.
“All right-y. Do have your Park District I.D. card?”
“Huh?’
“You’ll need your Park District I.D. to receive the resident’s rate, hon.”
“Oh. Well, I don’t have it; my parents must have forgotten to give it to me.”
The woman made a face.
“Do you think you could call home and ask them to bring it to you?”
Frankie shifted from one foot to the other, starting to get angry with this cheerful woman, hating her for her cheerfulness.
“No; their busy,” he said.
“Hmm. You really need the I.D. to get the resident’s rate. Otherwise, anyone could say they were a resident.”
Frankie looked behind him; a small line had formed. It was a hot summer day, a perfect day to take the family down to the pool, and now these people were stuck behind some kid who had forgotten to bring his Park District I.D.
“Not that I’m saying that I don’t believe you,” the woman was quick to assure him. “But rules are rules.”
Frankie wanted to just give up and leave, but he had nowhere to go until one o’clock, when his mom was supposed to pick him up, so he ignored the urge.
“How much is it for a resident?” he asked.
“Six dollars.”
“And for a non-resident?”
“Nine dollars.”
Frankie couldn’t help rolling his eyes as he dug into his pocket to pull out the money his dad had given him for the day. He counted out a five and four singles, and handed them to the woman. She deposited the bills into the cash drawer and smiled up at him.
“Thank you. Go right on in.”
Frankie bit back a smart-ass comment and walked past the front desk. There were two hallways, and Frankie headed down the left one, which led to the men’s locker room. He took off his shirt and pants and stowed them away in a locker, putting the orange locker key and what was left of his money in the webbed pocket of his trunks. He then went into the showers and got his hair wet. The Sports Complex had a rule that everybody entering the pool area had to shower first, and they usually had someone watching the locker room exits to check and make sure that people were complying. Frankie had learned long ago that all you really needed to do was wet your hair really quick.
He headed for the short tunnel leading from the locker room to the pool area, and when he walked out once again under the clear, summer sky he saw the shower checker guy standing a few feet away from the entrance to the tunnel. Frankie shook his hair like a wet dog, letting the guy see the water spraying loose from his hair. The guy looked at him with a bored expression, and looked away.
The pool was crowded. The depth of the pool ranged from three feet at the shallow end to ten feet at the deep end. There was a roped off area near the diving birds that was even deeper, but swimmers weren’t allowed to cross into the diving area. For the littlest kids, there was a foot-and-a-half deep kiddie pool set off to the side of the main pool. Set away from both the main pool and the kiddie pool there was a hot tub. The hot tub was walled in, and you had to enter through a gate. You weren’t supposed to use the hot tub unless you were at least eighteen years old; a few times Frankie and his friends had snuck thought the gate and into the hot tub, but they always got caught.
Frankie found an unoccupied pool chair and took a seat, spreading his towel over the back of the chair. It was hot, and he knew the cool water of the pool would feel good, but he decided to wait a while for the crowd to thin out a little bit. He lounged back in the chair and closed his eyes, listening to the splashing, the laughter, and the calls of “Marco” and “Polo”.
Eventually the sound of the swimmers and revelers faded away as Frankie drifted off into a light sleep, the kind of sleep that was best suited to lazy summer days. He didn’t dream of the Home, or of that terrible room where the bad kids went (along with plenty of good kids) to be punished. He dreamt instead of flying in a plane and looking down at the clouds from above. The clouds looked like white cotton balls that had been spilled out over the earth. Frankie had never been in a plane in his life, but in the dream it felt great to be high above everything, all of the people that he knew, all of the places he had known and loved, but would leave some day.
He was pulled from sleep by the sharp sound of a whistle being blown. Frankie sat up on the chair and looked around. Without a watch he had no way to tell how long he had been asleep. The pool was slightly less packed than it had been before he nodded off, and he figured that it was as good a time as ever to plunge in. He kicked off his shoes, then pulled the locker key and money from his pocket and deposited them in the left shoe before stowing the shoes under the pool chair. He pushed himself up out of the chair and walked around the pool to where the black numbers on the deck showed the water was five feet deep. He stretched one leg out and leaned down, dipping his foot into the chlorinated water; it was cold, but not too cold. He held his nose and jumped in feet first, sinking down until his feet touched the bottom of the pool, and he pushed himself back up so that he was treading water on the surface.
The bracing coolness felt wonderful. Frankie was five feet tall exactly, and he found that by standing on tiptoes he could keep his mouth above the water line. Frankie tiptoed further toward the deep end until he had to push off of the bottom again to keep his head above water. He didn’t feel much like swimming laps, so he just kept himself afloat by paddling. He was still near the wall and out of the way of other swimmers.
A wave of water hit Frankie from behind; he paid it no mind, figuring it for the wake of a passing swimmer. Then a second wave hit him, harder than the first, and he realized that he was being deliberately splashed.. He grabbed
onto the edge of the deck and turned around to see who was splashing him.
Buddy Weaver and three other kids were standing in the pool about eight feet away; the pool was shallow enough where they were so that they didn’t need to tread water, and they stood together, looking at Frankie. Buddy was smiling; it was the kind of smile Frankie imagined Buddy had on his face right before he pulled the wings off a fly. The kid standing to Buddy’s left, a kid named Kyle, was shorter than Buddy, and the water that only reached mid-chest on Buddy came up just under this boy’s chin. Kyle also had a smile on his face. Frankie knew the kid on Buddy’s right side--his name was Kevin something-or-other, and Frankie remembered him from his second-grade class. Kevin wore a bored expression on his face, as if this whole thing were part of some routine that he had grown tired of. The last kid was behind Buddy, and it looked to Frankie as if he were trying to hide behind the bigger boy. But then the kid moved to the right a little and Frankie could see him clearly. It was Stan Mercer, the same kid who had gotten a sprained wrist courtesy of Buddy the year before. He was also the same Stan Mercer who had held Jessica back for her own protection that day down by the creek. The look on his face said that he really didn’t want to be a part of this; it also said that he wasn’t willing to not be a part of it.
“How’s it going, Frankie?” Buddy asked. “We haven’t seen you in a while.”
“Yeah, where have you been,” Kevin from second-grade asked.
“I’ve been staying in,” Frankie said.
“Why? Don’t you wanna hang around with us no more?” Buddy asked, still with that smile on his lips.
Frankie could feel anger starting to well up in him.
“You know why,” he replied.
“I do?” Buddy said. “That’s funny; I didn’t think I knew. How about you, Kyle?”
Buddy turned to Kyle.
“No, I didn’t know that you knew, Bud,” Kyle said. “Why didn’t you tell us you knew?”
Kyle laughed, and Buddy did too. Kevin still looked bored, and Stan still looked ashamed to be there.
“Do me a favor, Frankie,” Buddy said. “Even though I know, could you remind me?”
Now the anger seemed to fill Frankie’s chest until it seemed that there could not be any room left for such inconsequential things as a heart or a pair of lungs.
“My sister…you know what happened to my sister.”
“Oh yeah,” Buddy said. “I forgot all about that.”
Buddy started to turn away, but he stopped and turned back to Frankie.
“By the way, have they found her body yet?” he said.
Stan winced at Buddy’s words. Frankie mouth the words “shut up” but his throat was so tight that no sound came out.
“They should probably check all the Dumpsters in the area where she went missing,” Buddy continued. “I hear that after perverts are done fucking kids sometimes they chop ‘em up and throw them away like trash.”
Frankie pushed himself away from the wall and headed straight for Buddy. This time he wasn’t just going to land a sucker punch. This time he wasn’t going to get pummeled and dragged out of the water. This time Frankie was determined to hurt Buddy, and to hurt him bad. He willed the rage that filled him up to travel to his hands, and to make itself felt so that Buddy would never forget how badly the heat of that rage could burn. He felt his feet touch the bottom of the pool, and he no longer had to paddle. He waded up to Buddy, who watched him come with gleeful eyes. Frankie cocked back his arm and swung with all his might.
That was when Buddy, moving surprisingly fast for a big kid standing in chest-high water, swung his body out of the path of the blow, and the unchecked momentum caused Frankie to lose his footing and slip, and his head went under the water. He had just enough time to feel a flash if embarrassment, and then the embarrassment turned to panic as someone grabbed the back of his head and pushed it further down in the water. Frankie opened his eyes to try and see who was holding him down, but the water burned his eyes and everything was a blur. The hand on the back of his head closed into a fist, getting a grip on his hair, and pulled him up. It was Buddy.
“You think you’re some kind of tough guy, or something?” Buddy asked.
“Go to hell,” Frankie had time to say before his head was dunked back under.
Buddy held his head under long enough this time so that Frankie started seeing black pinpricks floating in front of his eyes. He struggled to break free of Budd’s grip, but it was futile. Buddy was strong, and he was weak. He had known this as a certainty since the day he had abandoned his sister to the darkness. He was weak. He was a coward. He was a pussy. Frankie stopped struggling then, knowing that he deserved this, that this was his atonement, to suffer for his weakness.
Frankie was pulled up again, and he sucked in deep gasps of air that burned like fire in his lungs. His head was swimming. Kevin didn’t look bored anymore; he looked scared. Kyle looked uncertain, and Stan still had that same expression on his face, the one that told Frankie that Stan sure was sorry about all of this, but not to expect any help from him.
“Hit him,” Buddy said.
It took a second for Frankie to realize that Buddy was addressing Stan. It looked like Stan himself wasn’t sure at first.
“You,” Buddy said, nodding his head toward Stan. “Come on. Hit him.”
Stan had a pained expression on his face as he realized that Buddy wasn’t going to let him just be a bystander. The problem was, Stan liked Frankie. Frankie had never thrown a stick in front of his tire when he was riding his bike, as Buddy had.
“No way, man,” Stan said.
Stan swam to the edge of the pool and pulled himself out, water pouring off of his body onto the rough deck.
“Where the hell are you going?” Buddy asked.
Stan didn’t answer; he just walked away, disappearing into a crowd of people congregating near the refreshment stand.
“I don’t know what his problem is,” Buddy said, sounding genuinely confused. “Come on, guys. Punch his lights out while I hold him for you.”
Kevin didn’t move, but after a moment of hesitation Kyle came forward.
“I’ll do it,” he piped up.
Kyle moved closer, ready to strike, and that was when a whistle blew.
“What are you kids doing?” a lifeguard standing on the deck asked them. “There’s no roughhousing allowed here.”
Buddy let go of Frankie right way.
“We’re friends,” Buddy said. “We were just playing around. Right, Frankie?
Frankie swam to the edge of the pool and climbed out.
“Are you okay, kid?” the lifeguard asked him.
“I’m fine,” Frankie said, though he felt far from fine. “Can you tell me what time it is?”
The lifeguard looked at the waterproof watch he wore on his left wrist.
“It’s twelve thirty-two,” he said.
“Thanks,” Frankie said.
Frankie hurried to the pool chair where he had left his shoes, grabbed them out from under it and headed for the runnel to the locker room, carrying the shoes in his hand. He jogged through the tunnel, his feet leaving a trail of wet prints behind him. In the locker room he considered taking a shower to wash the smell of chlorine off of his body, but decided instead to get the hell out of there as quick as possible, before Buddy got the idea to follow him.
Frankie sat down on the bench in front of the locker where he had lefty his things, took the key and money out of his shoe, set them on the bench beside him, and slipped the shoes on. As was his habit, he hadn’t untied the shoes when he took them off, and he didn’t have to retie them. He took the key, stood up and opened the locker. He dressed quickly, putting his pants on right over his soaked trunks. After slamming the locker shut Frankie picked up the money and put it in his pocket, then headed for the exit which led him to the front entrance of the Sports Complex.
The same cheerful woman was seated at the front desk, and she flashed her smile upon hi
m as he passed her. Again he bit back a nasty comment. A clock near the entrance said that it was now 12:37. Frankie walked out of the building and took a seat on the stone bench to the right of the entrance. Fifteen minutes later his mom drove up. She was a few minutes early, and for this he was grateful.
“Frankie, where’s your towel,” Mary asked as Frankie got in the car.
He remembered that he had left his towel hanging over the back of the pool chair.
“Sorry; I forgot it,” he said.
“That’s no problem. Just go back in and get it; I’m sure they’ll let you back in.”
‘No, Mom. It’s not a big deal. It’s just a towel. I’m really hungry, though, so can we just go? Maybe we can stop by Burger King on the way home. What do you think?”
“Didn’t your father give you enough money to buy something at the pool?” she asked, a wrinkle of concern appearing on her forehead.
“Yeah, he did, but I don’t really like any of the food they sell at the food stand.”
It was a lie, but she didn’t know that.
“Can we go?” Frankie asked again.
“Okay. Are you sure you’re okay?”
“Yeah, I’m fine,” he said, flashing her his best imitation of a smile.
He was turning into a good liar, Frankie thought. Mary put the car in DRIVE and pulled away from the curb. In the rearview mirror Frankie watched the Sport Complex fall further behind them. Then they turned the corner onto Ashland, and he couldn’t see it at all.