Swimming with the Angels

by Colin Kersey

  “Can I help you with that?”

  “Well, ain’t you the gentleman?” said one. Neither was much above five feet tall and both had that shapeless, nearly sexless quality that some older women get. Their hair was dyed different colors—one platinum, the other chestnut—but they had a matched set quality about them, like salt and pepper shakers. Sisters, no doubt. I carried their chairs and picnic basket, walking slowly to keep from outdistancing them as they traversed the uneven ground in their matching white tennis shoes and white socks with the fuzzy balls in the back.

  “Ain’t it pretty, Doris?” the one with chestnut hair remarked.

  “Like a postcard of Ireland that I once saw,” Doris replied.

  I looked up from watching their feet and saw the truth of what they said. A swallow performed acrobatics over the emerald lawn as it searched for moths. A jagged row of snow-flocked mountains, like the parapets of an enormous, ancient castle, rose above the clouds. The patch of brilliant blue sky I had noted earlier was reflected in all three ponds. The statue of a cherub on the island held his hands in the air as if in praise. An air of peace and tranquility infused the farm, so that you almost expected to hear a Gregorian chant or Celtic harp playing in the background. The quality I most appreciated about the broken camera sitting on the desk in my cabin was its ability to slow, if not halt the flow of dissonant human activity down to a quiet scene like this that almost resembled an Impressionist painting.

  Heide had not enjoyed fishing. We tried once, driving several miles to a local lake at 6 a.m., but she complained of being bored and cold and we were back home within an hour. I thought she would have loved the beauty of the trout farm, however. She said it was just such places like this where one could most clearly see God’s influence. And, menial as it was, I was proud of my work preparing the trout farm for these visitors.

  The big pond that fronted my cabin (I had taken to calling it “mine” since Virgil had given me a raise) was circumscribed by several anglers, and one of the men from the Oldsmobile already had a fish on. The tip of his lightweight fiberglass pole bowed and bobbed as a flash of mercury flung itself across the pond’s surface, slashing the water with its tail to throw the hook. I admired the rainbow’s refusal to succumb to the likely inevitable end.

  “Fight like hell, brother,” I said to myself.

  I set the chairs down near where the women’s husbands were fishing. Across the water, someone else played a fish until the arc of the pole suddenly relaxed as the fish escaped and a curse resounded clearly across the water.

  “Anything else I can get you?” I asked the women.

  “Can you come to my home later and wash my windows?” Doris asked. The two women chuckled as she pulled a dollar from her purse. “This is for helping.”

  “Oh.” I stared at the money, embarrassed. No doubt I probably looked like I needed it. “That’s okay. I was just doing my job.”

  Doris seized my wrist and stuffed the bill into my hand. “C’mon, take it. Don’t be stubborn.”

  Behind the lenses of her glasses, her green eyes were small and bright. I wanted to hug her, but figured it might embarrass us both.

  “Thanks. I’ll check back later to see how you’re doing.”

  Nearby, a young father with a shaved head picked at a large nest of fishing line, while a toddler sat on her heels nearby and played with the strange, colorful objects in the tackle box.

  “Problems?”

  “Maybe your fingers are nimbler than mine.” He held out one of those cheap plastic fishing poles they sell in toy stores.

  “Tell you what: let me get you one of our bamboo rods so you can continue fishing while I work on this.”

  The bamboo poles were nine to ten feet long with a similar length of leader upon which was strung a bobber and a hook. A good, arm-extended cast would carry the bait out a more than adequate distance from shore. The action of the crude homemade poles might not be as good as those of more limber fiberglass, but their simplicity was unbeatable, and the fish could not care less.

  After several minutes of failing to untangle the line, I gave up and moved on. I dug worms in the compost pile for a young family, their towheaded son barely old enough to walk, but alarmingly mobile. He was followed everywhere by his mother, her ponytail bouncing as she tried to stay between him and the water’s edge.

  While keeping one eye on the towhead, I spoke to a couple from Vancouver B.C. The man was dressed in a tweed jacket and wool pants, casting a dry fly with studied care, while his female companion, equally tall and slender, sat nearby in a folding chair and read a book. I passed a woman in curlers who was wearing sunglasses, a black leather jacket, and a miniskirt that displayed thighs the envy of a fullback. She carried a small white poodle in one arm and appeared to be wading through a minefield as she stepped delicately in her high heels through the wet grass.

  A large black woman and her two daughters had taken up residence on the metal park bench at the east end of the pond. The girls played cards, drawing from a deck between them, while their mother read the newspaper. A fishing pole stood braced against the back of the bench. Another was propped up on a forked stick that had been stuck into the ground.

  “Check your bait, Donelle,” the mother said.

  “Already did,” one of the girls answered with a tiny lisp while displaying a mouth full of braces.

  “Check it again. I thought I saw the rod give a little twitch a while back.”

  The girl rolled her eyes. “That was on account of you sitting down.” Nevertheless, she began to reel in.

  I continued making my rounds as more anglers arrived. The fishing action was going strong; I saw several fish being pulled from the pond or added to stringers. By eleven, both sides of the long driveway had become parking lots, and there were more cars and trucks and a couple of RVs parked up along the road. The size of the crowd threatened to overwhelm Stu, whose job was to measure the trout, clean them, and collect the money. The line of people waiting with their catches had grown steadily. Stu worked at a specially built table near the foot of the driveway. A yardstick for measuring the trout was nailed to the back splash and a short length of hose ran water into a trough along one end.

  Between the way the morning had started out and the success of the early opening, I was feeling good. “Need some help?” I asked.

  “Watch me gut this one,” Stu said without looking up. He slit the trout’s belly with a slender filleting knife from the vent to the throat, reached in and tore out gills, pectoral fins, and innards in one quick move, tossed the offal in a garbage can lined with a plastic bag, and then rinsed the body cavity with water from the hose. With their heads and tails intact, the trout were then placed in a clear plastic bag, sides gleaming as if they were still alive and might swim away even now if given the chance.

  “Think you can handle this without stabbing yourself or an innocent bystander?” he asked.

  “I’ll manage.”

  For the next two hours, we worked side by side. I chatted with the customers while cleaning and bagging their fish. Stu measured, totaled up the fees, and collected the money. He also grumbled. He grumbled about where Vonda was and why hadn’t someone brought food, didn’t they know it was lunch time, when were the damn people going to stop coming, why did I think I was so fucking smart, and so forth.

  “If you hate this so much,” I asked, “how come you married the daughter of a trout farm owner?”

  “Wasn’t my intention to live here.”

  That made two of us.

  Stu straightened up and rolled his shoulders. “Arizona Diamondbacks offered me a big bonus to sign right out of high school. I was assigned to their Reno Aces Triple A farm team. Vonda and I got married and rented a nice apartment. Everything was looking good and then I blew out my arm pitching. Game over.”

  The Canadian couple showed up with a nice stringer of fish. Slit, tear, toss, rinse. I quickly found a rhythm for cleaning the dead trout. The garbage can contained a gro
wing mound of blood and guts that proved fascinating to children.

  “That why you ended up here?” I asked after the couple left.

  “Not immediately,” Stu said. “After two years at Skagit Valley Community College, the county hired me as a building inspector. We were living in Burlington while Vonda attended Western Washington University. Then the girls’ mother got sick, and Virgil needed help running the place.” He rinsed blood and fish slime from the table. “Not exactly the career path I would have chosen.”

  The large black woman appeared with the two girls and held up a large trout with a couple of smaller ones. “Got a whale here and a couple of his little brothers.”

  “Congratulations,” I said. “That’s probably the biggest fish so far.”

  “Told you, Donelle,” the mother said. “First time fishing and you caught Moby Dick.”

  Donelle rolled her eyes while her sister checked out the guts in the garbage can.

  “What are you going to do with that mess?” the mother asked. “Compost it?”

  “Feed it to the fish,” Stu said. “Can’t compost it or we’d have every bear, weasel, and raccoon in the North Cascades paying us a visit. A week from now there wouldn’t be any trout left to catch.”

  Valerie showed up a few minutes later with Patsy and sodas to ask when we were planning to stop for lunch.

  “Where the hell is Vonda?” Stu asked. “Doesn’t she know she’s supposed to swap places with us so we can take turns eating?”

  “I’m not in charge of her,” Valerie said. “You’re her husband.”

  Soon after Valerie returned to the house, Vonda appeared and replaced Stu. She wore a pair of yellow plastic kitchen gloves and a pink apron over blue jeans and a sweatshirt. She was slower than Stu, but no one seemed to mind.

  “How’s that nectar of the gods working?”

  She frowned. “Now I remember why I dislike drinking in the morning. It just sucks the spit out of you for the rest of the day.”

  Stu did not make it back until over an hour later. “You can grab lunch now,” he said. “Just make sure you’re back in thirty minutes.”

  I wiped my bloody hands on a towel before hurrying up to the house. The smell of fried bacon permeated the kitchen. Valerie had made my new favorite sandwich: bacon, peanut butter, mayonnaise, and sweet pickles.

  “What took you guys so long this morning?” she asked.

  “Thanks to your sister’s help, I thought it went pretty fast. I didn’t get lost, and the signs appear to be working.”

  “Did she make any snide comments about me?”

  “Not a one,” I said.

  “Daddy said we’re already had more people in a single day than we usually get on a weekend. He left to buy more bags for the fish, but said he’d be back to take us all out to dinner tonight.”

  Personally, I thought going to bed early was a better idea. A lack of sleep plus the amount of work getting ready for the past week was finally taking a toll. My shoulders and back ached from bending over the cleaning table.

  “Would you mind if I sat in your father’s La-Z-Boy, put my feet up and closed my eyes for a few minutes?”

  I felt like I had barely sat down when Valerie began shaking my shoulder. “Wake up, Gray. I think something’s wrong.”

  According to my watch, fifteen minutes had passed. I groaned. “Stu’s probably ready to kill me.”

  “We may have a bigger problem.”

  Then, over the sound of Patsy pawing at the door and whining, I heard a woman’s screams.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  Valerie grabbed Patsy’s collar to restrain her, and I bolted from the house, a lump in my throat and my heart beating too fast. There was no one at the cleaning station. Fishing had stopped. People moved in ones and twos toward the screaming, which was coming from one of the smaller ponds. I burst past Vonda. Stu was climbing out of the pond. In his arms, he held the limp body of the towheaded boy I had seen earlier. His pale arm was flung out to the side and one of his tiny, red tennis shoes was missing.

  “My baby,” the mother shrieked as she fought Stu for her son’s body. Her husband pulled her away, lifting her high as she continued to struggle, her legs kicking in the air as she clawed at his arms. “Let me go, goddammit! Let me go!”

  I made my way anxiously through the crowd.

  “Fire department is on their way,” one of the guys from the Oldsmobile said, holding up his cell phone in confirmation.

  Stu laid the boy carefully on the ground and, after checking his pulse, began CPR. I dropped to my knees beside him.

  “What can I do?” I asked.

  Stu’s brown hair hung in front of his eyes and he tossed it aside without missing a beat. “I got this. Go up to the road and wait for the paramedics. Get ‘em down here fast. One minute delay and he’ll die.”

  Stu continued pumping the toddler’s tiny chest, while his mother wept and his father struggled to restrain her as the circle of onlookers continued to grow.

  The fire truck arrived. I directed the men down the hill toward the pond where Stu and the boy were. A sheriff’s car arrived soon after. It was followed within seconds by two more. The ambulance was less than a minute behind. Filled with dread, I pursued it down the hill. The boy was now wearing an oxygen mask and strapped to a stretcher. After sliding him into the ambulance, a paramedic helped the mother climb aboard to ride with them.

  The clouds had disappeared, and the sky had become a brilliant blue, but the serenity from earlier had fled. My mouth felt dry as an ashtray, and I desperately wanted a beer or something stronger. Before returning to the fish cleaning station, I stopped by the house where Valerie stood in the doorway with Patsy.

  “It’s bad,” I told her. “Someone spotted a small boy floating in Pond Two. Stu gave him CPR until the paramedics arrived. The ambulance is taking him to Skagit Valley Hospital. The fire department is packing up their stuff, but the police are still here interviewing everyone.”

  “You’d think people would do a better job of watching their kids,” she said. “Do you think he’ll make it?”

  “Don’t know.” My earlier enthusiasm had been replaced by dread.

  Valerie, who I believe could hear thoughts as well as most people hear spoken words, said, “It’s like Momma told me. ‘You can’t run from your fate.’”

  I stared at her for a few seconds before putting it together. How else for a mother to explain to her young daughter why the cancer that was growing within her was not going to stop. Not until you were dead?

  “Sorry. I have to go.”

  ***

  I heard the fear in his voice and I knew right then, though I did not want to believe it, that everything was ruined. Momma was right about fate, just like she was right about everything else. It listens and waits. Like a cat waiting to pounce.

  When the man came to the door, I was dusting the knickknacks on the piano, even though I had just cleaned them the day before.

  “You live here?” he asked.

  “Excuse me, officer,” I heard Vonda call out from just behind him. “Can I help you? I’m Vonda and this is my sister, Valerie.”

  “Like your names. What do they call that? It ain’t rhyming.”

  “Alliteration,” Vonda said.

  “Alliteration,” he repeated. “That’s it. Tell me, Vonda, where were you and your sister when that boy drowned? Did either of you see what happened?”

  “My sister’s blind and can’t see nothin’, but I saw it. I was cleaning fish and had just packaged up some trout for people who were leaving when I heard the screams. I ran down the hill to see what was happening. I saw my husband, Stu, doing CPR, trying to save that poor little boy’s life. So tragic. No idea what his parents were thinking, letting a little tyke roam around like that. No supervision.”

  “Okay. That sounds about right based on what I already know,” the police officer said. “By the way, you happen to know who owns that pickup truck parked down by the barn with the
California plates?”

  “Sure,” Vonda said. “That belongs to our maintenance man, Gray Reynolds.”

  I must have gasped or something because they both quit talking. “You okay, Sis?” Vonda asked.

  If I had had my knife, I might have stabbed her right there.

  “You know where I might find your maintenance man?” he asked.

  “He should be down there helping out, probably at the cleaning table working beside my husband,” Vonda said.

  “In case I happen to miss him, you tell Mr. Reynolds that he needs to get his vehicle registered with the State of Washington A-S-A-P. If I see it with those plates on the road, I’m going to write him a ticket.”

  “What was that about?” Vonda said after he had left. “You went all red and crazy-faced for a moment. Thought you might puke or something.”

  “You’re a fucking idiot, Vonda.”

  I could not say how I knew that Gray was hiding from someone or why, but I was afraid my careless sister had just let the cat out of the bag.

  ***

  After burning off the remaining clouds, the sun was slowly sinking beneath the tops of the tall evergreens that bordered the west side of the property as I collected trash in a plastic bag. There were empty beer and soda cans, broken leaders with lead shot weights and hooks still attached, and cellophane wrappers. I spotted a tiny, red tennis shoe floating in Pond Two. Valerie showed up with Patsy as I was using a bamboo fishing rod to retrieve it.

  “You didn’t come to dinner,” she said.

  “I didn’t feel like eating. Did you hear anything?”

  “Not yet. Vonda tried calling the hospital, but they wouldn’t tell her anything. Daddy said we all need to pray.”

  “Pray?” I could think of nothing else to say. It was clear to me that God had moved, changed his email address and phone number without telling anyone.

  “Listen to me, Gray.” Valerie’s face turned fierce. “I only know one thing. It was not your fault. You didn’t have nothing to do with that little boy drowning in one of the ponds.” Her voice cracked and what came out after sounded a like a sob. “His mother should have been watching him better.”