Night Swimmers

by Betsy Byars

  Shorty Anderson looked over her shoulder. “I could eat that whole thing,” he said.

  “You always say that—”

  “I mean it too.”

  “—and then you take about three bites and get up and leave.”

  “I have to, hon. Short people can’t eat like other people.”

  Retta dumped the noodles in a bowl and poured the tomato soup over them. She stared at the dish disgustedly.

  Shorty watched his daughter. He knew something was making her unhappy, just as he had known that morning that Johnny was unhappy. However, he never interfered. After all, he hadn’t interfered with Johnny, and now, only eight hours later, Johnny was on the porch, problems solved, happy as a bug. Besides, if he asked Retta what was wrong, she might tell him.

  “Dish me up a great big plateful,” he said, hugging her. “Even if I can’t eat it all, it makes me feel good to have a lot.”

  He sat at the table and began to spread paper napkins over his purple cowboy suit to protect it from spills. It took eight napkins. If he only used seven—he knew this from experience—he would spill something on that one uncovered spot.

  “Boys,” he called cheerfully, “soup’s on!”

  Retta slammed the bowl on the table. The noodles trembled. “It’s not soup!” Retta said. The tears moved up from her throat to her eyes. “It’s spaghetti!”

  Shorty looked up in surprise from the safety of his paper napkins. “I know that, darling.” He began to serve himself, taking more than he wanted. “Hmm-mmmmm,” he said as the steam reached his face. He tucked his napkins more securely around him and began to eat.

  “And what’s more, I need seventeen dollars!” Retta said, leaning over the table toward her father.

  “Well, hon, you can have it. I get paid tomorrow.”

  At that Retta burst into tears, ran from the kitchen into her room, and slammed the door. The door didn’t catch and opened again, banging against the wall.

  Through the open door she heard Shorty Anderson say, “Clean your plates now, boys. Retta’s touchy tonight.”

  This time when she slammed the door, it stayed shut.

  “SOMEBODY’S SPYING ON US,” Johnny said in a low voice. He reached across the water for Retta’s arm.

  It was the next night. The Anderson kids were in the Roberts’s swimming pool. They were floating in the black inner tubes Retta had gotten, and they were holding on to each other so that they made a three-leaf clover in the center of the pool.

  “Isn’t this fun?” Retta had been saying as they turned in formation. “Don’t you like your inner tubes?” She was trying to be especially bright and cheerful tonight to hide the fact that she was miserable. Also she wanted the evening to be a special success because Johnny hadn’t wanted to come. “Aren’t you having a good time, Johnny?”

  “It’s all right,” Johnny had answered. He was enjoying himself, but he was not going to let Retta know that. For the first time in his life he felt superior to his sister. He had consented to come—that was the way he thought of it.

  He certainly was not going to jump up and down like Roy, screaming, “Inner tubes! Inner tubes!” After all, inner tubes were just old tires.

  “Do you like your inner tube?” Retta had asked.

  “I said it’s all right.”

  Johnny could hardly believe that just getting a friend—even a fascinating friend who made rockets and airplanes—could make such a difference in his life.

  Johnny had been seven years old when his mother died, and he had mourned her more than anyone. He would go into her closet and sit for hours hunched among her high-heeled boots, his face buried in the folds of her western outfits. He would dry his tears on her skirts before he crawled out.

  After those first terrible weeks he had started clinging to the only person available—Retta. He had clung as tightly as a person in a storm, but now, some how, he felt the storm was finally over. He felt he was stepping out into a world that actually welcomed him. It was while he was enjoying his inner tube and this new security that he had noticed a figure by the garage. With his words, “Somebody’s spying on us,” the good feeling left him. He was, once again, a skinny kid in a patched inner tube, swimming illegally in the colonel’s pool.

  “Where?” Retta asked. She glanced up immediately at the darkened windows of the house. “I don’t see anybody.”

  “Not there. There!” He pointed with one dripping arm to the garage.

  “I still don’t see anybody,” Retta said.

  There was a light that burned over the garage doors, casting a pale light on the driveway and bushes. Moths, drawn by the light, flitted around the bulb.

  “Well, somebody was there a minute ago,” Johnny said. “I saw them.”

  “Let’s go home,” Roy wailed. Being spied on, something he had never even thought about before, suddenly became the scariest thing there was.

  “Oh, Johnny’s just seeing things,” Retta said. “Let’s go around in our inner tubes again, want to? And this time—” She broke off because she, too, saw the figure moving behind the shrubbery. She paused in the water. Her long legs, which had been trailing behind her, sank like weights.

  She had expected, had been prepared for the fact that some night the colonel might come striding out in his bathrobe. She had been prepared to shove her brothers to the opposite ladder and have them out of the pool and across the lawn in seconds.

  But this strange figure, passing behind the bushes, this she had not been prepared for.

  “Yes, I see him,” Retta said in a low voice.

  Roy struggled in his inner tube. “Where?” His round face was twisted with worry.

  “He’s gone now.”

  “I want to see!”

  Retta turned and started swimming for the side of the pool. “I’m going to find out who it is,” she said.

  “Retta!” Roy grabbed for her but got only water. Kicking desperately, getting nowhere, he tried to move after her.

  “I’m coming too,” Johnny said.

  Now Roy grabbed for Johnny, but Johnny was out of his reach too. “Wait for me!” he cried.

  Retta was at the ladder. She pulled herself up and, dropping her inner tube, moved toward the garage. Johnny reached the ladder too. Roy struggled harder.

  Retta and Johnny ran across the lawn. They paused at the garage and glanced around uneasily. Then they looked at each other.

  Roy, fighting the water and the inner tube, reached the side of the pool at last. He flopped out like a seal.

  “I want to go home,” he wailed as he ran dripping across the lawn.

  “Hush up! You want to wake the colonel?”

  Roy was less afraid of the colonel than he was of the spy. “I don’t care. I want to go home.”

  “Oh, all right!” Retta said. “I guess whoever it was is gone anyway.” Now that she was at the garage, in the light, the desire to pursue the spy had left her. She, too, was ready to go home.

  “I’ll go back for the inner tubes. You two get the clothes,” Retta said.

  She was cold now, shivering. As she ran for the pool, she felt an unfamiliar weakness in her knees. She gathered the inner tubes and, holding them in both arms, ran to join her brothers.

  Roy and Johnny were already running for the fence, their clothes clutched to their chests. Roy glanced back over his shoulder to make sure only Retta was behind him.

  Roy had never enjoyed being scared the way some children did. He put his hands over his eyes during the scary parts of movies. He put his hands over his ears when Retta told that fearful story, “I’m on the first step. I’m on the second step. I’m on the third step.” He could not bear that final “Got you!” Now that it seemed about to happen to him, he was moving the way he moved in his dreams—so slowly he could never get away.

  He glanced back over his shoulder again. This time he stumbled over a bush and fell, dropping his Chubbie jeans in the darkness.

  “Rettaaaaaa!” he wailed.

&nbs
p; She was there instantly. She yanked him to his feet in one swift movement. “There.” She swooped up his clothes. Holding the inner tubes awkwardly on one hip, she led him to the fence. As they scrambled over, Retta glanced back at the garage.

  The figure was there, watching as they ran away.

  “Let’s go!” Retta said.

  “DON’T BOTHER ME NOW,” Retta said. She was pretending to watch television.

  “But I want to know if we’re going swimming again or if we’re not,” Roy persisted. He was worried. He wanted Retta to promise that they would never, ever go swimming again because he was afraid. All night in his dreams he had run without getting anywhere.

  “Of course we’re going again. No stupid spy is going to keep us from experiencing things.”

  “But there’s some things people don’t want to experience,” Roy said earnestly. He was remembering not only the evening before at the swimming pool but a long painful story a boy in his kindergarten had once told during Show and Tell about having his tonsils out.

  “Look,” Retta said, straightening, “I’m not going to allow us to grow up ignorant.”

  “I know that.”

  Roy sighed. Retta was already a stricter teacher than Miss Elizabeth. Once Retta had slapped Johnny when he was reading aloud and pronounced island “is-land” for the third time. The worst thing Miss Elizabeth ever did was shake you by the arm.

  “Why do we have to go swimming again though?” he asked. The thought of having to climb down into that cold, dark water while spies waited in the bushes made his voice tremble. He blinked back tears.

  Retta gave Roy a serious look. “Listen, Roy, life’s more than just school stuff.”

  “I know that.”

  “I mean, reading and arithmetic are important because you don’t want to go to a fancy restaurant and count up the bill on your fingers, do you?”

  “No.”

  “But other things count too.” She was looking at him so sternly that he temporarily forgot his fear. “Swimming in a nice pool, for example—that’s important. I mean, when you grow up and are invited to a nice pool, you want to know how to act, don’t you?”

  “Yes.” Roy inhaled deeply. He imagined himself as a grown man, floating in a pool in a black inner tube while onlookers admired his style. The frown on his face eased.

  “And when we get to be grown-up and important,” Retta’s voice softened because this was one of her dreams, “when we’re grown-up and have pools and nice houses and cars, what will we do?”

  Roy struggled with his memory.

  “We’ll share our stuff.”

  Roy nodded. He imagined himself smiling from an upstairs window of his mansion while poor kids swam below in his pool. It was a pleasant picture. He said sincerely, “Retta, anybody who wants to swim in my pool can.”

  Retta smiled.

  Encouraged, Roy went on. “I don’t care how many kids get in my pool. They can even make the water run over and I won’t care.” He made a solemn promise. “Every kid in the world can get in my pool and I won’t say one single word.”

  He paused. He was awed by the scope of his own generosity. In his mind kids from all nations jumped into his pool. The water rose. More kids arrived, many in native dress. They jumped in too. The water flooded his lawn.

  Above, in his window, he smiled a benevolent smile. He made a papal gesture of welcome. “Jump right in, kids,” he said grandly.

  “I’m going out,” Johnny said. He crossed between Retta and Roy. He could have gone out the back door, but he wanted to make sure they knew he was leaving.

  Roy stopped smiling. “Where are you going?” he asked, taking one step forward.

  “To see my friend.”

  “The one with the airplanes and rockets?”

  “You got it.”

  “Johnny, can I go too?”

  “No.”

  Roy paused. Then he said slyly, “I don’t believe you’ve really got a friend!” This kind of thing always worked on him. If someone said to Roy, “I don’t believe you’ve got a friend,” he would say, “I do too, I’ll show you!” He could see at once it wasn’t going to work on Johnny.

  Johnny sat down and began to retie his shoelaces. “I don’t care whether you believe me or not.” He got up, stretched, and started for the door.

  “Why can’t I come?” Roy whined. He followed Johnny to the door.

  “Because.”

  “Why!”

  “You really want to know? All right. You can’t come because, one, you’re a pest. Two, you whine. Three, you have peanut butter breath. Four, you touch things. Five, you act stupid.”

  “Tell me really why you don’t want me to come,” Roy persisted.

  Johnny gave a snort of disgust and turned away. At the door he paused. He looked back at Roy, and then he glanced at Retta on the sofa.

  “Oh, all right,” he said. “You can come if you want to.”

  “Me? I can come?”

  “Yes, if you don’t act stupid and if you keep your hands off Arthur’s stuff and if you don’t act like a pest.”

  “I won’t. I promise.”

  They went out the door without glancing back at Retta. She sat without moving. She could sense the excitement that joined them and fenced her out. She turned back to the television.

  On the porch Roy was saying, “I’m going to act so intelligent you won’t even believe it’s me.”

  “If you act intelligent at all, I won’t believe it’s you. Now keep up.”

  “Don’t worry, I’ll keep up. Look how fast I’m walking, Johnny.” He ran down the steps.

  Retta sighed. On the television a woman had just won a fur coat and a trip to Mexico and she was jumping up and down in the enormous coat.

  Suddenly Retta got to her feet. She turned off the TV and walked to the door. Her brothers were at the end of the block, turning the corner. Then they moved out of sight.

  Retta went out on the porch. She went down the steps slowly, idly, as if she weren’t going anywhere important. But at the bottom of the steps she turned and started down the hill after her brothers.

  She paused at the corner. Her brothers were crossing the street. Slowly, keeping a long distance between them, Retta followed.

  SHORTY ANDERSON WAS SITTING in his corner of the living room with one leg slung over the arm of the chair. He had gotten up after Retta and the boys left, and he was now working out a new song on his guitar. His foot swung with the rhythm.

  Ideas for songs were coming faster these days than he could write them down. This one, he hoped, would be the follow-up song for “You’re Fifty Pounds Too Much Woman for Me.” The title of this one was “You Used to Be Too Much Woman, but Now You Ain’t Enough.”

  He was hunched over his guitar, strumming a chord, singing. “You used to be too much woman. You filled up lots of spaces.”

  He paused, his eyes looking up at the ceiling. He strummed the chord again. “And now you lost your fifty pounds, but you lost it in all the wrong pla-a-a-ces.”

  He broke off as Retta came into the house. He gave her his not-now-I’m-composing-a-song look. She stood in the doorway watching him. Her face was as red as if she had gotten too much sun. She was breathing hard.

  Shorty began to sing the chorus, playing to Retta as if she were an audience.

  “Your hair’s got thin, but your head’s still thick.

  Your feet stayed big, but your legs are candlewicks.

  Your hips ain’t round, and your ears weigh fourteen pounds.

  Oh, you’re not the right woman for meeeeee.”

  He grinned at Retta. She pulled herself away from the doorway and started for the kitchen.

  “How you like it?” Shorty called after her.

  “Fine.”

  “Want to hear the second verse?”

  No answer.

  Undaunted, Shorty began to sing.

  “Your teeth thinned down, but your lips swelled out.

  Your nose got fat and your chi
n’s a waterspout.

  Your cheeks they flap, and your eyelids overlap.

  Oh, you’re not the right woman for meeeeee.”

  Retta sat down at the table. The kitchen was big and old. The cabinets had old-timey glass doors that showed the unmatched dishes. The table was covered with oilcloth in which Roy had poked holes with his fork.

  In the living room Shorty Anderson started over. He liked the verses, but he wasn’t satisfied with the opening.

  “You used to be too much woman,” he sang. He paused, waiting for an inspiration. When none came, he started over. “You used to be too much woooooo-man …”

  Johnny came into the kitchen by the back door, and Retta glanced up. Johnny was walking in his new, important way. His hands were in his pockets. He made a point of not looking at Retta.

  Behind him Roy was babbling about the afternoon. “I didn’t really believe you about the airplane. I’m not kidding. I didn’t really believe it was true!” His face, red with heat and joy, shone in the sunlight from the window.

  Roy was happily amazed because, as of late, his world had been drying up like a raisin.

  “I didn’t believe it was true,” Roy told the cabinets, the refrigerator.

  Once Roy had believed anything was possible. For example, he had had high hopes of digging to China. He had envisioned going down through layers of earth and popping up in front of startled Chinese. He had drawn a picture of the event in kindergarten, of the world with a line right through the middle—his tunnel—and a bubble at the end—his head. He was getting ready to draw the startled Chinese when Miss Elizabeth took up the papers.

  Once, too, he had thought he would fly, not in airplanes like other people, but by flapping his arms. There was a certain spot on his body that he would press and he would rise into the air as easily as a bird. As soon as he found that spot, he intended to fly straight to another planet.

  But lately his world, once as magical and enchanting as a fairy tale, was becoming narrowed by rules and laws.

  The sight of that yellow airplane in the sky had somehow given him back a faith in the world’s possibilities. He had reeled with pleasure and grown dizzy from turning his face upward.