That made the sheriff step back for a moment. After all, this was a new role for him. National crisis. He talked to Wick's back as the older man picked up two more tanks. "Everybody in that town is under forty feet of water. There's no way she's still alive, and there's no way she called you after the dam burst." He stood in front of the other man's route, blocking him.
Wick lowered the next two tanks to the dirt. He wasn't a big man, and he wasn't a young man. His chest was already heaving from carrying the first round of tanks. He looked the sheriff in the eye. "You have any children?"
"I'm sorry for your loss. I truly am."
"My daughter called me an hour ago. There's a landline down there. The cables are underground, so they weren't affected by the flood. She's in the basement of the federal prison. The way that basement's set up, it created an air pocket when the waters rushed in. She's still alive. And I'm going to get her out. You don't like that, you can try to stop me. But I'm telling you right now, I'm going down into that lake, and I'm going to bring her up, and out. You look to me like you're close to retirement. You want to live to see that day? Then get the fuck out of my way. Because if you don't, I'll kill you with my bare hands, and no amount of bullets is going to stop that." He put his right hand on the sheriff's shoulder. "This isn't a citizen talking. This is a father talking. This the day you want to die? Out here? In the dirt? When you got the whole weekend ahead of you?"
Wick carried the final tank to the water's edge. Got four regulators from the passenger side of his seat at the front of the truck, two pairs of black flippers.
The sheriff didn't stop him.
Wick undressed at the shore's edge, down to his underpants. The TV crew approached, watching where they stepped in the mud, filming. Pale body. Thin limbs. Gut that the old get. Looked like it was a body better suited to sitting in a chair, watching old TV shows, in a living room where the carpet looks tired, than it was to traversing the currents of a newly-formed lake, filled with corpses and snakes. Pulled on a black neoprene wet suit. Stretching the black neoprene pants up his legs. Raising his old arms, pushing them into the wet suit's jacket. Extra suit for his daughter by his bare feet.
Bending over, Wick tied all but one of the air tanks into a necklace. Put on his black rubber flippers. Stared into the sheriff's eyes. "Where's this prison located?"
The sheriff made a vague gesture at the deepest waters of the blue lake. "You head towards there, find the main street down there, what's left of it, then follow along it until you're outside the business district, to a fork in the road. Take the left fork. It's a big building. You gonna come back?" Like maybe he was a small town sheriff again, stepping up on someone's front porch, not someone being interviewed in front of the cameras of ABC, CBS, NBC and Fox. "Some men give their word and it means nothing. Some men give their word and it means everything. Which kind of man are you?"
Wick strung the air tanks behind him. Just him and the sheriff, at the shore's edge. "I'm coming back. With my daughter."
The sheriff stepped back. "All right, then."
Wick had tied a few half-inflated lifejackets he had around the four extra tanks. That should help keep them from bumping along the lake's bottom while he swam, possibly getting snagged.
He walked backwards into the lake, flippers lifting, water rising up his body, until he was chest deep. Twisted the regulator into his mouth. Inhaled, to make sure it worked. Pressurized air from the tank, cold as air conditioning, going down into his lungs.
Turning around, he slid his body forward, into the immensity of the lake, floating. No more gravity. Always a wonderful feeling. What death was like?
Kicking his flippered feet, arms swinging left, right, he swam out into the depth of the waters, head down, wide face mask gliding on the surface. When he figured he was far enough away from the shore to be over his head, he forced his face mask straight down, raising his legs up in the air as straight as he could at his age, and let himself sink under the surface.
The sheriff, watching at the lake's edge, not feeling special anymore, saw the black flippers disappear under the blue water, then one by one, the four air tanks dip under, gone.
Wick was already a bit winded from hauling the equipment, arguing with the sheriff, angling to get below the surface. So although he felt urgency, he paced himself. Had to.
His ears hurt, from the pressure against his eardrums, but he was used to that. Tried pinching his nostrils, blowing down hard through his nose to pop his ears, but that never worked, and it didn't now. All he could hear was the distant booming he heard each time he went under.
He was floating about ten feet above the lake's bottom, feet paddling. Looking down, the novelty, while underwater, of seeing, instead of sand or mud, bushes, some of them still belled with blossoms, though the blossoms were darkened by the diminished sunlight at this depth. As he paddled forward, he had to swim around trees, but as he got out into the deeper, colder waters, the trees were below him, so he could glide over their tops, allowing a more direct route.
Saw a few snakes, undulating sideways, in his peripheral vision. But they appeared to have not noticed him yet.
About twenty minutes in, he came across his first corpse. A black man in a business suit, snagged upside down on a branch by his armpit, red tie floating straight up from under his slack jaw, the two lengths of the tie fluttering, like tongues.
Up ahead, emerging from the dark murk, half-buildings. It looked like a war site. Since the town was at the bottom of the valley, it had taken the brunt force of the tidal wave released as the dam burst.
Some buildings were swept away, nothing more than pipes sticking up out of concrete. Others, for whatever reason, hadn't been fully washed backwards, their foundations, or in a few cases most of their bottom floors, still intact. Must be the main street. He swam above it, gazing down on the destruction as a way to take his mind off how tired he was getting. As he paddled, a building's wall collapsed underwater, red bricks silently tilting outwards, floating down in a slow motion tumble.
At the far end of the swaying avenue, a pile of upside down cars clogged against a stand of trees, some of the trees in front knocked over, but most still erect. Lots of bodies in the cars, limbs hanging down like jellyfish, mouths open. Newspapers, Styrofoam cups of coffee floating around their belts.
Fish were finding the faces.
Past the business district, many of the houses were surprisingly intact. The surrounding trees must have buffeted that first terrible rush of water. A few chimneys snapped off, a front porch missing.
The road outside town was still in place, which made sense. Takes a lot to completely destroy a path. He followed above the tar to the fork, swam left.
Almost all the trees here were still rooted. After another five minutes, checking his valve, seeing his exertions had cost him half his air tank, he swam up on the prison.
Three story structure. Fractures across the top floor, but the lower floors looked solid.
He paddled above the security fence, drowned man in the guard house by the gate. Cupped hands dipping down, to bring him lower in the lake. By the time he reached the front of the prison, he was right in front of the door, floating like a tired angel.
Waving his arms above the ground, white air bubbles rising behind him, hair waving around his scalp, he twisted the knob.
Locked.
Fuck.
Flew slowly back to the guard kiosk, arms out.
At his age, he had seen a few dead bodies, but none this fresh.
Face slack on the forward thrust of the skull. Like life was a slipping mask. Jaw lowered, showing decades of dental work.
The keys were on a metal chain clipped to the brown belt at the waist, a few extra holes amateurishly punched in the leather one quiet night in an apartment kitchen, microwave humming.
He swam back up the watery lawn. Floated, knees up, wrestling different keys into the brass slit.
Finally, one key turned.
The tall wi
ndows flanking the front door had already burst from the water pressure, so it didn't require any real effort on his part to swing the door inwards.
Inside the two story chamber, uniformed corpses and an extraordinary spread of paperwork pressed against the high ceiling.
From his phone conversation with Joan, he knew where to swim to get to his goal.
At each locked gate, he fumbled around the dead bodies to get to their keys, found the right one, inserted it, advanced.
He paddled down the staircase, floating to one side a young, upside-down African-American guard with a rictus grin, wedding band.
Reached the bottom level.
Opened the door. Lots of bodies in the wire cage. Spines stopped against the top of the cage, arms and legs hanging down.
Beyond, a narrow hallway with cells on either side.
Miraculously, some of the prisoners in the cells were still alive.
Bobbing their opened lips just above the high water levels in their cells. Some spotted him in his black wetsuit, his trail of air tanks, screaming for help.
He ignored them.
At the end of the hall, stairs going up.
Floating, he used his gloved hands to paw up the steps, until his hands emerged from the water.
Then his head.
Like something from hundreds of millions of years ago.
Pulled the regulator out of his mouth.
Breathed.
Took off his flippers. Stepped out of the lapping water.
Gravity, again.
Hauled up onto the steps the necklace of air tanks. Suddenly much heavier, again.
Arranged them on the steps above the water's surface, where they'd be safe.
Dropped the extra face mask and regulators on the top step. Walked out into a hallway, pitch black.
Clicked on a flashlight.
Door at the end of the hallway. Another door on his left, near where he stood. He could hear voices behind it.
Wick had not lived an exciting life. Of course, so few of us do. One time, on the road, he had stopped at a corner gas station in New Mexico to fuel up, and a police car came wheeling around the corner, siren wailing, lights flashing, and took off down the side street. He caught a glimpse of the two officers in the front seat, jaws set. That was not his life. He just did what he had to do, to survive.
After his wife divorced him, ten years ago, they had to split up their community property. That wasn't hard to do, so far as bank accounts and loans and cars went, and in fact a California judge made the final decisions, but where it got harder was in dividing up actual, tangible items. Who gets the furniture? Who gets the kitchen appliances? Once they had worked most of that out, and he would be eternally grateful to his ex-wife for at least that one grace, that she agreed for them to do that part of the divorce without lawyers involved, meaning without the money meter spinning around at a crazy rate, it came down to the little things. And one of the last of the little things they had to decide on was their family photo album. He met her for lunch to sort that one out, along with a few other personal effects from their years together, and was surprised she had no interest whatsoever in the photo album. That kind of hurt him, more than anything else had. Didn't she want some kind of record, a remembrance, of the years they spent together? Turns out she didn't. "You can keep it. I don't want it." Digging into her ceviche. As if he weren't even there.
She didn't want Joan, their only child, as well. "I need a new life. I'm going to reinvent myself."
Well, gee.
And there was little Joan. Now very much a part of his life. He remembered the first time she ever said a word that impressed him. Still tiny, with appalling table manners, and a lisp. The word was, ‘Unfortunately'. She said it casually, at the end of a sentence, as if she had been saying it all her life.
They sold their house, because that was the easiest way to apportion that asset. He cancelled some sales trips, so he could move himself and his daughter into an apartment. No more big houses for him. As it turned out, forever.
He arranged for a nanny to stay with Joan while he was on the road, because she was just a pre-teen. Like any child, Joan had no concept of what you have to do to earn a living, and had no idea what adults do to each other.
Just before his return to the road, after a dinner with Joan at their now-modest kitchen table where she was sullen and uncommunicative, because she didn't understand why he was preventing her from living with her mom, who she erroneously believed really loved her, when in fact she meant no more to her mom than an outdated refrigerator that could easily be replaced in her new home, he poured himself a drink in the living room and flipped through that photo album, because I guess he just wasn't hurting enough at that point.
This was their family album, but what surprised him was that he wasn't in any of the dozens upon dozens of photographs arranged on the black pages. Where's dad? Well, dad was on the road. Bringing over fresh drinks from the bar for his clients. Not present in all those picnics in parks, feeding geese with torn-up bread slices; the little girl white dresses of Communion and Confirmation; birthday parties with a tableful of other little girls whose faces he didn't recognize; the garish crayon drawings showing a tall figure with long hair holding the stick hand of a short figure with long hair; the shots of her blue-eyed wonderment, holding up awkwardly, pressing to her little cheek, the saggy limbs, not-happy pink mouth of a long-ago white cat.
It made him want to cancel this upcoming sales trip, but he couldn't. Or maybe he could have. But he didn't. He tried to explain it to her, sitting on her bed that morning while she leaned her little body far away, but of course how do you explain something that complicated to a child? Especially, a child you don't really know? And in the following months, the following years, it got easier and easier to just say, I have to do this. Easier for him, at least.
When she had to have a back molar extracted because it was a baby tooth that for whatever reason wasn't detaching from her gum, so the permanent molar underneath could emerge, it was the nanny who held her hand. He was in Minneapolis, on his cell phone to the home office, trying to salvage a deal. He missed her junior prom. And her senior prom. Never saw her come down the stairs. Or saw the corsage get pinned to the strap of her dress.
When she was nineteen, just before she moved out of that little apartment, and more or less melted away from his life, he fixed dinner for her once.
He didn't know much about cooking. But he had practiced a meat loaf a couple times, while she was out on dates. Finally got it to where it actually tasted as good as the meat loafs he ate at the different truck stops off the highways around America. He was proud of himself.
He got her to agree to stay in that evening, while he mixed all the ingredients in a big white bowl, fingers sticky with raw ground beef, diced onion, green bell peppers. She sitting tall at the kitchen table, sophisticated, and when did that happen, unresponsive to his different conversational overtures.
At one point, to break the ice, he looked around from the cutting board, confused. "Where's those slices of bread I took out of the fridge? What happened to them?" And of course, he had placed the slices on the top of his head, hoping to get a laugh when she glanced over, looked up.
But she didn't look over.
It's like one of those jokes where you're doing something stupid, and you're waiting for the other person to notice you're doing something stupid?
Except, she never looked over.
To where he started parading in front of her, right in front of her, no longer a young man, more and more competitors encroaching on his sales territory, moved from an office to a cubicle, with the bread slices still on his head like a girl balancing a book on her hair, saying, "Where's that bread? I wonder where that bread is?"
Secret sideways glances at her, not understanding why she hadn't noticed the absurdity of him having bread slices on his head–I mean, Come on!–then he realized she was deliberately not noticing what he was doing. She was deliberat
ely not noticing the feeble joke he was trying to make.
So eventually, he took the slices off his head, as if the slices were a crown he didn't deserve. Head bent by the cutting board, pulling them apart. That had to be one of the loneliest moments in his life, shredding, shredding, because it was in that moment, lowering the slices, he realized she no longer cared about him. Not a bit.
Wick stripped the air tank off his back. Thought about trying to lower it noiselessly, but realized there had already been a lot of clankings with the spare tanks.
Lifted the rubber grip of the black face mask off his tired features. Left it on the top of his head, staring straight up, like big sunglasses.
The door was unlocked.
Such an ordinary action, to twist a doorknob to the right, but here he was doing it in the bowels of a prison, under the weight of forty feet of water.
"Hello?" Shined his flashlight around the chairs.
Some kind of waiting room.
To the right of the receptionist's window, its glass reflecting his yellow light, another door.
The voices were coming from behind that door.
Holding his flashlight like a gun, he reached his left hand out, twisted the knob.
Stepped inside, playing the light around.
Uniformed guard sprawled on his back, face badly burned. The nose was black.
Dear Lord.
Swung the yellow beam.
His daughter, naked, huddled in a corner, shaking. Some kind of wide collar around her neck. Wait. What? It took him long, long seconds to realize, because it was so incongruous, that the collar was a toilet seat.
Swayed the beam around some more.
Big man standing in the middle of the room. Pants at his ankles. Blood on his shirt. Squinting at the light. Deep voice. "Get that fucker outa my face."
"Joan?" Wick realized his voice was quavering. Age, fear.
"Daddy?"
"What's the situation?"
"That's your real life daddy? You're shitting me!"
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