Swimming to Freedom

by Robbie Michaels

  With the increasing flashes of lightning and the rumbles of thunder getting harder and sharper, he guessed the storm was approaching. There had been other storms, but those hadn’t woken him. This storm was either bigger or stronger or both because the flashes of lightning got closer and closer and with them came a torrential downpour of rain. It was either a massive storm, or somehow it stalled over his location because it seemed to last for hours.

  Brandon tried to sleep some more, but the noise seemed to echo through the valley, somehow magnifying as it passed under the bridge where he was nested. As the storm got closer and more intense, sleep was next to impossible simply because of the noise.

  During an especially strong flash of lightning, Brandon noticed that the river was no longer small and most definitely not placid. He could see the water had risen several feet and had a strong current. The thunder and the torrential downpour must have drowned out any chance of hearing the increased volume of water nearby.

  And not only was it rising, but it was moving at a ferocious pace, as if all the water wanted to get downstream immediately because something even bigger and worse was snapping at its heels, about to catch it. The banks of the river constrained it, so the only choice available was for the river to rise, which is what it was doing. The water flowing past him now was angry, turbulent, and dangerous. Now that he knew what to listen for, he was able to sort out the sound of the water in the river from all of the other storm noises surrounding him. Rushing past his location it grew louder and louder and only added to the terror Brandon felt.

  He had never spent much time by a river so he was shocked by how quickly the water was rising. In a matter of minutes the water level rose several more feet from where it had been the last time he looked. He moved farther up, toward the underside of the road surface of the bridge in an effort to keep himself from getting swept away in the rush of water that made up this new and terrifying river.

  Brandon was kicking himself mentally that he hadn’t made plans, hadn’t scoped out an escape path for just such an occasion. Each morning he exited by the way he came in the previous evening, by walking along the riverbed. There was no way he could even think about that now. The angry torrents of water would kill anyone who got caught in their path, grabbing hold of them and whipping them around like a rag doll, smashing their head against the rocks on the bottom of the riverbed. Brandon very much wanted to live.

  He made a split-second decision to get out of where he was, and he had to do it right now. The water wasn’t going down but was doing exactly the opposite, and getting higher by the minute. It was go now or be swept away. He crawled as best he could to the upper edge and felt around to see if there was anything he could grab hold of above him, something he could grip to hoist himself to safety.

  Frantically feeling around and looking when the lightning gave some illumination, Brandon spotted one thing that might work. With water lapping at his heels, trying to catch on to him and drag him down, he knew it was now or never, so he gave it a shot, propelled himself upward, and somehow managed to grab hold of a piece of steel. The water continued to rise, so he didn’t waste time in pulling himself upward. Finding another handhold above the first, he moved higher. He was never so grateful as when he managed to pull himself over the railing and onto the sidewalk that ran beside the road surface of the bridge.

  Gasping for air and desperately trying to get his heart to slow down to a more reasonable rate, he knelt on all fours on the rough surface of the sidewalk. In just a few seconds, he was soaked to the skin, but he would have remained there had it not been for the way the bridge seemed to shudder with the rush of water just a few feet beneath its surface. When he felt the water start to splash up onto the sidewalk, he leaped to his feet and dashed as fast as he could to get off the bridge. He didn’t know where to go or what to do, but he knew that his previous sanctuary was safe no more and he needed to get away from that damned bridge.

  Not knowing of another option, he ran toward Tyler’s house, thinking that he could, if nothing else, get into the garage or the back porch of the house and try to huddle there until the storm ended. The garage was locked, but he remembered the shed that sat toward the back of the property and in which they stored the lawn mower and other outdoor yard tools. Thankfully the shed was not locked. There wasn’t enough open space for him to lie down, but at least he was out of the rain and could lean against a wall and try to stop shaking. What he wouldn’t have given to have a bed to sleep in, even a towel with which to wipe his face.

  For the longest time, though, sleep was not remotely an option. The storm continued unabated and with every crack of thunder, it felt like the walls of the shed vibrated. On top of that, Brandon could not stop shaking. He supposed it was from being totally drenched, but some of his shaking was also likely from fear. It wasn’t every day, after all, that he was nearly swept away in a flash flood. Personally he hoped he never experienced that again.

  Somehow he managed to sleep a little, grabbing ten or twenty minutes here and there, more when the storm finally started to wind down and move out of the area. He could not recall another storm that had been as intense as that one.

  Since the night had been so wet, his clothes—soaked by the rain the previous night—had not had a chance to dry out. Consequently in the morning, every step was irritating and annoying.

  He wasn’t sure if his bridge would even still be there the next day. He desperately hoped it would, because otherwise he’d have a much, much longer walk to get to work.

  The bridge was still there when he walked to work, but there were unmistakable signs the water had come up over the surface at some point before the storm had finished. There was gravel and dirt all over the bridge road surface, presumably tossed there by the torrents of water.

  His night had been about the least restful night he’d ever had, and that was saying something for the guy who had slept on concrete under a bridge. The trek to work was like a forced march. Every step was sheer torture. All he wanted to do was to curl up somewhere, anywhere, and go to sleep.

  “You look like crap,” Marge said when she caught sight of him.

  “That was one hell of a storm we had last night, wasn’t it?”

  “Damned straight. I haven’t seen a gully washer like that in years.”

  “What did you call it? A gully washer?”

  “Don’t tell me you’ve never heard that term before.”

  “I haven’t. What does it mean?”

  “Just what it sounds like,” she said. “A storm so ferocious that it sweeps away all of the built-up garbage and crap to make it clean and fresh once again.”

  “Sure fits. It sure was intense,” Brandon said.

  “Woke me up out of a sound sleep. Is that why you look like crap today? Did it wake you up too?”

  “Yes, it did. It was coming down so hard, water was rising everywhere.”

  “Yep. It came down so fast it just couldn’t soak in fast enough, so it all had to run off somewhere.”

  Brandon managed to get through the day, partly by using his midday break to take a nap. The heat of the day coupled with the humidity that remained from the previous night’s storm made for a miserable day, and of course the stand wasn’t air-conditioned because it was partially open to the outdoors. By the end of work that afternoon, when he was able to leave, Brandon was ready to sleep for a week.

  He was scared to go back under the bridge, but he was curious to see what the storm had done to his previously safe spot. Even though it was exceptionally squishy getting down to the riverbank, he made it. Nothing that had been there remained. All of his cardboard was gone, everything he’d had there, not that there was much to begin with, was gone. The water had washed away everything, both the good and the bad.

  When he’d first taken up residence under the bridge, he’d wandered north one evening along the riverbed since it was so shallow on the upstream side. He remembered two things: one, the river was much wider for most of th
e distance he explored. Probably to save money they had made the bridge as narrow as possible, which meant that when the water rose in the river upstream, it all had to funnel into the narrow spot under the bridge, which meant that it must have done this countless times over the years since it had originally been built.

  The second thing he had noticed was that there was a lot of crap that people had tossed into the river over the years. Not literal crap, he hoped, but stuff that they didn’t want or need any longer. How they’d done it, he had no idea, but in addition to the usual stuff like car tires and old clothes and sneakers and stuff like that, there was also a full-size washing machine. An actual, honest-to-goodness clothes washer—sitting right in the middle of the riverbed. It was probably a half mile north of his campsite.

  Brandon wondered if the storm had managed to shift that washer much. Out of curiosity, when he’d first found it, he’d tried to push it. It was lying on its side, so the barrel part had been filled with water from the river’s current. He had not been able to budge the thing at all. It had been there long enough that it seemed to have almost put down roots and anchored itself into the riverbed.

  The logical part of his brain was screaming at him to find some place to sleep, but the other half of his brain was urging him to go check it out, to see if the storm had managed to shift that heavy old washer very far. There was still more water in the riverbed than usual. Most days he’d been able to walk and sometimes not even get his feet wet in places, but that afternoon there was water everywhere, and he was having to push forward against the current, which had some strength.

  He’d gone maybe two hundred yards and started to question what the hell he was doing. But since he’d started, he was going to finish it. He knew exactly where the washer had sat, so he knew he didn’t have all that much farther to go.

  But when he got to where the washer was supposed to be lying on its side on the riverbed, he couldn’t find it. Convinced that the water must have been deeper than it seemed and must be covering the washer, he walked back and forth sweeping his feet through the water trying to find it. But he got two surprises: one, the water depth was as he had initially guessed, namely not deep enough to hide a full-sized washing machine, and two, the washing machine was gone.

  He’d traipsed there to find out if the water current had been strong enough to move the machine a few inches, but unless something magical had happened last night, the water had moved it more than that. He surveyed all up and down the river as far as he could see from his current location, but no matter where he looked or how far he walked, the washing machine was simply gone. The river current the previous night had picked it up and carried it down the river to who knows where.

  Marge was right. The storm had been strong enough to sweep away all the debris that had accumulated over time. Maybe that was why the person who dumped it there in the first place had done it, because they knew it wasn’t going to remain there forever, but would be picked up and moved on downstream, probably not all at once, but a little more every time there was a storm and the currents got strong enough to shove it along. Brandon had a brand-new respect for the power of water currents.

  He didn’t stay there that night. For one, he was terrified it would happen again. For another he wasn’t going to sleep on concrete again, and since the water had washed away all of his cardboard he’d slept on, concrete would be his only option if he slept there.

  Out of ideas, he wandered toward Tyler’s house, where he noticed something he hadn’t the last time he’d been there, namely that the grass had grown tremendously from the multiple rainstorms they’d had while Tyler’s family was away.

  It was getting late, so Brandon settled into the shed, awkward as it was. He could have felt depressed that his eighteenth birthday had been nothing special, but instead he was just glad to be alive. He slept curled up in the shed that night.

  The next night, right after work, when the sun and the heat had dried up a lot more of the moisture from the storm, the lawn was dry enough for him to mow. During the night he’d slept in the shed, he’d had to position himself around the lawn mower, which took up a lot of the limited space. He started the mower and got underway with the monotonous treks back and forth. It was more difficult going than usual because the grass had grown so much.

  A couple of times he stalled the mower and had to back up and cut in smaller swaths.

  For a couple of hours, he succeeded in disconnecting his mind from his body. He focused on the physicality of the experience, focused on the motion, the back and forth trek. He was exhausted, he was starving, but he couldn’t think about either of those things right now. Instead he focused on the one thing he could control, and that was getting the yard looking better. He knew Tyler’s dad put a lot of stock in keeping his yard looking neat. Before he’d started, it had been out of control, but it looked substantially better where he’d mowed. He thought perhaps this might help him get back in good with Tyler’s family.

  He’d been mowing for about two hours when Brandon got a surprise that made him jump and scream. A hand touched his arm. He hadn’t heard anyone approach and was totally shocked. His feet literally left the ground as he leaped away from the hand and the unknown person connected to it. When he saw Tyler’s dad, he turned off the mower.

  “Brandon, what are you doing?” Tyler’s dad asked, a huge smile on his face.

  “I didn’t know you were there. Sorry. You scared the crap out of me.” He leaned forward for a second to try to calm himself and get his heart rate back under control, and then he explained. “We’ve had a lot of rain while you were gone and your lawn was getting kind of shaggy. I know how important it is to you to keep it looking good, so I thought it was something I could do to help you out. I didn’t know when you’d be back, and I knew if it waited much longer it would be impossible to cut. I hope that was okay. I’m sorry if I did something wrong.”

  “Brandon, I’m not mad. This is wonderful. This is fantastic! Thank you so much. I was dreading this job when I got back. I knew I’d have a hell of a chore awaiting me. You’ve helped me tremendously, and I can’t thank you enough for your thoughtfulness.”

  Brandon smiled shyly. “You folks have been good to me, and it seemed like something helpful that I could do to help pay you back for taking me in when I needed it.”

  “It’s getting dark now. Why don’t you put the mower away and come inside and have something to drink. Mowing is hot work. It’s really muggy out here too.”

  Brandon lifted his T-shirt arm to wipe the sweat off his face.

  “Have you lost weight?” Tyler’s dad asked.

  Brandon quickly dropped the T-shirt, embarrassed. “I’ll get the mower put away, but would it be okay if I just finished this one last section?” he asked, pointing to a small area.

  “You don’t have to, but sure, if you’d like. Then come inside, please.”

  Brandon finished the last ten minutes of work and then put the mower away for the night. He knocked on the back door of the house and was admitted by Tyler’s mom, who smiled in welcome just as her husband had a few minutes earlier.

  “Brandon, thank you so much for doing the mowing. My husband was so pleased when we drove up and saw you mowing his yard. He’d been talking about how much work it was going to be for him while we drove back. I thought he was going to drive us nuts with the way he kept bringing it up.”

  “I’m glad I could help. I’ll finish it tomorrow night when I can see what I’m doing. You’ve both been so good to me, and I wanted to do anything I could to begin to pay you back.”

  “Aren’t you sweet,” she said with a motherly smile.

  Tyler stepped into the room just then and looked at Brandon with a look of confusion on his face. “Hey,” he said.

  “Hey,” Brandon said, unable to stop his face from breaking out into a huge smile at the sight of his boyfriend. “Welcome home. How was your trip?”

  “Long. I thought we’d never get finished. You got a minu
te?” Tyler asked.

  “Sure. My shoes are a mess, though. Actually, all of me is a mess, so I don’t want to go traipsing through the house.”

  “Okay, let’s go out back.”

  Once they were alone, Tyler said, “Dude, nothing’s moved, nothing’s been touched. Didn’t you stay here?”

  “How could I?” Brandon asked, surprising himself by the amount of unexpected anger in his voice. “I didn’t have a key to get in.”

  Tyler visibly paled in shock. “Oh, fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck,” he swore to himself. “Oh, Bran, I am so, so very sorry. Fuck. Shit. I’m so sorry. I overslept that morning and… and… and….”

  “I know,” Brandon said, calmer now. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to snap at you. It just left me in an unexpected bind.”

  “So what have you been doing? Where have you been staying?”

  “Around,” Brandon answered evasively.

  “Around? What does that mean?”

  “Anywhere I could find space to be sheltered.”

  Tyler grappled him in a big hug. “Oh my God! Brandon, you… you’re…. Shit, Bran, I can feel your bones. You’ve lost weight. What’s going on, man?”

  “Everything happened so fast that morning you left. My money, my wallet, my cell phone—everything, is upstairs in your bedroom. My clothes. Everything. All I had was what was in my pockets that morning—nothing else. There’s not much you can do with no money.”

  “I’m so sorry, Bran. Please believe me. All this time I figured you were staying here. I feel stupid now for being mad at you.”

  “Mad at me? Why were you mad at me?” Brandon asked.

  “You never answered your phone or my texts or emails. I didn’t know why you were shutting me out totally. I was thinking the worst.”

  “My phone was upstairs in your bedroom,” Brandon explained.

  “Fuck.” Tyler looked visibly pained.

  “I did sort of stay here the last two nights,” Brandon said softly, still not looking at Tyler.

  “What does that mean?” Tyler asked. “How can you ‘sort of’ stay somewhere?”