I threw the throttle forward and the boat lunged into motion. Just as the ski rope became taut, Ben stepped onto the ski, creating a huge spray of water, and we were off. He’d been skiing since he was seven, and he was an expert. We pulled over to the other side of the lake where someone had set up a slalom course and took a pass at it. Ben pulled hard on the rope with his right arm, leaned on his back foot, and with water spraying eight feet in the air, he cut across the right wake. With his shoulder inches off the water, he easily went around the first buoy. He stood up straight, waved to the girls on the beach, and then pulled hard with his left arm, leaned in the opposite direction, and went screaming back across both wakes to circle the second buoy.
Right, left, right, left, stretching and pulling and leaning, he methodically worked his way through the course. After he hit every one, we circled back around by the beach to drop him off. When we got there again he pulled hard on his right arm and went racing toward the shore, but right before he went smashing into the beach, he leaned back, twisted the ski in a spiral, sent water flying in every direction, and stepped out of the ski in ankle-deep water.
“Your turn, Billy,” he said, and he handed him the ski and the vest. Surprisingly, Billy was a great skier. His first pass through the slalom course he missed two buoys, but by the end of the day he’d gotten every one. Mickey knew how to ski, but barely. He hung on for dear life on two skis, and when he tried to drop one he lost his balance and went bouncing across the water like a skipping stone.
It was an afternoon of too much sun, too much beer, and too much laughing, and it was exactly what they needed to unwind. All three of them had been teasing Rafer unmercifully about not skiing, and finally, about five thirty, he agreed to try it. Mickey and Billy helped him get the skis on. “Hit it,” yelled Mickey, and Rafer popped out of the water like a bobber on a cane pole. He wobbled like a Weeble for about 150 yards and then went plunging into the water.
I pulled back around and circled in close to him. “Ya okay?” I asked.
“I think so,” he said, but I could tell that he’d swallowed a lot of water.
While he struggled to get his skis on, I put the boat in neutral, and Ben went back onto the swim platform to see if he could help with the rope. The current was pushing us back toward Rafer, and Ben was worried the tow rope would get fouled in the prop. He reached around the back with his right hand and grabbed the rope near the tow hook on the transom. Then, facing forward and still holding on, he leaned back trying to take up the slack with his left hand and keep it from fouling, but it wasn’t enough.
“Put her in gear and ease forward a little,” he said, still leaning back and trying to whip the rope away from the prop as he balanced precariously on the back of the swim platform.
“Be careful,” I said. “That teak wood can get slippery when it’s wet.” But with the girls watching the show from the beach, he ignored me.
“Take up the slack now,” he said, “or we’ll be cutting that rope off the prop with a jackknife.”
When I pushed the throttle forward, I didn’t realize that the steering wheel was cocked to the left, and for a split second the boat lunged ahead in that direction. It caught Ben by surprise, and he almost did a header off the right side of the swim platform. Unfortunately, he tried to catch himself by jerking on the rope with his right hand, and as I straightened out the boat, instinctively he kicked out his left foot for balance. He briefly balanced there acrobatically and then plunged into the water. When he did, his left foot was clipped by the propeller blade.
Even all these years later, the next few minutes are kind of a blur in my mind. As I circled around again with the boat, Ben’s head bobbed up out of the water, and he screamed in agony. I thought he was horsing around until I saw the blood. It looked like a scene from Jaws. There was blood in the water everywhere, and when I managed to get him in the boat I wrapped his foot in a beach towel and raced for shore.
The county Sheriff had been taking a coffee break on a picnic table under the oak trees in the grass above the beach, and when he heard Ben scream he came a-running. With lights flashing and the siren screaming, he took Dad and me and Ben to Mercy Hospital. The only thing I remember from the sixteen-mile drive was Dad. He was calm—too calm. He had wrapped his shirt around Ben’s foot like a tourniquet and then wrapped his arms around Ben.
“It’ll be all right,” he said. Over and over again he said it—“It’ll be all right”—but we all knew it wouldn’t be all right.
They rushed Ben into surgery, and about four hours later the doctor came out to see us. His name was Alan Swartz; he was a thin, good-looking man with silver hair and a pencil-thin mustache. We later learned that he was a pioneer in what’s called silicone small joint implants, an incredibly complex procedure that involved bone shaping and rebalancing of the surrounding joint tissue. Swartz developed the surgery for people suffering from severe arthritis. But by sheer luck and God’s grace he was there for a conference the day Ben needed him.
“He’s lucky,” Dr. Swartz said. “It could have been a lot worse. It looks like the propeller blade only struck him once, and it was a clean cut. It severed the proximal of the hallux and the metatarsals of the next two phalanx.”
“Can you put that in English?” Dad said, and Swartz obliged.
“The blade of the propeller cut through the major joint of the big toe and the lower bones of the next two. It also severed the cords and tendons. Some of the bone is missing, and there was some debris that needed to be cleaned out, but after that we were able to put an implant in and pin things back together. In time he should heal pretty well.”
“What do you mean, pretty well?” Dad asked. “Will he walk, will he run?”
“Sure, he’ll walk. He might have a slight limp, but he’ll walk fine. He won’t be much of a runner, at least not for a while, but maybe someday. It’ll be months before he can put any real weight on it, and it won’t be as flexible as it once was, but he’ll walk. He’s lucky,” Swartz said. “His toes were hanging on by a thread. A couple millimeters more and they’d have been fish food.” He could see Dad wince and he apologized. “Sorry. I just mean if he’d have lost his toes in the lake, he’d walk pretty gimpy for the rest of his life. But now, like I said, I think in six months to a year he’ll be walking around fine, and after that, who knows? A lot of it’ll be up to him.”
Dad and I both knew what that meant. No football. That was the foot he needed to plant if he was going to pass with any accuracy. Nobody can throw off their back foot very well, at least not with any consistency.
My sister, Sharon, kept calling the hospital, and finally, after a couple of hours, she and Mom showed up at the hospital with Billy, Rafer, and Mickey. When they walked in I realized that I’d left Rafer sitting out in the lake when I brought Ben back to shore.
“Sorry, man,” I said. “I didn’t mean to leave you out there, but . . .”
“You don’t need to explain,” he said. “How’s your brother? Is he going to be okay?”
“They stitched him up,” I said. “He was lucky, there was some hotshot specialist that happened to be here, and now we’ll have to wait and see.”
“But he’ll be able to play, right?” Billy looked at me inquisitively. “He’ll still be able to play ball?”
That’s when Dad broke down. He put his face in his hands and started crying uncontrollably. Mom sat down beside him and said, “It’ll be all right, honey, don’t worry.”
“No, it won’t,” he said. “Everybody keeps saying that, but it won’t be all right.” Then he looked at me and said, “What do you think you were doing out there, Sky? How could you let this happen? I told you to keep an eye on him!”
For a minute, his words froze everything in the room. No one moved or said a word, but Dad’s words cut me like a knife. He didn’t say anything I wasn’t thinking, but hearing it, especially from him, made it real. I’d been trying to hide from it, but there was no hiding anymore. The weight of i
t crushed in on me, and I crumpled in the chair.
“That’s not fair,” Sharon said. “It’s not Sky’s fault. It was an accident—a terrible, horrible accident.”
“Accident or not,” Dad said, “all of this never would have happened if Sky hadn’t brought that boat up here to show off. I told him, ‘no horsing around, these boys are in training, what they need is rest.’ I promised Bucky that I’d keep an eye on them, and then Sky showed up.”
“He was just trying to show them a good time, help them unwind a little,” Sharon said.
“Look,” Dad said. “These boys are special, irreplaceable on the football field. You got to be careful with people like that. You don’t let them put themselves in harm’s way.”
“Ben’s a big boy; he can look out for himself!”
“Obviously he can’t,” Dad said. “Great athletes are like racehorses. They need constant care. If you’ve got a plow mule, you work it hard all day and then you just let it graze for its supper in the field at night. But if you’ve got a racehorse, that’s a whole different ball game. You give them the best oats, the best hay, the best of everything. You hire the best groomers, and trainers, and vets, and jockeys because racehorses are special. You take every precaution you can because you’ve got a lot invested in them, and, well, all I was saying is that a lot of us have got a lot invested in Ben.”
“He’s not a racehorse, Dad; he’s your son. So is Sky, and blaming him for this isn’t going to fix anything. You’re the one who wanted these boys to break training and come up here for a few days. And if you remember, I’m the one who suggested that we go water-skiing.”
“You’re right,” Dad said, looking up at Sharon. “I don’t know what I was thinking. I’m sorry, Sky. Forgive me,” he said, reaching over and putting his hand on my knee. “It was an accident, just a freak accident. No one’s to blame.”
But hearing him say it didn’t change anything. You can’t take words like that back. I felt guilty before he said it, and hearing it from my father only confirmed my guilt.
“I’m sorry, Dad,” I said. “I don’t know what else I can say. I’m sorry.”
He put his hand up as if to say, “That’s enough!” and then he slowly shook his head, looked at the floor, and let out a long, deep sigh. The grief of it all washed over him, and he and my mother fell into each other’s arms. I knew our conversation was over, and I also knew that my guilt wasn’t over. Whatever my culpability was, it was something I was going to have to learn to live with.
Of course, logically I also knew that some of this was on Ben. He was always pressing the limits. It was his nature. Some kids are natural-born risk takers. As little kids we were given boundaries. Don’t touch that; it’s hot. Don’t go out of the yard; it’s not safe. Don’t color outside the lines. Then as we got a little older, we learned that every game we played had lines that defined what was in bounds and what was out. But some kids just don’t think the rules apply to them. That was Ben. He was always pressing the limits, and so Dad was right: knowing that, I should have been watching out for him.
Since then I’ve replayed that day a million times in my head, but I still don’t know what I’d do different. All I know is that I wish I’d done something different.
The boys went in and saw Ben and made some remarks about him maybe missing a game or two.
“We’ll let Bucky know what happened,” Billy said. “Keep us posted, okay?”
“We will,” Dad said.
“I’ll pray,” Rafer said.
The other two said, “We’ll pray too,” and they meant it. Then they got in the van and went back to the university.
For the next few months we all prayed. On the eve of State’s first game there was a pep rally, and afterwards they filled the field house for a prayer meeting for Ben. He was there with crutches, and when he dropped them and gingerly walked across the stage, the place erupted in applause. For the whole summer and most of the fall we all believed in miracles. We hoped, we dreamed, and we prayed that Ben would be able to play again next season, but God didn’t answer that prayer. Winter term Ben dropped out of school, and he never went back.
———
When I think about the accident now, one of two things happens. I either get angry or I feel guilty, and today it was a little of both. I was angry with Ahbee for picking the scab off an old wound. If he knew everything, then he knew that I’ve always carried a piece of the guilt from that day around with me wherever I went. Sometimes it would get buried under the busyness of the day, and other times it would come bubbling up to the surface. Sometimes when it did, the only thing that would get me through it was the memory of hearing my dad say it was an accident. Now even that small comfort was taken from me when Ahbee said, “Nothing happens by accident here, or anywhere else.” If that’s true, then someone’s to blame for everything, and so the accident was either on me or it was on Ahbee.
For a while I sat on the beach and wrestled with my guilt. Then I cried for what felt like an hour or more. Finally, when my storehouse of tears ran dry, I got angry.
“Is this what you wanted me to unpack, Ahbee?” I shouted. “Do you enjoy watching people reopen old wounds? Is that your game? Are you trying to push my nose in it? Well, two can play at that game, you know. If you are who you say you are, if you’re all-powerful and all-knowing, then you either should have seen the accident coming or you should have stopped it. Either way, some of this is on you. You could have done something and chose not to. So tell me, if you can, what kind of a loving Father would stand by and watch his children suffer? If Rae is right, if you’re always with me, then answer me. Show yourself, you coward. This has been brewing between us for a long time. Let’s have it out once and for all.”
I knew that like in my younger years, I was picking a fight I couldn’t win, but I didn’t care. I wanted an answer. “Explain yourself!” I shouted, sounding more like Job than I intended.
For the longest time I waited for a response—a voice, or a lightning bolt, or something—but it never came. As he so often does, God held his tongue, and the callous silence became my answer. I was exhausted and at the same time exhilarated. I’d been waiting a long time to get that off my chest. Finally I decided to walk off a little of my anger by wading in the creek.
It was cold and clear, and as I stepped in, sand billowed up from the bottom. Minnows darted in every direction at once, and a nervous box turtle flopped off a log to my left and disappeared into the willows. I walked slowly and tried to take in the nature around me. Birds chirped in the breeze, and as I made my way with the slow-moving current, I’d see a bluegill or a perch or a school of minnows slip silently past my legs every once in a while.
In places the creek was lined with birch trees and tall, wispy white pines that spilled into a dense and dark woods. Then around the next bend, rock cliffs rose up from the water, and the bottom of the creek would turn from sand to smooth, round stones. I saw a blue heron leapfrogging his way in flight in front of me, and a couple of mallards skidded in for a landing on the water over my shoulder.
Ahbee was right: it was peaceful. The cool water quenched the fire in my soul. The more I walked, the better I felt. Each step seemed to lighten my load. Maybe it was time. I’d been carrying this around bottled up inside me for too long.
“I’m sorry, God,” I whispered. “Sometimes it’s easier to just lay all this at your door and walk away. I know that’s not fair. There’s more than enough blame to go around. But like my mom said, sometimes the world isn’t fair, and, well, I’m part of that world.” Once again I waited for a response, but the only thing I heard was the wind rustling through the trees. “Is that you, Rae?” I asked hopefully. But if it was, she, like Ahbee, kept silent, so I kept wading my way along.
The more I thought about it the more I realized that this was the perfect place to unpack my thoughts. There were a few cottages along the way, mostly on top of the rock cliffs. Once in a while I could hear voices, but for the most p
art I was alone with my thoughts and my prayers. Someone once said that when we’re having trouble putting the pieces of life into perspective, we should pray. And they were right: we don’t pray enough. Prayer changes everything, but worry changes nothing, so I decided to try and pray more and worry less.
Prayer changes everything, but worry changes nothing.
I walked and prayed my way down the creek, and when the water turned dark, I’d skirt the edges to keep from getting too wet. In some places it looked like the water was over my head, but mostly it was up to my knees with rocks and rapids.
By late morning I’d walked the full length of the creek and found myself on the shores of a huge body of fresh water that was rimmed with sand dunes and squawking seagulls. Whitecaps crashed against the shore, and a wind blew in off the lake. It seemed like a good place to eat my lunch, so I sat down on a piece of driftwood and unloaded the knapsack that had been left for me on the kitchen table.
Inside the knapsack was a Granny Smith apple, a half-melted Milky Way, a bag of Fritos, some celery sticks with peanut butter, a brown sugar and oleo sandwich on Wonder bread, and a chocolate cherry macaroon.
How can this be? I thought to myself. These macaroons are my own secret recipe. And someone’s been talking to my mother. This is exactly the kind of lunch she would have made when I was a kid.
The macaroon recipe was originally my mother’s, but over the years I doubled their size, added the dried cherries, and dipped them in dark chocolate. I guess Ahbee approved of my additions.
As I ate my lunch, I looked out at the lake, listened to the seagulls, and thought about the people I had been talking to over the past few days. Moments slipped into hours. If I was dreaming, I didn’t want to wake up. Then it hit me—this must be what heaven is like!
Lightning cracked on the big lake’s horizon, and it was as if Ahbee were calling me back to the cottage. Huge black clouds rolled in toward the dunes. Then it began raining—first one raindrop, then another, and by the time I made my way back to the cottage, I was drenched and shivering. I was hoping to see a familiar car in the driveway, but there was none to be found. I guess it’s a day off from everything, I thought to myself.
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