by Chris Lynch
So I didn’t stare Alex down because I did not know what that was, but I did know that if you did it you probably did not do it to a graduate of the United States penitentiary system, if in fact Alex had ever been in jail.
“Were you in jail, Alex?” I asked in a low voice.
“I was.”
I sighed. “Why does everything have to happen to me?”
Once again I had made my uncle laugh, which I did not understand but which was fine with me. I left him, took a running dash to the pool, boldly right past the No Running sign, and I dived in.
I felt different—which almost always means better—the instant I broke the surface of the water. Being under there, cool and wet and airless, weightless and soundless, was joy.
You probably caught me there lying. You probably already told yourself that joy was too strong a word. Okay, but only just barely.
For one thing, I stayed under that water for a good long time. No, wise guy, not like a rock at the bottom, but like an actual swimmer type. I stroked and stroked with about the same motion as a seal or a penguin, but funny as that may seem, the comparison felt right and flattering to me. Because those were creatures that looked comical and misfitted on land, but once underwater they were perfect. They were, in fact, flying.
I was, in fact, flying. It had been so long since I had dived into a pool, I couldn’t even remember. It had been so long that my bathing suit, which was purposely bought seven sizes too big, was now only three sizes too big. I had forgotten I liked to swim. I had forgotten I could swim.
“You can swim, boy,” Alex said to me as I popped up out of the water with a great intake of air. He had caught right up to me even though I had swum the whole length of the pool without coming up. “I knew it. I knew you would be a good swimmer. We are fish, you know. Bishops are fish. I think we slithered up out of the primordial soup a little more recently than most of humanity, because every Bishop takes to water just as readily as to air. Good, Elvin, this is good to see. I’m happy to see.”
He sure was. You would think he taught me himself, the way he was grinning and carrying on.
And it made me want to dunk right back under the water so I couldn’t see him or hear him celebrating my ability to swim.
So you know what I did? I dunked back under the water, of course.
The silence was heavenly, the feel of the water was heavenly as I felt it slide over me, as I made my sealy way through the pool with my slick underwater stroke. Stroke. Stroke.
When I broke the surface once more, something amazing had happened. I had swum underwater the full length of the pool again.
I wasn’t even winded.
Of course I was.
I was so winded and grunting that the pool attendant gave me a long, worried look, but that wasn’t important because I swam underwater the whole length of the pool without coming up for air. Even when I saw my uncle splashing the place up with his overexcited, understylish Australian crawl as he hurried to get to me, I didn’t feel the need to get away again.
I didn’t feel the ability to get away again either. But really I didn’t feel the need.
“You are a swimming sonofagun,” he said when he got there, panting twice as hard as me.
Never ever thought I would be able to assemble those words in that order: panting twice as hard as me.
“Stop,” I said, taking charge because my breath was back, and because I was feeling in charge all of a sudden.
“Stop... what?” he panted.
“Everything. Stop everything. I don’t want to hear how great it is that I can swim. You know what I want to hear about? Missing toes and jail and... did you say antidepressants?... and antidepressants and cancer and you...”—I poked him hard in his scabby chest, raising an immediate angry red welt—“and sorry about that... and bullet hole scabs... and my mother... and what’s wrong with my penis... and my father... and... I can’t think of anything else right now, but I am sure I will... I’m afraid I will... and if I don’t, I bet you will come up with something new that I won’t want to know about but then I’m going to need to hear about because you couldn’t leave me alone so you had to come along and spoil everything... and so you better explain yourself....”
By the time I had finished, if I was even finished, Alex’s breathing had completely calmed. Calmed, in fact, to the point where I could not detect any rise and fall of his chest. It had come to the point where I was noticing such things. I got suddenly extremely nervous. Was he breathing? Was he okay? Had I damaged him further?
I dived back under the water.
But this time he caught me. Two firm bony hands gripped my shoulders before I could slip away and pulled me up.
“Let’s go to the sauna,” he said, holding me tight so I couldn’t escape. “They have a nice sauna here, a wet sauna. So many places now, they won’t let you ladle the water onto the rocks, and the dry stuff is hardly worth your time. This one, you’ll like. It’s a nice place to talk, too. Best place for talking. And it’ll help clear up that skin of yours some too, when we open up those pores....”
“There is nothing wrong with my skin,” I said, but went along. “My mother says my skin glows.”
It certainly glowed once we stepped into the sauna. It nearly caught fire.
“It’s hot in here,” I said, stopping just inside the glass door. It was a six-foot-by-six-foot cubicle of mostly cedar, with three tiers of benches rising at the back. Alex climbed to the top and took a seat.
“Yes, it is hot,” he said. “It’s supposed to be hot. That’s what a sauna does.”
I reluctantly took a couple of steps in. “Well, why does it do that?”
“It’s good for you. Makes you sweat.”
“A ringing telephone makes me sweat. The new fall TV schedule makes me sweat.”
“This is different. You’ll see. This is the kind of heat that does stuff for you. Makes you tough.”
“I’ve only been in here for a minute, but I get the distinct feeling that I am getting tender, rather than tough.”
He sighed. He closed his eyes and leaned back, letting the heat attack him.
I took a seat on the bottom bench. The truth was, this wasn’t so bad, so far.
“Why do you sit up there?” I asked.
“Hot air rises. The heat’s better up here.”
“Okay,” I said, feeling confident. I rose to the second level.
Not bad. The heat was a little drier than I had expected, actually making me less sweaty than when I walked in. Face feeling a bit flushed, a bit tight. But the overall effect was kind of tingly. This was all right. And it was not difficult. I liked things that were not difficult, and if this was something that was both not difficult and good for me—well, that was kind of my Holy Grail right there.
I ascended to the top level, taking my seat a few inches away from my uncle. Who may have been sleeping by then.
His arm reached out and slapped me on the knee. “Glad you could make it,” he said, without opening his eyes.
“Ouch,” I said, my knee skin turning out to be a bit heat sensitive.
Alex opened his eyes. He looked at me, then over to a wooden bucket that sat near his feet. “You mind if I ladle on some water?” he asked.
Why should I mind? Water was always one of my favorite things. Water, especially in the heat, was always a welcome thing. “Why should I mind?” I said. “Can I do it?”
He nodded, handed me the ladle, and pointed me to the metal electric barbecue thing with the hot, dry stones on top. “Just make sure the water gets on the rocks, rather than on the grill or the wall or the floor. Cover those rocks, boy.”
Boy, I covered those rocks.
Then I sat back in my top-row seat. It was very interesting, the way the steam crawled up the glass of the door, making its way to the top, then to the ceiling, then along that ceiling toward us.
The first whiff of the steam was a rush.
It was the last thing I could call a rush for a whi
le, because almost instantly that steam became more like a wave of boiling molasses descending over my body, coating me in lethargy.
“I think I’ll get down now,” I said slo-mo.
“No, Elvin, don’t,” Alex said, holding me in place quite unnecessarily. “This is the stuff. This is what you come here for. This is the best thing for us. Let the heat engulf you. Let the sweat pour. Let your mind drift, your spirit float....”
He continued talking. He continued talking nonsense. He went on and on about the spiritual, physical, mental properties of this sauna business, and mental was right. He claimed all kinds of amazing things were going to come of this, but the only one that seemed to be coming true was sweat. Gallons and oceans of sweat. He compared this uncomfortable and unenlightening experience to a Navaho sweat lodge where people would go in and not come out until they had hallucinated and collapsed and all but croaked and they began jabbering like monkeys about all the important things in life.
“You’re nuts, Alex,” I said, and I must have meant it since it took about all the strength I had to say it.
“I might be,” he said calmly. “Anything else you want to tell me?”
“No,” I said.
“Okay,” he said.
“You’re gross,” I said.
“I’ve heard that before,” he said.
“You don’t have enough toes. Those scabs on your back bother me. You have scary hair. You are too skinny. I don’t like having you around,” I said.
“That makes me sad,” he said.
“We had an okay life, me and my mother. It wasn’t great, but it wasn’t all complicated, either.”
“Debatable.”
“Not debatable.”
He leaned over and before I could stop him, sloshed another big helping of water on the rocks.
“Oh God,” I said as the steam came like a fireball toward my head. I tried to squirm down to a lower level, but he held me by the elastic waist of my bathing suit. Weak and slimy as a snail, I remained stuck to my seat.
“Are you going to kill me?” I asked.
If he was a film madman, he would have laughed. He did not laugh, which scared me more. “Why would I kill you?”
“Well, you were in prison.”
“I’m not going to kill you.”
“How long were you in prison?”
“Some years.”
“How long you been out?”
“Some years.”
“Where have you been since you got out?”
“A lot of places. I don’t remember all of them, to be honest, from before I quit the drinking and the drugs and stuff. It gets clearer after that. Mostly around here, though, is where I’ve been lately. Been around here pretty much the last couple of months.”
“Here?”
“Here. Keeping an eye on you, checking you out.”
“What? No. No, that couldn’t be. Watching me?”
Watching me. Just the idea of it, of being watched. Even if I knew I was being watched, even if I was watching someone watching me, I was always self-conscious to the point of hysteria wondering what I was revealing about my inner self through the antics of my outer self. If somebody was watching me over time and I was not aware of it? Oh God.
“I’m sorry,” I blurted.
“What?”
“Whatever I did. Whatever it was you saw, I apologize. I’m not usually like that. I wasn’t myself that day. It was my first time, and I didn’t even like it. A bigger kid made me do it. I was just trying to fit in—”
“Jeez, will you stop that. You have nothing to apologize for.”
“Really?”
“There’s nothing wrong with you, Elvin. You’re a great kid.”
“You sure you were following the right guy?”
“Damn. Where’d you get all these hang-ups?”
“Same as everybody, from my mother.”
“Your mother is far cooler than you are.”
“You leave my mother out of this,” I said, standing up quickly and getting a rush of blood to my head. I wasn’t going to sit down, though, and spoil the strength of my moment. “You keep your hands off my mother.”
I stood there, wavering in the vapor-rich air of the top of the sauna. Alex reached for the water bucket. “And you keep your hands off that ladle, too,” I demanded before thumping back down into my seat.
He relented on the ladle, but not on my mother.
“I didn’t bring her up,” he said, “you did. And as long as you did, let me point out that another thing we have in common is that we both love your mom.”
“I never said that,” I said. “She is good. She’s got her problems. I like her, right? Hey, we’re no different from any other mother and son, all right, so why doesn’t everybody just stop saying—”
“Wow,” Alex said, “could it be true? Could it be, nephew, that you are not able to say you love your own mother?”
I thought about his impertinent question for a minute. Then I thought about it for another minute. Then I fell right over sideways on that top bench, struggling to breathe.
“Shut up,” I said.
“Elvin Bishop, that is very sad. That is so very...”
His voice trailed off. I turned my head to look up at him. He was coated in running sweat streams like I was—well, not like I was since I was perspiring so much it looked like there was an invisible barbecue chef basting me—so it was hard to read his face. You could read his body, though, all slumped and shrunken. He said sad, and he meant sad.
“You gotta tell people you love ’em,” Alex said softly. “You gotta do that, Elvin, you just gotta.”
Now he was making me very sad, because, apparently, I had made him very sad. This hardly seemed fair. How did all this bad stuff get in the sauna, when there was none here when we arrived? It was like a nuclear reaction of crappy feeling.
“I am extremely hot, Alex.”
“Stop changing the subject. You do that a lot, don’t you?”
“Why were you in jail?”
“Because I stole money. Have you ever told anybody in your life you loved them? Once, even?”
“I am very, very hot. Who’d you steal money from?”
“Everybody. Do you ever miss your dad?”
“Why do you take antidepressants?”
“Because I can’t take everything else anymore. Do you ever get mad, that he’s not around?”
“Maybe I get mad that you are around.”
“Maybe you do. I don’t mind. But I can tell you that I miss him. I miss your dad, and I get mad sometimes that he isn’t around, and I loved him and I still love him, and your mom, too, and you too, ya portly bastard, I love you.”
You know, I didn’t even mind that. Portly didn’t bother me, hardly even registered, even. As I lay there, my vision getting all wavy as my head went for a molten metal swim, I felt more and more like my fat was indeed burning off me. I felt it melting away. I heard it pish-pish-pishing away a drop at a time onto the hot whatever between the slats of our bench. I got through the bad, torturous part of the sauna sweat lodge experience, had paid my dues, and was coming out somewhere else, where you were rewarded for your toughness by great gifts of health and lightness of thought and burning-away blubber.
I barely looked up when somebody opened the door and stepped inside. I barely looked up when he came over and sat on the bench right below Alex and me. He was an older guy. A heavy guy with thin gray hair that had a shiny skullcap of skin on top, and rounded shoulders. He sat down heavily. He breathed heavily.
Then he reached for the water ladle.
Oh God, no. Don’t do that. I thought it, but I didn’t say it.
He ladled on one big helping of water. Then another. Then another. The sauna filled up instantly with the kind of fog that filled old black-and-white movies with England in them, though England never could have gotten this hot. I could hardly see Alex now. I could hardly see the man. I could just about make out the shiny patch on his head.
He ladled on more water. Then he did it again.
“Could you stop that?” I wheezed into the void.
He stopped, turned halfway around, and halfway smiled at me.
“He’s a good kid,” Alex said.
There was a thick pause. “He is,” the man said. “You’re a good kid. Do you know you’re a good kid?”
I shrugged. “So I hear. Thank you.”
“Good manners,” the man added. “You’ve been brought up well. There’s not enough of that. There’s never enough of that. Most kids aren’t any good, but you’re a good one. Mother must be proud. Bet she’s proud. She proud?”
“Well... we don’t really talk about it....”
“Then you should. When you get home, talk about it.”
Sounded enough like a command that I said, “Yes sir.”
I heard, just then, the quick open-shut of the sauna door.
“Alex?” I called, because I thought it was high time we left too. I was skinny enough now.
He didn’t answer. “Alex?” I tried again. Nothing.
I got right up, slowly. My head still spun, and my knees wobbled. I made my way carefully down the steps and across the slick floor to the door.
“You’re a good guy,” the man said before I hit the door. “Keep being a good guy. Don’t turn into a jerk when you get older.”
“Okay,” I said.
I jumped out the door and snapped it closed behind me.
“There you are,” Alex said. “Why didn’t you answer me? I kept calling you.”
“Can we go now?” I said.
He smiled weakly and started hobbling toward the locker room, looking half as strong and twice as old as when we had arrived.
I scooted up and bumped up alongside him, sort of propping him up with my shoulder.
Or possibly propping us both up.