[Fiction] Carried Out

By Evan Sharp

When I dried off my legs and got the courage to ask, the police officer said the boy was still alive. The kid had somehow gotten way out into the middle of the ocean, where the water swells heavily and dips deeper than any human can comfortably swim. The tide had come in suddenly, carrying him far beyond the bobbing red buoys that marked the line in the ocean where sharks began to glide, encircling. And eventually, a jet ski picked him up, saving his life. 

“There was an excursion,” the police officer explained. “The kids were getting swimming lessons and his teacher just wasn’t watching.” He was fitted tightly into his officer’s uniform; the badges pinned to his chest glinted at me. I saw my reflection cast dark and oblong in his sunglasses like a tinted trick mirror.

“So where were you?” he asked me. 

I told him I was sitting at the back of the beach where the waves couldn’t touch me. 

He scanned me up and down from my moist shins to my red forehead. Then he looked at Emily, who was standing beside me, and the curve of a smile appeared on his thin lips. My girlfriend of ten years was wearing a green bikini and had put her sunglasses on, shielding not only her green eyes from the world but her disappointment in me as well.

“Didn’t you try to go into the water to help?” he asked.

“He was sitting over there,” Emily answered for me, pointing to the abandoned lifeguard tower behind us, its shadow providing the only square of shade on the entire strip of yellow beach.

I didn’t want to seem like a coward, although that’s what I was. Everyone had looked at me as soon as they’d heard the screams. They’d arrived at intervals like tides, the screams and the people who’d gathered on the beach. And when one woman had pointed at the ocean near the horizon, I’d seen it. Two pale arms were sticking out of the blue and white waves, flailing and splashing.

Maybe all this attention I was getting was because I was so tall, I thought, and I had my shirt off. My long chest, wide shoulders and skinny, hairless legs were evidence to their eyes that I was a strong swimmer, strong enough to go out there and save the boy from drowning.

I’d gone in when Emily looked at me. She was wondering why I didn’t just rush into the water.

“Right,” I’d said, walking towards the water. What I’d never told her was that I couldn’t swim.  

I’d only gotten a few inches into the ocean, the water rising to my thighs. It was just enough to smell the salt and feel the seaweed rubbing against my feet. Wading through the shallow water was like stepping on leeches and trying to keep my balance, and the waves swallowing the boy looked like walls.

It was best not to say any of this to the police officer. I didn’t want to look like the coward that I was. I knew we had to give him our information, but he was only looking at Emily when he talked. In my defense, she was much easier to talk to, and it didn’t hurt that she was so pretty.

When I went to give him my information, he only said, “No, that’s okay. Thanks for your time,” and walked away, leaving footprints in the sand with his stained dress shoes.

Although what had happened at the beach that morning was distressing and surreal, on the drive home all I could think about was the way the police officer had spoken to Emily and not me. When asking her questions, his voice had softened like someone catching up with an old friend, but with me he’d sounded as annoyed as a parole officer conversing with a reformed criminal.

“What did you think of him?” I finally asked her.

“Any kid who gets away from his teacher is trouble,” she said. “God, don’t you hate naughty children? I can’t believe people don’t watch their kids when they take them out to public places. I mean, anything can happen. Don’t they know that?”

“No, I meant the cop,” I said. “What did you think of the cop?”

She didn’t answer. Her mind was elsewhere. She shook her head and sand fell from her hair, landing on the steering wheel like dandruff.

“Little boys seem to always do this,” she went on, ignoring me. “They’re so disruptive. You remember my nephew Blake? And I thought you’d go out there.”

She was getting so worked up I just nodded along, telling her to watch the road so we didn’t crash and wind up at the same hospital they had taken the boy to.

I remembered her nephew. Blake was disruptive. He threw rocks at windows and laughed as the glass cracked and splintered like he was watching cartoons. The few times he’d stayed over at our apartment he hid our toothbrushes very obviously inside the toilet bowl for us to find and use. Once, he even keyed the side of Emily’s car for no reason. When I’d demanded an answer out of him, he’d said it was, “just for fun, Uncle Mattias,” and laughed hysterically to himself before I could remind him that I wasn’t exactly his uncle and damn proud of it.

Blake died more than a year ago now. He’d been playing with his army figurines by the lake of Emily’s sister’s house one gloomy afternoon. When Emily went to fetch a juice box from inside the house, leaving the two of us alone, he slipped and fell into the lake’s murky green water and drowned.

Her sister, Margaret, always made me feel guilty about it later because I used to be a lifeguard in high school, despite never learning how to swim. It was a summer job, I always wanted to explain to her, the only one I could get, lying my way in. I never took it that seriously.

Emily and I never really talked about Blake anymore, so I found it odd that she brought him up so suddenly in the car.

But today a boy almost drowned, I realized. Only this boy was lucky enough to be saved. Just not by me.

#

Emily began to steer clear of me after that. She went to work early, leaving her side of the bed cold as a bag of peas in the freezer, and she didn’t return until the very end of the day when the sun was gone.

One evening she returned in the middle of the night, carrying clothes store bags. She walked right past me and locked herself in our bedroom without a word. From the outside of the door I could hear her voice. It was thick, muffled by the space of plaster and paint.

She was talking to someone on the phone. I assumed it was her sister Margaret and that they were gossiping about me. A grown man of thirty-four who couldn’t save yet another child from drowning and who still couldn’t swim.

That night I slept on the couch without the warmth and comfort of blankets. And the next day I decided to learn how to swim. I’d never learned to swim because I never liked the water. The most water I could ever tolerate came out of the sink and shower in lukewarm spurts  or out of a plastic bottle. Even as a child I was never a bath kind of boy, and apparently my mother said I couldn’t be baptized. As a baby, I’d screamed so much that apparently the priest threw his hands up in the air, quitting right there during the ceremony. So, I was never the type to go rushing into the water to save anyone in the first place.

I thought I’d get to the pool at the aquatics center early when the shallow lanes were empty. I imagined being taught by an experienced instructor who didn’t discriminate or form judgements about adult men who decided that after thirty was the best time to learn.

But when I got to the aquatics center all the shallow lanes were busy. The water was always cold and unbearable to my skin. Whenever I slipped myself in it felt like being buried in a liquid coffin filled with snakes writhing around my body searching for the best crevice. And the only swimming classes available were for children. Not only would it be weird to them if I joined in, but the parents watching from a safe distance might think I was a creep, so I didn’t take any classes.

I held onto the railing and slid my body into the chlorine-flavored water. The freeze hit my body and my legs went numb. Flailing around like a worm, a victim of the water, I felt my body sink below the thin surface like I was in quicksand. I had to be rescued, forcibly pulled to the ledge by two arthritic pensioners who were doing their aqua-aerobics class.

“We thought to call the police there for a second,” one of my rescuers said. He was a man with a chicken-thin neck and pale blue eyes that didn’t glow against the water.

“How’d you manage that?” asked  the other one, his arms trembling as he somehow pulled himself out of the water.  

I told them I had a cramp in my leg, my entire body going red like I’d been sunburned. I was so embarrassed that I left the pool area and made it to the parking lot without showering or changing, a towel wrapped tightly around my waist.

To make things worse, the next time I went back to the aquatics center I was approached by the management. This teenage girl with curly hair and braces informed me that I needed to change my bank details for my club membership.

“Excuse me?” I asked  almost rudely. This didn’t happen. I didn’t ever get stopped by managers asking for money. I always had money.

“It’s been declined, sir.”

“Impossible,” I said. I had a large inheritance from my parents’ deaths, a road accident one summer evening, their black Chrysler plunging off a bridge into the water of a ravine. “Check again, please.”

“I already did that three times, sir. It’s still declined. Do you have another card?”

I emptied my wallet, giving her cash and multiple cards like I was handing out candy at Halloween.

I returned to the apartment confused, deflated and defeated.

When I got to the door, I heard voices conspiring inside, so I entered slowly, thinking that it might be a burglary.

Then I relaxed a little when I saw Emily’s brown bun hovering above the couch and heard the familiarity of her slight cackle.

Steam coiled from a cup she was holding, like smoldering incense except there was no lavender or gardenia aftertaste.

For a moment I thought that everything was all right, that it had returned to how it was before the beach incident, to a time when Emily didn’t think that I was a coward.

Then I walked in and saw that there was someone sitting opposite her, a man.

“There he is!” Emily said jovially, spinning her head around.

“What’s going on?”

The man got up.

“You remember the police officer from the beach the other day,” she said.

“Mr. Wolfe,” he said bluntly, “I’ve come just to follow up on some routine questions.” His lips became a straight line with the tiniest cracks at the farthest corners of his mouth fading, evidence suggesting he’d been smiling and laughing until I intruded on their scene.

“Fire away,” I said.

“That’s all right,” he said, making his way past me to the door. “I’m actually done here. Thank you.” He left, shutting the door. 

I asked her what was going on, and she told me he’d come to ask about the boy.

“He is doing an investigation,” she explained.

“So any leads yet?”

“Same story,” she said. “Teacher wasn’t watching him.”

Her cheeks flushed.

I wanted to ask her about the declined credit card, because it was the one we both used, but I didn’t want to tread that far into deep water. Had I brought anything up about the drowning boy, it might remind her of Blake, and she would in turn blame me.  

Before bed, I was going to tell her about the swimming lessons. This was my version of saying that I was trying, even if I hadn’t made much progress yet. But I lost my nerve and went to the couch where I’d made my home of swirled blankets that smelled of sea salt.

It was in the middle of the night, while neither of us could sleep, that she emerged from the bedroom and stood over me.

“Why didn’t you just go into the water?” she asked me frantically.

“Because I was afraid,” I said. It just slipped out. I didn’t have to think about it. I didn’t know if she was talking about the boy at the beach or her nephew.

“I wanted you to go into the water,” she said.

“I know,” I said. And I want to talk about the credit card, I thought, but decided not to say. It wasn’t the right time. It was the middle of the night. We were half-sane, half-asleep. Maybe it was my fault. I was spending too much.

“Can I go back to sleep?” I asked instead.

She didn’t answer me. In the night, she just shuffled back to the bedroom, now a foreign place. If I got in there again, I was sure I wouldn’t even recognize it.

#

The next day I didn’t bother going to the aquatics center. I went to the hospital instead. It had been almost a week since the incident, but the boy was going back there to have routine tests done. There were prolonged respiratory issues associated with drowning, and then there was the threat of severe brain injury affecting neurological networks and motor functions. I’d read about this on my phone on the way to the hospital. The doctors had to assess the damage caused by the prolonged immersion. Knowing this made me more fearful of water than I’d ever been.  

His parents were there with him and they were what you’d expect. His mother hovered around him like a fly, touching his face and checking his temperature with her palm, and his father had a thick arm wrapped around his shoulders. They looked to me like rock formations in the shape of an overprotective family.

I didn’t see my moment to strike until they started to argue. I couldn’t hear what they were saying, but I did learn that his name was Colin.

When the doctor came the father removed his hand from Colin’s shoulder and wrapped it around the doctor. Then the mother stood up and started talking, the lines on her face scrunched in concern and worry like a napkin. It was a portrait of a worried family unfolding before me.

Nevertheless, Colin was left alone, so I went over to him. His eyes were dark and sunken. His skin was pale. His hair was inky black, and his fringe hung down to his eyes like a wet rag. He looked more like a little human being formed out of dark shadows. 

“You probably don’t remember me,” I told him, “but I was at the beach that day.”

“Are you the one with the jet ski?” Colin asked.

“Huh?”

“They say that someone came to get me on a jet ski.”

I hesitated a second, thinking that I could just take the credit. Then I came to my senses.

“No, I was the one who called the ambulance,” I lied, but I said it confidently.

The boy’s eyes dimmed like a weakened light. He looked like he was about to go to sleep. 

“What were you doing way out there, kid?”

“Trying to swim.”

“You couldn’t swim?”

“Mrs. Kelly said it was a good idea to learn how to swim in the ocean. She thinks the salt helps our bones grow.” He shrugged. “And I wanted to see a shark.”

“Wait, kid, you wanted to see a shark?” I almost broke with laughter, but then I realized that some children were reckless and idiotic. You don’t swim straight when you see a fin cutting through the water in front of you. “You actually wanted to see one?”

He shrugged again.

“But why did you swim out so far?”

“She told me that sharks swim close to really big waves,” he said.

“Hate to be the one to tell you this, but she told you wrong,” I said, assuming that it was his idiot teacher. “It’s the other way around, actually. Sharks can sense tsunamis and high waves from hundreds of miles away, so they get away from them.”

I knew this because I had looked it up that morning when Emily had wanted to suddenly go to the beach for the first time. I was worried, panicking about every little detail, except that a child could swim and be carried out too far.

“She told me that it was okay,” he said. “A man would help me if I got too far out.”

He dropped his head then, defeated. The boy wanted to see sharks because that’s what boys do. They do reckless, stupid things. Like Emily  once said, which reminded me of Blake. I hoped that Colin didn’t also like to laugh at the sound of windows shattering or smile at the pleasure of scarring the side of a car with a set of keys.

I was about to apologize, and he lifted his head for a moment, but I heard the echo of his parents’ voices. They were arguing with the doctor, who was positive Colin was doing well.  

I had to leave.

I was going to tell Emily about what I’d done later. I was even excited about it, feeling butterflies of progress batting their wings against the lining of my stomach.

But when I got back to the apartment she wasn’t there. I searched each room, but I didn’t find her there. I went into the bedroom I’d been temporarily evicted from and opened a closet. It was filled with her clothes; long coats and dresses, none of which I recognized, were hanging like skeletons, yet they were kept inside plastic covers, shining like polished cars. There was also some jewelry—white watches, gold rings, green necklaces—trapped inside sparkling cases.

If they were presents from me, I never remembered giving them to her. 

Then I went to the window and peered out. She was getting into her car, and before she could start the engine I was already downstairs. I didn’t drive, so I got into an idling taxi and followed her.

I thought about signaling to her from the road, waving outside the window to get her attention, but there was never a break in the traffic to allow that.

Eventually, we came to a stop at a parking lot. All the other cars were gone, and it was dark except for two pairs of headlights glowing in the darkness, her car and another.

When both cars turned off their lights, I paid the taxi driver and got out, standing in the empty lot of darkness.

She had come to the beach where Colin  almost drowned. Maybe she’d come out here just for a break, I thought, a time to think. How could she spend the rest of her life with someone like me, a coward? What was she doing in a relationship with a man who had too much money but not enough guts?

I was walking towards her car, with that smell of the sea emanating around me like smoke, but then I stopped when the driver of the other car got out.

They met each other in front of their cars, and I walked around to get a better look without being seen.

From other angles the weak light given from the moon, together with the glow of the city’s lights reflecting just behind me, bounced off the swelling waves. In this fading light I could make her out, and the police officer from the beach was standing opposite her.

I hadn’t noticed that it was him because he was driving a dark red car that had no lightbars or sirens. He looked expensive, too, and I remembered that Emily had liked expensive things.  My heart pounded in my chest, the noise climbing to my ears, as I expected to see them embracing in the kind of romantic lock that would send me over the edge.

But they didn’t do that. They talked for a while, then the officer got back into his car, slamming the door, and started the engine. The headlights flashed into my eyes and for a second I felt naked, like they could see me.

He drove out of the parking lot, and I took this opportunity to approach her.

“You came,” she said when she saw me.

“You thought I would follow you?”

“I saw you back at the apartment.”

“Why didn’t you wait for me?”

She didn’t answer. She walked out of the parking lot and onto the beach, slipping off her shoes, meeting the sand in her bare feet.

I followed her, like I always do.

The cold wind brushed off the water in the night and that seaweed smell was as heavy as smoke coiling around us.

“I went to apologize to the boy,” I told her. “His name is Colin.”

“Did he forgive you?” she asked.

“You know, I think he did,” I lied. “He didn’t start crying or anything, but he seemed to be cool with what happened. He knew that I tried in my own way.”

She told me that he wanted to find sharks and I paused for a moment, wondering how she knew that, then I asked her. 

She walked to the shoreline, leaving the question in the air, her feet sinking into the darkened sand.

“Emily,” I said, “how did you know Colin was swimming for sharks?”

“Boys are always the same,” she said. “You want to appear brave, swimming out to meet sharks and playing with your figurines, but you find yourselves in danger and have to be saved. Not you, though.”        

“Not me?” I was so confused that I came closer to her. The water was right there, inches from my feet. I could feel its soft, cool spray as the night waves came in. They folded and unfolded over each other rhythmically, soothingly, trance-like, becoming thicker. 

“Rich boys don’t need to be saved,” she said.  

Then she asked me if I would go into the water with her.

The waves hit my feet, soft at first. But I heard it in the distance, a heavy wall of waves rushing towards the shore, too many of them.

I went past her until my neck was submerged and then turned back around.

She was just there, standing on the shoreline far away. All the light lifted off the waves in the swells and rhythms of the ocean, lighting up her features like flashes of lightning.

I asked her if she was coming in.

“You first,” she said.

Evan Sharp is a Melbourne-based writer and editor whose work has appeared in Mystery Tribune and Marrow Magazine.