Stotan! (17 page)

“I know,” I said. “I'm sorry.”

“Sorry may not be good enough. Tell your third man not to go.”

I looked him in the eye and said, “Our friend is dying,” and he seemed to soften a little, but he said, “This could cost your whole team disqualification.”

I glanced up behind him to see Max working his way through the crowd. His stopwatch was in his hand, obviously running. I smiled at the director and said, “Nortie's going to swim.”

It didn't really matter what I said to the director, I'd have had to hog-tie Nortie to stop him from swimming. He was already on the block and, as Lion powered in for the touch, shot out over the water.

“I suppose you can take back our medals and points,” I said, “but you can't take back the act.” I put my hand on his shoulder. “Our friend is dying.”

Nortie swam like a man possessed, pulling easily away from the field. Most teams swim their slowest legs
in the second or third position and their fastest man last, so he needed a good lead—and, boy, he got it, looking like some kind of medium-sized nuclear torpedo. He touched, glanced quickly at the clock; you could see his little computer brain figuring what our time would have been had Jeff been there at his best. He smiled, gave a big nod and got out, waiting for the winners.

The lane ropes they use nowadays, for important meets at least, are a series of large round plastic fine-mesh cylinders, designed to keep any wave action from spilling over into the adjacent lane, so while the fury of the fourth leg boiled in the middle six lanes, our lane nine stood smooth as glass, the reflection of the overhead lights shining back at us and the ghost of Jeffrey Hawkins shooting through the still water. We stood there by the block watching it as Max approached from behind and slid his arms around our wet shoulders. “Pretty good swim,” he said, and Nortie burst into tears.

Something about the joy and pain of that moment, something about the excruciating contrast, made me feel that no matter what happens now, my life has been worth it. What a ride.

As the last Wilson swimmer approached the touch pad, Nortie came to and his eyes locked in on the clock.
When it stopped his computer whirred again for a second, then his eyes lit up. “We could have done it!” he screamed. “It's close, but we might have! We could have done it!” he screamed again, jumping up on the block and facing the crowd. “Awful close! Awful close! We
might
have!”

In a second the Wilson swimmers were there shaking our hands. Charlie Knows-His-Guns pulled Nortie down off the block and said, “I don't know, little man, we were awful damn fast.”

Nortie laughed, tears streaming down his face, and said, “We
could
have. Awful close.”

Swimmers from the other teams moved toward us now, and the danger of losing our hardware and points obviously passed. There would be no protest. No one there was willing to take anything from us.

 

So there it is. Wouldn't it be nice to make sense of it, get some idea of what it all means?

The remainder of the year stretches before me like an infinite anticlimax, though I'm sure, as spring opens up and we get out the boat and skis, and as scholarship offers roll in, demanding my immediate attention, I'll feel less empty.

But Jeff is still the same, and we'll have to go on
carrying the uncertainty of his status with us. God, sometimes in my most selfish moments I want it to just be over with; want Jeff to go to sleep one night, dreaming of himself and Colleen whole and strong, with a life and everything, and not wake up. But I never wish it really, because I can't even comprehend what it's going to be like when he's gone; how desperately I'll miss him.

I think I expected something more out of my senior year, or at least something really different. I wanted to come out of it with more answers than questions; but for answers I got zip. For questions I have legions.

I think if I ever make it to adulthood, and if I decide to turn back and help someone grow up, either as a parent or a teacher or a coach, I'm going to spend most of my time dispelling myths, clearing up unreal expectations. For instance, we're brought up to think that the good guys are rewarded and the bad guys are punished; but upon close scrutiny, that assumption vanishes into thin air. Nortie certainly never did anything to warrant the horror of his life, and Jeff sure isn't one of the bad guys. Look what he gets to give up.

And who are the bad guys anyway? Are they guys like my brother who are so damaged and weak they prey on people when they're down, or are they guys like O'Brian who are damaged and strong and prey on
anybody who gets in their way? And what about guys like Nortie's dad? Is it his fault that ten generations of men before him beat the hell out of their families, and he's too mean and dumb to stop it?

And if a guy like Max Il Song can't pull off a decent relationship with a woman, when his own daughter, who he loves
so
fiercely, is hanging in the balance, then who am I to think I can when my most powerful emotion in my current relationship is ambivalence? That is, next to lust.

All questions; no answers.

But I guess I have learned a few things. I've learned that asking “why” is more often than not a waste of time; that it's much more important just to know what is so. It doesn't matter why Elaine and I can't be lovers, it only matters that we can't. And it doesn't matter why Jeff has to go; he just does.

I think my job in this life is to be an observer. I'm never going to be one of those guys out there on the tip of the arrow of my time, presenting new ideas or inventing ways to get more information on a smaller chip. But I think I'll learn to see pretty well. I think I'll know how things work—understand simple cause and effect—and, with any luck, be able to pass that on. And that's not such a bad thing. I'll be a
Stotan
observer: look for
the ways to get from one to the other of those glorious moments when all the emotional stops are pulled, when you're just so goddam glad to be breathing air—like when I was standing at the foot of lane nine at State with Nortie and Lion and Max, having won it all, or at least “awful close.” Yeah.

But first things first. Right now I've got to get dressed and go pick up Devnee. Gotta set her straight.