Don, I Left as You Wished novel · Chapter 28 of 32

Chapter 28: Swim Across

The horn went at nine.

The big kids went first, sixty green caps hitting the water together, with the lifeguards' kayaks fanned out around them.

The adults went five minutes later.

I went in with them, in the middle of the pack, and swam slow.

Not my stroke. A tired grown-up's stroke, head up, a little crooked.

Joanie paddled beside me in a red kayak and didn't look at me once.

"You're dropping your elbow," she muttered at the water.

"I'm in disguise."

"You're in disguise as somebody bad."

Buttermilk Channel was flat and green and smelled like diesel.

A tug sat still with its engine off and its crew on the rail, clapping.

Ahead of me the green caps went on and on.

I watched my kids swim.

The nine-year-old who'd slipped into the deep end in June was out in front, kicking.

The two sisters from the bus driver's family swam side by side in their goggles, stopping every twenty strokes to check on each other.

A boy who wouldn't put his face in the water in May was doing it now, every stroke, all the way across the harbor.

I swam behind them and cried into my goggles where nobody could see.

The Red Hook shore came up slow.

A little stony beach at the foot of the pier, and the whole neighborhood crowded onto it.

News vans had their masts up.

Men from both families stood in dark glasses, in separate clumps that didn't mix.

Thirty yards out, a rope floated across the water in a long curve.

Inside it, the little ones were swimming their last hundred yards, a coach to every kid.

And at the end of the rope, standing in the harbor up to his chest, holding it steady, was Santo.

Black T-shirt, soaked through. Water to his ribs.

A five-year-old girl was hanging off his arm, kicking.

"Ears in," he was telling her. "Belly up. Like a pancake."

He didn't see me. He was looking at the beach.

So was I.

Up by the pier there was a little stage, with speakers on poles, for the finish.

A banner hung over a table of medals. LANE FOUR SWIM ACROSS.

And a second banner, newer, strung under it.

IN MEMORY OF COACH ROZ.

Dino was on the stage, at the microphone.

He wore a black suit, and a wreath of white roses stood beside him.

Tullio sat in the front row, his cigar in his fingers, the gray-haired city man beside him.

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