I'd Walk with My Friends If I Could Find Them

13. Thirteen Steps

LATER FAHRAN’S FATHER will meet Fahran at the door with a scratch lottery ticket worth five hundred dollars. He’ll thank the stars and embrace his boy before he notices Fahran’s defeated face and slumped body and hears that his son has watched a man die. But right now Fahran is a skinny thirteen-year-old at the packed Farmington, New Mexico, community swimming pool on July 3, 2013. The day is sunny, and it’s the part of the hour when everyone has to take a five-minute break. Whistles blow, and two lifeguards jump in the water from their elevated chairs, relief spilling over their faces when they crest the surface and slick back their hair.

Fahran’s diabetic mother wears her dry red swimsuit with her insulin pump hanging off her left hip. She reclines in her green-and-yellow plastic folding lounge chair near the three-foot end, sunning herself. Fahran has been swimming for an hour. He rests on the slatted wood bench near the shaded fence within reach of his mother, his fingers feeling at his waterlogged palms. She works at the hardware store, and Fahran figures she’s about as happy as she can be on one of her few days off, gently falling asleep amid the laughter, chlorine smell, and frequent shouts to walk, not run. She rarely accompanies him the four blocks to the pool, but earlier in the day she appeared in the hallway with her long towel and cheap sunglasses. She wrapped her gray insulin pump in a plastic bag but still reminds him that she has to keep it dry.

Now, she rests her head on her forearm, the straps on her bathing suit crisscrossing her brown back, which is scattered with tiny moles. Fahran sees the same skin on his belly, and already a few moles of his own. One, just south of his belly button, bothers him enough that he’s tried to pinch it off with nail clippers, but it bled all over. He peels back his shorts and glimpses the lighter brown skin beneath them. It’s enough of a contrast to the bronzed upper and lower halves of his exposed body that his mother calls him Oreo, but only at home. Fahran takes in his midsection and he checks on the gangly dark hairs that protrude around his genitals and up toward his belly button. He’s proud he won’t be the last one to show.

Fahran is mostly scared of his body. He has started to wake up with damp circles on his shorts and the bed sheets. His dad has told him about wet dreams; in fact he’s pretty open about all the sex stuff. It’s just that Fahran doesn’t know the right questions to ask when his father says, “Ask anything.”

All around the edge of the pool kids begin to line up for the lifeguards, who climb up their perches. One lifeguard, Kylie, a thin brunette with brown eyes, places the whistle in her lips and blows. A dozen kids leave the ground simultaneously. Her one-piece suit dips just low enough, presses just close enough to her breasts, for Fahran to fantasize about the lower, covered two thirds. She’s a couple years older and sits with her knees a few inches apart. Normally Fahran would be one of the first back in the water, but he’s decided to let all his sliding droplets dry on the bench while his body calms down. He leans forward, placing his elbows on his knees. His mother shifts to rest on her back.

Fahran swats at a yellow jacket that sniffs around his feet and ankles. To his left a large man talks through the fence to a woman. They smile and their fingers meet through the Cyclone diamonds. Fahran attempts to hear what they say over the collective splashing. The man appears to be his dad’s age, but this guy’s belly hangs over the top part of his swimming trunks, and little dots of scarred skin speckle his forearms. On his back a peculiar snakelike tattoo winds up his spinal column. The woman has dyed pink into her blond hair and wears a sleeveless purple dress like the ones he’s seen on women in the bank. They stand close to each other and kiss. Fahran tilts his head so he can spy on their joined faces. They press their bodies against the fence, and after a few seconds Fahran glances around to see if anyone else notices, but no one looks their way, so he turns back to see.

The woman goes up on her toes, and still they kiss, all through one narrow gap. Finally they pull away, just their faces, and stare at each other. The woman says, “I’ll pick Emma up at four,” and turns away. The man shakes the fence before spinning around, his eyes catching Fahran’s on their swing toward the water. He strides six steps, past Fahran and his sunbathing mother, before launching his body into the air.

Fahran’s world stops. He doesn’t know what awaits, but something is already off: the angle the man’s legs form with his diving torso, the listing ash trees in the background, the wind, the smell of urine and sunscreen — everything mysteriously shifts and blurs. The water absorbs the man’s body up to his waist, but a halting, spastic jolt snaps his lower legs, calves, and feet concave. The tension squeezes Fahran’s face, and he waits for ten seconds for the man to emerge, until a woman in jeans and a white button-up shirt across the pool leaps into the water. In the hazy moments that follow, kids jump off the diving board and more carefree laughs enter the air. The dressed woman struggles through the three feet of water, and her labored stride grinds to slow motion.

In an eerie crescendo the screams arrive as a red blood-cloud blossoms out into the blue water. Fahran stands at the edge, gazing down into the gathering maroon. Help is still ten feet away, pulsing out waves in her mad, sluggish dash. One of the waves spreads the flowing blood enough for him to see the man’s submerged back. Fahran’s mother kneels beside him, leaning over the edge, her arms elbow-deep in the murk.

Whistles join the shrieking, and the lifeguards scramble. The clothed woman arrives and lifts the huge man up in a heap of water and blood and skin.

Fahran’s mother grabs his shoulder and spins him around, pushes him to the bench, but before he sits, he turns and sees the woman in the purple dress. She stands motionless in the middle of the sidewalk, then turns back toward the pool as if someone called her name, eyebrows up, curious. Her tangible happiness careens into alarm the moment her eyes focus. She stares right at Fahran, and yet somehow she knows everything. She pivots in her high heels, and her right arm flies up like a dagger into the air, starting her sprint. Her eyes and mouth open wide, and she covers the distance quickly, crashing into the fence, bellowing vowel sounds.

The lifeguards reach them and one boy bends down to start CPR, but when he takes the man’s chin in his hands the neck moves like jelly, and the lifeguard lets go. Kylie says, “Listen for breathing,” but the other lifeguard just kneels, eyeing his own hands. Fahran stands across the rattling fence from the woman, and for a minute no one touches the man. An amazed space settles around his body, a force field of nerves and fear and oddity. Already the body has lost its vitality, is now wet, unmoving muscle. Kylie bends down and edges her ear to the man’s mouth. She shakes her head, then clasps her hands, places them on the man’s chest, and pumps up and down.

Soon the paramedics arrive and take over and Kylie steps back. Someone asks, “Dead? He’s dead?”

As the paramedics press on the man, Fahran tries to understand how this body could be the same mass that dominated the afternoon five minutes ago. Later, when he reflects back on his life, he’ll understand that this was the moment when he began to believe in souls.

Eventually the paramedics slow the compressions. A stretcher arrives and more sirens fill the air. One of the EMTs turns his attention to clearing the area, save for the witnesses. Fahran’s mom tries to get Fahran out of there, but the manager says they need to stay to be interviewed.

The EMTs let the hysterical woman in the purple dress ride with the body to the hospital, and as they load the stretchered man into the ambulance Fahran notices that no one pumps on the man’s chest. The pool complex empties except for Fahran, his mom, the woman who jumped in the pool, and the lifeguards.

Everyone is quiet, waiting for the cops to show. The woman who jumped in the pool leans against the fence. They’ve given her a pair of oversized trunks and a Farmington High Scorpions T-shirt too large for her. She stands with her arms crossed, staring at the sparse hill and plateaus west of town. Her wet clothes hang over two chairs. Fahran’s mother approaches the woman, but she says, “Please, no,” and moves away from the rest of the group, to the other side of the pool.

The lifeguards gather near the entrance, and Kylie holds one of the boys in her arms. He touches his own face. They’re the same age, but she cradles his head against her chest and runs her fingers through his dark hair. She talks to him, and while Fahran can’t hear Kylie’s words, he imagines she’s saying, “It’s okay. I’m here. I’m here.” She might be singing to him, even, but whatever nurturing it is, Fahran hates the boy, hates his weakness, hates that he himself is not the one.

Fahran doesn’t want his mother to hug him or comfort him in front of Kylie, and she abstains, but her complete passivity surprises Fahran. When the cops show up, they speak with everyone else first. The woman who jumped into the pool exits under the late-afternoon sun, dazed, her drying clothes over her left shoulder. The lifeguards stroll out one at a time. Kylie, now wearing a towel, keeps her head down.

A short, plump cop talks to his mother, then walks over and takes a seat by Fahran.

“Okay, buddy,” he says. “This is important. Did someone push the man?”

“No,” he says. “He jumped.”

“Thanks,” he says, and starts to rise.

“Ask him another,” his mother says. “Please.”

Fahran is embarrassed; he understands his standing in the world, but the cop sits back down with a grunt. He has nothing to ask, he knows the drill, has all the answers he needs, so he sizes up the sky for a few seconds, searching.

“Um,” he says, “how far away from the fence do you think the woman was when the accident took place?”

The question surprises Fahran. He isn’t ready. He thinks about the man’s dive, the neck angle, the bag of limp limbs thrown on the no-diving picture.

“How far?” he repeats. He glances at his mother, who nods her head. “In feet?”

“Whatever, son.”

Fahran has no idea what the answer is, but he wants to say something.

“Thirteen,” he says, “steps. He had a snake tattoo.” The cop jots it down and leaves without a word.

On the walk home, Fahran’s mother, usually prone to lectures, hums a song Fahran doesn’t know. The day is still hot, and they pass through the shadows of the overhanging trees. Fahran’s tired mind negotiates the thousands of images still spiraling through him. When they near their home his mother stops short and says, “Ice cream.”

When they reach the porch the door flies open, and Fahran’s father, before taking them in, wraps his arms around them and thanks the stars for the five hundred dollars he won by scratching the correct four hearts on Hearts Are Wild!

Fahran and his father are off for ice cream in his father’s car. His mother couldn’t take any more of the day and drew herself a bath, put on some Norah Jones, and told them to go celebrate.

Eight at night, the cooling air, and from the car’s radio news of Egypt’s coup and a U.S. drone attack in Pakistan before Fahran’s father taps the radio off. Although he appreciates what his son has experienced, he’s feverish about the five hundred, how he can get new tires on the truck, take Fahran to K-Mart for new clothes, maybe even install a basketball hoop over the garage. They’ll have to wait until after the Fourth, after the parade over in Aztec and the night’s fireworks, but that’s okay, his father says, on the fifth they’ll go and spend it all. Fahran doesn’t dare interrupt him. He’s never seen his father this happy.

They drive down Butler Avenue over to East Main and Fahran rolls his window down. They pass a Wendy’s and a McDonald’s, and the dry night wind blows through Fahran’s hair and over his right forearm. The city lights appear new and clean, and Fahran’s father is now up to a new television with a remote control, a leather couch, a motorcycle.

Fahran waits anxiously, eager to switch the conversation. He wants to get to the point where his father says, “Ask anything,” because he’s ready now. He imagines himself in Kylie’s arms in a dark place, alone, and her voice, “I’m here. I’m here,” the smell of chlorine on her summer body, and he wants to know what he must do to get there, to that place where you finally get what you want.