Whale Talk

CHAPTER 7

Finally Andy Mott shows. I believe I may have mentioned I wasn’t exactly looking forward to that. You know how that Li’l Abner character goes around with a cloud over his head all the time? Well, Andy’s cloud is three times the size and shudders with thunder and lightning. Andy seldom talks; the cloud speaks for him.

He limps onto the deck in that unique gait one morning, dressed in gray sweatpants, Nikes, and a T-shirt. His torso cuts an impressive figure; he ain’t Tay-Roy, but he isn’t Chris Coughlin, either. This guy has spent some time pushing iron away from gravity.

He whips off the T-shirt, kicks off his shoes as he sits on the bench, pulls off his sweatpants, then unstraps his right leg. The guy has a prosthesis from just above the knee. He shoves it behind the bench, hops over to the end of the pool, and stands.

Andy Mott is a junior, moved here two years ago, and nobody knows he’s missing a body part. He says, “What’s the workout?”

I almost can’t tell him we’re doing kicks.

He looks at me with contempt, or maybe that’s just his look, and says, “My best thing,” and hits the water.

Everyone is stunned, but Chris is paralyzed; wide-eyed with mouth agape, staring first at Andy in the water, then at the leg, a space-age metallic thing, then back to Andy. Communication with Chris Coughlin teaches one patience. There is a standard two-second lag time between input and output. Even with the simplest of questions, you watch his eyes and see the wheels slowly turn. His brain has a standard transmission, as if he has to create his own synapses. That’s for a simple question. When some guy limps into the pool and takes off his leg before diving in, Chris’s wiring tangles irreparably.

I have to admit it frays the ends of my own, but I walk Chris over to the bench and start him swimming on the surgical tubing, though he almost breaks his neck craning it to see if Andy’s for real.

At the end of the workout, Andy pulls himself out of the water, hops over, and straps on the leg. Chris still can’t take his eyes off him. Andy looks up and says, “What’s the matter, never seen a one-legged swimmer before?”

After the standard hesitation, Chris shakes his head slowly and says, “Huh-uh.”

I couldn’t be happier. Before Andy actually turned up, I believed the Magnificent Seven consisted of one swimmer of color, a representative from each extreme of the educational spectrum, a muscle man, a giant, a chameleon, and a psychopath; when in fact we have one swimmer of color, a representative from each extreme of the educational spectrum, a muscle man, a giant, a chameleon, and a one-legged psychopath. When I envision us walking seven abreast through the halls of Cutter High, decked out in the sacred blue and gold, my heart swells.

By the time Thanksgiving vacation is over and Simet is legally coaching, we are a well-oiled machine. We have three in the water and four on the benches at all times. I’m putting in extra yards during off hours and my repeat times are getting faster daily, and if my times are in rapid descent, the other guys’ times are in freefall. Fifteen minutes of simple stroke technique per day will make a nonswimmer exponentially faster, and Simet is truly a master technician.

Dan Hole benefits most from that because he is first and foremost a student, and the very physics of swimming fascinates him. Jackie Craig, who remains the team’s ghost, listens intently to Simet’s every word, watches Dan put those words into practice, then imitates Dan’s every move. Though he’s been with us for weeks, I don’t think Jackie has uttered three sentences. I look back and realize I haven’t even thought of him and wonder if his whole life is like that. He shows up, watches, imitates, all the time remaining invisible. Mott comes in every day looking surly, leaves looking surly, and does everything in between with a barely controlled rage. I believe if the water were alive, he would beat it to death. Chris doesn’t get much from the technique instruction, but once or twice a week Simet gets into the water with him and manually moves his arms and legs correctly through the strokes. Chris probably has the best natural stroke on the team, and that’s a good thing, because no matter how much Coach works with him, that stroke doesn’t change. Simon continues to churn the water in search of muscle definition.

Tay-Roy probably has the most overall talent next to me. Though not a natural, he has an okay feel for the water, and as he alters his body design from bodybuilder to swimmer, he gets better and better. He’s the one guy who knows what it means to dedicate himself athletically. I don’t know how many people understand the dedication bodybuilding takes, or what it takes to bring yourself to the musical level Tay-Roy has achieved. Even I can learn from him. He is singular in his vision of himself as an athlete.

The first day Simet is on the job, Icko tries to disappear, standing over by the door for most of the workout, then slipping out early. The second day, while I’m moving from the water to the benches, I grab his arm and bring him to Coach. “Oliver Van Zandt,” I say, by way of introduction.

Simet sticks out his hand. “Pleased to meet you, Mr. Van Zandt. I didn’t realize that was you. I understand I have you to thank for keeping this group together.”

“They were pretty much together already, I was just around,” Icko says. “And you can call me Icko.”

Coach says, “Not the way I heard it, Icko.”

“I don’t know much about swimming,” Icko says. “In fact, I don’t know nothin’ about swimming.”

Coach glances around the pool. Jackie Craig and Chris Coughlin lie flat on their stomachs, stroking away on the benches to the beat of Bob Seger’s “Betty Lou’s Gettin’ Out Tonight,” while Tay-Roy churns the water in his lane like a washing-machine agitator, and Simon DeLong displaces enough water on his dive to wash Dan Hole to the far side of one lane and Mott to the side of the other. “You’re not the only one here who doesn’t know much about swimming, sir. And I’d sincerely appreciate it if you were to stick around as my assistant. I’m sure there’s money in the budget to compensate you.”

“Hell,” Icko says, “I got two full-time jobs as it is. No reason to pay me for this. I kind of enjoy it.”

“I kind of enjoy it, too,” Simet says, “but they still pay me.”

As I’m moving to the benches, I hear Simet ask Icko if he can drive a school bus. That would make us one self-contained traveling water show.

I look at us: a group of real outsiders, a group Cutter High School has offered very little to. You could make a case for the fact that Cutter has offered me a lot and that I’ve simply refused to take it, but for whatever reason, I fit better here than I’ve fit anywhere before. It’s hard to put my finger on, maybe it boils down to the racial piece. It isn’t as if I live in a city where racial struggles are everyday issues if you discount people like Rich and Mike Barbour, and it isn’t as if I’m carrying much personal cultural history, though my parents have always kept me supplied with books about African-American heroes, and we’ve always celebrated certain of their accomplishments and birthdays. But the fact is, my parents are white and the only others close to my “persuasion” are a child therapist and a preschooler. Sweet Georgia Brown, more by example than by lecture, has continually demonstrated that racist thought and action say far more about the person they come from than about the person at whom they are directed. Yet, no matter what you know, it doesn’t always alter how you feel.

When I was eight, in the third grade, I learned about Charlotte Volare’s birthday party the day after, when one of my friends asked why I wasn’t there. I walked up to Charlotte and asked her the same thing. She said her parents didn’t want me in their house because I wasn’t white; that her grandfather had been killed by some Japanese people in this thing called World War II, an event neither of us could quite pin down. It was okay for her to play with me at school, but she could never ever kiss me or have me to her house. I was pretty hurt, and Dad offered to call up Mr. Volare to find out what gives, but Charlotte was gorgeous beyond belief, with large, round brown eyes, and dark, thick hair that spilled down to the middle of her back like a luxurious blanket. Even at eight, I was pretty sure if my biker dad jumped in the middle of Mr. Volare’s shit I could kiss good-bye any idea of becoming Charlotte’s secret boyfriend, so with Georgia’s help I talked him out of it. But the sting was undeniable. Charlotte was so matter-of-fact with her explanation that I thought there really was something different and wrong about me that everyone else took for granted.

“Not a thing wrong with you, baby,” Georgia said over a plate of those miraculous cookies when I showed up at her house, crying and majorly pissed. “Some people’s parents are just stupid and mean; so mean they would cheat their own children out of having a great friend like you. Got to feel bad for that Charlotte.” By the time that conversation was over, I half felt bad for Charlotte.

So as an outsider, I may rate only a three or four on a scale of ten, where Dan might be a six, Simon and Chris an eight, Jackie-who knows?, Tay-Roy wherever he puts himself (he goes his own way], and Mott a fifty. Andy is famous as the king of in-school suspension, out-of-school suspension, and Saturday school; he spends more time in those places than in the classroom. We know he accrues most of that time not from fighting, but from calling to public attention Morgan’s shortcomings as a principal, or pointing out some teacher’s personal deficits in front of the class. While he hasn’t said a cross word to Simet or Icko, nor to any of us for that matter, he is notorious for the level of vitriol in his parting comments. I haven’t yet figured out why he picked this team for his sanctuary.

Cutter High School has many rituals I could do without, but none is more annoying than the special assembly before each new athletic season. The athletes from the teams are introduced, and the captain and coach have to make a short speech about team goals and what it means to compete for Cutter.

We operate on a shortened class schedule that day, so the assembly lasts the entire final hour. Winter sports include basketball, wrestling, volleyball, gymnastics, and now swimming. To this, I have not been looking forward. We will parade our band of merry men before a crowd of more than seven hundred students that includes the members of the state champion football team.

The other teams have a large number of returning lettermen, so the gym floor is covered with blue and gold by the time we are introduced, dead last, fitting for the spot we are sure to place in the conference. Icko has taken an hour off work and follows Simet onto the floor decked out in his Burger King uniform. I’m behind him, followed by Chris Coughlin, who is so seriously traumatized by having to walk in front of that many people that I have to keep saying, “Stay with me, Chris. Stay with me, Chris. Chris?” I hear the laughter and turn around to see Jackie Craig run into him because Chris has stopped when someone in the bleachers calls out, “Dummy!” A moment later we watch a teacher hauling the culprit out, but Chris is still paralyzed and Jackie’s nose is bleeding from the collision. I take Chris’s arm, bring him next to me, and tell him to stare just above the top bleacher and hum “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” in his head.

Simet introduces us as a new team with a good chance of getting points at State to help Cutter out with the all-sport state championship. When he introduces Icko, several people shout out orders for a burger and fries. Then I’m introduced as captain to a mixture of cheers and boos. I’m fairly popular, but there’s not a student in this school who doesn’t know I’m considered a slacker for not turning out for football and basketball. My speech is short. I tell them our goal is to finish the season with as many swimmers as started. Mott picks up a couple of days of I.S.S. when he hears somebody snicker at his name and gives the entire crowd a double middle-digit salute.

All things considered, we weather it pretty well.

The experience starts me obsessing on the idea of embarrassment and humiliation. Truth is, I have no idea how I stack up against the rest of the swimmers in the state, don’t even know who the best ones are. I downloaded last year’s best times off the Internet, but I still can’t get a fix on where my times fit; I get an extra turn each hundred yards because we’re swimming in a twenty-yard pool, give or take a couple of feet for the underwater shelf that also prevents me from flipping turns at that end. For a sprinter, starts and turns are absolutely crucial. All I can do is work out as hard as I possibly can, and start checking my times against the best times after our first meet, which isn’t until after Christmas vacation. Meantime, the trick is to get in as much distance as possible so I can avoid both embarrassment and humiliation.

That evening, just after I drop off Carly to head home, having completed a science experiment with steam and the interior of a Chevy Corvair, a car pulls up close on my tail. I’m just paranoid enough to know it’s got to be Rich Marshall or one of the jocks from the football team, ready to let me know one thing or the other about letter jackets or patriotism to good old Cutter High. So I drive around awhile, through some tougher parts of town, back and forth down some alleys. Out by the old cemetery I try to ditch whoever it is, inching through the graveyard itself, then accelerating as quickly as a Corvair can without dropping the engine onto the street. My evasive action doesn’t have the same effect of James Garner’s Camaro in the old Rockford Files TV show, and I finally pull up in front of my house, jump out, and rush back before whoever it is can get their driver-side door open, then prop my knee against the door, ready to do whatever business is needed.

The window rolls down slowly, and I’m face-to-face with Judy Coughlin, Chris’s aunt. She says, “Goodness, were you lost?”

I know nothing about this woman except that she took over for Chris’s mother when Chris came out of the hospital after the Saran Wrap incident. Before that, when he lived with his mom, any bad guy who wanted to got his hands on that kid and did what they wanted. I look at him sometimes in the water, think of what a stud his half-brother was, see that natural stroke, the possibilities that might exist for him if he didn’t have to wait almost a full second after I say go to actually jump in the water.

I start to make up some wild story to explain my circuitous route home, before realizing a couple of sentences into it that I must sound like the goofball of the universe. “Never mind,” I say. “I’ll pay you money not to tell my dad.”

“I just wanted to thank you,” she says.

“For what?”

“You know, for taking my nephew onto your swim team.” She looks tired, and grateful.

I say, “Hey, I need him more than he needs me. He’s not going to be a bad little swimmer.”

“He’s been in school twelve years,” she says. “This is the first time in eleven years anyone has paid one bit of attention to him, other than to make him drink urine out of a Seven-Up can or trick him into giving a dog an erection.”

I know all the Chris Coughlin stories. His hard times have come at the hands of teachers as well as kids, some of them not nearly as major as the Seven-Up incident, but just as devastating in the long run. Through the years Chris was always with our class part of the day, being mainstreamed in art and music, and of course he was present for class functions like Christmas parties or class plays.

In fifth grade our teacher was a guy named Sanford Davis. That year was the first most of us had a man teacher, and we were pretty excited about it, ready for someone to challenge our budding masculinity. But Mr. Davis wasn’t exactly the hands-on mountaineer we had in mind. He was the new preacher at the Mountain Bible Center, and he ran his classroom the way I imagine he ran his church, with a holy iron fist. He tolerated exactly zero bullshit in his classroom. We sat in rows, the person with the best grades in the front seat to his far left, moving down the academic gradient to Chris Coughlin in the back seat of the right-hand row. Every three weeks he went through his grade book and reseated us. The one person who never moved was Chris; his position was nailed down by a good twenty points. Davis often used him as an example of an “unfortunate” and threatened on a regular basis to put a student in a desk behind Chris, which I suppose would have had to be considered educational wasteland. He talked about Chris as if he weren’t there, though most of the time it was hard to tell if that bothered Chris or not. He would hear his name, look up, then go back to what he was doing. I now know he felt every sting. He’s slow, but he gets the basic stuff just fine. Seven years later the mention of Davis’s name brings a crinkle to his nose.

We were waiting for the designated Santa, and Davis was killing time having us make all the words we could out of the word Christmas. The concept of moving letters around to do that was beyond Chris, but he saw two right off; his own name and what he believed was Jesus’ last name, and he wrote them down in that order.

Davis was pacing up and down the aisles, hands folded behind his back, smelling of Old Spice and trying to catch us cheating. He turned around at Chris’s desk, ready to retrace his steps, noticed Chris’s unpardonable sin, bent down and told him to reverse the order of the names. Well, the problem was that slow as he was, Chris has always gotten excited anytime he did something on his own, and having to change the order would mean he didn’t do it right in the first place, and he dug in his heels and refused to budge. By God, he had found those two words by himself and they were right and he wasn’t going to erase or scratch them out.

Davis said, “You can’t put your own name before the name of the Lord.”

Chris said this wasn’t the name of the Lord, it was Jesus’ last name.

Davis said they were the same thing; that lord was a title, like king.

That was way past Chris’s ability to understand.

Davis tried to explain that Chris simply shouldn’t put his name ahead of Jesus; it wasn’t right.

Then Chris said the smartest thing that was said all day. He said they told him at Sunday school that Jesus liked kids and He was nice. So He wouldn’t mind.

Davis made the mistake of saying Chris went to the wrong Sunday school, and Chris just sat there stupefied. Then Davis did the thing somebody should have shot him for; he made Chris stand up beside his desk, and he said, “Chris Coughlin thinks he’s better than Jesus.”

Davis didn’t know that Chris’s brother took Chris to Sunday school each week, that now Davis was treading on holy ground. Chris spun out, screaming that Davis was a liar, that nobody was better than Jesus and he did not go to the wrong Sunday school and he would be glad to bring his brother in here to kick Davis’s ass for saying that.

I got to escort him to the office, and he spent the next minutes trembling and trying to explain how he wasn’t better than Jesus and he went to the right Sunday school because his brother took him and his brother would never take him to the wrong one. Of course nobody there knew what he was talking about, and in the end, Chris Coughlin missed the Christmas party. Another day in the life…

I look at his aunt now, standing next to her beat-up Dodge Dart. She looks small and helpless, kicked by the world. “Really,” I tell her. “Chris could be a real swimmer if he stays with it.”

She smiles. “He’ll stay with it as long as there’s somebody like you to watch over him. He says you’re his hero. He’d do anything for you. It’s a moment for him. He doesn’t get very many moments. I just wanted to thank you.”

Before I can say another word, she is back in the Dart, driving down the road.

Man, what kind of a fucked-up world is this? You should have to be a lot more than decent to be a kid’s hero.