Under the Lake

 Author’s note: this was a contest entry that did not place - I still like it though ;-)

The moment I plunged into the deep, clear, and ice-cold water of the caldera, I became known to myself. The water was cathartic, an antiseptic to my wounded soul. It shocked the breath from my chest and needles of pain pierced what had been a fog surrounding my person in a protective shroud.

I sank away from the boat, my sodden boots and wool clothing now like an anchor, dragging me away from the smooth surface. I suppose James thought I was dead, that my inheritance was now his and that he was free, but as I drifted deeper, the sky above me broadened, and so did my perspective.

We’d struggled for so many years, always thinking, if only we had more money. If only we had more, the fighting would stop, the drinking would stop, the cheating would stop. We blamed our unhappiness on our circumstances and my stingy guardian. Content to spend our days and our small allowance on video games and travel, running up our credit card bills, until Dad died and suddenly his fortune was mine.

“Let’s celebrate with a trip to Crater Lake,” James said. “We’ll hike the Devil’s Backbone and take a rowboat out to Wizard Island with a picnic, and it’ll be just you and me like it used to be.”

Like it used to be.

He’d known nothing of my past when he met me playing pool at a tavern in tiny Union, Oregon. I tended bar, went to the local University, studying to be a teacher. Nothing spectacular. Not to say that I wasn’t eye-catching. Tall, lean, hair the color of sunrise. Overall a good picture, despite the square jaw and small eyes I also inherited from my father.

James and I ended up in bed together that first night, and now I wonder if he’d known then what he knows now, that my father owned one of the biggest ranches in eastern Oregon and a meat processing and packing plant and, and, and…and now he’s passed on and the will have been read and I am one of the wealthiest women on the west coast and when the crushing weight of this water pushes the last of the oxygen from my lungs and I settle on the bottom of one of the deepest lakes on the continent, James will be the wealthy ones.

Why did I stay with him?

Fear? But of what?

Oh, fear of being alone.

Christ, I am such a dumbass.

The rim of the caldera protects the lake from wind, and the clear, smooth water creates a lens, like a magnifying glass. From the surface, looking down, the boulders that form the bottom look as if they are just inches below the surface. The view is both awe-inspiring and frightening. In reality, those stones rest two thousand feet below and are the size of city blocks.

James whacked me with an oar, right to the back of my stubborn, hard head. Another inheritance from my father, I suppose.

The rental agent required us to have life jackets on board, but wearing them was optional, and we opted against it. The October air chilled us, but we dressed for it, and the sun warmed our heavy clothes. James insisted on sturdy hiking boots and high-tech outerwear, now that we could afford it.

I never saw this coming.

Or did I? How could I not? This sinking feeling in my gut hurt me far worse than the oar to the back of my head or this gentle drift into the depths.

What keeps us from ourselves?

Even in my last moments, I feel this threshold question tugging at me.

Ah, to sleep, perchance to dream…

Nothing specific caused me to curl into a ball so I could reach my boot. I unlaced it, and then the other, kicking them free. Struggled out of my woolen pants. Squirmed out of my coat and shirt. Now a mermaid, or an angel, I stretched out my arms and undulated my body, dolphin-like. Giggling cost me the last bit of sustenance in my burning lungs, but I wiggled toward the surface, a tadpole in a giant universe of ice. My chest burned. Eyes blacked out. Rushing noise in my ears, and yet still my heart pounded me toward the surface, but it was too far.

This is the moment of letting go. Being completely unattached to the world. It is the perfect moment. The perfect shape.

When I was a child, I used to sit and draw for hours, trying to achieve this perfection. I started with triangles and circles, out of curiosity, and then moved toward more intricate geometric patterns, always drawn back to simplicity, but this moment, suspended in water and time, this was the perfect pattern, perfect sequence, perfect nothingness.

I died at that moment, finally at peace, finally free.

And then, my head popped up like a buoy and I gasped clean air. The rowboat, gliding by James’ strong, steady beat, appeared to be a good quarter-mile off. I could imagine him practicing his weeping for the patrols and search teams.

I swim often. Swimming calms me. I hate the moment before though, anticipating the cold water, and I hate getting out when the air slaps my skin and sucks whatever heat I generated from my body.

I am numb now, but my muscles still work, and they take control, narrowing the distance between me and James’ clunky wooden boat. I can hear the squeak of the oars in the spurs and the splash of them dipping and emerging dripping wet and dipping again with a dull thud as they shift in and out of position in the worn locks.

James grew up in town. I was an only child, a lover of horses and rivers and hunting, with mostly boy friends until middle school when I realized that boy friends were no longer appropriate. My lover has no idea how close I am. My hand touches the flat stern, fingers locking on the splashboard. James is back-watering, like an idiot, facing forward, pushing instead of pulling. No wonder I caught up to him so easily.

I have no strength in my arms, no feeling, and the cold is so deep inside me I can’t even shiver. But I pull myself up, slide back down, laughing, and James turns, white-faced, jaw dropped, eyes wide. I laugh again, flop up onto the stern, wiggle into the boat, and gasp. The shock of not being in the cold hits me as hard as that oar did the back of my head. James, never that imaginative, pulls the right oar from its lock. I can’t speak, so no last words. Instead, I stand, duck the slow swing of that eight-foot club, and use that momentum to simply push James against the gunwale. His shins meet wood and he drops the oar as he windmills for balance, but now the tide has turned and he meets the same water I did, almost flipping the boat in the process, except now as he gasps for air, his arms flap and his feet kick. I lean over the side, mostly naked, with the bright sun on my back.

“Can I have that?” I ask, pointing to the oar floating within his reach.

He can’t speak. Can barely draw a breath.

I put my chin on my folded arms for a moment and then pull the blanket out from under the picnic basket. James can barely keep his head above the water, manages to gurgle out, “Help.” I crack open the basket, pull out a pastrami on rye and the bottle of red wine, tipping the bottle toward him in a friendly gesture that says, “Do you want some?”

“Me neither,” I say. I put the bottle on the deck at my feet.

“Can’t say you were drunk,” I mutter. “They’ll do a blood test. But if you dropped an oar and went after it, that would work.”

I had never seen someone just give up and die before, but in that clear water, I could see him go under, his eyes open, pulled down as I was, but too far gone from his struggles on the surface to redeem himself. He twitched and wriggled as he diminished, gulping water instead of air, dwindling, dwindling, and I feel no remorse.

I should feel something.

Damn.

I dive in. This time the cold is welcome. He’s not that far down. I tug him upward as I peel off his clothes. Getting him into the boat turns out to be a chore, but in the process of dragging him over the gunwale most of the water gushes out of his lungs and he wheezes and coughs and gurgles back to life. I tie him up with the anchor chair, make sure he sees that I have the anchor in hand, and then we wait. He’s nearly blue when rescue arrives. I play a scared, silly redhead while a medic wrap James up for transport.

“Mam, where are your clothes?” a state trooper asks.

“I don’t know,” I plead. “I lost them in the water. Am I going to get a ticket for that?

He gives me a ride to the hospital, with me still wrapped in a blanket. I follow him into the lobby, tell him I’m going to the bathroom, and then walk down the hall where I grab some wrinkled scrubs off a cart. It’s fucking cold out but I drop the blanket and walk down the sidewalk into the darkness, pulling on the blue-green hospital gear as I go. I have no ID. No money. Nothing. I am like a new person. Don’t need my father’s money. Don’t need James to tell me who I am or what I can or can’t do. I am free.

I wonder if I should have just left James in that lake.

Hmph.

I‘m going to like getting to know myself.