Fourteen Kids at the County Pool

All Afternoon

They went off that high board together all afternoon. One right after the other, Logan first and then Tanner, around and around. By four o’clock Tanner was doing cannonballs.

The head guard finally got tired of watching them and blew her whistle and pointed at them. I thought they were in trouble.

“You two,” she said. “Every time you go off, one of you yells which one of you made the bigger splash, and the other one has to agree.”

They did that. For the rest of the day you could hear it across the whole county pool. Bigger. Not bigger. Bigger. Fine, bigger.

Kim handed out bologna sandwiches and grapes. The little ones napped on their towels in the shade, sunburned and limp as noodles. Hailey Burns fell asleep with a grape in her hand.

Around three o’clock, I went to the concession stand to get myself a pop. When I came back, Logan was standing in line at the counter dripping on the concrete with his spiral notebook in a plastic bread bag.

I asked him what he was doing. He said he’d brought some of his mowing money.

“How much is a snow cone?” he asked the lady.

“Two fifty,” she said.

He counted it out on the counter. Fourteen snow cones. Thirty-five dollars. He made her write it down so he could put it in the notebook.

“You don’t have to do that,” I told him. “That’s your money.”

“I know,” he said. “That’s why I can.”

He carried them out four at a time, cherry and grape and blue raspberry, and handed one to every kid on Elm Street. The last one he gave to Tanner. Blue raspberry, Tanner’s favorite. Then he sat on the edge of the pool with his own.

I had to go stand in the shade of the ticket building for a minute. Karen says I’m not a crier. I’m going to leave it at that.

The Fence

Around six, Melissa Dahl came to the pool. She didn’t come in at first. She stood outside the fence by the parking lot with her purse in both hands.

I saw her before anybody else did. I don’t know how long she’d been standing there. Long enough to see her son go off the high dive, I’d guess.

Tanner saw her too. He climbed out of the water, dripping, and walked over to the fence. It wasn’t mine to hear. But I saw him talking, and I saw her hand go to her mouth, and I saw her look across the deck at Logan.

Then she walked around to the ticket window and paid her way in. Six dollars, adult rate. She came across the deck in her sandals to where I was sitting.

“Brian,” she said. Her voice was not steady. “Tanner just told me.”

“I heard him,” I said. “So did the whole deep end.”

“I thought,” she said. She stopped. “Ben said Logan grabbed him. And I saw Logan pulling him up, and I just thought. I was so scared. I’d been inside for towels. I should never have gone in.”

“He did grab him,” I said. “That’s how you get somebody out of nine feet of water.”

She sat down in Kim’s chair. She put her face in her hands for a second. Then she looked up at Logan, who was eating the last of his snow cone on the edge of the pool.

“He saved that little boy,” she said, “and I banned him from my house.”

“You were scared,” I said. “I get it. I’d have been scared too.”

“Don’t be nice to me,” she said. “I don’t deserve it right now.”

I didn’t argue with her. I just let her sit there. Sometimes the best thing you can do for somebody who’s ashamed is not say anything and not leave.