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Out
Deep
by Evan Miller
Ruth scampers down the path to the beach, her eight-year-old feet picking their way nimbly over the boards – scattered pieces of discarded lumber: some rotting, old, some sturdy and new – avoiding the white-hot patches of sand in between. Above her in the crisp blue the sun fries away like an egg, oozing heat and light all over the pastel backdrop of sand and sky. She knows the path well enough to go along with eyes closed, feeling the way with her feet, thumping gently as she maneuvers from board to board.
The path runs like a giant zipper sewn haphazardly into the dunes, bee-lining from the scattered row of houses to the beach. Seaside, the mother sits under a black umbrella, a black towel draped over her legs, engaging herself in a book – one of those beat-up paperback things that Ralph, sitting several feet away, underdeveloped body gleaming white in the hot sun, whose sickly pallor is not helped any by the three layers of ultra-SPF waterproof sunscreen insisted upon by his mother, doesn’t understand – the kind of book with daggers and pools of blood and vague white lacy things on the cover, that he finds exciting in a heart-pounding, make-sure-no-ones-around sort of way, having gingerly explored the pages of such books before, alone in his room at night, the book having been carefully extracted from mother’s bedside at some earlier opportunity, under the covers with flashlight held in one shaky hand, skimming the smooth, fuzz-edged pages, earnestly searching for some sequence of words which might unlock, if only partly, fleetingly, the secrets of things he knows little of, like the things he heard his parents do once, before the divorce – muffled noises, screams? filtering through the walls of their room, the door closed, it was never closed! or the thing that happens to him in his shorts, and always at the wrong time – sitting in class or on the bus, any time when his thoughts might wander to places he can find only unconsciously, triggering reactions he is sure are wrong: the thing growing, swelling, like some horrible distended tentacle - not anything at all like the one his father has(1).
Ruth comes to a board and stops; instinctively, it seems, recognizing it: her favorite board. It is thick and long: more of a pale-gray now than any shade of brown, with ripples of grain swirling along its length. There are two iron-gray nails at either end – remnants of some past life Ruth knows nothing about: it’s been there as long as her – useless now, nailed to nothing but sand. She flexes her toes, feeling the board’s warmth and solidity, tracing around a large twisted knot with the tip of her first-little-piggy until, as if hearing her name whispered from the sprawling blankets of sand, she veers off the path into the dunes.
Sand rises and dips into vast bowl-shaped hollows, curved and swelling; pregnant hills of searing white light. Ruth hop-skips to keep from burning the soles of her feet, wisely avoiding the low growing clumps of poison ivy(2), scratching through the yellow and black striped nylon of her swimsuit at the phantom memory of those red, itchy welts.
(1) He saw it once, his father's, entering his parents' room too early one morning, sure he was sick: can't go to school mom, his father standing there, swaying slightly in some warm-cover-coffee's-brewing breeze, Christ jack cover up, his mother said, his father chuckling at what must have been a god awful distortion of his then five-year-old face at the sight of his, the father's, naked body, Ralph mostly entranced by the size of it, the thick mat of hair swallowing it up - the hair all over really, none of which Ralph had - or the tip of it, pink and purple, swollen like some bruised and bloated earthworm, not at all like what he found between his own dusty smooth thighs. It was, his father's, like so me ugly grub emerging from its cocoon. Of course, his father had finally covered up, ordering Ralph from the room, But he could only think back to that now and wonder if maybe his too hadn't begun some hideous metamorphosis - he could only hope it hadn't, and in the meantime consult all of the cover-bent-back books his mother had, searching for some clue - like the book she has now, cracked open flat between her spidery blue-veined hands, while seagulls cry and clatter by overhead.
(2) Although Ruth's mother has been repeating the mantra Leaves of three, let it be for probably most of her, Ruth's, life, it wasn't until her own pink-sore experience with the plant that she began skirting the large oily patches growing in the sandy dunes.
She picks her way over the hills of sand, pretending that they’re giant moon craters ice-cream-scooped from the land, coming finally to her objective: a massive shallow crater, fifty feet across, a good ten feet deep from the rim to the dimple of sand Ruth has scooped out more-or-less in the center of the crater(3). The remnants of a god-old boardwalk stretch down one slope, across the bottom and disappear halfway up the other side, boards missing, giving the impression of a toothless smile, sun-bleached and wind-torn, too splintery to do much of anything these days. Ruth races down the wall of the crater, only to sprint back up and roll down, spitting sand shaking it from her hair.
Her first order of business is the general upkeep of her giant sand dimple: the sweeping off of the boardwalk, the retracing of her name in giant letters into one side of the crater - R-U-T-H - with her patented loop-the-loop R, the rescooping of the hole at the crater’s center, the checking of her secret places – hidey-holes running along underneath the boardwalk, half buried and stuffed with Ruth’s found treasures: beach glass in all colors and shapes, a collection of shells, cigarette butts stripped of the paper leaving only the tar-stained filter, smooth hollow pieces of driftwood, and any other objects found on her long beach excursions.
These tasks quickly accomplished, Ruth takes off her swimsuit, sliding deftly out of its constrictive confine, having been driven to such extremes only by her mother who has refused both a) Ruth’s petition to be allowed to romp and play sans bumble-bee swimsuit and b) her more savvy and delicately positioned query as to the purchase of a two-piece swimsuit for herself, Ruth, a mature-beyond-her-years
(3) Forming one heck of an involuted breast, nipple and all - an observation Ralph was quick to make on his one and only trip to Ruth's spot, Ralph being somewhat embarrassingly educated on the subject of female anatomy, having once spent an afternoon in the principle's office for drawing a well-bosomed stick-woman, the picture eventually having been transferred to his parents' hands, the whole fiasco having ended not without a good deal of hell-raising and red-welting of Ralph's posterior.
eight-year-old - both requests having been denied so many times now that Ruth’s mother has adopted a simpler parental defense: It’s not up for discussion(4).
One side of Ruth’s hole looks out onto the beach: there is a slope up from the bowl, which Ruth, naked, scurries up now, a crest, and a steep slope back down onto the beach. The sandy wall is the last partition between dunes and beach. From Ruth’s vantage point – she has arranged herself lying on the interior side, her body at roughly a forty-five degree angle, face hidden behind a stalky clump of dune grass – she is invisible from the beach and can observe without fear the going son below her: mother sitting in her chair, Ralph off to her left, burying his legs in the sand.
Ralph rises, rupturing the tumulus of sand over his legs, brushing it from his chest, and approaches his mother’s chair from the rear right-hand side. Mother, looking up, sees Ralph standing at attention and puts down her book, sighing, "Time for more sunscreen Ralph?"
"No mom," an exasperated breath, not wanting the slightest thing to do with the thick white goop – more like paste really than anything else – that’s already slathered generously over his slight frame, "but, well, can we…you wanna go swimming?"
Going back to her book, "Well take your wings," indicating the neon water-wings sticking menacingly from her oversized beach-bag, the mere thought of which quiets Ralph for a moment as she returns to her
(4) Ruth herself has now adopted the phrase and will use it - perfectly reproducing the swerve and dip of her mother \rquote s tone, the stress and pitch both cresting on the 'up' - in just about any situation, so long as her mother is present, or at least within hearing distance, and the subject is something which Ruth has only a modicum of patience to deal with.
book, then, absently, "and don’t go out too far. Stay where I can see you."
Ralph stays standing, regrouping, searching for some appropriate way to express his distaste for the ‘wings’ – the bright vinyl tubes which are inflated around his pencil-thin arms, not unlike the tar-black blood pressure cuff of the doctor, only nuclear orange, meant to keep him from sinking like a rock, even in the buoyant salt waters of the bay, where you’ve really got to try not to float – finally abandoning any higher rhetoric for, "but mom, they’re…I’m nine…how come…and Ruth doesn’t hafta…"
The lowering of book by mother, high cathedral peaking of her eyebrows, "Ralph it’s not up for discussion. You’re wearing the wings."
"Mom geez, but…"
Closing her book, "Ralph, what did I just say. The last thing I need is a drowned little boy on my hands. God knows we won’t ever forget that awful pool accident with your father…"
Nothing better than another, "But mom…" as he flops dejectedly back to his spot, kicking sand in giant exaggerated steps, meant to display the verbally inexpressible injustice of pernicious parental rule. He pauses before sitting back down, glancing shrewdly up at the dunes where Ruth is stretched out hiding, a slight smile teasing up the corners of his mouth(5).
Ruth scrambles down the slope back to the floor of her crater. She redons her swimsuit, wipes her name into million-grained obscurity and heads back to the path.
The padded thump of her feet on the boards. Sun beating down on her head from the cloudless sky above; a slight breeze now putting the tall grasses into motion: an easy sway, almost sensual, the sound
(5) The effect being less like a smile than a distorted squiggle creasing his drawn lips...
of the wind rustling itself into being. She is nearing the end of the path. Another thirty feet until the path slopes down onto the beach, not nearly as steep as the near-vertical dunes on either side, having been eroded by generations of eager feet; another ten feet before she can see the water: there is only the sound now, lifting itself to her like the cavernous shuffling of paper sheets between the etched and stone-shadowed hands of some giant aquatic god.
Sometimes she plays a game, stopping here, a step before the horizon-edge of ocean looms into view, pretending that beyond the hump of dune lies nothing but more sand and sun-bleached clumps of dune grass – the philosophical musings of her eight-year-old brain: does the water exist if she can’t see it, feel it? – then taking the next step forward, gasping with glee to see the blue-green line of sea rise up against the pale blue wall of sky. Standing there now, eyes closed, letting the wind crash and curl itself around in her hands – held at her sides, relaxed, nails chewed down, red and pink and white where she has been gnawing the skin on either side of the cuticle – a habit her mother despises, despite her own, the mother’s, compulsive nail biting, having attempted to break Ruth of the habit several times now(6), all attempts ultimately having failed, Ruth’s finger biting not abated in the least, her fingers just as stubby and raw as ever, as she stands now, scratching idly under the elastic edge of her swimsuit, pulling the nylon out away from her leg, scratching, and letting the suit slap back against her chubby white thigh.
(6) The last time having involved No Suck, a solution which, applied to the fingers, forms a thick stinky shell of bitter gunk, the foul taste of which is intended to break child\rquote s nasty habit, originally patented by a dentist for use in the treatment of compulsive thumb sucking but working well enough for oral fixations of just about any kind.
Conversation floats up from the beach – Ralph and her mother – Ruth listening without hearing, too caught up in her private mentation. Then, comes from the beach a call, sharp and squealed, "last one in!" galvanizing Ruth into action. Dismissing her game for later, she charges forward down the slope of sand.
"Here I come," squeals Ruth, flying over the sand, leaping to avoid a beached mass of seaweed, past her mother, momentum taking charge now, plunging toward the water with a playful scream, then tumbling into the bay, feeling it bite sharply at her calves, knees, thighs, and stomach, before finally diving the rest of the way in.
Ralph, in up to his knees a few feet from Ruth’s splash, has taken the opportunity – mother has drifted off, book slipped down to her side, UV-tinted sunglasses perched high on her forehead, wisps of dark hair rising and falling in the gentle salt breeze – to slip into the icy bay without his water-wings, shivering from the water and the knowledge that she could wake at any moment, breaking all hell loose at the sight of Ralph, clearly disobeying what is certainly one of her most severe fiats ever, like an all-time big deal. He steps back gingerly as Ruth makes her entry.
"Better watch out," she calls, splashing water willy-nilly, dangerously close to Ralph.
"Don’t do it," he says "you’ll be sorry," with a quick glance toward mother, fearful that the voices may have roused her – they haven’t – then turning back to Ruth who, flipping on her back, kicks water at him,
the droplets arching through the air, a thousand points of light glistening and reflecting off of Ralph as he roars and lunges out after her. She darts away, out deeper, screaming with glee.
"Can’t catch me, can’t catch me."
Ralph eyes the water, dark and blue-green, warily, not quite comfortable with the fact that he can’t see the bottom – it’s the seaweed more than anything that scares him, huge patches of it, rooted to the seafloor, an eerie rhythmic waving, ready to reach up at any time and tickle the bottom of his feet, leaving him no safe place to plant himself: there’s crabs in there, and god knows what else. This is what he considers, briefly, before grinning his wickedest grin at Ruth, and diving underwater.
Ruth paddles out farther. Ralph comes up for air.
"You’re farther away than when you started," cries Ruth, laughing, churning water as she treads in place. Ralph dives again, his nine-year-old passions having been kindled to the point of not-caring-about-any-old-seaweed, kicking up white frothy bubbles behind him. He’s no good at holding his breath underwater(7), and comes up for air prematurely, having panicked mid-dive when some slimy tendril of seaweed tickled, of all things, his belly.
"Ruth, hey Ruth, it’s getting deep."
"Scaredy."
"Serious, I don’t think I can touch."
(7) Something he practices daily during his evening bath, submerging himself in the giant porcelain tub, once even having enlisted the services of Ruth - she was to help hold him under - which ended badly, Ruth keeping him down too long, ignoring his frantic clawing at her arms, Ralph panicking, gagging, choking on the tepid bath water, finally attacking her face with the large pink bar of hypoallergenic soap, Ruth having left the room crying, the soap burning her eyes, Ralph finally having pressed the stomach eject button , repeatedly, fast-forwarding up, up and away, the slimy opaque bathwater.
"I’ll check," kicking herself up above the water then rocketing back down under the surface, her arms, held straight overhead, disappearing last. Ralph looks in to the shore, finding his mother – she must still be asleep, though he can’t really tell – who seems awfully far away, an amorphous black blob, blotting the glaring white curve of sand.
Resurfacing, Ruth says, between gasps of breath, "It’s not that deep. Here, I got some sand from the bottom. To prove I actually touched. Now it’s your turn."
Ralph, uneasy, "That’s stupid."
"You’re scared," says Ruth, "everybody knows you’re a wimp."
Opening his mouth, then shutting it, his jaw muscle fluttering as he attempts a look of haughty resolve, "Fine, fine," taking a deep breath, exhaling, several more deep breaths as Ruth rolls her eyes(8), he dives finally, breaking the water awkwardly.
Ruth paddles around in small circles, watching bubbles of air rise to the surface. Once when they were younger, Ralph fell into the swimming pool: the day late afternoon, sun splintering over the roof, cutting through the scattered leaves of their rope-swinged backyard tree, delineating as it hit the shifting surface of the water, casting kaleidoscopic patterns of water-light on the wooden fence. What leaves had lifted from the tree: fallen and collecting in a corner of the pool, a mass of brown and yellow, unpoolscooped since mother had gone off to stay with her sister a week before(9).
There was the sound of children playing nearby; cars passing in the street; the yip and scurry of tame domestic animals – all the hum and hurry of a productive suburban neighborhood. The smell of chlorine
(8) Ralph observing all the proper breath holding technique known to him.
(9) Dad spending most of his days in bed, the bathroom, or off somewhere else, only to come home to the bed an d bathroom stinking like dirty laundry, no joke.
cut at Ruth’s nose as she stood poolside, having just finished a disappointing afternoon swim, mixing with the dark wet wood-rot of the deck to form a perfect olfactory cocktail of summer sensations; the smell, usually enjoyable, making Ruth’s nose twitch. She swatted at it, eyes red, having been excoriated only minutes before by her father, coming into the house for a glass of pop, asking off-handedly about were him and mom maybe going to get a divorce.
Then there was Ralph, elbowing in between rope-swings and chlorine and rubbed-red eyes, not helping anything in the least, "Hey how come your eyes are red," sipping idly from a tall beaded glass of high-fructose corn syrup pop.
"Because I was swimming," between sniffs.
"Yeah right, I heard you before crying," slurping at the pop, sucking it in through his teeth.
"I said I was swimming."
"Sure."
"You wouldn’t know. Since you don’t even know how to swim good."
"Hey come on, I was just saying."
"It’s not like it’s any of your business anyway," said Ruth, tossing hair over her shoulder and straightening up.
After several seconds of intense slurping, "Is dad and mom do you think getting divorced?"
"Don’t say that."
"Just asking, ‘cause I mean…serious…"
"I don’t know."
""Cause I don’t really know who we would go to live with…"
"Just leave me alone," she said, turning from Ralph, heading for the back door.
"How come? So you can cry more probably."
"Wasn’t crying Ralph."
"Uh-huh," the sloppy tipping of his glass, pop splashing onto his shirt, expanding in a dark circle…
"No."
"Were too."
"Shut up already Ralph, just shut up."
"Crybaby," said Ralph, tugging at Ruth’s hair – nothing too violent, but just enough to prompt Ruth who pushed him backwards, hard. His awkward elbowy arms pin-wheeled as he stumbled and fell back, into the pool.
Her eyes widening, Ruth scrambled to the edge of the pool. She got down on her hands and knees, watching him, her nose just touching the surface, sending small rippling cocentric rings, staring at the water as if it were a block of obsidian and she were trying to find some secret image carved into its blackest depths…
She stood after a moment, her breath coming in quick gasps, short sharp inhalations of air, then ran around the side to the diving board.
A dog barked.
She crawled out onto the diving board, hands and knees, its rough sandpapery surface scraping her legs, her eyes never having left Ralph at the pool bottom. He had stopped flailing now; the water was calm.
Her mouth opened and closed. There was a short whispery exclamation of breath as Ruth’s eyes lolled. She gagged, seeming to choke on her breath, the beginnings of a scream swallowed up before it could find voice on her lips.
A dog barked – another one this time. It’s yip was high and tinny.
Overhead, a plane boomed by.
The sun had dipped below the peak of roof; the backyard cast into shadow; not gradually, but as the snuffing of a candle. Ruth lay belly-down on the diving board, clenching and unclenching its thick blue sides, her hair, half dry now, clumpy and ragged from the chlorine water, hung down past her shoulders, almost touching the shifting surface of pool.
In a nearby yard there was a child’s scream, followed shortly by a burst of gleeful laughter.
An insect crawled around on the edge of the pool, clicking over the cracked square tiles, turning to and fro, aimless, then scattered itself back into the grass…
Ruth rose suddenly, leaping up from her vantage at the tip of the board. It quivered slightly as she stampeded back to the pool’s edge, making quickly for the house. Her mouth was opening and closing rapidly, fluttering like the wings of a moth caught too close to flame…the pantomime of screams.
She tore violently through the house, knocking chairs, slamming doors as she went.
Her father had been in the upstairs bathroom – she remembers having heard sniffing and a muffled sob as she stood momentarily outside the door, finally of course having banged frantically, at the time not really registering at all what might have been happening to her father as he sat fully clothed on the toilet – and he came running back down with Ruth, who had found her voice enough for "Ralph…pool…didn’t mean to…"
After diving into the pool and dragging Ralph’s prostrate body to the side, dad had pounded his back and chest, almost slamming the boy against the concrete pool edge until he, Ralph, groaned, a low vomitous moan, and spit up a bellyful of murky pool water, his eyes rolling down from the planetarium interior of his sockets, crying weakly at first, then all hell breaking loose tear-wise…
Ruth: floating in the bay, her breath coming faster now. The distance between herself and the shore seems to have expanded, an exponential increase, since Ralph disappeared underwater. She looks in to the shore, struggling for a moment, then finding the shape of her mother under umbrella, seemingly oblivious of her children’s whereabouts, nothing more than a tiny black blip on the curve of sand.
Ruth calls Ralph’s name softly, hoping perhaps to coax him back from deep under, as if he were simply hiding behind a bush.
"Ralph," she whispers, "Ralph."
But he does not appear.
Waves rock the body of Ruth, buoying her, cradled as she is, in the icy bay. She dunks her head underwater, hoping to catch a glimpse of Ralph through the densely opaque green-blue, then bobs back up, rubbing her eyes, the salt water burning, with the palm of her hand.
She slaps the water around her with her hands. Tears begin to roll down out of her eyes.
The sun passes behind a cloud, casting the bay into shadow. Ruth shivers in the water.
Finally, Ralph comes up, gasping for air, beaming his squiggly smile, holding aloft in one thin pale hand a quickly disappearing scoop of sand.
"Did it," he says.
Ruth sucks in air hard. She puts her hands over her face.
"Hey come on," says Ralph, "its your turn again. But this time you’ve got to go out deeper," paddling one-handed over to Ruth, shoving the remaining clutch of sand right up under her nose. Ruth, without a word, turns toward shallow water and begins to kick her way in, weakly. Ralph, looking confused, watches a moment as she swims away from him, "hey so do I win then?" before, re-establishing his spatial position (calculating in for increasing aloneness factor), "Wait up," rubbing his eyes now, "I think I swallowed some water."
Ruth continues without looking back, sniffling and shivering her way until finally she can touch: a relieved gasp, before Ralph, also in shallower water, lobs a soggy pile of seaweed against the back of her head, "That’s for splashing me," connecting with a sickly squish.
Ruth begins to cry, kicking through the last few inches of water, peeling the seaweed from her hair and face. She stands, the waves lapping at her calves, looking up to find her mother, then letting out with a pitiful moan, "Mom," sniff, "Ralph…he…" but was interrupted by Ralph, shaking himself off at water’s edge, the white of his skin shining hollow and pale like the moon, who has yet to remember the absence of water-wings on his arms, "Mom? Mom, hey…you can’t die from swallowing the water right?"
