“Water Boy”
By John McGondel, November 2003.

Every time she could get away, Sharon went down to the lake. It was a beautiful lake to her still, despite what had happened. Near a cove, she had planted flowers, one flower each day she had been coming there since…

She sat then, in the tall grass under the hot sun, and thought about her brother and how he and she had loved to swim together, back and forth across the cove. She had never figured out which one of them loved the lake more, him or her. She went to the water’s edge, as she did whenever she visited the cove, and walked along it, thinking about Jim and how he used to skip stones across the cove, trying to hit the other shore. God, those lazy days had been so nice, and the swimming always cooled them off after they had sat in the sunshine so long that neither could take it anymore. Jim, who couldn‘t make the team at school, and became the water boy instead. He had told her that he didn‘t mind being called the water boy, because he associated the name with swimming in the lake…

Sharon scooped some water from the lake, and walked over to sprinkle it over the flowers she had planted that day. Jim had loved daisies, and she had planted a whole field of them, right at the spot where she had last seen him alive. She had told him not to try to swim across the cove with his sprained wrist, but he had done it anyway. At least he had tried to do it. She tried to not think about his flailing arms as he cried out to her from the middle of the cove, where he was beginning to drown. Tears of agony streamed down over her face, until her eyes were blinded by the salt.

She had screamed his name to him, yelling that she was on her way, and she had dived into the water. But when she had reached the spot where she had seen him last, she could not find him. She dove under the water, like a dolphin, searching for her brother. But she could not find him. And his body had never surfaced since that time, which was now a month ago. Jim. They had always promised each other that each would always be there for the other. He had always told her that he would rather die before she did, as he would not be able to stand the pain. And he had died, right before her eyes. And she had not been there for him. And now he was gone. She sank slowly and listlessly to the ground, where she sat, weak and weeping in sorrow and remorse. Jim had left her to live, as she had left him to die. She wiped her face with her long, flowing hair, and closed her eyes to sleep. The warm sun comforted her, and the calm air whispered across her tiny female form.

She never heard the man who sneaked up to her and grabbed her roughly as she lay vulnerably on the ground. He had been watching from the nearby trees, where he had decided that she would be his prey. He dragged her as she screamed incoherently, her young mind overloaded by the situation, and he was walking toward the water. She saw the look on his face, the face of a madman, and she fainted. The madman waded out into the water, half-carrying her, until it was waist-deep. There he stopped, and grabbed her by the hair, wrapping it tightly around his large meaty fist. He then thrust her head beneath the water, and held her there, all the while grinning like the lunatic that he was.

The last thought she had, before her lungs began to fill with water, was that she was trying to scream to Jim for help, just as he had screamed to her on the day he drowned. She felt a sense of peace that she would soon be joining him, then she lost consciousness.

The lifeguard was pounding on her chest and it hurt. She gagged on regurgitated water, and coughed up a little blood. Her eyes fluttered open, and she glanced, uncomprehendingly around her. She saw the lifeguard, and a few people. There was also a cop and a fireman. The cop and the fireman were standing, looking down at something on the ground at the water’s edge. They turned to stare at her, puzzled looks on their faces.

Against the lifeguard’s wishes, she climbed awkwardly to her trembling feet, and staggered over to see what the cop and the fireman were looking at, and when she reached them she recoiled in horror. How could it be? The madman lay dead, his legs floating in the lake’s waters. But what caused her shock was the fact that there was a hand, half decomposed and with flesh trailing from it, and the hand was holding the throat of the dead madman in a death grip. There was a watch on the hand, and her eyes opened wide in disbelief and terror. For the watch was the one she had given Jim on his sixteenth birthday. The hand was Jim’s. The hand that had choked the life from the madman belonged to her dead brother.

As they led her away from the scene, the cop was silent. She was also silent. There was nothing to say. They had found the rest of Jim’s body a few feet away from where the madman had died. The ambulance doctor had said that the arm which was attached to the hand had just recently been torn from the body. The cop finally asked her what had really happened, and her reply to him was this: “Jim was watching out for me, after he died. He waited there to help me, and when I needed him, he saved my life.” She broke down, sobbing uncontrollably. The cop scratched his head, certain that the girl was in shock and unable to think straight. He closed the ambulance door behind her, and the ambulance pulled away from the lake. As she lay there, on the stretcher, she thought to herself: “Jim? You never left me did you? You said you’d be there for me when I needed you, and you were.”

And in her mind, her half-shattered mind, she heard Jim’s voice, telling her that yes he would always be there for her. In the lake, where his soul was at peace. And she knew then that the lake would always protect her. Because of her brother Jim- The Water Boy.