“Back Crawl” by Joseph Pfister

Back Crawl

“C’mon. Don’t be such a fraidy cat.” Eddie lazed at the raft’s edge, basking in the
afternoon sun like a Greek statue. “It’s not like you’re gonna drown.”
It was only June, but already he had a tan most people waited until August for. The way the sun shone off his shoulders, lake water trickling down his arms, did something funny to Elena’s stomach. It was thrilling to see him without his shirt — and the excitement of the afternoon, of being alone, still hadn’t worn off.
“It’s not even that deep,” he said, leaning back on one hand, sweeping tendrils of wet hair off his face. A gesture, she thought, he no doubt perfected perched atop a white lifeguard stand overlooking the Gold Coast. All those women with their bronzed shoulders, laid out like prizes at the edge of Lake Michigan.
Shouts, followed by female laughter, carried across the water.
“It’s deep enough.” Elena folded her arms protectively across her chest. “Can’t you just swim back and bring me another inner tube?”
She could feel the heat rising off of him. His knee, visible from the corner of her eye, was close enough to touch with a finger.
“And why would I want to do that?” he asked, flashing her a grin those bored, old housewives would have died for. “If I swim all the way back, I’m gonna stay there.”
It wasn’t so much her fear of water that kept her from learning how to swim as her mother’s. When Elena was four, she’d taken a topple from a dock. Uncle Matteo, who’d been chewing his pipe, admiring the mansions dotting Lake Delavan, reached in and fished her out.
Elena had no recollection of the incident. But, for years afterward, her mother suffered a recurring nightmare and burst into her room, shaking Elena from a sound sleep, to ensure she was still breathing.
“Listen, here’s what we’ll do,” Eddie said now. “I’ll swim out a bit, and you take a
running leap. Then we’ll swim back together. How’s that sound?”
“Awful,” Elena admitted, lifting a hand to her brow. But she didn’t see what choice she had.
“Well, that’s what we’re gonna do,” he said, rising. Before she could argue, he took a step back and threw himself into space. He kicked his legs as if riding a bicycle before crashing and disappearing below the green waves.
“Show-off,” she muttered.
Eddie surfaced ten yards away, sputtering and spitting lake water. “All right, your turn!”
“I don’t think you understand.” Elena felt a punching pain in her stomach. A low-grade panic. She could throw a tantrum, insist he bring a fresh inner tube back to her. But when had throwing a tantrum with Eddie ever gotten her what she wanted?
“Let’s go!” he bellowed. “The sun’s gonna set by the time you’re ready.”
She removed her sunglasses — temporarily blinded by the sun glinting off the water — and plugged her nose. She meant to take a running start, as Eddie suggested, but her legs suddenly seemed filled with cement. She mustered a single step before she was airborne. Instead of the graceful swan dives Eddie liked to perform, hers was more of a pencil, and she went straight down. Where she expected to find muddy bottom, she found nothing. Her panic was immediate — she kicked and thrashed, the tightening in her lungs forcing her toward the surface. The sun rippled above her, faint at first, then burst into full radiance. She threw her head back and tried to suck the world in through her mouth. Eddie splashed his way over, laughing.
She kicked furiously, terror still beating in her throat. She imagined how ridiculous she must look, flopping like a drowned poodle. Eddie swam with his head above the water beside her, a relaxed back crawl, making a feeble attempt not to grin. In contrast to his easy, effortless strokes, Elena found herself rapidly tiring. How much farther was it? It hadn’t seemed this far when she’d been in the inner tube. Between the slop of waves, she heard a mother with a high, bird-like voice, calling her children to come get their lunch. Eddie splashed ahead, urging her to keep paddling, until he stopped and said her name in a loud, amused voice.
“What?” she sputtered, still beating the waves with her arms.
“I said, ‘You can stand up now.’”
Elena kicked again and her knee grazed something sharp beneath her. A rock. She was swimming in less than two feet of water. Above the heads of umbrellas and families spread on towels, sunbeams fumed with smoke. Children chased each other, barefoot, through the grass. Eddie labored to his feet.
“C’mon. Lemme help you up.”
His hand — white as a fish, the fingers already turning pruny — hung before her. A choice, the rest of her life hanging in the balance.

Joseph Pfister

Joseph Pfister’s fiction has appeared in Oyster River Pages, PANK, Juked, and X-R-A-Y, among others. He is a graduate of the MFA Writing program at Sarah Lawrence College and teaches fiction at Brooklyn Brainery.

Headshot: Katherine Burns

Photo Credit: Staff