I remember Tex saying there are two sandbars here. Maybe I'm between them, but the hurricane might have changed the sandbars. I don't know anything about this kind of stuff. What the hell is a sandbar anyway? Tex talks about a lot of things, and I don't always remember everything.
I kick to the surface and gasp. I try to tread water, searching for bottom, and there's still nothing.Shit!I'm already at least thirty feet from where I was standing.
I start swimming as hard as I can toward shore, pulling with my arms and kicking my legs. I'm not a strong swimmer but I can swim, and the shore is right there. I can see the bar. It's right there in front of me.
But I'm not getting closer.
I swim harder. Freestyle, the way I learned in a pool when I was a little kid, arms pulling and legs kicking and my face turning for air. I'm putting everything into it, and the shore isn't getting closer. It's staying the same distance away. Then it's getting farther away fast.
The water is pulling me out.
I don't understand it at first. The water doesn't feel like it's moving. There's no current I can see, no rush of water around me. Not even any waves. But something has me. Something underneath. Invisible and silent, it is pulling me away from the shore and toward the open water.
It must be an undercurrent. I've heard of those. Water pulling you down and out. I kick harder. I'm strong, I can swim out of this. I put my head down and I swim with everything I have straight toward the shore, toward the shallow water where my feet can touch.
The bar gets smaller.
I stop and tread water, looking over my shoulder. The open Gulf is behind me, going on forever. When I turn back toward the shore, the bar is smaller than it was a minute ago. I can still see it, but it's shrinking. I'm being pulled straight out, directly away from the shore, and no matter how hard I swim, I can't break free.
I take a deep breath and swim toward the bar as hard as I can again. I keep the building straight in front of me becauseit's the only thing I know, the only landmark, the only fixed point in a world that's becoming water in every direction.
There's no one else in the water with me. Or on the beach that I can see. No lifeguards. No tourists.
I swim and I kick as hard as I can. The bar gets smaller and the water gets deeper. My arms are burning, and my legs are starting to cramp. I'm swallowing saltwater every third breath.
Time passes. I don't know how much.
Everything blurs together. The swimming, the gasping, the salt in my throat and the burning in my muscles. The bar is really small now. I can still make out the shape of the building but that's it. The shore is a line, just a flat line of sand and structures.
I'm out in the Gulf of Mexico alone, and nobody knows I'm here.
I yell and scream for help with everything I've got, and the sound comes out weak. No one can hear me. There's nobody on the beach. Nobody in the water. Nobody on the road. Sheila thinks I'm walking. Tex is in a meeting. Nobody is looking for me because nobody knows I need help.
I go under.
It's not dramatic. It's not like the movies where you thrash and fight. I just run out of strength. My arms stop pulling and my legs stop kicking. A swell of water closes over my head and I sink, just a few feet, into the quiet dark. It's almost peaceful. That's the terrifying part. How peaceful it is when your body gives up. And it's warm.
The water is so warm.
I claw back to the surface. Gasp. Try to think. Try to be smart. I stop swimming and roll onto my back and float. Justfloat. Let the water hold me. My chest heaves and I stare up at the sky, blue and empty and enormous, and for a few seconds it works. The panic drops a notch. My legs stop cramping. I can breathe.
A wave rolls over my face. Not a big one, just a swell, but I'm flat on my back and it fills my mouth and nose with saltwater. I choke and roll sideways and I'm under again, thrashing, coughing, fighting back to the surface. I get my head up and try to float again but another swell comes. I can't time it, can't anticipate it, and every time I get my breathing steady the water comes over me and resets the panic to full.
The wind is picking up now and the swells are getting bigger.
I try three more times. Each time I float a little less, choke a little more, come up a little weaker. The swells aren't big yet but they're choppy and unpredictable. They just have to keep coming enough to drown me, and they try, patient and relentless, breaking over my face every time I find a rhythm.
I'm going to die out here.
The thought arrives calmly. Factually. I'm going to die in the water in a hot pink bathing suit. Nobody is going to know what happened until my body washes up somewhere down the coast.
The panic quiets and changes into grief.
I think about Tex. How could I think about anything else?
He's everything.
I think about him standing at the grill with smoke in his beard and his eyes crinkling when he smiles. I think about his voice in the dark during the hurricane, steady and warm, the rope I held onto when everything else was falling apart. I thinkabout his hand stopping one inch from mine on the counter, when he instinctively reached to comfort me and I didn't let him.
