My phone buzzes on the drive back. A beach flag alert. I glance at it at a red light.
BAY COUNTY BEACH SAFETY: Double red flags now flying on all Panama City Beach shorelines. All Gulf water entry prohibited. Dangerous rip currents reported. Multiple rescue operations underway.
Double red flags. I feel a little prickle at the base of my neck, the kind you get when something's wrong but you haven't figured out what yet. Double red means the water is closed. Not caution, not advisory. Closed. You're not allowed to stick a big toe in. The post-hurricane sandbars have been creating rip current conditions all month and the county has been flipping flags back and forth as the currents shift.
I pull into the parking lot and rush through the bar door. Sheila is behind the counter wiping down the outdoor bar supplies.
"Where's Stormy?" I ask.
"Took a walk on the beach," she says, without looking up. "About an hour ago. Said he wanted to cool off."
"He went to cool off by walking on hot sand? He didn't go swimming, did he? I got an alert on my phone. They just flipped the flags to double red. The water's closed. Rip currents up and down the beach."
Sheila's eyes shoot to mine. "He said a walk, Tex. He said twenty minutes."
"An hour ago?"
We look at each other. I'm already moving.
I take the stairs three at a time. First floor to second to third and through the hallway to the door at the end that leads to the roof. I burst out onto the flat concrete and cross to the Gulf side and grab the railing and look.
The beach stretches in both directions, long and white and mostly empty. To the east, a quarter mile down, I can see a cluster of people at the waterline. To the west, nothing. The water looks flat from up here, deceptively calm, that glassy blue-green surface that looks calm from a distance and kills multiple people every damn summer.
I don't see him.
I run to my room. The binoculars are in the closet, top shelf, where I keep them for dolphin watching. I grab them, and I'm back on the roof in thirty seconds and I put them to my eyes. I scan the water. Left to right, slow, systematic. The shore break. The shallow water. The middle distance in between the sandbars. Further out, where nobody should be, where the water turns from green to dark blue and the Gulf gets serious.
Holy shit, I spot him.
He's a speck. A tiny pale shape, impossibly far out, way past where the second sandbar ends, way past where anyswimmer should be. He's not moving much. His arms are barely going. His head keeps dipping below the surface and coming back up and each time it comes up slower.
The binoculars shake in my hands. I can't hold them steady. I press them harder against my face, and I watch his head go under and I count. One. Two. Three. It comes back up.
He's still alive.
I take off running again. Down the stairs, through the hallway, past Sheila. "Call 911!" I'm yelling it as I move. "He's caught in a rip current! He's way out, Sheila, he's way out! Call rescue now! I'm going in!"
I hear her grab the phone as I hit the first floor. I can already hear sirens somewhere to the east, distant, heading the opposite direction. People caught in other rip currents. This happens every time the flags flip to double red. People are already in the water when the conditions change and the rescue crews get slammed with calls all at once.
They might not make it in time. There might not be enough rescue crews to go around.
I'm out the door and across the sand. I kick off my boots. Rip off my jeans. Pull my shirt over my head and throw it. I'm in boxers and nothing else, running across the hot sand toward the waterline, and my brain is doing math I don't want it to do. He's been out there for close to an hour. He's not a strong swimmer. The rip current has been dragging him the whole time and he's been fighting against it.
Stop it, Tex.
He's alive. I saw his head come up. He's still alive.
I just need to get to him while I can still find him. If he drops down in that water. Fuck! I can't let my head go there.
I hit the waterline and don't stop. I read the water the way my dad taught me, the way you learn when you grow up on the beach and spend every summer in these waves. I can see where the rip current is. The water tells you if you know how to look. Where the waves are breaking is safer. Where the water is flat and calm and pulling seaward is the current. That's where Stormy went in, I would bet, because that smooth, gentle-looking water is the deadliest spot on the beach.
I don't fight it. I run straight into the rip.
The current grabs me immediately. It's stronger than I expected, pulling outward with a force that would exhaust a normal swimmer in minutes. But I'm not fighting it. I'm riding it. The rip current is going to take me exactly where I need to go, out to where Stormy is, and it's going to get me there faster than I could ever swim on my own.
I let the current pull me and I swim with it, adding my own power to the rip current's pull, and the shore falls away behind me at a speed that would be terrifying if I had room for terror right now.
I don't.
