Lifeguard

© 2004 Michael Hanson
All rights reserved.

"From a proud tower in the town, Death looks gigantically down."
—Edgar Allan Poe

The sun crested the distant fence of giant spruce trees. The small wisps of morning fog that hugged the camp's shoreline every morning flared to a beautiful white brilliance.

A moment later the glorious spectacle was over.

He was like a king. All this for his pleasure, his pleasure only.

Humid sunlight washed down over the sleeping camp. In another twenty minutes the camp director would wake up and ring the large bronze bell that sat in the center of the sleeping cabins like an invulnerable and ageless watchdog.

Time for a dip.

He stripped off his bright blue T-shirt and ran out along the white, metal pier. He leaped headfirst into the clear mountain lake water, performing a long, shallow dive. Cool, tingling bubbles streamed upward along his sleek, smooth muscles. The shock of the sudden immersion kicked his heart into first gear as his momentum carried him into the deep shadowy reaches of the lake. This was his perfect moment of the day.

All of the sounds of above-lake life were now muffled, and the lifeguard felt safe and secure as the water pressure increased and hugged him tightly. In another moment he entered a thriving patch of ten-foot-long lakeweed on the lake bottom. Though he could never quite feel the underwater current himself, the lakeweed always rippled and parted around him like living tendrils, occasionally lapping at his sides. Red Cross lifeguard classes had always taught him that such patches of underwater growth were inherently dangerous and had taken the lives of many experienced swimmers. The lifeguard didn't care. Somehow, for some reason, he felt an affinity with the lake's eerie, swaying denizens. Three minutes later he quickly broke through the lake surface gasping for air. The morning dip was always refreshing.

The lifeguard smiled, revealing a perfect set of long, shiny white teeth. The bell started ringing around his fifth lap. It was time for breakfast.

The lifeguard jogged back to his cabin. Several small black squirrels scurried out of his path and then resumed their daily nut gathering. His campers were still asleep. Or so he thought.

"Surprise! Happy Birthday!" the entire cabin screamed in unison after jumping up from a series of feigned snores. All eight kids tackled the lifeguard to the floor and commenced to give him his twenty-six birthday tickles.

"Okay, okay, you got me" he laughed. "Now chill out, we gotta get set for breakfast!"

Reluctantly, after two squealing renditions of 'Happy Birthday To You,' the twelve-year-old kids permitted the lifeguard to hustle them into the bathroom. He turned to his counselor bunkmate with a sardonic grin.

"How'd you find out about today, Jim?" he asked.

"Why" Jim laughed, "I broke into the nurse's files, how else? God knows I'd like to break into more than that, though!"

They both laughed and the lifeguard slapped Jim on the back. Along with the other counselors he was more than aware of Jim's hopeless dalliances with the camp's attractive young nurse.

The lifeguard had no doubt he could score with the naive bitch had he half the inclination, but he of course said nothing of the kind to Jim.

"How easily your kind bruises," the lifeguard mused at Jim's retreating back, quickly stripping out of his wet swimming trunks and digging a clean white towel out of the pinewood footlocker at the foot of his bed. The three urinals and two toilets in the back of the cabin started to flush in a staccato of gurgling voices.

"David, you little pig, pick up your toilet paper!" Jim suddenly yelled out, "Oh, Christ, what a mess!" he continued. "I'm gonna call you the toilet paper man from now on, David!" This last statement was answered with laughter throughout the entire cabin.

A picture of a thick shag rug.

The lifeguard frowned as the mental image resolved into sharper detail.

He was eight years old. He would run home from school, quickly remove his sneakers and pull his socks three quarters off his feet and pretend they were diving fins like those Jacques Cousteau wore on TV. He would "swim" around his living room's shag rug always aware of the danger of sharks, the bends, and running out of oxygen. In his mind, he saw the deepness of the ocean, felt the comforting pressure of hundreds of feet of water overhead, and frolicked amid the friendly swaying plankton...

The lifeguard sat on the edge of his bed, oblivious to the strange looks his fellow counselor Jim and eight assigned campers were giving him. A slightly reverent smile was plastered on his face.

It was his 12th birthday. As custom demanded, he told his homeroom a tale of his past. Sitting in his sixth-grade class, after having told his classmates all about his rug scuba diving, the other kids were snickering.

"Strong desires to return to the comfort of the womb!" The teacher had expounded to a giggling and hypertensive gang of children. "Compulsive paranoia over the fear of bedwetting," she added sarcastically. He had been the laughing stock of his class for over a week.

The lifeguard snapped out of his unpleasant reverie at the sound of the breakfast bell with a startled and painful tensing of his shoulders. He noticed with some surprise that Jim and the rest of the cabin's inhabitants had already left on their way to the dining hall.

The lifeguard checked his watch and realized he had only five minutes to shower, shampoo, shave, brush his teeth and hair, clip his nails and dress for breakfast. He finished skillfully with a whole two minutes to spare and realized, bemusedly, that his four-year hitch in the Navy had not been a complete waste.

As he was toweling off his wet hair, the lifeguard caught a glimpse of himself in the body-length mirror on the rear wall of the cabin. He examined his physique with a dispassionate eye. Lean. Muscular. A six-foot, two-inch tall male in his mid-twenties. His skin sported a Hollywood tan and his hair, almost black during the non-summer months, had been bleached a light, golden bronze from constant exposure to the sun.

His eyes were a soft green and surrounded by long, thick lashes. His chin was a small brick of manly solidity and his lips were thick and sensual. All in all he wore the cliched pose of a lifeguard very well.

The entire camp (three hundred boys from ages eight to sixteen, and one hundred and fifteen counselors) filed into the dining hall. The main dining space was one large open room filled with forty circular, oak tables. The lifeguard quickly spied out an unchaperoned group and made his move. As a member of the waterfront staff, he was required to sit at a different table every other day. He returned a chorus of "happy birthdays" with half the dining hall before sitting down with his assigned ten campers.

The lifeguard sat back to enjoy a fine meal of pancakes, French toast, sausage, bacon, coffee and orange juice. The laughter and chatter of campers and counselors echoed freely throughout the hall. Upon sitting down the lifeguard had automatically turned on his trademark smile and dived, once again, into an alien world of upper middle class mores and sensibilities.

"Did yuh hear? Abraham's dad got him a new CD and a motorbike for his birthday!" One handsome, black-haired youth from Manhattan spouted out enthusiastically. "That's so RAD man!" he added with a dazzling grin.

"Screw that!" The red-haired youth to the lifeguard's left replied "I'm getting a new Apple computer with a shitload of software this September. Would you believe it. It's to help me in school!"

"No way!" the black-haired kid answered "Your old man fell for that crap?"

The lifeguard took in the barrage of affluence and one-upmanship these eleven-year-olds played with a relaxed smile and a chorus of approving nods. He was safe. He knew they had accepted him. In a manner of speaking he had already begun his entry into this foreign world of wealth and upward mobility. The lifeguard knew his camouflage of good looks, indifferent smiles and stylish clothes endeared him to every kid in the camp. He would finish college in another year and then BANG! He would use one of his contacts, possibly the parents of one of these rich brats, to smooth his way into a more suitable and downright comfortable lifestyle.

The lifeguard swept his eyes around the dining hall. He knew that most of the other camp counselors, younger college students with only half of his own ambition, would never draw the praise and admiration from the kids like he did. He was unique. Special. The lifeguard finished his breakfast and then instructed his campers, amid a chorus of groans and mimicked heart attacks, to start stacking their dishes in the center of the table. In a few minutes the cooking staff would stop at each table and pile the morning's dirty dishes onto several large carts and dolly the refuse out through the kitchen's large, revolving double doors.

A squeal of anger. The lifeguard turned his head and spotted a crying, outraged camper whose head was covered with milk and cereal. His table mates were laughing like banshees.

The bathroom door being forced open. He was standing naked and wet with a towel in his hands, just out of the shower. His brothers were snapping Polaroids. The photos circulated his elementary school and he was laughed at for a week. When the taunting became unbearable he would hide within his mind, deep down in a cold dark place of safety.

The lifeguard shook his head and noticed that people were starting to leave the dining hall. The kids at his table were staring at him strangely. He smiled, stood up, and headed out to start his day.

The lifeguard's job was to sit on the large, elevated, white watch tower next to the waterfront's gate entrance and supervise the checking of campers and staff into and out of the swimming and boating docks. He had a large, plastic-covered cardboard map of the two waterfront facilities that he always carried with him. Every time a waterfront instructor entered the area with a class, the lifeguard would take his grease pencil, count heads, and draw the tallied number of people over the map space they were training in. If any one of the kids in that particular group left the waterfront, he had to erase the original number and draw in the new tally.

The same was done for the boating division, with the exception that instead of circling the numbers, he would draw the shapes of canoes, rowboats and sailboats around them. On an active day there would be over two dozen half-smeared numbers plastered over the face of his laminated map.

The lifeguard prided himself on the fact that he had never had a discrepancy between his map's figures and the body count made during the buddy checks given every ten minutes. The kids were safe under his care. Adults were another matter.

The lifeguard was different, almost separate, from the rest of the waterfront staff. There were swimming instructors, lifesaving instructors, canoeing, rowing and sailing instructors. In fact, there were even water ski and wind surfing instructors. There was, however, only one lifeguard. The lifeguard. The waterfront director may have technically been in charge of overseeing the camp's lakeside operation, but it was the lifeguard who actually coordinated the placement and safety of all campers and staff in the waterfront via his laminated map.

"I'm the only director around here," the lifeguard thought atop his lofty tower.

The day streamed by in a haze of pounding sunlight, shrill whistles, an occasional cut toe and the ever-present, though highly unlikely, expectation of a miscount on his map. The five o'clock bell rang and the lifeguard climbed down the twenty-five foot tower. During the free swim period, in the late afternoon, the lifeguard relinquished his aerial post to the waterfront director so he could help patrol the swimming docks. Throughout the day only about one hundred campers ever used the waterfront at one time. During free swim, however, the entire camp was allowed access to the beachfront and deepwater swimming area out by the floating raft. On a hot day there would be upward of three to four hundred people in the water at one time.

It was very hot today. The waterfront director wanted the lifeguard patrolling the swimming docks during free swim because he was the strongest and fastest swimmer among the entire twenty-five-person waterfront staff. The lifeguard picked up a ten-foot-long, hollow bamboo rescue pole from inside the waterfront shed and strode out onto the pier. He glanced around and made a quick head count of the twelve other waterfront staff members on the docks. This did not count the two staff members out on the raft.

Julie, a handsome and shapely blonde from the University of Miami, smiled and waved a brief welcome to the lifeguard as he walked out onto the farthest arm of the dock. The lifeguard liked her. Julie was always using him as a model for her lifesaving students.

"We're hitting Rileys tonight," Julie dimpled. "Why don't you cut out early and ride in with me?"

Julie was wearing a skimpy light blue skin suit that highlighted her eyes and amply showed off her hourglass physique. She lightly pressed her hip against the lifeguard's thigh and placed her left hand demurely over her stomach. He glanced down and examined this maneuver much like a scientist would look over the outline of a specific breed of bacteria.

"We'll see," the lifeguard smiled back. "I don't know if I can get out of bunk assignment or not."

It was a good ploy. Julie always fell for it.

"Okay" she replied, obviously disappointed. "I'll keep my fingers crossed!"

"But not your legs," the lifeguard thought smugly. "You'd pin me into your boring, middle-class social life with all the excitement of an enema."

She turned and went to her assigned station. The lifeguard had his eyes on other prey this summer. Specifically, the rich widowed mother of a young camper from Jamaica.

Parent's weekend was only a ten days away, and he didn't need any bleeding heart sentimentalist mooning over him when the Jamaica bitch needed attending. He had to do something about Julie. She was becoming quite a nuisance.

"A little too much alcohol," he thought, "some rough bedplay, a couple insults. That'll take care of it." He briefly sketched the scenario in his mind before returning to his duties. He'd have Julie fitted into her niche by the end of the evening.

The lifeguard didn't have a stationary spot like the others. The waterfront director liked to keep him constantly moving among the permanently stationed waterfront staff during free swim. It helped keep them on their toes, knowing that the lifeguard was looking over their shoulders. The lifeguard smiled back at Julie and just as quickly pointed his safety pole in the direction of a couple of fifteen-year-old campers who were wrestling in the deeper water out by the raft. The campers were struggling just under the raft's diving board and so were out of sight of the two raft watchers above. Julie blew a hair raising screech on her whistle and pointed out the two delinquents to the raft staff.

The sun was starting to sink behind the forested mountain range on the opposite side of the lake.

The resulting greyish black shadows rippled quickly toward the camp's waterfront.

Laughter arose from a couple of campers playing water basketball directly in front of him.

The lifeguard looked down.

An eight-year-old camper, clutching a water basketball, cried fiercely as two older campers pushed him into the deeper swimming area. The lifeguard recognized the younger camper immediately. It was Chris Rosenthal, a beginner who could not swim.

Julie, seeing the direction of the lifeguard's gaze, leaped into the deeper end of the dock and quickly pulled Chris into shore.

The two older pranksters smirked up at the lifeguard, daring him to chastise them...

His parents took them all to the Jersey Shore for his sixth birthday. He was on top of his dad's inflatable rubber mattress, his two brothers dog-paddling their way out to the roped-off border of the swimming area. He looked up and smiled at the crystal clarity of the shiny blue sky. There wasn't a single cloud in the heavens. Suddenly, without any warning, both of his brothers pushed the mattress forward so that it floated up against the buoy rope that marked the farthest boundary of the swimming area. The water here was over ten feet deep. He didn't know how to swim. He stared in white-faced shock as his two giggling brothers rapidly swam back to the shore. And just as suddenly a riptide current practically flung his little raft out over the buoy rope and rapidly out to sea. He had moved over one hundred yards before his paralysis broke and he started screaming for help. But it was too late. The roar of the surf drowned him out.

He was found three days later by the U.S. Coast Guard, fully catatonic and desperately clutching his deflated air-mattress, which seemed to have anchored itself upon an eight-foot-diameter mass of seaweed and barnacles.

Surrounded by constantly attacking sharks, his living and slowly disintegrating green island was spotted 65 miles from shore.

Exactly one year after this trauma, his catatonia broke, and he awoke to the world with no memory of even having gone to the beach that day.

Until now.

A shrill whistle sucked his mind back into the present. Julie, standing a mere ten feet away with her back turned in his direction, had just cautioned two campers for wrestling in the water. They were the same two kids that had played their little prank on Chris Rosenthal. "Alone" his mind echoed hollowly.

Intense nausea.

The image of both of his brothers' leering faces burned in his mind. The sound of their laughter echoed in his ears. And an ebony wave of surfacing horror loomed darkly over his soul.

And then, his sanity, padded and nurtured and protected by a dozen years of control and tedium and routine ... shattered.

The lifeguard strode to the far side of the Intermediate dock and looked down into the shadowy waters of the lake with two soulless eyes. The bubbling darkness of his shredded subconscious vomited forth an unending mass of slithering dark snakelike horrors that crawled rampantly through his mind.

As this apocalypse tore and slithered through the lifeguard's thundering synapses, freshwater weeds, as long and slimy as fifteen-foot snakes, broke free from the deep lake's bottom and undulated toward the shore.

The lifeguard turned to look back at the happy campers, and he saw they were all alike, for each and every one of them wore the faces of his brothers. His leering, laughing, terrible brothers.

Somewhere, far away, Julie screamed as dozens of children were simultaneously engulfed by lakeweed and pulled under the water to thrash about and drown in terror.

And all the while, ignoring this horror, one single coherent thought surfaced above the miasma of dark slithering madness that was now the lifeguard's mind.

"There are more beaches left in the world. So very many..."

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