Learning to Swim (5 page)

I led him by the hand down my narrow stairs into the kitchen, where he seemed to think a picnic table with a plastic-coated checkered tablecloth made a fine dining room table. He emptied his bowl of Cheerios and looked at me wide-eyed, like the hungry orphan in
Oliver!
I know my Dickens—both movie and novel—and correctly concluded he wanted more. We negotiated: more Cheerios if he would give the half-eaten pizza slice to Tiger.

I watched him munch his cereal, and hoped if he had any food allergies he’d be smart enough to turn down whatever he was allergic to. While he was finishing his second bowl, I retrieved our wet clothes from yesterday and dumped them in the portable washing machine. I wheeled it to the kitchen sink, attached it to the faucet, and switched it on.

What now? I could try to coax Paul into talking or I could do more research to see if I had missed anything. We headed upstairs and were just stepping into my office when my phone rang. I jumped, and Paul scurried into the bedroom.

It was my brother, Simon.

“Hey, kiddo, what’s up?” he asked. I don’t think being eleven months younger warrants being called kiddo, but I let him get away with it. Most of the time. Simon had managed our family much better than I had: he had obediently gone to Vanderbilt, where our father teaches, and majored in pre-law. But when he was supposed to be sowing wild oats on senior spring break he’d slipped off to take the police exam in Orlando, and after graduation had accepted a job there, thereby managing to do exactly what he wanted after being comfortably supported through university. After the initial shock, everyone decided this was a singularly clever way to acquire experience before law school, and Simon lets them think what they want. What they don’t know is that he’s quietly building a second career as an artist, selling a few pieces here and there, and has no intention of going to law school.

But when I landed a scholarship to Oregon State and wanted to skip my last year of high school, it was Simon who calmed our mother and convinced our father to sign the admission papers—although I would have forged them if I’d had to. So if anyone comes close to understanding me, it’s Simon. He’d known I’d had to get away. Just as he knows I need to live in this mountain town more than a thousand long miles from Nashville.

“Not much,” I said. “Work, dog, house. Rode up Keene Valley. Hiked Algonquin.” I’d taken Simon up two of the Adirondack mountains; I hadn’t yet summited all forty-six, but I was marking them off, one by one.

He laughed. “Hey, it’s a tough life you lead up there in the boonies.”

“Yeah, well, have fun down there while you can, before it gets so hot you can barely breathe.”

“At least we don’t have black flies.”

“No, just cockroaches so big they fly.” I hesitated a moment. “Hey, Simon, what do you do at work if you find a lost kid and no parents show up?”

He answered without hesitation—like me, he can switch gears quickly. “Basically it gets publicized until a relative appears or you track them down. Like that kid abandoned in a shopping center out west. Or that little girl in New York found wandering the streets after her mother was killed by her boyfriend. She was in the papers and on TV until she was identified. What’s up, Troy?”

“Mmm.” There was a lump in my throat. “Just an article I’m working on.” This didn’t have to be a lie—I
could
write an article about missing kids, abandoned kids, kids tossed off ferries. I made noncommittal noises and slid into small talk. Simon told me he had two paintings appearing in a local show; I mentioned an article I’d sold to
Triathlete
magazine.

I caught a movement out of the corner of my eye. Paul was standing in the doorway of the bedroom. I put up a finger—
one minute
—and told Simon goodbye, and as I hung up I thought of something to try.

I patted the sofa, and Paul climbed up beside me. I pulled a photo album off my bookshelf and opened it. First I showed Paul pictures of me and Tiger, then a photo of Simon.
“C’est mon frère,”
I said, and asked if he had a brother or sister. He shook his head. A dog? Another shake, with a little frown that made me think he had wanted one but hadn’t been allowed.

I flipped to photos of our parents and the house we grew up in. Paul began to shift uneasily, maybe guessing where I was heading. But instead I asked where he went to school. This he answered.

“Je ne vais pas à l’école.”
No school.

Time to ask him where he lived.
“Où habites-tu, Paul?”
I tried to make the question sound casual. He frowned and shrugged.
“Tu habites avec tes parents?”
I asked next. At this he became visibly agitated and shook his head. He either didn’t live with his parents, or didn’t want to answer.

I looked at him, clownlike in the baggy T-shirt and shorts. He
needed some regular clothes—and maybe being around other kids would help him relax. And although I would never have admitted it, maybe I needed to talk to someone.

I picked up my phone and speed-dialed my friend Baker in Saranac Lake.
“C’est mon amie,”
I told Paul. “
Elle a trois jeunes fils
—three sons.” I’d met Baker when she had filled in temporarily at the newspaper during someone’s maternity leave. Her first name was Susan, but she’d been called by her last name ever since working with several women who shared the same first name. Now she remains Baker, despite having acquired a large burly husband, a new last name, and three small sons.

Her husband answered.

“Hey, Mike, it’s Troy. Is Baker around?”

“She’s here somewhere.” He was almost shouting over the background din. “She’s playing Indian chief with the tribe. Hang on a sec.”

Baker was breathless when she got to the phone. If she thought it odd that I needed to borrow some of her oldest son’s clothes, she didn’t say so. “I suppose you’ll explain this when you get here,” she said dryly.

“Yup. I’ll be over within the hour. Do you need anything?”

“Nope, unless you’ve got an Algonquin chief’s outfit. See you.”

Paul was frowning, looking worried. “We’re going to go visit my friends. To borrow clothes,” I told him.
“Pour emprunter des vêtements.”
He seemed wary, but didn’t protest. I put my driver’s license and cash in my jeans pocket, leaving my still-wet wallet behind. Paul’s sneakers were damp and a bit shrunken, but I pulled them on his bare feet and tied the laces. He and Tiger watched me hang our wet laundry on the line behind the house, and after putting Tiger back in the house we were off.

It was slow driving along Main Street. Lake Placid hosted the Winter Olympics twice, in 1932 and in 1980, and tourists seem to think this is an Olympic theme park and that the townspeople are part of the scenery. Of course they have no idea most locals don’t go anywhere for vacation because they can’t afford it at North Country rock-bottom wages. Or that the 1980 Olympic Village is now a prison
camp, and that being a prison guard is considered a great job here because it pays so well.

I do love this area—I’ve lived here nearly five years now. You can walk your kayak to a clear lake for a paddle before breakfast and hike up a mountaintop after lunch. Saranac Lake has a spectacular Winter Carnival, with an amazing ice palace and a parade the whole town turns out to watch no matter how cold it is, and Lake Placid has the best July 4 fireworks I’ve ever seen.

I’d come here as sports editor on the daily newspaper in Saranac Lake, covering three area high schools and two community colleges, plus all the Lake Placid events: horse show competitions, boxing, luge and bobsled, biathlon, ski jumping, and more—and community sports: softball, bowling, dart tournaments, sled dog races, and ice fishing. On a small paper the editor is the editor, writer, photographer, and layout person—you’re it, the whole department. After spending too many nights sleeping on the couch in the newspaper office because I didn’t have either time or energy to drive home, I’d known it was time for a change.

Now I do freelance writing and editing and some computer and website consulting. I write press releases for the area chambers of commerce and theater reviews for the paper, and sell articles about sled dog races, rugby tournaments, three-day canoe races, and ski jumping to magazines like
Southwest Spirit
and
Scholastic Scope
. It’s not a huge income, and it’s sporadic. But my expenses are few, and I like the freedom. It had suited me fine.

I had the feeling that was about to change. And maybe it already had.

O
NCE OUT OF LAKE PLACID, IT’S ABOUT TWENTY MINUTES
to Baker’s house.

Baker is just this side of plump, sort of a heavier, freckled, younger Maura Tierney, with a round friendly face that spells Mom, apple pie, and meat loaf. The corners of her mouth twisted at the sight of Paul’s odd outfit, but she just led us to the stack of clothes she had set aside. Paul shyly picked out a Batman T-shirt and jeans, and I helped him change. The clothes were slightly big, but he seemed to like them, and gave Baker his wistful half smile. She popped a construction-paper headdress on him and pointed him toward the backyard where the kids were playing. He looked at me with a mixture of eagerness and nervousness, and I gave him an encouraging nod. “I’ll just be inside,” I called out as he took a step toward the play set.
“Je serai juste là, à l’intérieur … dans la maison de Baker.”

Baker gave me a look.

“Uh, he doesn’t speak English—did I forget to mention that?” I asked as I followed her back into the house.

She shrugged. “Doesn’t matter. Kids all speak the same language.” Through the kitchen window I could see Paul being coaxed up a slide by a pigtailed, overall-clad kid with a dirty smear on her cheek, one of the neighbor’s daughters. “He’ll be fine,” Baker said. “What, are you adopting a French-Canadian kid?”

I shrugged. “I found him. Literally. In Lake Champlain.”

She stared at me for a long second, reading more in my face than I wanted her to. “Okay, you’re staying for lunch. We’ll eat first and
then I’ll feed the horde.” As she made sandwiches I watched Paul through the window, going down the slide and then marching around and climbing back up to do it again.

“So tell me,” Baker said as she plopped tuna sandwiches and carrot sticks on the table, with a Coke for her and iced tea for me.

“Mmm. I honest-to-God found him in Lake Champlain. I was on my way to see Thomas yesterday, and I saw him, well, fall in from the other ferry.”

She stared at me. I took a sip of iced tea and made a face. Too strong, as usual. Nobody in the North Country knows how to make iced tea. Most of them think it comes from a jar of powder from the grocery store. I was lucky Baker brewed it for me. I pushed my chair back, the skittering sound loud in the sudden stillness, ran tap water into the glass, and swirled the ice around.

“You just happened to have a portable raft with you, or what?” Baker asked. Sarcasm does not become her.

“No, I swam and got him and then swam to shore.”

More staring. “Troy, you can’t swim worth a damn.”

“I’m not that bad,” I protested as I sat back down. “I don’t like swimming in groups and I sort of veer to one side. But if I concentrate, I do okay.”

She picked up her sandwich and took a bite. “Okay, he fell in the lake. You got him out. So why do you still have him?”

Dead silence. It was difficult to say aloud, and it took a moment to get the words out. “I’m pretty sure someone threw him in.”

Another friend might have exclaimed, but Baker wasn’t made that way, and she knows how tough I like to pretend to be. We chewed our sandwiches.

“Did he say so?” Baker asked.

“No. He won’t talk about it. But no one was at the dock looking for him, and he had … there was …” I cleared my throat. “He had an adult’s sweatshirt tied around him, the sleeves knotted around his arms.”

Baker thought about this. “Did you call the police?”

I nodded. “Etown and Burlington. I didn’t give my name. But Paul
wasn’t talking, so he wouldn’t have told them anything. And I’d pulled the sweatshirt off him, so it was at the bottom of the lake.” I clinked my ice around in my glass and took a long drink. “I think he’ll calm down soon and tell me who he is and what happened and where he’s from, and then I can decide what to do. He’s just starting to talk.”

She stared at me a moment longer. North Country people are known for their reticence and staying out of other people’s business, but even Baker couldn’t let this go. When she spoke, her voice was mild.

“Troy, you can’t just keep a child. He has parents somewhere, parents who are bound to be looking for him.”

“Maybe. Maybe not. Maybe they’re the ones who threw him in the lake.” My voice almost cracked. “And I don’t want him being sent back to them.”

She watched as I drank more tea, and then I spoke again. “When he tells me what happened, then I’ll know what to do.”

For a moment I thought she was going to pull maternal rank and say,
“Are you out of your mind?”
But I could see her working it out, considering the possibilities and the risks:
parents who don’t get their kid back immediately
versus
child may be sent back to people who tried to kill him
. At last she nodded. Paul’s safety was most important.