On My Honor (3 page)

"I wouldn't be scared even if it was ten foot deep."

Joel stepped closer. "You willing to swim it then?"

Tony's chin shot up. "Sure. Unless you're too chicken to swim it, too."

"We'll see who's chicken," Joel said.

Chapter Four

J
OEL PUSHED OFF WITH A BREAST STROKE
. After a few of those and a couple more dog paddles, he gave up and put his face down so he could swim properly. He kept his eyes closed underwater, though. Every few strokes he raised his head, glanced toward the sandbar, and realigned himself. The current was pushing him downstream, and if he wasn't careful he would miss the sandbar entirely.

He could hear Tony splashing wildly behind him, puffing and spewing water, his hands flailing. He couldn't figure out why he had never noticed what a poor swimmer Tony was before now.

Joel touched bottom for a moment to catch his breath, peering back toward the riverbank, wiping the water from his face and trying to forget how dirty it was. Tony came to an agitated stop behind him, and Joel faced him. "If you can't swim any better than that, you'll never make the swim team next year."

Tony's chest was heaving. He gasped for breath as if he had been swimming for miles. "That's why I want to work out every day. You and me. I'll get better. We both will."

"How about working out at the pool?" Joel asked, feeling reasonable and somehow older than Tony, the way he often did. "It's cleaner, and we won't get into trouble for going there."

"How about working out in the middle of Main Street?" Tony replied. "Then everybody can see." He was still breathing hard.

"What difference does it make if anybody sees?"

"All the difference in the world. Do you want Rundle and Schmitt noticing what we're doing? If they see, then they'll want to try out for the team, too."

"So ... let them try out. Who cares?" Joel couldn't figure out what was going on. This wasn't like Tony. He was always everybody's friend. So much so that sometimes Joel couldn't help but feel a little bit jealous, wanting to keep Tony to himself.

Maybe Tony knew his form was bad, and he was embarrassed. He'd probably never had lessons at the Y like most of the kids, and the last thing in the world he was ever willing to do was admit that there was something he didn't know.

Joel could still remember the time Tony had claimed to be an expert at hang gliding. He'd jumped out of his upstairs window with a sheet tied to his wrists and ankles. Tony said, afterward, that the reason it hadn't worked was because he hadn't jumped from high enough. The doctor had said Tony was lucky to have gotten off with only a broken arm.

"Come on," Tony prodded. "You said out to the sandbar. Are you giving up?"

"You sure you'll make it?" Joel eyed his friend's still faintly heaving chest meaningfully. "You look pretty tired to me"

Tony gave him a shove, almost caught him off balance. "Swim," he commanded, and Joel plunged into the water and resumed swimming. Tony started beside him but immediately dropped behind. Joel could hear him, blowing and puffing like a whale.

It's not so bad,
Joel said to himself, beginning to get his rhythm, discovering the angle that made it possible to keep gaining against the current. Maybe Tony was right and this river swimming would be a good way to practice ... now that his father had decided he was old enough to be allowed a bit of freedom.

He started the side stroke. He could watch where he was going better that way, keep tabs on how far he still had to go. He couldn't see Tony coming behind, but he didn't need to see him. He could tell he was there, because he sounded like an old paddle wheeler.

Only about twenty more feet. Joel caught a toehold in the bottom for a second to look ahead. The water foamed and eddied around the sandbar as if it were in more of a hurry there than other places. He put his head down and began the crawl, angling upriver against the current.

He was gasping for breath each time he turned his head. He wasn't really tired, though. A little nervous, maybe. In the pool the side was always nearby, something to grab on to. Still, he was a pretty good swimmer, and he was doing all right. He
might
be good enough for the swim team by the time he got to junior high in the fall.

He should have thought of practicing in the river himself. It had been a good idea. Tony was full of good ideas. When they both reached the sandbar, he would apologize, tell Tony he was sorry for what he'd said about his dad. He'd tell him he was sorry about saying Tony would be afraid to swim a little ways, too.

"Made it," he called out, when his hand scraped bottom with his approach to the sandbar. He stood up. "And I beat you, too!"

There was no answer. Joel turned to check.

Behind him stretched the river, smooth and glistening, reddish brown, but there was no sign of Tony. There was nothing to indicate that Joel wasn't alone, hadn't come into the water alone to start with. Except, of course, he hadn't.

He started to walk back, pushing through the water impatiently, as though it were a crowd holding him back. "Tony," he yelled. "Where are you?"

A faint echo of his own voice, high like the indistinct mewing of a cat, bounced back at him from the bluffs, but there was no other reply. Joel kept walking forward, pushing against the wall of water.

Maybe Tony had turned back; maybe he was hiding in the bushes somewhere along the bank, watching him, waiting for him to come unglued.

"All right, Tony Zabrinsky. I know your tricks. Come out, wherever you are."

There was no answer, not even a giggle from the bushes or some rustling.

"Doggone you, Tony, if you mess with my clothes..." But he could see his clothes, the pile of them, lying where he had left them, his red T-shirt marking the spot.

"Tony!" He began to move forward in lunges, gasping for breath, half choking. Tony had to be hiding. He had to be just off to the side somewhere ... laughing. There was no other possibility.

It was when Joel stepped off into the nothingness of the deep water, the river bottom suddenly gone from beneath his feet as if he had hit a black hole in space, that he knew. As he choked and fought his way to the surface, he understood everything.

Tony couldn't swim—not really—and Tony had gone under.

Chapter Five

J
OEL TREADED WATER FOR ANOTHER FEW
seconds, looking across the deceptively smooth surface of the river. There was nothing there, no faint difference in the appearance of the water, nothing to give a hint of danger. How wide across was the hole? Where did Tony go under? Would he still be where he went down, or would the current have carried him away by now? How long could a person be underwater and still live?

The questions came at Joel in a barrage, leaving no space for answers, if there were any answers.

There wasn't time to wait for them anyway. He made a lunging dive, pulling himself forward and under with both arms, his eyes open and smarting in the murky water. He couldn't see more than a few inches in front of his face, so he reached in every direction with his hands as he swam, feeling for an arm, a leg, a bit of hair. Anything! He found nothing until he touched something slimy and rotting on the bottom and sprang to the surface.

He ducked under the water again, reaching on every side, looking and feeling until the river sang in his ears and he burst through to the light, pulling raggedly for air.

The current would have pulled Tony downstream. He let the river carry him a few feet farther on and tried again.

Nothing.

When Joel dove for the fourth time, letting the current carry him farther from the shore, he found himself caught in the grip of that hurrying water. It sucked at him, grinding him against the silty river bottom. As he struggled to rise, grasping at the water with both hands as if he could pull himself up by it, his hand touched something solid.

Was it Tony, floating just above him? He thrashed toward the object, only to have the current draw it from his reach. Then he was swirling, spinning, being pulled toward the bottom again while a dark, boy-shaped object pivoted above him, facedown in the muddy water.

Tony was dead ... dead! And he, Joel, was going to die, too. He couldn't breathe. His lungs were a sharp pain. The air came bursting from his chest like an explosion, and the water rushed in to take its place. The form that had ridden above him brushed against his arm, his side. It was rough, hard, no human body. It was a log. Joel grabbed hold, and his head broke through the light-dazzled surface just as the rest of his body gave in to limpness.

He lay for a few minutes, coughing, spitting water, being moved without any assistance on his part from the eddying whirlpool to the slower, straighter current close to the riverbank. When the river bottom came up to meet his feet, he stood.

The sky was an inverted china bowl above his head. A single bird sang from a nearby tree.

Shut up,
Joel wanted to shout.
You just shut up.
But he didn't. He didn't say anything. Instead, he bent over double and vomited a stream of water. Strange that river water in small amounts looked clean.

Joel could see everything with a sharp, terrible clarity: the river water he vomited, the bare roots of a tree thrust above the water, the steady progress of the river toward ... where did it go? Toward the Illinois River. And the Illinois River emptied into the Mississippi. Didn't it?

They had studied rivers in school, but he couldn't remember.

He looked around. Still nothing disturbed the smooth surface of the water, and nothing skulked along the bank, no hidden form. He might have been the only human being alive in the entire world.

If he found Tony, if he found him hiding somewhere on the bank, he would beat him to a bloody pulp. He would never speak to him again, never do anything with him again. It was a dirty trick, the dirtiest trick Tony had ever pulled.

A shiver convulsed Joel, though the sun was still bright and hot, and he began to move woodenly toward the spot where he had left his clothes. He would get dressed and—

He stood there over his pile of clothes. Tony's clothes were scattered on the ground, exactly where he had dropped them. Tony couldn't have gotten out of the water. Not even Tony would be running around stark naked ... just for a joke! Joel turned back to face the river again, squinting against the sunlight that glinted off the rippling surface.

It wasn't possible. It couldn't be. It was all a terrible dream from which he would awaken any moment.

Far above him, a car rumbled across the bridge.

"Wait!" Joel screamed, coming out of the trance in which he had been standing over Tony's clothes. "Stop! Help!" He ran toward the bridge, flailing his arms, but the car was too far away for anyone to hear ... to see. It moved smoothly up the hill on the other side of the bridge.

Joel stopped in his tracks, trembling, his teeth chattering in erratic bursts, then ran back to his clothes. He grabbed his jeans from the pile, letting his underpants and shirt tumble to the ground. His hands shook so violently that he could barely hold the jeans up to step into them. The heavy material stuck against his wet skin. He tried to stuff his feet into his sneakers, gave up, and began to run toward the highway, still struggling to fasten the jeans. There would be another car coming soon. There had to be.

As he ran, he paid no attention to where he stepped. He looked down once, after tripping and picking himself up, to see that his big toe was bleeding, but it might have been someone else's toe. He felt nothing. A thistle beneath his left foot only made him move faster ... up the hill, his lungs pumping. The air seemed to hold him back exactly as the water had earlier.

By the side of the highway, he doubled over, vomited again, and then stood erect. He had to get help. Maybe Tony could still be saved if he got help. The road climbed away from the river on each side ... empty ... bare. There wasn't a single car or truck in view. The only movement anywhere was a black crow wheeling high in the sky.

Joel turned toward home and began to run blindly up the middle of the highway. He could feel the river just behind him, a presence, a lurking monster waiting to pounce. A monster that swallowed boys. Joel increased his speed, his heart hammering against his ribs, his bare feet slapping against the dark pavement.

Chapter Six

J
OEL WAS HALFWAY UP THE HILL BEFORE
another car crested the rise at the top and started toward him. It was a big, old boat of a car, blue with silver fenders, a red and orange flame painted on the hood. Joel planted himself in the middle of the lane, waving his arms. The blue car swerved toward the opposite side of the road, and he lunged to stay in its path, determined not to let it get away. The car came to a screeching, vibrating halt, inches from his extended arms.

"What in the hell do you think you're doing?" the driver yelled. He was a teenage boy, probably eighteen or nineteen, with a lot of dark hair and bare, muscular arms.

"Please," Joel gasped, but then he couldn't say any more. He stood doubled over the car's hood, trying to catch his breath, trying to get the words past his throat. "Please," he repeated.

"The kid looks sick," a blonde girl said. She was sitting next to the boy, so close that she could have been sharing the driving. She leaned forward as she spoke, peering through the windshield at Joel.

"In the river," he managed to say, pointing. "Please, come."

"What's in the river?" the boy asked, attentive now. "What're you talking about?"

Joel shook his head, unable to speak again. His face felt numb.

"You mean somebody's drowning or something?" The boy leaned forward, gripping the wheel.

Joel nodded dumbly.

"Get in!" the driver ordered, reaching back and swinging the door open for Joel.

Joel stumbled around the car and slid into the backseat, pulling the door shut again. The blonde girl turned and stared, her mouth working methodically around a wad of purple gum. She looked scared.