She smiled. “He prefers simple weapons. A bow and a sheaf of arrows suit him quite well. He has slain some incredible beasts just through the accuracy of his aim.”
“I don’t doubt that for a moment,” I said. “Hello, John.”
He had seemed a little on the shy side, but there was no trace of shyness in the prideful way he held himself when we shook hands. It was as if, in some hidden recess of his mind, he believed every word his mother had just said about him.
“Susan’s quite different,” she went on, her eyes crinkling in a wholly enchanting way. “Most of her adventuring is done on ‘wings of bright imagining,’ as some poet must have phrased it sometime in the past, perhaps far back in the Victorian age. I’m not good at making such lines up.”
“I’m sure you’re mistaken,” I told her. “I read a great deal of poetry, both traditional and avant-garde, and I can’t recall ever having encountered that particular line.”
“ ‘Stumbled over’ would be better,” she said.
“It’s a little grandiose,” I conceded. “But when you say it, it doesn’t sound that way at all. I know exactly what you have in mind. Susan likes to dream away the hours sitting by a window ledge, with potted geraniums obscuring just a little of the view — a seascape or rolling hills with a snow-capped mountain looming in the distance.”
“Thank you,” she said. “I can shoot down a compliment like that faster than you might suspect, as a rule, armed with just one of John’s arrows. But when you say it—”
We both laughed.
“Susan’s not a tomboy,” she added thoughtfully. “But she won’t take any guff from John or any of his friends. You should have seen how fast she was running along the beach just now, outdistancing him in a few seconds. They are both children to be proud of, don’t you think?”
“Indeed I do,” I assured her. “I sensed that straight off. It doesn’t really need to be pointed up in any way.”
“Thank you again,” she said. “I must confess that, on rare occasions, I have a few doubts. But it’s amazing how quickly children can make an adult change his mind about them when forgiveness becomes of paramount importance—”
I should have known that if what she had said about her son’s exploring urge was true — and I had no reason to doubt it — it would have been impossible to keep him still for more than a moment or two. But I was not prepared for the harm he did to our conversation just as it was reaching a most rewarding stage by turning about and dashing off so abruptly that concern for his safety drove every other thought from her mind.
“John, come back here!” she called. “Right this minute.1'
She had followed him out across the beach, almost running, before I saw what had alarmed her. He had not merely bypassed the surf line and headed for a section of the beach strewn with the wreckage of a recent storm. He had climbed up on rotting boards of a washed-ashore, storm-shattered breakwater and was staring down at a side channel of swirling dark water which almost bisected the beach at precisely that point. Just below where he stood on one of the boards, precariously perched, the water had widened out into a pool that was unrippled by the wind and had a deep, black, extremely ominous look. It had been made more hazardous by the way the wreckage extended out over it here and there, with edges so jagged a pitchfork would have seemed far less menacing.
I caught up with her before she could quite accomplish what her son had achieved with close to miraculous speed. There is no accounting for the swift way a small boy can travel from place to place when some wildly impulsive notion takes firm root in his mind.
“Don’t be alarmed,” I urged, hurrying along at her side. “Kids his age do reckless things at times simply because they just don’t think. But we do, and it will take only a moment to get him down.”
“He’s not listening to me!” she protested. “That’s what alarms me. I’ve never known him to be so stubborn.”
“He’ll listen to me,' I assured her. “He may just be starting to feel the need for some stern father-to-son talk. If a kid has to go without something he’s once known too long—”
“I don’t want him to fall!” she said, as if she hadn’t heard me, and before I could go on. “I’m so terribly worried.”
“You can stop worrying,” I assured her. “He’ll climb straight down the instant I raise my voice.”
I was far from sure that he would. But it wasn’t just an idle boast to impress her. I was genuinely concerned for the boy’s safety, and there was no excuse for what he was doing now. He could, I felt, have at least answered his mother’s almost frantic appeals. Refusing to obey was one thing, totally ignoring her concern quite another.
When I reached the piled-up mass of wreckage he had moved even closer to the edge of the demolished breakwater, and the board on which he was standing seemed rickety in the extreme. It was so rotted away in spots that the swirling dark tides just beyond the almost rippleless pool were visible through the warped and nearly vertical far end of it. Something about the shape of it struck a chill to my heart. The supporting beams of a gallows might well have had just such a look, with both vertical and horizontal aspects, to the blurring vision of a condemned man awaiting swift oblivion.
Being parentally harsh is very difficult for me, because I’ve always felt that the young are frequently justified in their rebellion, and as often as not I find myself on their side. But now I was very angry and felt not the slightest trace of sympathy for a boy who could cause his mother so much unnecessary anguish.
“John, get down!” I shouted at him. “You ought to be ashamed of yourself!”
I suddenly felt that shouting was not needed and went on just loudly enough to make sure he’d catch every word. “I see I was wrong in believing everything your mother told me about you. No courageous explorer I’ve ever known took meaningless risks with his life. You’ve got to think of other people. How can you be so cruel, so thoughtless? Your mother—”
I stopped abruptly, noticing for the first time that there was a faraway look in his eyes and that he did not appear to be listening. He was clasping something in his right hand, and suddenly he opened his fingers and stared down at it, as if only the object mattered, and everything I had said had gone unheeded.
And that was when it happened. That was when the terrible mistake I’d made by not climbing up without saying a word and grabbing hold of him dawned on me. But perhaps it wouldn’t have mattered. Even if he failed to put up a struggle, just my added weight on the board might have caused it to collapse anyway.
It collapsed with a dreadful splintering sound. The warped and upended, almost rotted away, portion fell first into the dark beach- bisecting channel, followed quickly by the part of it on which he had been standing. He went with that part so swiftly into the water that no slightest sound came from below the wreckage for ten full seconds. Then I heard only the gurgling of the water as it subsided, the initial splash having been a great deal louder. Despite that loudness I was quite sure that if he had made some outcry before vanishing I would have heard it.
My immediate, overwhelming emotion was one of horror, mingled with disbelief and a sudden gratefulness. The gratefulness was due solely to the fact that I had come to the beach to go swimming, and wore only bathing trunks beneath a light summer bathrobe.
I kicked off my sneakers first and discarded the bathrobe almost simultaneously with my swift ascent of the wreckage adjacent to the vanished part of the storm-shattered breakwater. I had no way of knowing how deep the water might be at that particular spot, but when a narrow channel widens out into a pool it is likely to have a greater depth as well, and I was nine-tenths sure it was the opposite of shallow.
I remained for a moment staring down at that dark expanse of water, until I became convinced that no bobbing young head seemed likely to send a great wave of relief surging over me, for more additional seconds than I cared to risk wasting.
To have dived in would have risked a stunning blow to my head from the cluttered wreckage, which projected out over the pool in a dozen directions. So I let myself down slowly and cautiously before swimming out into the sluggishly moving current.
I abandoned my overhand strokes to plunge into the depths at about the spot where it seemed most likely John had been swallowed up. The farther I descended the less sluggish the current became, and I was soon being carried erratically back and forth in a tide-buffeted fashion.
It was my first attempt to save anyone from drowning, and I was lacking in all of the qualities that can make such a rescue attempt quickly successful.
