right thing to do, from every angle he could think of.
He got his arms around the boy, still thrashing but weaker now, and kicked up to the surface. Gil flipped the boy onto the pool deck, climbed out. He heard a scream from the direction of the house, but didn’t look up.
The boy had landed on his back. Gil knelt, turned him over. Water flowed out of his mouth, then a little mucus, then nothing. He made a sound, half sob, half cough, sucked in air, and started to wail.
A woman cried, “Oh, God.” Now Gil looked up, saw Val, wearing a pretty dress, running down from the house. She grabbed the boy in her arms, yelling, “Is he going to die? Is he going to die?” over and over.
“He’s breathing, isn’t he?” Gil said, but she didn’t hear him.
After a while, quite soon, in fact, the boy stopped wailing, put his arms around her, said, “Mama.” Then it was her turn to wail:
“It’s all my fault.”
For cheating on your husband? Gil thought.
“I didn’t get that fence built.”
She rocked the boy back and forth, back and forth. His wet body dampened her dress, making it transparent. Gil could see her nipples, tiny now, compared to what they’d been before.
“Well, no harm done,” Gil said.
Val stopped rocking, looked at him, seeing him for the first time. The boy looked at him too.
“Lucky thing I happened to be fishing off your spot here,” Gil said. “Never have heard him hollering otherwise.”
The boy kept looking at him.
“But he seems like a tough kid,” Gil said. “Probably would have done okay on his own.”
“Tough kid?” said Val, bursting into tears again. “He’s just a baby.”
“You saved his life,” said the doctor, about fifteen minutes later. The boy sat in a chair by the pool now, wrapped in a blanket and sipping a Coke. “Nice job, Mr.-”
“Onis,” said Gil, right off the bat. “My friends call me Curly.” So much like Onsay, and he remembered Curly Onis’s meager line from the Baseball Encyclopedia; and like Curly, he’d taken just one cut in the bigs.
The doctor smiled. “Your hair looks pretty straight to me, Mr. Onis.”
“It was different when I was a kid,” Gil said.
The doctor left. Val came forward, held out her hand. “Oh, Mr. Onis, how can I ever thank you?”
“That’s all right,” Gil said.
She didn’t let go of his hand. “I’m Valerie, by the way. Valerie Rayburn.”
“Nice to meet you.”
“Sean, this is Mr. Onis.”
The boy’s eyes came up, fastened on him.
“Lookin’ good, Sean,” Gil said.
“Thanks to you, Mr. Onis,” said Val. “Thanks to you.”
Gil sat down, took off his socks, wrung them out, put them back on, and then his shoes. He rose, picked up the knapsack and the fishing pole.
“You’re not going?” said Val.
He looked at her.
“Oh, don’t go. We’ve got to give-I’m sure my husband will want to thank you personally. He should be home any minute.”
“You’ve already thanked me, Mrs. Rayburn.” He got a kick out of saying the name like that, casually, in conversation.
“But not nearly enough, Mr. Onis. There must be something we can… what do you do for a living, if you don’t mind my asking?”
Gil glanced around. “Funny you should bring that up,” he said, “since I happened by chance to notice you could do with a little work around here. I’m a landscaper by trade.”
She clapped her hands. Actually clapped them. “Bobby and I-that’s my husband, Bobby Rayburn-” He registered nothing at the name. “-we were just talking about that. Consider the job yours.”
“That’s very nice, Mrs. Rayburn. But I really couldn’t.”
“But you have to. I couldn’t live with myself if you didn’t.”
Gil shook his head. “It’s asking too much, Mrs. Rayburn. See, I live a ways away. It would mean you putting me up somewhere at the beginning, at least while I got things in order.”
“That’s not asking too much. There’s that apartment over the garage, right, Sean? Just sits empty.”
“It’s full of spiders,” Sean said.
“We’ll have it cleaned, of course,” Val said. “There. It’s settled.”
“Thank you, Mrs. Rayburn, but I really-”
“And call me Val. Valerie.”
Gil shook his head a few more times, said he really couldn’t a few more times, and then they went up to the house. Val said: “I need a drink,” and poured an Absolut on the rocks for herself.
“And for you, Mr. Onis?”
“If I’m calling you Valerie, you better call me Curly.”
“Curly.”
“I’ll have a glass of milk,” Gil said.
Val was on her second Absolut when Bobby came in. She took a step toward him, stopped, started crying. The story came out in a jumble. The moment he had the gist of it, Bobby blew past her, took Sean in his arms.
“I knew something like this was going to happen,” he said.
“Because of the fence?” said Val. “It’s all my fault.”
“I didn’t say this, I said something like this.”
“What do you mean, Bobby?”
He didn’t answer right away. Then he said: “It’s the luckiest day of our lives, that’s all.” He closed his eyes and gave Sean another squeeze.
“Stop it, Daddy,” said Sean.
Bobby let him go, approached Gil. Gil stood up. Yes, he was just as tall as Bobby, and just as powerfully built, if not more: Bobby seemed a little smaller out of uniform. Bobby held out his hand. “I’m forever grateful to you, Mr.-”
“Onis.” They shook hands. Gil resisted the urge to squeeze hard. “My friends call me Curly.”
“Whatever I can do for you, just name it.”
“As a matter of fact,” said Valerie, and she explained her plan. Bobby nodded his assent right away. Gil said he really couldn’t a few more times. They had a drink together, Bobby a beer, Val another Absolut, more milk for Gil. Then Bobby took him out to the garage and showed him his apartment.
“This do, Curly?”
“Do? Better than that.” And it was: twice the size of any home he’d ever had, and far more luxurious. He didn’t see a cobweb. “But I really-”
Bobby held up his hand. “I couldn’t have it any other way.” He paused, and for a moment Gil imagined the unimaginable: that Bobby was about to cry. Then he said: “It’s a miracle.”
Gil didn’t know what to say to that. He laid down the fishing pole and knapsack.
“Maybe you can show Sean a little about fishing,” Bobby said. “Haven’t had much time for him lately.”
“What is it you do, Mr. Rayburn, if you don’t mind my asking?”
Bobby laughed. “I’m a ballplayer.”
“Baseball?”
“With the Sox.”
Gil nodded. “Sorry,” he said. “Don’t follow it much.”
“Nothing to be sorry about,” said Bobby. “There’re lots of worlds outside baseball.”
28
