Moon Lake

Had it been now, I would have had a seat belt on, but then, even if a car had them, we didn't wear them, and thinking back, I wonder if in this case a belt might have done me in, if I might have been fumbling with the release, sucking in water all the way to the silty bottom.

But there was no belt in that giant Buick, and the impact and that dislodged windshield and the water drove me over the back seat. The clothes we had thrown there swirled around me and something caught over my head, and then I felt a pain in my spine. Realized I had been driven through the rear windshield.

The safety glass molded around me and then went away. I clawed the cloth off my face and looked down. It was dark where I was but light enough I could see the rear of the car and the dying taillights for a moment, and then I couldn't. The dark took the Buick and Dad.

Above, I could see moonlight through water, and it beaconed to me the way dying people say they see a warm, bright light that invites them into it.

I'd been swimming all summer, but no one had ever praised me for my aquatic skills. I struggled like a dying frog with no real breath inside of me.

Then I saw a mermaid. She came swimming down toward me, and she was dark of shape and swift of motion.

I felt weak. I had the sensation of filling up with something and floating downward, and then the mermaid grabbed me, and up we went, her pulling me by my jacket. It had burdened me during my rudimentary efforts at swimming, gathering around me like a suffocating cocoon.

The light grew bright and the mermaid broke the surface of the lake, still dragging me by my jacket. The mermaid was black. I registered that. I coughed and spat, but the water wouldn't leave me. I felt as if I was being absorbed by moonlight. Then the light was gone and the universe became a murky place and there was only the beating sound of the mermaid's swimming arms and legs. Or so I thought before I realized it was the sound of my hammering heart.

When I awoke, a black face hung over me like the dark side of the moon. The dark moon was the face of a girl about my age.

It was the mermaid and she was outlined in the moonbeams. She was sleek of build. Her dark skin was wet and shiny. Moon-glistened beads of water dripped off her nose and cheeks, lips and chin, and wilting Afro hairdo. She looked at me as if examining a formerly unknown species of fish. She had at first seemed nude, but now I realized she wore a dark shirt and dark shorts. No fishtail.

I rolled my head to the side to let some water flow out of me, and I remember when doing that I saw across the lake a little light moving through the trees like a large firefly, and then I didn't see it anymore.

Then another black face leaned over me, this one larger and rounder and older and not so beautiful. The man who owned that face was fully clothed and wore a fedora.

The older, dry man lifted my head, said, "Breathe easy. You been to the bottom of the lake."

I hadn't actually, but I had certainly come close to it.

Feeling nauseated, I turned my head and coughed up enough filthy water to start a fish farm.

"It's all right," said the man. "You're going to be all right."

The girl was still staring at me, her eyes wide, her lips parted, her chest heaving slightly. Sight of her didn't take away the pain I felt that night, but it was a mild balm to a soulful wound. I felt some puppy love howling around inside of me.

"You saved me," I said.

"Yep." She smiled. Oh, heavens, that smile.

"My daddy?" I said. "In the car."

The man shook his head. "Sorry, son. You're all that came out. He's gone down with the car, and he didn't come up. It's deep out there."

"You have to get him," I said.

"I'm sorry. Lake owns him now."

I started to cry and I don't remember when I quit crying. I don't remember them helping me up and out of my wet coat and into their pickup, loading up their fishing gear, for they had been night fishing on the bank of the lake, tucked up between trees and dark shadows—a lucky break for me—but I remember the drive to town.

It was long and lonely. The world came back in starts and spurts. Cold, wet memories, slices of this, slices of that, the car in the water, going down, down, down.

I sat in a puddle of my own making, shivering. The girl beside me was making a puddle of her own. She wore a jacket now over her wet clothes. We shivered together. The truck was full of warmth, though, as the heater was turned up high. Gradually I began to lose the chill.

The town wasn't too big, but it had bright streetlights, and the main highway split it right down the middle. On either side of it there were businesses and old houses and great trees with limbs that dangled over the edges of the road. Many of the houses were two stories, and a few were three stories tall.

I saw a Dairy Queen all lit up, and I was suddenly hungry and felt ashamed of the feeling. I was alive and craving a hamburger, and my father was at the bottom of the lake, maybe still behind the wheel of our car. In my happier thoughts, he was driving along the lake bed, and all he had to do was find a place where he could drive up from the deeps, onto the bank, and into town, where he would find me. It seemed perfectly reasonable.

The police station was a blur. A big white man with a big round belly wearing a dark blue cop suit with a badge pinned on it was there. He was also wearing a white cowboy hat with a brim wide enough to use as a patio awning, and when he turned in his chair, I saw he had a colorful patch on his sleeve that had all the flags that had flown over Texas, including the Dixie flag.

On the wall were a lot of photographs of him with other law enforcement officers in uniform. One photo had him with three older-looking people, a woman and two men. Beside him, solemn and pale as they were, they looked like wax figures of executioners.

There was another man in the room. Also large of size but better proportioned. He was dressed in slacks and a crisp white shirt and he had a thick head of red hair. He was placing a tray with a cloth over it on the sheriff's desk. There was a placard on the desk that said SHERIFF JAMES DUDLEY.

The redheaded man removed the cloth from over the tray as if it were a magician's trick, and there was a plate with fried chicken and mashed potatoes and white gravy on it.

"Thanks, Duncan," the sheriff said, and smiled at him. The redhead nodded, smiled back, and left the room, trailing a cloud of Old Spice.

The sheriff studied me. I was still damp and dripping. Questions were asked of me and of those who saved me. Notes were taken by the sheriff on a pad with a pencil.

I did the best I could to say what I knew, but my mind wandered. I could see a room off of the office with the words COLORED WAITING ROOM above it. The words had been painted over with white paint but were still visible under the thin coating. Just a few years back my rescuers would have had to come through the back door and sit in that waiting room, where they would be attended to. Eventually.

"What the hell am I going to do with him this time of night, Jeb?" the sheriff said. "Get some foster folks or some such, I guess. I can get a wrecker out to the lake in the morning, couple of boys who can really swim, see if they can find the car."

"You'll need swimmers who can use diving rigs. It's deep there," the black man said. I would find out later his full name was Jeb Candles and his daughter, Veronica, was known as Ronnie.

"That'll cost the county a good chunk," Sheriff Dudley said. "More to the point, this boy needs a place to stay, some food, and dry clothes. I'm not sure what to do about that."

In 1968 the idea of protecting children was different. There wasn't a whole lot of thought put into the struggle of orphans. Not in that small East Texas town, anyway.

"He can stay with us for now, Sheriff. May I borrow your phone?"

The phone was borrowed, and the next thing I knew, I was brought dry clothes from somewhere and given a large beach towel. My donations had come from black folks Mr. Candles knew. They arrived quickly and quietly and left the same way they arrived, like beach-towel ninjas.

I went into the bathroom and dressed, looked in the mirror at somebody I didn't know: snow-faced, dark hair drying in a matted wad, eyes seeming as if they were without true color, my skin popped with goose bumps.

I could hear the sheriff talking in the other room. I heard him say, "If you're up late, I'll be by later and we can discuss a few things. I got to do some thinking on this first."

"We'll wait up," Mr. Candles said.

When I came out, I was wrapped in the beach towel by Mr. Candles and loaded back into the pickup. We drove away, leaving the sheriff happily alone with his notebook and fried-chicken dinner. It had been all I could do not to grab a chicken leg and shove it into my mouth. I was starving.

Later, I would be asked many more questions and could answer only a few. It was hard enough right then for me to remember my name or where we had lived.

I did eventually tell the sheriff my mother had abandoned us and that I had no idea where she was. I had an aunt on my mother's side somewhere in Europe, but I didn't know where, and I didn't know her that well. Her husband, my uncle, a rich oilman who I had never met, had died and left her well fixed. My aunt and I had met, and that was about all I could say.

The Candles house wasn't too far from the lake in a section of town where there were no streetlights, and the houses on the block were lit by porch lights that were swarmed by insects.

Inside their house there were shelves of Reader's Digest books as well as others; a big fat black Bible was open on a wooden stand. There were knickknacks of all kinds on the shelves in front of the books; ceramic elephants were favored. The air smelled slightly and pleasantly of baked bread. There was a delicate-looking black woman there. She had a sweet face. She said her name was Millie and to call her that. She moved about swiftly, like a bird on the ground.

The house was bright with light and warm from a fire in a stove that had been constructed from a black barrel and a long, wide pipe that ran from stove to ceiling. A door had been cut in the barrel. Hinges had been made for the cutaway and welded to the barrel. The little door was open, and I could see inside. A bright fire was chewing up sticks of split wood.

When I touched something, it seemed not to have substance. When I spoke, the words didn't seem to be mine, so I preferred not to use them. I felt like a phantom dissolving into the warmth of the house.

"Come, child," said the woman. "Closer to the fire. Let's get you warm."

I moved to a chair by the stove. The beach towel was taken away, and a blanket was put over my shoulders. I was brought a hot cup of cocoa with marshmallows melting in it. The cocoa steamed under my chin and warmed my face. When I sipped it, it filled my insides the way the fire filled that stove, only without the burn.

It was late when the sheriff came by. He seemed smaller to me now than he had before, but perhaps it was because he stood with his hat in his hand, out of his element, beneath an orangish hallway light.

Mr. and Mrs. Candles were standing with him. They spoke in low tones. I caught a word here and there, but mostly it was all a mumble. All I knew was they were talking about me and my situation.

Ronnie was with me in the living room. She said, "You scared being in the lake like that?"

"What do you think?"

"Stupid question."

"Thing is, I was scared until I saw you swimming down to me. I thought you were some kind of mermaid."

"I'm a damn good swimmer. You're not that good. You thrash a lot."

"You do that kind of thing when you're drowning."

"Guess so."

"I'm glad you were there."

"Me too."

I could tell there were other things she wanted to ask me. She had to be curious as to what led my father to drive us through a bridge and into Moon Lake. But she didn't ask.

Had she asked, I couldn't have given her an answer. There were moments when I thought my father felt he could drive off the bridge and back into the past and take up life there. It was an idea right along with the one I had about him driving along the bottom of the lake. None of my thoughts and feelings that night were exactly stellar.

Later, I was alone on the couch in the dark beneath warm blankets, and from time to time, I would wake up whimpering, and each time, Millie was there. She stroked my head, said, "Now, now, sweetie. Now, now. You're safe here. Sheriff says you can stay with us for a while."

"My daddy tried to drown me," I said.

"Ah, now, baby. It was just an accident. He lost control."

I nodded, but I knew better.

Millie stroked my head until I slept. I never knew when she went away. Daylight came. I woke up late, exhausted from trauma, nibbled at some crackers and tomato soup. Both Ronnie and Mr. Candles were gone, her to school, him to work. Millie didn't press me about anything. I ate and went back to sleep on the couch.

When I awoke again, it was dead dark and there was only the glow of the porch light sliding through a split in the curtains of the window next to the couch. As if sensing it was time that I would awake, Millie was there. She ran her fingers through my hair again. My mother had never done that, not that I recalled. I remembered my mother staring at me from across the room as if she were surprised that she had a child.