Tommy Edwards was the kind of new kid who got a pass from the first day. He was a well-built guy, for one thing—you would think twice before messing with him—and he would indeed prove to be a quick, powerful athlete, in three sports. Not basketball. Gravity kept him near the ground, and no one was a bigger disparager of his ineptness at shooting than himself. That’s how he was—never calling attention to himself, most comfortable talking about things he couldn’t do. Which wasn’t much. Unless you counted things he wouldn’t do—like drinking, smoking, cussing, or talking dirty about girls. His whole family—and they were a close family, the kindest, most decent people in the world—went to church three times a week—some church you had heard of but didn’t know what it was. He resisted not evil and turned the other cheek. The only time anybody ever saw him mad was when somebody picked on somebody weaker than they were. He didn’t go for that. And even then it was just a red-faced, indignant, non-violent anger. You respected him and liked him because you couldn’t not.
This is a story about the impossibility of knowing what happened, so I can’t tell you what happened. But I’m the narrator and I can give you my version.
It was a group of seven or eight boys at Cooper’s Lake that day, and it all happened so fast it was hard to say what really happened even while it was happening. And of course everybody just saw their piece of it.
Mark Thompson went under. That much was clear. Why he went under was not clear, since nobody was actually looking. True, he was only a fair swimmer, but he was only out a few yards from the shore, where the water was maybe eight feet deep, and nobody was tussling with him, he hadn’t eaten within ninety minutes, he’d had maybe half a beer, and there was nothing there he might have snagged on, no dreaded undertow like at the beach—I mean, this was a lake where generations of kids, none of whom had any idea who Cooper was, had come to swim in the back woods of Alabama. It was tempting to imagine some kind of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea giant squid pulling him under, but there was nothing like that, no snake, no hundred pound catfish. Later, a possible leg cramp was mentioned, and that could have been a factor.
Three or four guys were farting around on the little strip of sandy beach, and Tommy, Brian Waller, and David Evans were out swimming in the vicinity of where Mark was, and of course later none of them remembered it quite the same way. Mark went under, when no one was looking, then resurfaced, flailing his arms and gurgling a cry, then went down again. That was as close to a consensus as they could manage.
Tommy and Brian were the closest and swam to the spot and dove down. David saw Brian come up before Tommy, treading water, wheezing in a panic, and for a few seconds the guys watching wondered if what had gotten Mark had gotten Tommy too—but then Tommy resurfaced with his arm under Mark’s arms and around his chest, kicking his way toward the shallow water—at which point Brian, still half hysterical, came over to help and then everybody hurried to lend a hand pulling Mark up on the sand.
“Mark!” Tommy cried, holding his limp friend up and trying to shake him awake, unsuccessfully, then calmly said, “Help me lay him on his back.” They did, and Tommy tilted Mark’s head back, pinched his nose and gave him several mouth to mouth breaths. Mark didn’t respond, and then Tommy started pushing his chest. Brian was kneeling in the sand beside him, looking desperate, as the others leaned over watching. After—who knows?—two? a hundred? minutes, Mark coughed, spit out some water, and then in a shocked gasp of inhalation got his breath back.
Everyone cried out in joy and relief. Brian looked around at their faces.
Mark opened his eyes, and from that moment was a different person. Maybe he had seen something he couldn’t share. Whatever it was—you could say, he left something of himself in the lake that day.
And not just him.
By the time they got home there were several variations of the story, most of which, maybe because of their pulling him to shore together, featured some version of how “Tommy and Brian saved Mark.”
That was what went into the newspaper, and of course Tommy never offered anything alternative.
Letting that stand was what changed Brian.
* * *
They all tried to return to their lives as they had been, and with the mercies of time mostly succeeded. Brian made it clear he didn’t want to talk about the incident, and grew surly and withdrew if anyone brought it up around him. He began to avoid Tommy, nursing a seething competitiveness toward him, and taking subtle cheap shots at him behind his back. That didn’t play well with anybody, and Brian began to grow aloof from his old friends. The next year he stopped playing sports altogether, broke off from the group, and changed crowds. He never really had another meaningful encounter with Tommy after that. When Brian did re-tell the story to his new friends—toked-up and responding with some heavy-duty “Wows”—there was a general migration of “I” into the territory of “We”—and who knows? maybe he had even come to believe it himself.
Belief being what it is.
The boys graduated and went their separate ways.
Brian, people said, went out to California and joined something.
* * *
Tommy went on to—well, I don’t have to tell you—just say he was a good provider and leave it at that. He married Patricia Thomas right out of high school and they had four perfect children. Two of them became doctors, one a therapeutic cellist, and the black sheep an academic.
Everybody else became what white southern kids from good families usually became.
Brian, of course, no one ever heard from again.
* * *
Everybody knows some close calls and tragic accidents from very young days. And then a classmate or two dies in high school, and after that the deaths pick up over the years, each with its own little shock, each one helping to solidify the case for our individual and collective mortality. But the news about Tommy’s death, from cancer, in his early fifties, hit pretty hard. A man of no vices—good as gold through and through. The word “senseless” got worked to death.
At the funeral the pastor spoke of that day so many years ago when Tommy and his friend had saved their friend. Ironically, just how Tommy would have wanted it.
I guess.
* * *
The story would be remembered—and every now and then, if for whatever reason the subject was Cooper’s Lake, where nobody went anymore, you’d still hear people mention in a somber tone the day that Thompson boy had drowned out there.
Even some who claimed to have been there.