Chris Crutcher - Whale Talk

But the next day he catches me just after I’ve said good-bye to Carly in Wolfy’s parking lot and pulls his pickup in close just after I open my car door, trapping me. He says, “Hey, Jones.”

“Hey, Rich.”

“Hypothetical question.”

I take a deep breath, appear disinterested. “What, Rich?”

“Let’s say you got married and had a family. And let’s say the Department of Children’s Services made up a bunch of bullshit to keep you away from your wife and kids.” He waits.

“Okay,” I say, “let’s say that.”

“And let’s say you find out some guy who ain’t got no business within ten miles of your family gets himself involved.”

“Okay.”

“What do you do with him?”

“Nothing, Rich. I just do whatever I have to do to get back with my wife and kids.”

“Not me,” he says, pointing his trusty forefinger at me, bringing his thumb/hammer down. “Not me.”

I shrug and get into my car, waiting for him to pull back so I can close the door, and then sit there waiting for the adrenaline flow to ebb.

Ten minutes later at All Night, I tear the water up ; swim two-hundred-yard repeats leaving every three-and-a-half minutes until I can barely drag the paddles through the water, forcing my elbows high through each stroke, sending deep burning pain into my shoulders and chest, trying to replace the fear and contempt in my gut. Maybe this is Rich Marshall’s purpose in my life, to make me faster.

An hour and a half later I drag my dripping butt out of the water and head for home, only to rise-now more pissed than scared-around four to return for some distance work before the rest of the guys show for the station workout, and find Icko waiting for me.

Icko is Interim Coach Oliver’s new acronym. Yesterday I started calling him our I.C.O., but when Chris Coughlin heard it he was convinced I was spelling the name so he wouldn’t understand something, like they do at his home. I tried to explain about acronyms, but that went about as far over his head as you can go without escaping gravity, and he started calling Oliver Icko. As I tried to explain it for the tenth or eleventh time, Oliver overheard me and said, “Hey, I like it. Icko. It has a certain ring.”

I said, “Yeah, like already chewed food, or snot running into your mustache. Ick-O!”

Icko told me to watch it.

At any rate, when I show up now, a little after four, he’s already up. “You got a minute, chief?” He follows me to the pool.

I say, “What’s up?”

“I been watching what you call a swim team pretty close,” he says, “and no matter how hard I watch, it don’t look like any swim team I ever saw.”

I said it was a little raw.

“Raw? Hell, I seen open, seeping sores ain’t as raw as this team. Ever notice you’re the only actual swimmer? Hell, you look like one of them boys in the O-lympics.”

I tell him it’s the same principle as my parking my Chevy Corvair next to some really ugly cars in the school parking lot. He says I couldn’t find an ugly enough car to make a Corvair look Olympic, but he gets the point.

“There some kind of vendetta goin’ on at school about this team?”

“What do you mean?”

“Well,” he says, “you know the Barbour kid, the one that works for Marshall Logging in the summer? The football stud?”

“Mike,” I say. “Mike Barbour. Yeah, I know him.”

“I seen him stacking up little slow Chris back behind the hardware store.”

Shit. “Did he hurt him?”

“Naw,” Icko says. “I done what I used to do with my boy.”

“What was that?”

“Picked me up a piece of rebar.”

“You used to hit your kid with rebar?”

Icko laughs. “Never thought of that. Naw, I just stood there talking to him real reasonable, you know, sayin’ he ought to increase his circle of friends enough to include people like my friend Chris there, while I bent the rebar into a horseshoe. He seemed to understand.”

“Was Chris okay?”

“Yeah, I guess. You know how he don’t say much. Well, he was sayin’ less than that. He liked the rebar thing, though. ’Cept he thought it was a magic trick. Asked me to teach it to him.”

I ask Icko if he knew why Barbour was bugging Chris in the first place.

He says, “Somethin’ about a letter jacket. I didn’t understand. I mean, the kid was wearin’ that Speedo jacket he always wears.”

Man, Mike Barbour is a one-trick pony.

So later in the morning I’m “doing lunch” in Simet’s room, bringing him current on the progress of his semi-landlocked mermen, advising against his applying for the job with the men’s national team.

He says, “What are your goals?”

“A small cattle ranch outside Albuquerque,” I tell him. “A few longhorns-”

“For the season,” he says.

“Swim as fast as I can. Get the gold.”

“That it?”

“Letter jackets for the downtrodden, one and all.”

“That’s still the big deal to you, isn’t it?”

“Still is.”

“Coach Benson caught me in the teachers’ lounge this morning,” he says.

“You must have been delighted.”

“Not particularly. He was feeling me out for swim team letter requirements; said he thought it was great I was getting a team going, though I should have talked you into going out for football if I really wanted to do the school a favor, rather than create a whole new sport for you.”

I love that they all want me. “What did you tell him?”

“I told him I didn’t create swimming; it’s been going on a long time. Told him about a couple of guys named Schollander and Spitz.”

Simet’s as big a smartass as I am.

“He said he knew the letter requirements were up to me, but he hoped I wouldn’t diminish what it means to be a Wolverine. Mike Barbour’s name came up, along with a couple of other ball players; and yours, of course. Said they were concerned that you were trying to make a sham of it.”

“It’s already a sham. I’m just exposing it.”

“You got something going on with Mike Barbour?”

I shrug.

“Well, I don’t know exactly what this is all about, but remember I have to live here after you’re gone. We can be creative, but I have a certain respect for athletics myself, so don’t push it too far.”

I promise I won’t push it too far. But like I said, Simet’s one of those guys who remembers what it was like to be a kid, so I figure “too far” is quite a ways out there.

Finally Andy Mott shows. I believe I may have mentioned I wasn’t exactly looking forward to that. You know how that Li’l Abner character goes around with a cloud over his head all the time? Well, Andy’s cloud is three times the size and shudders with thunder and lightning. Andy seldom talks; the cloud speaks for him.

He limps onto the deck in that unique gait one morning, dressed in gray sweatpants, Nikes, and a T-shirt. His torso cuts an impressive figure; he ain’t Tay-Roy, but he isn’t Chris Coughlin, either. This guy has spent some time pushing iron away from gravity.

He whips off the T-shirt, kicks off his shoes as he sits on the bench, pulls off his sweatpants, then unstraps his right leg . The guy has a prosthesis from just above the knee. He shoves it behind the bench, hops over to the end of the pool, and stands.

Andy Mott is a junior, moved here two years ago, and no body knows he’s missing a body part. He says, “What’s the workout?”

I almost can’t tell him we’re doing kicks.

He looks at me with contempt, or maybe that’s just his look, and says, “My best thing,” and hits the water.

Everyone is stunned, but Chris is paralyzed; wide-eyed with mouth agape, staring first at Andy in the water, then at the leg, a space-age metallic thing, then back to Andy. Communication with Chris Coughlin teaches one patience. There is a standard two-second lag time between input and output. Even with the simplest of questions, you watch his eyes and see the wheels slowly turn. His brain has a standard transmission, as if he has to create his own synapses. That’s for a simple question. When some guy limps into the pool and takes off his leg before diving in, Chris’s wiring tangles irreparably.