LITMIR.BIZ

      1

      I Surrender

       Suddenly what I thought could only happen to the other guy became my reality. No matter how confident we are, none of us is exempt from trauma, from loss, from our world changing instantly without provocation or warning. Even while we cling to the hope that life as we have known it will sustain us, we can begin to find a depth of ourselves we didn’t know existed. Imperceptibly at first, the emptiness and panic begin to be soothed by the stranger within. That stranger is our closest friend.

      “Hi-dee-ho and away we go! Speedboat rides from the end of the Santa Cruz pier. Thrills and chills! Go skimming across the surface of beautiful Monterey Bay. Hi-dee-ho and away . . . .”

      The loudspeaker droned on from the end of the pier as it did every hour or so, the mechanical spiel hardly varying. It blended with the more distant din of the boardwalk: the calliope tones of the old carousel, the roar-scream-roar-scream rhythm of the Big Dipper, which itself sometimes drowned out the belly laughs of the teetering mechanical clown over the Fun House door. The August sun was hot and the air was warm with the smell of ocean and taffy and baby-oiled bodies languishing on the beach beyond. So familiar.

      The scorching heat of the San Joaquin Valley and the demands of summer jobs were so distant, as the tiny tongues of water lapped gently around my face. We floated limply side by side just beyond the break of friendly summer waves. Our breathing had eased after we’d wrestled and rolled playfully beneath the water’s sun-flecked surface. My eyes were closed; I just let the sound and taste and feel of it all sink in. I smiled contentedly as I thought of her there near me.

      Suddenly, as if that thought had distracted her from her own contentment, she rolled toward me, and with a playful chirp thrust my face beneath the water. I twisted away from the pressure of her hand and exhaled hard through my nose. There beneath me in the crystalline water was her lithe body swimming strongly down and then away. She was a water creature, this sweetheart of mine, and the silvery bubbles streamed up and behind from her dark hair like tiny pearls that had just been born there.

      I gulped air and dove. I kicked hard after her through the colder, bluer water. Ahead of me she merged with and parted from the shifting prisms of sunlight as if she and the sun and the sea were one, then separate, then one again. Suddenly, in one swift motion, she stopped and turned and challenged, suspended motionless for an instant in her element. A few shining pearls were still breaking free, and she was smiling as I collided with her middle, wrapped my arms around her waist and thighs, and rolled her backward. Then again, as we had done in countless rivers and lakes and salty summer bays, we tumbled and rolled together; wriggling free from one grip, parrying another, holding tightly to an ankle or arm for a moment, then thrusting away defensively. The shivery blue of the deeper water, the swirling bubbles and sparkling rays of light, the firmness of her twisting body—all a sensual kaleidoscope of color and touch as in our sham struggle we inched toward the water’s surface and the breaths we knew we would soon need.

      I burst through the surface before she did and held her tightly with my legs for an extra second or two. She went limp; a sympathy tactic. As I released the pressure, her retaliation was explosive. The water she slapped into my face stung my eyes. “Rat!” she yelped, and again she dove, the bare parts of her tanned body glistening from the sun. She had an armlock on my foot now and was kicking hard straight down, trying to pull me under. I doubled forward to pry my foot from her grasp. But my right arm wouldn’t move. And then she was gone.

      The water beneath me was still deep blue, with fragments of sunlight dancing aimlessly from above. But she was gone. The pressure on my foot continued, however . . . from the nylon shroud lines tangled around my boot. My boot . . . ? Shroud lines . . . ? They were stark in their whiteness as they trailed off into the deep where, I was now aware, the dim shape of my parachute drifted downward. The nylon tentacles and undulating skirts of the canopy reminded me of a monster jellyfish trying to envelop me. What fantasy! This whole thing is fantasy! Where is Bea? Where did she swim to?

      I lifted my stinging face from the water. The surface was gentle, the sun still high, but the rest . . . The calmness around me was eerie. What the hell was going on here? I floated higher now and vertically, but the pull on my foot continued to threaten, even with the flotation gear that encircled my torso.

      Again I doubled forward, face in the water. God, it stung like fire now. I strained toward the tangle around my foot. Still my right arm wouldn’t move. No pain. It simply dangled limp, ignoring my command to help out my other hand in freeing my foot. What’s going on? My arm’s broken, my face stings. What happened? Where am I?

      Concentrating very hard, I finally freed my foot from the sinking chute. Several shroud lines had drifted loosely around my other leg by now, but in the space of one more breath, I was able to extricate myself from the deadly weight that had done in many an exhausted Navy pilot after all else had gone well.

      Slowly

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