The Swimmers

We were all of us little kids then, or crazy little kids, as the older people liked to put it, each of us a friend to the others but at the same time a kind of rival, unspoken though the rivalry may have been, nobody really sure of who he was or what he wanted to do, but in a few of us the beginnings of identity and purpose showing themselves, generally by accident and more of a surprise to the boy himself than to any of the others--who to be, what to do, who really to be, what really to do.

In the meantime, there were several things to do, several of our own choosing, that is, several that were not from the world, from the order and law of the others, the older people, the members of the family, over and above going to school, the ordered honorable behavior, the instruction in posture, speechway, attitude, tone (continued on page 201)Swimmers(continued from page 117) of spirit, as when the old lady, the mother's own mother said, "Laughter is for fools, keep a sober face," or the mother herself said, "It is not necessary to be forever confused--there is much that is quite clear," or the mother's kid brother said, "Easy now, do not be some kind of horselike animal in human form which must suddenly start and run," or the dead father's brother said, "Like the iceberg, only one tenth of our truth is outside, the rest inside, look there for yourself," and all of the others, all of them 15 or 20 years of age, or 30 or 40, said something else, and the next day put it another way, each of them with a new variation of the same general idea, or a totally contradictory variation of it, so that the old lady would suddenly say, "Enough of this thoughtful silence, a boy of nine might notice the comedy in things once in a while, too, you know."

Of the several things to do that were of our own choosing, swimming was the best, each of us beginning without skill, in total ignorance, but also in total faith, starting anywhere and fighting out the problem in silent fear and faith, in any of the bodies of water that were there, mainly the irrigation ditches, some narrow and shallow and slow, some wide and deep and swift, some weedchoked and occupied by frogs and startled snakes, with glorious dragonflies hovering over the life-cluttered water, but also the great rivers, the Kings, the San Joaquin, the Fresno, each of which could deeply scare a man, not so much by its breadth and depth and silent flow, but by a meaning sensed and unknown, something to do with something else, with a man's own way, of the way of the life in him, not really known to him, going along that way, so that risking it, risking all of it the very first time, risking a run and a dive into it, could be frightening, because it was not unlikely that it could mean one or another of the things one hoped to put off knowing about for at least a little while yet--could mean failure, not being able to make it out and back, being stopped not necessarily by the water, whatever the water really was, not necessarily by an absence of the required skill at moving about in the water, but by a failure of an unknown order, a failure of connection, of relationship, of participation, of acceptance, by the water, by its movement, by the climate of the day, by the sun, by the silence, the peace, the patience, by the enormity of the indifference of everything to a small boy with a huge and unknown reality, an enormous nature, and by the boy's own indifference to this indifference, his refusal to be ignored, his insistence on ignoring instead of being ignored, by the music of the summertime living that was brand-new every day, but awfully old, too, and wise, aware of everything from having seen and felt and seized and kept and thrown away every bit of it, secret and known, through all of the time long gone but always still here, always here again, a new body, a new head and face, a new voice, speaking a new language, any boy at any time could lose it all by the accident of some unknown action or truth, embarrassed, speechless, angry, and then out of it, unaccountably out of it all, the flash of him gone.

"Cramps," one said to the other. "Worst of all is cramps, and nobody knows why cramps happen, but they say not to go diving in right after eating--wait five minutes. I've had cramps. I know. What happens is like having your feet and legs tied, so you can't move. What you do is what you can with whatever's left that isn't tied, and wait. Cramps don't stop because you want them to, you've got to wait until they're good and ready. They take their time. Anybody eats the whole heart out of a big watermelon, he's got to watch out for cramps."

"Another thing," another of them said, "is running and diving hard and hitting bottom. You can break your neck. I was lucky when I did it, I only got a bump and a headache."

"Worst of all," another said, perhaps a whole summer later, "is overestimating yourself and underestimating what can happen, so the next thing you know you've got nothing left to swim with and all kinds of brand-new risks and accidents coming at you from all directions, your mouth and nose full of that funny taste of water you don't want and can't drink, that crazy taste of ho boy! that sick taste of how much time have I got and what can I do to have just a little more? And then maybe just enough more time to have the second chance I need to get to the bottom of this water business, this swimming business, this great school of choking, ho boy! will I ever graduate, will I ever get my diploma, will I ever get home, take a job, get married and be a good citizen?"

"Ah, you're full of it," another said. "Skill is all it is. Find out how to swim, where to swim, when to swim, and there's nothing to it, you can do anything, nothing can touch you, nothing can happen to you."

Any summer day's afternoon talk lazed along with the water, and we were each of us the lone talker, the lone listener, each of us taking the swift or lazy words of another and making them his own, giving them his own language, his own style, meaning and message. And with the lazing talk the silence talked, and listened, talked again and listened again.

And then some really wild animals in he form of men and women came along to have at the flowing water, too, but not really, more really to have at themselves, the men all pale, snakeskins, one of the boys called them, the women all larded over with ripe, bursting flesh.

"Holy Jesus, did you ever see--man, what I could do--let's get the hell away from here." And another, a little older, "Hell no, we don't have to go away, we were here first."

"Ah, they didn't come to swim, you know that, let's go. They make me want to puke, I can't stand them nagging at each other. Every time I see a snakeskin and a lardy lady, I want to go, I'm going now, you guys stay and watch all you like."

"I came here to swim," another would say, and then run and dive, and come up squirting water out of his mouth, whoop a laughing name, Aram, Aram, who would then laugh and run and dive, somersault, come up, squirt, whoop another name, Buck, Buck, and then one by one, the others, called to or not called to, would run and dive and come up and laugh, to cool it, man, no use trying to walk away from it, you couldn't walk away from it, it was there, it had always been there, it would always be there, and when it was on you, and hot, it was the only thing, the first and only, too-much, too good, run and dive and cool it, man, there's a whole world of time to be put up with, and sure enough, even the one who had walked away, moving downstream to a new place, to the grass under a water-leaning fig tree with black figs ripe on its high branches, and great numbers of little hard green ones that wouldn't be ripe until tomorrow or the day after, even this boy would race back up the bank and dive in and whoop and laugh with the others, all of them moving downstream now, but swimming, not walking away, leaving the best place at the headgate to the men and women, swimming to the second-best place, a quarter of a mile downstream.

And then up on the bank again, and up into the tree for a feast of figs, one after another. "Jesus, what is a fig, to taste so good? Whoever got the idea of making a thing like that?" And down again, with the mouth stinging. "What's a fig? I'll tell you what it is, my father told me, opened one and showed me, it's this little insect that has got to get in there and do something or the fig won't be a fig, that's what a fig is. Eat a fig, you've got to know an insect did it, a bug, and sometimes you eat the bug, too, but you don't know about that, because by that time the bug has the same taste as the fig."

"Bull."

"No, it's true, my father knows figs, knew them in the old country, all of these trees in California were started by the trees from the old country. Roeding did it, too, the fellow who made Roeding Park. You don't have the bug, you can't get the fig. You've got to take the bug to the tree. That's the way it is, take it or leave it. And mulberries have worms, but when you're eating them you don't think about that, you don't care about it."

"And what do we have?"

"We have them, too, bugs and worms and everything else, whatever works with one, works with another, works with all, it's part of the deal, nothing is itself alone, it belongs to something else, it's part of everything else."

"You're full of it."

"Don't take my father's word for it, think about it for yourself, it stands to reason, nothing's new, nobody's new, everything's more of the same, and so is everybody, and everything and everybody has got more going on around him and in him than he could ever even guess, and all the time--insects, bugs, worms, all with a short lifetime of work to do on figs or mulberries or you or me, getting in there and starting something that has a real nice smell at first and then if it lasts long enough a terrible stink, because that's how it is, that's part of the way it goes, the last part, and it all comes from something that's very old that every morning looks as if it's brand-new but really isn't, it's only part of the old thing going through its motions, start to finish, good start and good finish or bad start and bad finish, no telling how it will be, but no matter how, it will be. Just because your name happens to be Buck Bashmanian doesn't mean that's who you are, because who you really are you'll never know, because how could you?"

"Buck Bashmanian is Buck Bashmanian, don't put me with green figs getting screwed by bugs. My people come from Bitlis."

"They're members of the same human race as the rest of us, as everybody else, you wait and see, you'll find out. Cookie Hovsepian last year, the toughest kid in town, all-city four-forty champ, tall, swift, hard, nobody was ever newer than Cookie, nobody stronger, so he was twenty-two last year, and all of a sudden gone, Cookie was dead, Cookie found out, you wait and see, you'll find out, too. Wasn't Cookie from Bitlis?"

"Harput, I think, maybe Van, maybe Mus. Wait and see, and just what is it I'll find out?"

"You'll find out you can't make it yours alone, it's got to be everybody's, it's got to be part of everything. How many drowned last year that we knew, counting only the kids we knew, that we had seen and talked with? Was it two, or three? Al Cooper, you remember him, third grade at Emerson, swimming at Skags Bridge. Charley Bannerman right here, just up at the headgate, anybody can manage a ditch like this, but they found him drowned. Augie Schultz."

"I never knew him, he was from Russiantown. So three of them had a little bad luck and drowned. It happens every summer all over the country, what the hell has that got to do with Buck Bashmanian, why should that prove that Buck Bashmanian isn't Buck Bashmanian?"

"It can happen to anybody."

"Not to Armenians from the highlands of Bitlis, not to the Bashmanians, not to Bakrat Bashmanian, if you don't mind my saying my name properly, not to us, not to any one of us, we're not going to drown--unless we want to drown."

This last was unexpected, even by the speaker himself, and immediately everybody moved a little, as if to have heard better what had been heard well enough, all too well. "What? What did you say, Buck?"

"You heard me. We're not going to drown unless we want to. That's how it is. That's how it is with us. I don't know how it is with anybody else."

"Want to? What do you mean?"

"Drown. It's not going to happen, unless we want it to."

"Who would want to drown?"

"Anybody. Anybody might want to."

"A kid? Bull."

"Yes, a kid, even a kid."

"Who, for instance?"

"Me, for instance."

"You, Buck? Why would you want to drown? Nobody had more fun than you do. Nobody gets a bigger kick out of everything than you do. What do you mean you might want to drown?"

"I might decide I don't want to bother anymore about the rest of it."

"Why, Buck?"

"I might decide I don't like it that much, I've had enough of it, it's too stupid, too slow, too cheap."

"Cheap?"

"Yes, cheap. Like raisins. The Sun-Maid Raisin association has got seeded muscat raisins in storage from six years ago. They've got five hundred tons of seeds they don't know what to do with. They run these great full-page ads in The Saturday Evening Post, they get a trademark of a pretty girl smiling in the sunshine, they invent slogans, but still they can't sell the raisins, and they don't know what to do with the seeds that keep piling up."

"They're pressing the seeds into fuel for stoves. We burn pressed muscat raisin seeds every winter at our house."

"Go to a muscat vine in the summer and look at a bunch of muscat grapes. There isn't anything more beautiful. Pick a bunch of the grapes and eat them. Nothing has a flavor like that. So the poor farmers with the big mustaches and the big mortgages pick the muscat grapes in August and set them out on trays to dry in the sun and become raisins, because this year, at last, the price of muscat raisins will be all right, people all over the country will be glad to pay eleven cents for a nice one-pound package of muscats, ready to eat, and good for you, better than candy, better than ice cream, with no seeds in them, even but again it doesn't happen, the people don't want them, the poor farmer loses money again, so he has to make money at a winter job of some kind to keep the bank from stealing his vineyard away from him. That's what I mean by too cheap. I might decide I don't want to bother with all that cheap stuff, that stupid bank and stupid money stuff."

"Oh yeah? I'd like to see the day Buck Bashmanian decides he doesn't want to bother with anything, and I mean anything. Buck, old boy, who do you think you're kidding?"

"Not myself, I can tell you that. We're old, all right, but here's one boy who's brand-new."

"You sound older than your father, already."

"Brand-new."

"Twelve years old."

"Brand-new. Yesterday, now, tomorrow and forever."

When he was 16 Buck began to race the best cars through the streets of Fresno--to Turlock and back in one day, and park the car precisely where he had found it, as a matter of pride and honor. To Bakersfield and back another day. To Coalinga and back. To Shaver Lake and back.

"Back, what's the matter with you? What do you do it for?"

"I told you long ago, didn't I, when we used to go swimming and talked so much. Didn't I tell you? We're from Bitlis. You must have understood me. Didn't I say I might want to drown, even? Because it's too stupid, too slow, too cheap?"

"We said a lot of things, Buck. You've got to stop stealing cars. You'll die in jail."

"Not Buck, not Buck Bashmanian."

"They gave you six months the first time, and then a year, and the next time they'll give you more, and pretty soon life. Cut it out. We're cousins. Let's go swimming again, out at Herndon, tomorrow. Let's round up some of the kids and all of us go swimming again. It's not too late."

"Maybe we will. Tomorrow, maybe we will."

But they didn't go swimming the next afternoon, and a whole month later, in October, when Buck was 19, he went around to the old house in the old neighborhood, driving a brand-new Kissel Kar with the top down, but nobody was home, he told me the next day, so he drove out to Pete Krikorian's house.

"Hop in, Pete," he said. "It's Aram Joseph's, he told me I could have it for the rest of the afternoon. We're going swimming. We're going to pick up some of the other guys and we're going out to Herndon where the river's half a mile across and we're going to swim across that river. Come on."

Buck and Pete picked up three out of five, the other two saying they had stuff to do, but Buck knew they didn't want to go because they didn't want to go with him, a car thief, and he knew Pete knew, too, and the three who went with him knew but wanted to go anyway: Haig Karamanian, Aslan Aslanian and Enoch Bankaji, all of them not yet 17. They loafed around roasting hot dogs on the beach of clean white sand at the river for almost an hour, talking and laughing the way they had in the old days, alone out there, nobody else out there, and then almost at the end of the day, at sundown, as if to move with the sun, and without any announcement, Buck Bashmanian walked halfway to the edge of the water, and then ran and dived in and began to swim out into the current, out where the water was really moving. The others watched a moment, and then Pete Krikorian said, "I think Buck's swimming across. I think I will, too."

"It's pretty swift out there," Enoch said. "It's pretty far, too."

"I think I can make it," Pete said. And he began to walk out, as Buck had, and then he ran and dived, as the three others looked at one another.

"Can Pete swim that good?" Haig Karamanian said.

"I don't think Buck can swim that good," Aslan Aslanian said. "I don't think any of us can."

And then all three of them got to their feet and began to walk to the water, and then suddenly they broke into a run, and dived in and began to swim, laughing and shouting, "Buck, Pete, wait for us."

By midstream they were all within hearing distance of one another, fighting the current, still laughing and talking, when suddenly everybody began to notice that everybody else was beginning to have a bad time. It was now as far back as it was across, so there wasn't much point in turning around and going back, and then Pete Krikorian called out, "Buck, I can't make it. So long, Enoch. So long, Haig. So long, Aslan." And still laughing, or still making himself laugh, he went under, gasping and choking, while Enoch tried to get to him, and Buck laughed and shouted, "Leave him alone, Enoch, just keep swimming. It's too late, just swim across."

Trying hard to laugh, Enoch said, "We went through Emerson School together." And then, unable himself to fight the current any longer, and beginning to go under, and swiftly down-stream, he said, not laughing, scarcely able to speak at all, "So long, Buck. So long, Haig," and went under, and for the gasping and choking or the distance he was being carried, he wasn't able to say, "So long, Aslan."

The others made it across, nobody helping anybody else, and only Buck able still to laugh a little now and then, but only now and then. When he was finally across he began to vomit, and then turned and stood and looked where Pete and Enoch had let it go. The other two swimmers finally made it, too, and after being sick, sat looking at the river and crying.

Buck Bashmanian got five to life for armed robbery, but died two years later, in the hospital at San Quentin, supposedly of tuberculosis.

Haig and Aslan went along to the rest of it, but every now and then, Haig on a visit to San Francisco or Aslan on a visit to Los Angeles, they met, and remembered the drowned swimmers. And then, after talking about everything else but especially about their kids, one or the other of them would say, "Maybe they did right." And the other would reply, "Maybe they're well out of it."