Memories of Drowning

“I wonder what it would feel like to swim to the moon," he thought. “I’ll swim to the moon.”

Photo by Lukas Robertson on Unsplash

Moonlight sparkled and glistened across black waves from the horizon and onto the darkened beach, three floors down and across tall dunes – a narrow boardwalk visible to the left. A warm breeze tousled the grass, rustling John’s shirt and caressing his skin as he held Owen, his baby boy, far too late into the night. Owen slept quietly as John stood for hours - hours after he had finished grilling sticky sweet chicken for everyone’s dinner, singing and humming little songs, and big songs; talking to him, caressing him. Telling him stories he hoped he would tell again some day. John drank in the air like liquor, wanting to feel that moment – the calmness and the weight of his son on his arm. The warmth of them both. “It must be really late,” John said to himself, or to Owen, or to no one. He looked another moment at the moon. Bright, grey, white and yellow, covered in craters, peaks and valleys, it seemed to cover more of the sky in this place than anywhere else he had been. He wondered exactly how far away the moon was. John felt a familiar tight, onyx coldness in his chest. The moon really didn’t look that far.

He turned to his right, opened the patio door, and went into the house. A television was on. Something loud and bright. His wife and her friend were chatting, knitting and drinking wine- the three things they did together on vacation. John thought he could hear them commenting to each other mockingly on his long stay out on the deck with the sleeping baby, but he wasn’t quite listening. He passed through the room and down some stairs to the bottom floor. It was black and dark there. He saw the gold of a doorknob, turned it, and stepped through the doorway into a room. Moonlight softened the darkness. He heard the children’s wave machine – they slept with it every night. It automatically turned off after an hour, so it couldn’t be too late. He saw the outline of Marie, his toddler, under her green fluffy blanket they had brought from home, her wild, curly red hair and full lips clear in the light. He placed Owen in his little bed, and covered him with his little blue blanket, placed his hand softly on the boy’s head, brought his hand back to his side, looked again at both children, turned and left the room, closing the door behind him.

The next morning, John watched out the kitchen window as a huge deer, the healthiest looking deer he had ever seen, bounded across the dune in front of the beach house. Owen held himself up in a window making his little Owen sounds. “Dit dit dit. Dit dit dit,” waving his pointed right finger towards the dunes where the deer had vanished. The coldness in John’s chest had grown and morphed into a cavern. “Owen! Let’s go down to the beach!” he said. “Dee dee dee dee dee!!” Owen responded, as if he understood. Owen did not like the sand at first. He shook and poked ineffectually at any skin that touched the sand. He tried to stay on the red blanket under a huge blue canopy out of the sun. As the morning passed, Owen slowly learned that the sand would not hurt him, and eventually turned it into a toy, just like he did with everything else. John took Marie, his daughter, by the hand and they toddled together down to the waves. Marie didn’t mind the sand but the waves sent her running and screaming back to his arms. “Smart girl,” John said, “those waves are bigger than you are.” “Go to Owen!” Marie said. John agreed, and they went to Owen. Back to the red blanket and the blue canopy, out of the sun, away from the sea. John played there with them all morning – their mother and the others coming and going without him noticing who was where, and when. At nap time, he bundled Owen and Marie together with their beach bags and walked with them back across the boardwalk to the house, holding Marie’s little hand as they went.

During Owen and Marie’s naptime, John drove the rental van up to the top of the island where the pavement ended. There was a little town equidistant from the ocean and the bay, with a towering lighthouse. He parked beneath it and walked to the bay side, slowly inhaling the fresh, verdant air deep into his chest. The air would not warm the growing cavern. Cypress stood at the edges of the land, their huge roots exposed above clear, golden-brown water, surrounded by shades of green and tan. Trees, shrubs and bracken of every color of green surrounded him. Streams with schools of fish meandered silently from the woods into the bay. There were crabs and herons and egrets and dragonflies. “I could live here in this spot,” John said, aloud, he supposed, just to hear a human voice. But he sensed that nap time was over, so he returned to the van and drove back to the beach house. The coldness was somehow colder still.

Marie and Owen had finished their nap when he returned, and were up, playing.  John’s cell phone rang. It was his assistant. There was a potential client. John talked to the man for an hour, taking his payment and immediately paying past-due bills over his phone. He couldn’t stand the client, what the client had done, or what he would do to defend the man against his own actions, but that wasn’t unusual. John’s chest felt like a black hole, sucking in everything around him and eviscerating it, before sending it who-knows-where.

That night, when the children were asleep, and the others were knitting and chatting and drinking wine, watching loud television, or whatever else they were doing, John went for a walk on the beach alone. He wore white denim shorts that might have once been pants, a black belt and a cotton shirt with long sleeves. John couldn’t stand short sleeves. He could see all the stars in the dark sky – so many more than at home. The moon rose too quickly out of the sea as he walked, brighter and whiter even than the night before, its beams reflecting in the water all the way to John’s feet at the shore. He thought of his childhood cat, Moonbeam, who came up to him the day his Granddad died and curled up in his lap - rarely ever leaving his side when he was outside at home for the next five years. He passed a group of young people in the distant darkness of the beach building a bonfire by the light of a bright spotlight on a high tripod - male and female voices laughing and talking. John glanced toward them. The light on the tripod stood between him and the voices. He could make out bare feet and legs in the shadows. Nothing more. He walked further along the shore. He walked up the beach and back down, once again past the light on the tripod, the bare legs and feet and the now-roaring bonfire. He wasn’t sure how long he had been walking. The moon was now almost entirely above the line of the horizon, at the other edge of the sea. “It doesn’t matter,” John said to himself. “Owen and Marie are asleep.” Impulsively, John turned toward the water and waded out away from the shore. He got deeper and deeper into the water, waves hitting his body higher and higher until his shorts were soaking wet. He stood still in that same spot, breathing the sea air, feeling the warm breeze. The coldness John felt inside his chest had spread all the way through him, followed by a sensation he thought of as “the Darkness.” A dull, aching feeling of longing for something he couldn’t name. John had that unwelcome visitor on and off most of his life. He could find no power, influence or control over it. Colder than cold. Darker than dark. Eating away at everything in its path.

John heard music coming from inside his head. First just a soft melody, then the a cappella four-part harmony of the church music he grew up with, but hadn’t heard for decades. Human voices, echoing in his own mind. Then he heard the words.

“Abide with me, fast falls the eventide…”

He looked down at the water and splashed at the waves with his hands, his arms extended loosely from his shoulders.

“The darkness deepens, lord, with me abide…”

He stared directly at the moon, now fully emerged from the water, still bright and enormous, but now white, silver, grey and yellow.

“When other helpers fail and comforts flee, Help of the helpless Lord, abide with me.”

He turned and looked at what was behind him. He had ended up directly in front of the beach house. All the windows were dark. Everyone was asleep. John had no idea what time it was. He thought about sleeping Marie. Sleeping Owen. The last book he read to them that night had been “Good Night Moon.” Their wave machine was running. They were happy, safe and warm. He looked back at the moon.

“Swift to its close ebbs out life’s little day,”

He took a few steps deeper into the water, now up to his belt. The same leather belt he wore with his suit to work. He unfastened the belt and pulled it through the loops. He threw it toward the shore.

“Earth’s joys grow dim, it’s glories pass away,”

He pushed further into the water towards the moon. “I wonder what it would feel like to swim to the moon,” he thought, silently. “I’ll swim to the moon.”

“Change and decay in all around I see,”

He decided to jump in and swim to the moon.

“E’en though who changes not, abide…”

The very instant before he jumped, a flash of light struck him and the water around him from the beach. He turned and looked into the spotlight on the tripod that the young people on the beach had been using to build their bonfire. He could see the flames of the bonfire dancing to the right of the bright spotlight, and shadowy forms of human figures moving in front of the fire. The music in his head was gone. He was in the water up to his chest. He moved to the right and the spotlight followed him. He moved to the left and the spotlight followed him again. He paused. He looked at the dark beach house. He turned back and looked at the moon. The spotlight was focused directly on him from the shore. “Fuck!!!” He yelled, so loud it hurt his throat.

He walked in from the ocean, the spotlight moving along with him until he was out of the water. The spotlight stayed at the edge of the water as he walked onto the beach. He saw his belt floating at the edge of the lapping waves. He grabbed the belt, jerking it out of the water and threaded it back through the loops. He plodded up the beach, looking over towards the bonfire many yards away. He didn’t see anyone looking at him. He heard the laughing, chatting voices of those people behind the spotlight, around the fire. Moonlight glowed off the grey-gold sand. He sat in the reeds at the foot of a dune, looking at the horizon. The moon was already smaller as it rose away from the sea. He stared down at his bare feet, glistening and sandy. “I missed my chance. That was my chance,” he said aloud, just to hear his own voice.

The Darkness inside him now was still. It wasn’t expanding or contracting. He rose to his feet, looked once more at the moon, and crossed the footbridge back to the beach house, remembering the feeling of the water up to his chest, and the peace of the decision to swim. He went inside the beach house, to the brutal safety of his life, to sleep, and to wake again.

---

Patrick McCarty writes about what interests him, which is a little bit of everything and a lot of certain things.  Right now, he lives in Houston, Texas.

---

If you enjoyed this post, hit the ♡ to let us know.

If you have any thoughts about it, please leave a comment.

If you think others would like it, hit re-stack or share:

If you’d like to read more:

And if you’d like to help create more Juke, upgrade to a paid subscription (same button above). Otherwise, you can always contribute a one-time donation via Paypal or Venmo.