There were other lifeguards at Camp Laurel, but I’d worked there five straight summers. As a rising junior and co-captain of the university swim team, I was at my peak.
Pool water is my natural element, and the pool at Camp Laurel was a gem—dazzling blue, chlorinated to perfection. In the first week of prep before the day camp officially opened, I looked at the shimmering surface of the water from the deck and couldn’t resist its siren call. I jumped in and executed a nearly flawless butterfly stroke from end to end. The other guards gawked, never having seen a proper butterfly in person. When I rose from the end of the pool, I rose the uncontested king of lifeguards. From that moment I ruled like a god.
Once the campers arrived I spent most days enthroned on the high stand overlooking the deep end, above the screaming masses of munchkins and the counselors assigned to each group. When my shift ended, I always dove into the pool to cool off. When I climbed out, a handful of campers gathered around to see if I’d shake my head and spatter them with water. I have thick hair, tawny as a lion. I pretended not to know what they were waiting for and sometimes let them walk away disappointed. They still got a free show, with close-up views of my tanned pecs and abs.
All the campers craved my attention. “Liam, watch me dive!” “Liam, look at me!” I heard it all the time, and I always told them what they were doing wrong. I’m a good judge of diving flaws and general weakness, and from my high stand I didn’t miss a thing. Hey, I call ′em like I see ′em. Nobody ever learned anything by getting praised for a poor performance.
I didn’t mix with the counselors, who clumped together at the concession stand during free swim. They swapped gossip, drank Cokes, and played Top 40 hits on the jukebox. “Bohemian Rhapsody” was the crowd favorite. The counselors, like the kids, were a faceless crowd to me and I didn’t bother to learn their names; I called all the girls “Babe” and the guys “Dude.” They liked it.
The different groups at camp were named for trees—the Poplars, the Pines, the Oaks. The Cedars were a group of middle-schoolers, and their counselor stuck out from the crowd right away. Where the other counselors only dipped into the pool to cool off before hanging out at the concession stand, the Cedars counselor stayed in the pool with her kids and played Marco Polo or whatever.
She seemed an average teen from a rural part of the county: no nail polish, no fancy ponytail ties and ribbons. She slipped into the water like a happy otter, played hard with her kids, and did a damn good job of getting them out and dressed and onto the next activity. Not much to look at, she had stick-straight brown hair that got so flat when it was wet you couldn’t help seeing her nose. I had no idea what color her eyes were, because she never looked at me or any of the other staff straight on. I guessed it was shyness, or lack of confidence—pretty common among girls like her.
Then it happened. During a free swim, I watched a kid cannonball off the board, made sure he got to the ladder, and when I looked back at the board there stood the Cedars counselor. What? Her kids, all of them in the 3-foot section, cheered for her to jump. She grinned at them, bounced, then tried executing a swan dive. It wasn’t much, but it sent the kids into a frenzy.
I waited for her to come up and swim to the ladder, leaned over and called to her, “More of an ugly duckling than a swan, Babe. Too much splash. Tuck your head as you enter the water.”
She scraped her hair back but didn’t look up. “Got it. Thanks.”
I figured she’d quit, but she climbed out and went to the board for a redo. Her kids started yelling. “That was great! Dive again, Claire!” And she did. I could tell she tried to tuck her head on her second go, but she didn’t do much better. The kids loved it though.
From then on, during every free swim, they begged her to do the swan dive like it was the greatest thing ever. She’d dive a couple of times before getting back to her kids and talking them into going deeper, and even trying a jump from the board themselves. “Imagine you’re a straw!” she told them. “A straw plunging down straight into a cold drink!” Not a bad analogy if you didn’t care about form.
Her spirit seemed to light a fire in those kids. Pretty soon most of them were jumping off the board—plopping in more like ice than straws, but a try’s almost as good as a win. They didn’t beg me to watch them, they begged her: “Look at me, Claire! Look at me jump!” And they always talked her into a few swan dives. She was improving.
“You almost had it, Babe,” I said after one of her more successful efforts. She didn’t even turn around. Maybe she didn’t know I was talking to her.
Once free swim was over, the other lifeguards and myself cleaned the pool area, did what maintenance needed doing, and waited for any campers signed up for swim lessons. I’d managed to avoid giving lessons this summer, but I spent my free time on the high stand, where I had a great view beyond the pool deck. When the mesmerizing gleam of the blue pool stared through me and made me sleepy, I’d look up to watch the web of paths through the surrounding woods. The paths led to the lake, picnic shelters, horse barns, and hiking trails. Campers moved along these paths like ants as their groups headed to canoeing or archery or crafts.
I’ve taken a couple of classes in anthropology, and the Cedars fit the description of an emerging society. They’d all go down the trail to the canoe launch in a tight bunch instead of single-file, a tight little unit. During a pop-up rainstorm one afternoon I saw them tearing down the trail to duck into a picnic shelter. At that point they were out of sight of the pool area, especially since I was off the guard stand and sitting on a bench under cover. But as the rain fell in a solid sheet I could just make out their voices, belting out the classic “John Jacob Jingleheimer Schmidt.” And after the woodlore class did a session on the Saponi Nation tribe, I spotted the Cedars walking with great stealth through the woods, communicating with hand signals while pretending to track game. They were a hoot—really all-in on the entire day camp experience.
One afternoon the Cedars missed their horseback riding session because they were combing the creek for artifacts and catching frogs. After camp ended, the counselor got called into the director’s office for keeping the horse barn staff hanging. The director’s office is behind the concession stand at the pool, and you can’t hear a word from inside because of the window unit blasting cold air. When the counselor finally came out she kept her eyes on the ground.
Late in the summer I was watching the woods, thinking it was time for the Cedars to head to the lake for canoeing, worried she might get in trouble again if they missed their time slot. A shaft of sunlight in the trees seemed to be moving, and I followed it until the shaft solidified into a person: Claire leading her faithful band of Cedars down the path to the lake. They melted into the shadows and disappeared.
The last free swim of the summer, I climbed up the ladder to the high stand, stripped off my shirt, and settled my aviator glasses on my nose. In a week, I’d be packed and driving back to the university. Next summer I’d be in Atlanta, working an internship at a top financial firm. As I surveyed my kingdom for the last time, I took a look at the empty pool and prepped for the sounds of kids and splashing water. I’d unplugged the jukebox so I wouldn’t have to hear “Bohemian Rhapsody” or some other Top 40 hit worn thin from overplaying.
The counselors were worn thin from overplaying in a different way. They knotted up as usual by the concession stand, but I could see the fractures caused by summer romances and heartaches.
Being the last day of camp, we’d already lost a number of campers who had to start school early or go on vacation with their families, so the pool hadn’t been busy the entire week. The first kid splashed in, and I focused on knowing where the swimmers were and who was in over their heads. Another lifeguard sat on the low stand at the shallow end. As a line formed at the diving board, I turned my aviators in that direction. The area beneath the diving board required strict attention at all times when swimmers were in the pool.
Every Cedar was lined up with Claire, prepped for an end-of-summer ritual. Clearly they’d made a pact, and knowing them it might even have involved the mingling of blood or spit.
The Cedars started jumping, first the ones who’d been jumping all summer. As each one climbed up the ladder they seated themselves in a line at the edge of the pool to cheer on the next jumper. Good kids.
Finally, only the two Cedars who’d never gotten up the nerve to jump remained. The first, a girl in a bright blue tank suit with a weird ruffle, walked onto the board. The other Cedars howled and shouted encouragement, until she giggled, backed up, took a running leap, and jumped straight down, feet first. She came up laughing, shaking from the adrenaline of it and basking in the praise of her group.
The last jumper, a gangly kid with zero coordination, held back at the end of the board. The Cedars clapped and chanted his name: “Anthony! Anthony!” Anthony peeked off the side of the board and shook his head.
Claire eased down the ladder into the water. “Come on, Anthony. I’m here at the side of the pool. You’ve got this! I’m right here.”
A couple false starts, then Anthony bounced on the board a couple times and did a butt-first jump into the deep end. He flailed a little getting back up to the surface, but Claire had him by one arm. Soon he was up the ladder, streaming water and slapping hands with the other campers like a boss.
“Claire! Claire! Do your dive!”
Probably her swan dive was part of the pact. Claire hauled herself out of the pool and walked to the board giving a quick glance around. I guessed she wanted this to be only for her kids and hoped nobody was watching.
I twirled the green cord of my whistle then gave it a short blast and called down a kid who was walking fast on the other side of the pool. “Dude, no running!”
“I’m not even running, Liam!” the kid said, and what could I say? He wasn’t.
But I didn’t miss seeing Claire’s swan dive, and it was a poem. She sliced into the shimmering water like a silver blade. The Cedars erupted with pure joy. I had to smile, myself. Until I realized all was not well.
The force of her entry had sent the top of Claire’s two-piece swimsuit down to her waist. She kicked her feet to swim further down while struggling to get her top up. With a totally unfamiliar feeling of helplessness, I held my breath. I knew she heard the sound of the water in her ears, the deep percussive spoken word of clear water, and wondered what it said to her.
I was about to jump in, but Claire didn’t need a rescue. She wrangled her top in place and in seconds her head broke the water. The kids hadn’t noticed a thing, but Claire wasn’t smiling. She cut her eyes toward me. She knew I’d seen.
She hung onto the ladder before pulling herself up, gasping for air. “Why did you stay down there so long?” one of her kids asked.
“I saw a dime on the bottom of the pool, and thought I could get it.” She held up her hand and showed the kids a dime. You’d have thought it was pirate treasure as the dime went hand to hand down the line of little Cedars.
I blew my whistle and yelled, “Clear the pool!” This was a standard maneuver, a chance to give all the kids a short break on the side of the pool, while taking a survey to make sure nobody had sunk to the bottom. Like I’d let that happen.
Claire sat with the Cedars, dangling their legs in the water. They were all still pumped about every one of them going off the diving board, and most of them were making plans to go again as soon as I whistled the all-clear. I looked down at the sun-glazed surface of the empty pool, rocking gently in the light. Then I climbed down from the high stand to grab a Coke from the concession stand. As I passed behind the Cedars, the girl in the blue ruffled tank who’d taken her first dive said, high on her success and feeling sassy, “Hello, Mr. Light Guard!”
“Liam’s a lifeguard,” one of the others told her. She just wrinkled her nose and grinned.
I stopped behind the row of Cedars. “Beautiful dive, Claire.”
Her head came up and swiveled around. For the first time her eyes met mine. Eyes like clear water—not the chemical blue of a tiled pool, but the gray-green of creek water with silver sparks. I felt it like cold steel through my gut. She thought I was being sarcastic. She’d figured I was the type to make some wise-ass remark about losing her top.
“Seriously,” I said. “Good job.”
I waited until I saw she believed me. That girl—she wore her whole heart on her face. I’d never seen anything like it.
“Thank you, Liam.”
“And you should congratulate me. I just got promoted. You heard the kid—now I’m a Light Guard.”
Claire zapped me another creek-water blast of gray-green eye contact, this time with a hint of humor in the shallows. “Nice! Congratulations.”
I moved on to the concession stand, parting the mass of Babes and Dudes who were as usual completely oblivious to anything important going on, bought a fountain Coke, and headed back to the high stand. Somebody had discovered the jukebox was unplugged and plugged it back. As I climbed the ladder, the reggae vibes of Mr. Johnny Nash boosted my spirits. What do you know? For once, somebody had made the right choice.
I whistled two short blasts to signal the kids back into the pool. It was indeed a bright, bright sunshiny day.