Crazy Water

by Michael White 

The only school in our district that had a pool was John Evans Junior High. It was a circle school, meaning that it consisted of “pods” that orbited a center “pod.” This of course led to no end of confusion, but it was designed and built in the 70s when such high ideals seemed innovative and realistic and cool. Now it was just an asbestos filled hulk looking like a nest of alien spaceships smacked down in the middle of a neighborhood full of rotting tract houses that must’ve been pretty fancy in 1965, but now they all seemed from another time, another era, like

John Evans Junior High itself.

But the pool.

It was a brick outbuilding connected to the gym “pod” by temperamental doors that didn’t always turn easily for my master key. Every night at 11:30 I would head from my office in the middle of nowhere, speeding down the isolated first avenue road while listening to Art Bell’s weird stories about pyramids on Mars.

The crickets were still audible, but there was a sharpness to the air, an unsubtle hint as to what was coming. Yet there was also a sliver of summer left too, a heaviness to the sky, which sparkled with stars. It smelled like mown lawns and dead leaves, like fireplace smoke and swamp coolers. It was like being between two worlds.

I had been feeling between two worlds lately. Adrift and ambivalent, I struggled to find some kind of emotional perch. I felt such a growing distance from my wife, which I pushed aside as long as I could. It was like every day she grew less familiar to me. And the person that she became was not a person I liked. I told myself, if only I could fall in love with her all over, we could carry on. We had these times before in our 26-year relationship. Every marriage had its dips and valleys, but I had come to the point where nothing short of adultery was a deal breaker. We had invested so much into it; I couldn’t see either of us throwing it away.

So, it had disturbed me one night when during dinner, my ten-year-old son said apropos to nothing, “Are you guys going to get a divorce?”

I was shocked and reassured him, “No of course not! That will never happen! Why would you ask that?” I looked at my wife for support but her face was blank. He just shrugged. My wife remained silent.

Suddenly there was a bright light in my eyes and someone was tapping on my window. It was a cop. I rolled my window down and he looked at me, his expression a question, waiting.

“Hi officer. I’m the night foreman for the school district and I’m just making sure my people leave when they’re supposed to. There’s been some monkey business going on...” I trailed off and offered him my school district ID badge. He softened.

I could see the crew exiting the school and making their way to their cars, looking my way, watching the police leaning into my side window. I knew they knew it was me. Their boss.

“Well, you know I drove by and saw you just sitting here so I had to check it out.”

“Oh of course.”

“Have a good night.”

I watched him walk back to his cruiser and drive away. My heart was pounding from the adrenaline surge. When I finally looked back toward the school the night crew had gone. The parking lot was empty and looked lonely with its row of security lights making bright pools on the asphalt.

I walked in circles from “pod” to “pod” in the semi darkness feeling my way having walked this catacomb like stroll a hundred times before. It was like a giant combination lock. So many steps right, so many left and so on. The school was all circles and the classrooms were like pieces of a pie. I had to travel taking right turns or I would end up in a gloomy maze of round brick walls and dingy lockers. But I knew the school well and was used to traveling through dark empty school buildings at night.

It was my job.

I got to the gym and walked across, my footsteps echoing just like in the movies. The silence was big. The gym had a beautiful round wooden roof, like the roof of some great lodge, the boards of wood latticed into a geometric design that was really out of place for such a weird

funky building. I always made a point of stopping mid gym and appreciating it, communing with it as if it were something sentient, patient, alive.

The chlorine smell hit me as I entered the pool, the warm wet air and the hum of the pumps and a gurgle from the edge. I went into the locker room and got ready. I put my clothes in a locker and hung my tie on a hook and put on my trunks. I couldn’t bear to walk on the floor barefoot, but I did anyway. I went to the breaker box and with a flip of a switch I plunged the entire pool building into pitch blackness. It was a darkness that only a windowless room could achieve, a darkness so complete that it voided any sense of direction, time or place. It was a tangible darkness, heavy and claustrophobic.

I immediately entered this new world. I felt my way to what I hoped was to the edge of the pool, my heart pounding my senses keen. The sounds of the room seemed intensified; rhythmic and foreboding. I had no way to orient myself. I tentatively stuck my foot out and down and felt water, the edge of the pool.

I stepped up, and I jumped.

Down down down into the blackest black, completely disoriented. I had no idea what was up or down or sideways. A stab of panic hit me as I touched bottom; I was in the deep end. Twelve feet. I lunged up, my lungs starting to burn, the panic stabbing again, it was taking forever to find the surface. Could I even tell when I came up? Shouldn’t I have come up by now?

Then I came up.

The room echoing with my heavy breathing.

This was my new fall ritual, something I had fallen into by degrees. It was scary and fun and a great way to fine tune my psychic balance. It was also dangerous and foolhardy. But it took my mind off of the uneasy feeling I’ve had lately, and the strong dreams which followed me around like little clouds.

In the most recent one, I was looking at my books in the bookcase frantically trying to choose which ones to take with me. I was packing in a hurry, making snap decisions about what to take and what to leave. What to take and what to leave.

What did that mean?

I would swim in the deep dark, being sure to always keep my arms in front of me so as not to run into the wall. I kept running into it anyway. I couldn’t swim like this for more than fifteen minutes before I had to get out. The psychic energy it took was depleting, and the darkness and the water had a way of pulling at something very deep and familiar and very dark and dangerous in my soul. I was nowhere and everywhere when I was in that pool, alone and hiding in the blackness, the vastness of a universe of dark.