Making for the Shore

From the shore, the lake looked as large and far-reaching as the Pacific. The sun, past its zenith but no where near setting, cast a line of reflected light across the water that ended at the feet of Tyson. Untying his boots, he shucked them off like old skin, stretched his toes in the hot sand, lifted one and then the other, checking for blisters from the days' work and then, without a backward glance to the old truck, placed them in the cool water, right where the sun came to kiss his frame. He covered his toes, then his ankles. Before long, he was knee deep in the lake. He pulled his shirt over his head, threw it on the shoes and dove headfirst.

He thought his heart would stop, the temperature change was so violent. While the shallow water was cool enough not to gasp, the depths were anything but warm. Tyson came up for air as he swam farther from his life of work and toil and sweat, then dove below the surface again, kicking like a dolphin and clamping his eyes shut against the muck below. He continued to move North and the sunlight's pitter-pattered feet continued to mark his progess, it following him as he swam like a beacon in the darkness.

His arms began to throb, but still he swam. His lungs began to wheeze and whine, but still he moved onward, stroke for stroke, kick for kick. As a child, he competed in events for a club swim team and, as he now headed for the opposite shore, still invisible, the form of a natural-born swimmer returned to him, his muscles remembering to pull his arms tight to his ears, his kicks becoming less violent and more refined. His breathing improved, no longer taking great gasps, but only moving his head over to the side in line with his shoulders, taking small, controlled breaths so that he could keep up the 1 2 3 rhythm of the stroke.

An hour later, the pain in his side was so terrible that he considered quitting. The calm, controlled breathing felt labored; his legs hurt and occassionally, he'd find them dragging behind him until he forced them into propelling him forward, keeping him on course. At one point, he swam over a bed of lakeweed and his legs, tangling in the stuff, pulled him backward. Grunting, Tyson stopped his forward motion, grabbed at his ankles and unhitched himself from the underwater garden. He stopped, breathing heavily, egg-beatering to stay afloat.

He wiped his brow and took slow breaths, opening his eyes to see what lay before him.

The distant shore was no longer distant, but a mammoth of mesas and shoreline stretched out before him. The boy cried, silently, to himself. He continued on, kicking and paddling again, head down.

As the sun sank below the waters, the moon came up to greet him, marking his place in the lake like a pin on a map. It was high overhead when Tyson finally found the shallows and collapsed in a heap on the far shore, now his new home. Gasping and spitting, his fingers and toes long water-wrinkled, he hugged dry land and his chest heaved again and again. Chuckling, he kept his eyes open until they hurt, he ogling the rock-pocked shore of his new home.

He had done it. He swam to Sanctuary.