the guards

 

one day codylude showed up at my beach to substitute for his sister. we had gone to the same high school and knew of one another, but had never talked. i played trumpet in the pit orchestra for music man. he was the lead. we transposed for him because he couldn’t sing, but he was a good actor. we wound up in the same lifeguard chair, where we discovered we were both idiots. that week we spent our hours trading time on the long red rescue board, surfing small waves and haphazardly navigating through the swimmers we were being paid to protect. i often did this on slow days, but with the both of us surfing in shifts on a sunny saturday, the offense was constant. swimmers looked up to see the red board with the white cross honing in on their foreheads. there were consequences, for me. my surfing performance was judged.

at the beach that summer a guatemalan got out over his head. he was drunk and he couldn’t swim. he yelled for his life in spanish. i didn’t know spanish. latinos did not come to our beach. latinos did not come to our town. they must have been lost and now they were drowning at the far end of the beach where the fuck-ups went to drink beer and try to launch boats. at first it sounded like they were horsing around. it was almost 5 o’clock and the water was flat calm. maybe five people were standing together in the water about 200 feet down the beach to my right. the lifeguard chair down there was empty, so they were mine.  another lifeguard, orphan tammy, who i will tell you more about, was in the chair on my left. she was also attracted by the shouting. we didn’t know what was going on. i did not see anyone struggling. what was going on was another late-afternoon pain in the ass, when kids came to party because the beach was free. i climbed down and jogged over. the group became more focused seaward and they got frantic. i ran into the water. i reached them, but i wasn’t needed. one guatemalan had his arm around his brother and was walking him in. the guy was in terror. i took an armpit and we brought him to shore. he was coughing. i checked him out for shock. he was fine, just reeking of booze. he was glad to be alive with his brother by his side. i joked about how he almost didn’t make it to america. i regretted not getting to him sooner, but how could i know? they were horsing around the whole time and drowning sounded like more of the same. the guy was drowning in spanish. we were short a guard and i had no binoculars and they were drunk.

nobody saved anybody that year, but i was the worst at it. at this beach it was important to look like you were protecting swimmers who were all excellent swimmers. an upper-middle class need to construct something formal which appears to pre-empt death, cut out risk before it can happen with rules and a highly visible security force composed of well-connected gods and goddesses. people feel better saved in advance. they lie down with the sand fleas and tampon applicators and burn fearlessly. it’s called stability and the need for it is a neuroses i usually avoid. but i faked it because i needed a job and too often the money is nesting in the assholes of the dead, who as a requirement, must look carefree. any of a thousand swimmers or city employees could have complained about my surfing on the job.

next summer, i was not rehired. i found another lifeguard job in newport. it was a small state beach at fort adams, where i slept when nobody was in the water and listened to the iran-contra hearings on the radio in my jeep. what punishment that summer. a wet fog outlasted justice. it was just me and admiral poindexter and a fog everyone talked about. i never fell asleep on the job. i woke up. i didn’t know for sure if there had been anyone in the water before i awoke, but i did have a way of waking up to see people just going in. of course, others may have gone in and come out before i woke up, but i like to doubt it. and there was never anything in the papers. i lifeguarded using extra sensory perception. i saved three kids and i’d say those kids were fortunate i was such a surfer at the other beach, where codylude, my fellow surf idiot, had replaced me as a full-time guard. the three black kids could have been saved by any passersby, but there weren’t any. one of them had fallen on her face in less than a foot of water and could not get out. she was about 3 years old. her mom was not on the beach and i was informed a park ranger had found her at a picnic table  on the other side of the hill drinking beer with two guys. no fear, roosta is here, his love of surfing having turned him into a babysitter. i was unprofessional, a fuck-up,  fired by an affluent island town which had done the right thing to preserve its grave atmosphere. there were other problems at that island beach. i ate too many sour kraut hot dogs and i didn’t do my daily work-outs. there also was the time i left my post and jumped in the bushes with a long lost girlfriend. and then there was tammy, poor orphan tammy.

she was an all-state gymnast and in position to whine. her step-father’s company had contracts with the city and her boyfriend was the son of the city council president. she was fowl-mouthed, dull and loud. there was no affinity from the start, but my natural attitude toward ignorant bitches blew up in the heat. she came onto the beach late that summer and began engineering a scene in which she would be the social center. since she was stupid and we worked more as individuals, her talk was noise, except to codylude’s sister deborah, who recognized the political advantage in being her friend. tammy was short and muscular, a great build for drowning. her hair was long and almost black. she had been adopted at 12 and i guess it was in the places she had lived that she had learned to be, and was allowed to be, loud, vulgar, and a good person.

she was bitter about something. i didn’t know what. she was entitled to something. i didn’t know why. okay. i can guess. it was one response to her life in foster homes without her biological parents. she had been abandoned. that might have been it.  then newfound privilege had warped her and she wasn’t made to straighten out. she was not grateful. and she was indulged. her adoptive mother was a well-known gymnastics coach, with an accomplished daughter of her own. maybe the adoption was a merger, or an acquisition. tammy’s gymnastics abilities were supposed to be exceptional. her name was not her name but the name of someone in the sports pages i did not read. her name was in the air. her character was on the mat. i can tolerate ego when there’s a greater perspective and humility, but in tammy i saw destruction, a moment to moment vacuum which menaced the sea and sky. it was all about her and avoiding her was only possible on the days she was not working. when she was at the beach, she made demands over chairs, she liked to be close to the facilities, argued over her break time, and about when we should take in the torpedoes, rescue boards, and boat. if there was one thing she could fight about and exert power over, she was on it. the environmental impact of her mouth was turning the sand red.

one day i was walking by her chair. she was saying something. i stopped. whenever i showed a hint of friendliness toward her, tammy acted friendly and happy. while she continued saying something, she had her legs spread for someone. i noticed she was bleeding through her speedos . . . i was dense, but i caught on. the one foil to her bitching was to pretend i found her attractive. i discovered that our misery was all my fault and that life for the staff would be better if i whipped it out and succumbed to her entitlement. word reached us that her boyfriend was having doubts. their relationship was shaky. in addition to being a bitch from hell at work, she was not much more at home. her romantic difficulties were ours and our one shot for peace was a truly self-sacrificing lifeguard, a man who would plug up the boat in order to save eight people. i was the candidate for this selfless hero and i did not step up.

i was aware she was connected. i didn’t care. it might have helped if i knew more about her connections and did care, but i didn’t follow local politics on any level. i didn’t know the extent of her network until after i was canned. she was somebody. she was this important guy’s daughter and that important guy’s maybe future daughter-in-law. she had money and she had the acclaim of a local jock. i should have guessed she was maintaining a log of my disprofessionate activities, her roosta dossier, but i was just living. i was unprofessional, no doubt, but i was very philosophical: the well-being of our charges first, but freedom: we had to be loose to survive the stresses of watching out for what came once in 3 months - while acting as law enforcers, tourist centers, babysitters, and oceanographers. the staff shares a joint on a cold rainy day when nobody is at the beach? codylude’s sister passes, tammy passes, most don’t. who cares? we catch a few waves to break up the monotony and revive ourselves? who cares?

good people care.

i have a memory of a fight in the guard shack in which i threw something at tammy. it was a rainy day, we were all trapped together, sitting on guard equipment. it was cold and we were talking.  i don’t recall what she said or what i threw, but it wasn’t with any force or intent to hurt her. it meant, “shut the fuck up.” someone had to say it and she took it like she deserved it. codylude’s sister was stunned and then condemning. throwing things was not something i had done before or since. i would have been better off if i had had more patience, but she could not swim and she had been forced on us. i heard about all of it next spring when the city’s director of parks and recreation told me flat-out no way i could have a job and when i refused to leave his office, he told me it wasn’t his decision. i waited while he called the mayor, who gave him the no again. later, word from codylude was that tammy had told her parents and the city that she refused to work with me. i don’t know if scorn was a factor, but she was in, so i was out. the parks and recreation director said, “the mayor doesn’t want to have any more of what happened out there last year.” his eyes went to the ceiling, the mayor’s office. tammy worked two weeks into the summer and once sure of my excision, quit. i was by then in newport, fast asleep. codylude took her job, which had been my job.

a couple years later i was a newspaper reporter and my beat included that island, that mayor. i had heard of poetic justice and believed in it, but my wrath was more like something out of the old testament.