Walking with Scout

Tonight after Master’s swimming practice at a local high school, my friend and I walked down the street to my car. It was dark with only the light from the streetlamps, leaves covered the sidewalk so there was that scuffing sound walking through them. In the sky, a three-quarters moon shone along with a single star in the Western sky which I knew to be Venus. It was a big, plump star shining above the tops of the trees.

“Don’t nights like this make you feel like Scout in To Kill a Mockingbird, walking home in the dark in the ham costume?” I said to my friend. To myself I thought about how the distance between the scuffing of the leaves being lovely and being sinister is so thin. Anything can happen anytime. To any of us. Like Scout, we could be attacked by bad guys and then saved by Boo Radley. If we were attacked tonight, walking to our car, would there be a Boo Radley anywhere near?

It’s tempting to queer the sublime by thinking of possible catastrophes. I wonder about the couple walking laps in the dark around the high school track, both very overweight and using walking poles. They have waited until night to do their walking. Because the moon and Venus would make it lovelier? They aren’t afraid of catastrophe, maybe because they have the poles with which to defend themselves. They seem serene in their walking.

That is my goal. To be serene in my walking. To walk down the street with the small triumph of swimming a length further on each set than the younger women in the next lane. “Let’s do three instead of the two,” my friend and I agreed right away. We came to the wall after two lengths to see the other swimmers resting already, we turned and swam another length, the two oldest women in the pool keeping pace with each other as if we had been practicing for years. I watched my friend’s kick underwater and saw that she’s tightened it up like we talked about last week; when she’s swimming, she looks 30 if a day. Maybe that’s true for me, I don’t know.

I know this, though. It is good to swim hard and be out of breath, and maybe not catch your breath until you’re in your car having walked down the street in the dark, admiring the moon and thinking of Scout. I am lucky for all of these things. And don’t I know it.