Night Swim: A Story

She’d dreamt of swimming across the lake a thousand times. The dreams were always the same. There was a full moon that shone on the water like a spotlight, soft, though, sweet and rolling with the waves. She saw herself swimming, always in a red suit, the skin on her back and arms perfectly white, alabaster as if she was a statue come to life. Her stroke was smooth with a two-beat kick, her body rolling side to side like she’d been taught in high school. Her swimming was languid in her dream and endless. She swam forever and it was beautiful.

            After a night of dreaming, she sat in a canvas chair under a tree. The sun was up but just barely. The coffee from the old percolator was too hot to drink so she held the mug in her hands for a good long while, contemplating the distance to the other side of the lake. Was it a mile? Two miles? She could see children playing on the dock across the lake. They stayed the summer in the blue cottage. A raft bobbed some distance from their dock. She could swim there, she thought, but it would have to be at night.

            She was afraid. Not of the water. Not of swimming. But of the dark. She had never swum in the dark – not in a pool, or the ocean, or a lake. She decided to set out that night, to make the dream real. To swim in the dark because if she did, if she swam to the raft across the lake, she could do anything.

            Dinner was a hot dog and a hard boiled egg. She drank water and a half a bottle of Gatorade and then went inside in tiny cabin to put on her swimsuit, her only suit, a black one. The black would blend into the water. She would be seamless and smooth and lovely, like her dream.

            She had fished with her father in this lake. Together, they’d trolled the edge of the bass beds in an old rowboat but got their biggest catches in the open water. Northern pike struck hard on their lines, the struggles sometimes went on for long minutes. Her father watched her reeling and pulling and never offered to help until the pike was next to the boat. Then he would scoop up the fish with his green net, dumping it slowly at her feet. Because of how long it took to land the fish, she would have to use pliers to get the hook out of its mouth. Her father showed her how to put her foot on the fish’s body and then reach in and twist. It took a long time but her father waited for her, his hand on the tiller, never moving except to light his cigar.

            She rubbed her face thinking of the northern pike and their angry-looking jaws. Do they swim at night or sleep? What do fish do in the dark?

            It was dark, very dark when she waded into the water. She felt minnows fluttering around her ankles. She knew those minnows. She’d held them in her hands when she sat in the water, sunning in the afternoon. They were tiny and silver and so perfect she’d thought of swallowing one just to feel it glide down her throat. Minnows were like silver, a necklace come undone. She still had her father’s minnow bucket in the corner of her kitchen.

            Wading in, knee deep and then thigh deep and then letting go of the earth to float in the water seemed final somehow, like these could be her last steps in this life and she was giving herself over to timelessness, all of her memories of the lake floating with her. She began to swim. She kicked and stroked and breathed in a rhythm she’d known forever. Rolling with her breathing, stretching out as far as she could, watching the moon come out from behind the clouds.

            The weeds wrapped around her right leg first and then her left. She’d known the weeds were there, a patch of them bordering the edge of the lake right before the drop-off. She knew that from fishing, looking over the edge and seeing the tall waving stalks give way to a deep so deep, she couldn’t see the bottom. She kicked and pulled, reaching down with her hands to pull the weeds off her legs and throw them in the distance. She shuddered, thinking about it, how easy it might be to sink or for a pike to find her wriggling. Turning back would be okay, no one would know one way or the other. She could make coffee and sit in the dark.

            By then, the moon was pouring its light on the water. As in her dream, the light folded out in front of her, her strokes slicing the water like knives, clean and even, no splash. This is what she had wanted. This swim in this darkness and this light. The night was still except for her quiet breathing and fine drops of water falling from her silver hands. She swam this perfect way across the lake.

            The raft had a metal ladder. She held on to the lowest rung, her legs hanging, resting, her breathing quiet like a thief. Slowly, she climbed on to the raft and then laid down on the rough wooden planks. The raft was very old but sturdy and she felt safe and comfortable lying there, so much that she fell asleep, only waking when the moon had disappeared back behind the clouds and the wind had picked up. She was cold.

            She didn’t think about getting back to her cabin. It didn’t matter to her. She sat with her arms wrapped around her legs and waited for the sun to come up.

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Photo by Jaunathan Gagnon on Unsplash