Twenty-One Mile Swim Read online

  He showered afterwards, put on clean underwear, and felt like a million. But the next day every joint and muscle in his body screamed with pain. He knew it would take several days of exercising before he’d feel normal again.

  The meeting regarding the new school took place at Paula Kantella’s house at seven-thirty on June 29, a week after graduation day. Joey hadn’t intended to go to it. It was expected that including a swimming pool in the overall plan was a big factor in whether the plan was going to be accepted. The pool was going to cost about four hundred thousand dollars, a lot of money in the opinion of many of the city’s taxpayers who were already paying “through the nose,” as many of them put it. Although Joey liked to see a swimming pool included in the plans for the new school, he couldn’t see himself giving his opinion to the adults who were going to be there. But Paula had asked him to come anyway, and it didn’t take much persuasion from her to accept her invitation.

  Twenty people attended, partially filling up the large living room and dining room. The two rooms connected and were almost like one huge room. Mrs. Townsend, a school representative who was a member of the board of education, started off by presenting the facts and figures and showing a layout of the proposed school. Joey and Paula sat on chairs in the background, listening intently to her clear, concise remarks. She spoke plainly and well, obviously knowing her topic inside and out.

  A question of the courtyard came up, which she settled quite easily with a few pleasant, straightforward answers. Someone also mentioned the laboratory for the science class. How much would the equipment cost for it? Would there be enough ventilation for it, because, as this parent explained, “my son’s complained about the ventilation of the one he’s been in for two years. There’s been complaints on top of complaints, promises on top of promises to get it taken care of, yet nothing’s been done.”

  “The science lab will be one of the most up-to-date in the country,” promised Mrs. Townsend. “It’ll have enough chairs and tables to accommodate thirty students. Equipment will be sophisticated but not terribly expensive. And the room will be adequately ventilated. You can bet on it.”

  Then the inevitable question came up. “Can’t the swimming pool be put in for a lot less than four hundred thousand dollars? Man, that’s a lot of money just to let a few kids swim.”

  “Have you conducted any surveys, Mr. Williams?” Mrs. Townsend asked. “Have you checked the costs of the installation of a swimming pool in schools around the state? They are expensive, and four hundred thousand dollars is quite a good deal less than some of them cost.”

  “I can’t believe it,” another voice cut in. “You know how much four hundred thousand dollars is? That’s almost a half a million hard, solid bucks!”

  “I know how much four hundred thousand dollars is, sir,” said Mrs. Townsend, without raising her voice. “Nowadays it doesn’t go very-far when you’re thinking big — and building a brand new high school is thinking big.”

  “My children swim in the lake, Mrs. Town-send,” a familiar, accented voice chimed in. “I know that the lake water is cold most of the year round, but it does not cost them anything to swim in it. And my taxes are already plenty high just because our home is by the lake. There are also beaches on the lake where children and their parents can go to swim, and that does not cost them anything. I think that a swimming pool in the school is nice, yes. But most of the people in Gatewood have to work hard for their money. My wife and I have four children. I don’t make so much money as maybe some other man in this room makes. The extra tax that a big, nice swimming pool would cost us every year would be another bite into our pocketbooks just so a few children could swim all year round.”

  Joey felt himself staring at his father proudly, listening to the words spilling slowly from his father’s lips — words that truly came from his heart and caught the attention of everyone in the room. The strong Hungarian accent was highly noticeable; Joey was sure that very few of the people there knew his father and mother and were not aware until now that they — his father, anyway — couldn’t speak English very well But they certainly should have been able to understand what he had meant.

  “I understand your feelings, sir,” said Mrs. Townsend. “And I truly appreciate your views. But I’d like to remind you — and others here — that during competitive swimming meets, there will be an admission charge. Money will be used to pay for the electricity to light the big room and keep the water heated —”

  “But what has that got to do with the taxes, Mrs. Townsend?” spoke up another voice.

  “They’ll still be reaching into our pockets for more money, Mrs. Townsend.”

  A warm hand touched Joey’s arm.

  “Joey, let’s go out on the porch,” Paula whispered into his ear.

  Quietly they got up and tiptoed out of the room. The door leading to the wide, screened-in porch was open. They stepped through it, found chairs next to each other, and slumped into them.

  “Sounds like it’s going to be a long, dragged-out meeting,” said Joey.

  Paula smiled. “Could be. Your dad is really against the swimming pool, isn’t he?”

  “So’s my mother,” admitted Joey. “I knew that all along.”

  “How do you feel about it?”

  “Oh, heck, I’d like to have one, sure. But I’m not a family man. I’m just a fourteen-year-old kid who doesn’t have to support a family and pay taxes. Maybe if I were in my parents’ shoes, I’d see it their way, too.”

  “Yes, I suppose you’re right. I gather your father doesn’t earn much money. What does he do?”

  Joey wished she hadn’t asked that. This was one of the small things that bothered him to talk about — his parents’ heritage and what his father did to earn an income.

  “He’s a stone crusher,” he said.

  “A stone crusher? Where?”

  “At the Gatewood Crushed Stone Company. He operates a machine that crushes the big stones after they’re brought by trucks to his place and dumped. The stones are crushed down to different sizes and sold by the ton.”

  “Oh. That’s what he does,” she said.

  “Yes. That’s what he does.”

  “I guess you know what my father does,” she said.

  “He’s an engineer, isn’t he?”

  “Yes. For an air-conditioning plant. I think he makes a lot of money.”

  “Probably twice as much as my father does.”

  “I don’t know exactly,” said Paula. “But when we bought a new TV set just before Christmas, Dad paid cash for it.”

  “Wow,” said Joey. “I guess if you’ve got it, fine.”

  “You know, it’s funny,” she said. “Till just this minute, I never gave money much thought. I thought it was something people had enough of without worrying about how much anything costs. Guess I’m pretty dumb. Your father gave a nice speech in there, Joey. I’d be proud of him if I were you.”

  “Thanks, Paula. I am.”

  They were quiet for a while, and he suddenly remembered that he had never told her about his ambition to swim the length of Oshawna Lake. He had wanted it to be a secret in the beginning, but since he had improved so much he didn’t think it was necessary any longer.

  He broke the news to her gently. She looked at him, surprised at first, but only for a minute.

  “Hey, that’s great, Joey!” she exclaimed. “I mean — wow! That’s really great! When did you decide to do that?”

  He smiled.

  “This summer. I had to be sure. I didn’t want anyone to know at first.”

  “Oh, Joey!” Her face beamed. “I think that would really be an accomplishment! I really do!”

  Later they were called in for doughnuts, and they knew that the evening discussion about the new school was over.

  While people ate the refreshments, they continued to talk and ask questions. What did most of the town think about having a swimming pool included in the plan? Was Mrs. Townsend going to be able to sway votes to h
er side, or was the cost going to be too high for most people to accept?

  Joey and everybody else interested in the answers wouldn’t know until the voting on the issue was done and counted.

  Joey got a summer job mowing the lawn and washing windows for Mrs. Kenny, a widow who lived only a few doors away. He worked hard on his exercises, spending half an hour in the morning at them and half an hour in the afternoon. Looking at his reflection in the mirror, he couldn’t really tell if his muscles were developing. But he was sure they were. You couldn’t spend an hour a day doing solid exercises, using barbells most of the time, without changes taking place in your body.

  He swam every day, extending the distance from about fifty yards to seventy-five, from seventy-five to a hundred, from a hundred to two hundred. He swam parallel to the shoreline, keeping within a hundred feet of shore so that if anything happened — if he got a cramp in his legs or in his stomach — he’d be close enough to swim to shallow water and stand up. Of course he would try to work the cramp out of his legs or feet first before coming in to shore. But if he couldn’t, shallow water would be just a few yards away.

  A few days later, he turned down an invitation to go sailing with Ross and Paula. It was Ross who asked him; the invitation came while the two were rowing out to the sailboat and saw him swimming. But he had a hunch it was Paula’s idea. There was something about the smile she gave him, something about that wave.

  But he wasn’t keen about Ross’s company. He didn’t like some of the things Ross said or the way he said them. Those cracks about Joey’s height, for example.

  There was something else he didn’t like about Ross. It wasn’t until recently that he began to realize it. He didn’t like the way Ross looked at Paula.

  I guess I’m jealous, he admitted to himself.

  The people voted for the new school on July 6. Included was a referendum about the swimming pool.

  The next day, on Friday, an article published in the Gatewood Courier reported that the school bond issue had been passed, but the referendum to include a swimming pool had been turned down by a vote of three to one.

  THE SECOND YEAR

  1

  THE WINTER was the most severe one that had struck the county in twenty years, Joey thought it would never end.

  One morning the Vass family found a snowdrift fifteen feet high piled up in front of their back door, and it had taken the whole family almost all day to tunnel a hole through it to get to the driveway. The temperature hovered below zero most of January and February, and when the weather began to warm up, there were threats of flooding. The Chemung River rose until it overran its banks. Water entered the cellars of many of the homes, but the level didn’t rise high enough to cause any serious damage. It was nothing like the havoc that tropical storm Agnes had caused back in the early 1970s when the rampaging river had demolished homes, properties, and farms.

  Because of the uniqueness of the Oshawna Lake watershed — hundreds of streams around the long body of water funneled melted snow down into it — the lake level rose three feet above normal. It caused damage to cottages built close to the water’s edge and to docks and boat houses.

  What bothered Joey was all the garbage that had been washed down into the water, the raw sewage, the foam along the lake’s edge, the bad smell, the sludge, the thousands of dead fish. This was April. Could all that stuif be cleaned up by June so that he could start swimming again?

  He had exercised all winter, missing only three days, when he had caught a severe cold and had to take time off from school. He had even gone so far as to have his father help him make a bench on which he could lie on his stomach and practice coordinating his arm and leg action.

  But it was the use of the barbells that had built up his muscle tone. Curling — lifting the barbells up from his thighs to his shoulders while keeping his elbows down — strengthened his forearms and biceps. He would do this six times, rest for a minute, and do it again.

  On the bench he did the back press. Lying on it on his back, with his feet on the floor, he would lift the barbells from the level of his chest straight up to arm’s length, bring them down, lift them up again. This, too, he would do six times, rest, and six times again.

  Holding the barbells across the back of his neck, keeping his back straight and bending his knees, he also did half-knee bends, which strengthened his legs, developed his chest, and increased his lung capacity.

  To build up his calf muscles, he stood with his feet slightly apart, held the barbells across the back of his neck, and kept his body up arrow-straight. Then slowly he would raise his heels until he was standing only on his toes. Up, down; up, down. Six times, rest; six times, rest again.

  Every day. Every day.

  He had gained seven pounds. He now tipped the scales, in the raw, at one hundred and twenty-eight pounds.

  By the middle of May, the lake had receded almost to its normal level. Much of the muddiness cleared up, garbage had sunk to the bottom, driftwood had washed ashore. It was still too cold to swim in.

  The fear came over Joey that the summer wouldn’t be long enough for him to get in the amount of swimming he needed. He still had not yet swum even a mile at one time. And the lake was twenty-one miles long.

  Twenty-one miles!

  Joey read some statistics about long-distance swimming. Back in August 1872, a J. B. Johnson had tried — but failed — to swim the English Channel. The distance — from Dover, England, to Calais, France — was twenty-two miles. It was the narrowest part of the channel.

  In August 1875, a Captain Matthew Webb swam it successfully, completing an approximate fifty-mile zigzag course, through strong current and rough seas, in twenty-one hours and forty-five minutes. The swim was done in August because weather conditions were most favorable during that month.

  In 1926 Gertrude Ederle became the first woman to swim the channel, cutting Captain Webb’s time by almost two hours. She had swum the crawl style, while Webb had swum the breaststroke, the most popular stroke of his time.

  But the longest swim on record was two hundred and eighty-eight miles. Clarence Giles had swum the Yellowstone River from Glendive, Montana, to Billings in seventy-one hours and three minutes, June 3 o to July 3, 1939.

  Two hundred and eighty-eight miles! thought Joey. The English Channel is twenty-two miles wide. And I’m thinking of swimming twenty-one miles.

  I really might be able to do it.

  It was on the third Wednesday of May when Joey’s father sprang a surprise on his family. Joey noticed how quiet his father was during supper, quieter than usual, and assumed that something had happened at work again that annoyed him. Things weren’t any better at the stone-crushing company than they were before. Sometimes Joey thought they were worse.

  But it wasn’t the job that was on his father’s mind.

  “There is a boat for sale I want to look at,” his father said, drawing the attention of everyone to him. “I saw the advertisement in this morning’s paper. If I like it, I am going to buy it.”

  “So that is why you have been quiet?” said his wife. “You was thinking about the boat?”

  “Yes. The one I have is too small. I would like a bigger one with a motor.”

  “How much is it?”

  “Two hundred and seventy-five dollars. That does not sound bad, but maybe I could talk the man into selling it to me for even less — maybe two fifty.”

  Joey laughed. “I bet you can, Dad.”

  “It’s the Magyar in him,” said Joey’s mother, smiling.

  “It’s his charm, Mom,” interposed Yolanda. “Wasn’t it his charm that got you to marry him?”

  “His charm? Yes, I suppose it was. But I have not seen much of it lately.”

  “It’s because of his job, Mom,” Mary added. “You know how it’s been bothering him.”

  Joey’s father chuckled. “What do you know about my job, my little egér?”

  She shrugged. “Not much,” she admitted. “But enough.”r />
  “I am going to call up the man and see if he’ll be home,” said Joey’s father. “You want to come with me, Joey?”

  “Yes, I’ll go with you, Dad.”

  “Can’t I go, too, Daddy?” Gabor pleaded.

  “Why not? The more the merrier.”

  “Take the girls, too,” said Joey’s mother. “Then the man will see how big a family you have and will sell you the boat for half the price he is asking.”

  “Now that is going too far, Margaret,” said her husband, pretending irritation. “But it is a good idea,” he added, smiling.

  “Maybe the man needs the money, too,” said Joey’s mother. “Maybe that is why he wants to sell his boat.”

  “We’ll see,” replied her husband. “Well, I will make the call.”

  He made it, and a few seconds later hung up, smiling jovially. “All who are going with me, get ready!”

  The children, all but Yolanda, scrambled off to get their coats. Before flying out of earshot, Joey heard his father say to his mother, “You sure you don’t want to come, édes?”

  “I am sure,” she said. “I have a hundred things to do, starting with the dishes. Yolanda, you’re not going?”

  “No, Mom. You go with them,” insisted Yolanda. “I’ll stay here and do the dishes. Go on. You don’t get out enough, anyway.”

  “She’s right, Margaret,” said Joey’s father. “Come on. The fresh air will do you good.”

  Joey paused a little longer, waiting to hear what his mother was going to say.

  “Get my sweater, Yolanda,” she finally decided. “I’ll brush my hair. It looks like a mop.”

  Joey ran to get his, a smile splitting his face from ear to ear.

  In ten minutes they were on their way, their destination an address in the country some fifteen miles beyond Gatewood. They found it without difficulty, and saw the object of their trip sitting on a trailer in the back yard, a handprinted For Sale sign taped on its bow. It was a white, fiberglass boat with a small Johnson engine. The extra four feet in length over their rowboat, and the addition of the engine, would make the purchase a definite advancement.