Twenty-One Mile Swim (5 page)

“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 her 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 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.”