Recruited
From the things he did you would believe he was out there aggressively knocking on doors and making the world fit his aims, corralling it into his wheelhouse, meeting objectives. But without ever articulating it to himself, he actually thought he would be discovered one day. He would be plucked from the crowd and recognized right away for his special talent. Trying to sell other people on it was too distasteful. Hustling was for business majors. He would be seen and then arrive later that afternoon.
Offhand he remembered his mother talking about a lady in town, a receptionist who worked at the school, as they passed her in the car while she tended her garden. “She’s had a tragic life,” she said. “Lost her husband and her daughter one after the other.” It was a character trait, to be tragic in life. It was a misfortune and a destined lot but it would, presumably, not rub off or become part of your own character, nor would it happen to everyone eventually.
When he was 9 he almost drowned his brother. Jimmy was terrified of the water. He would go in the pool and splash around in the shallow end but scream and carry on if they went over chest height. Nate was sure it could be fixed simply by a quick trip, barely noticed, to the deep end, where Jimmy would enjoy swimming, something he already knew how to do, he just needed to build a little confidence. Jimmy was holding one end of a pool float and Nate was on the other end, paddling them back and forth when he decided he could pull it off this time, the realization, the teaching. He stealthily steered them deepwards, Jimmy none the wiser, until he was. He started to banshee and then flail, letting go of the float.
“C’mon Jimmy, it’s ok, you already know what to do. Grab the float!” said Nate enthusiastically, trying to maintain his instructional focus while Jimmy’s keening drew a siren of adult attention.
“C’mon Jimmy! Just grab the float, we can go right back” he said, unintentionally covering over Jimmy’s submerged head with the float.
Their father made a splashing dive right away and swooped Jimmy up, spiriting him to the edge where he continued to wail and emit redness, screaming with the anguish of the whole world.
Nate’s mother gave him a gritted teeth look that summoned him up the stairs where he stood dripping at the edge while several of the adults stared at him without words or their customary face for children. He wanted to melt back into the water, and being 9, he did. He sat down on the stairs and floated out a bit, his ears below the water so Jimmy’s yells were barely audible.
His mother appeared in his view again and her fury drew him out. Dale, the big lady who would later get his father fired, and Mike, the straw blonde-haired man who looked like a boy and talked about late night t.v. all the time, were staring at him as if he were the bad one. He wanted to yell that he had just been trying to help, that Jimmy just needed a little push was all, he wanted to help. Later he would tell their mother all that and she would look at him the same, and thinking about it made him wish he had evaporated from the hot concrete around boss Dave’s fancy home pool, that he could just not be there.
He wanted to tell them all what he really meant, but he was waiting to be recruited, he was.
