I don’t know why people say that getting old is difficult. It really isn’t hard. You just sit around and it happens on its own, whether you want it to or not.
Bad joke. I understand what people mean when they complain about aging, but I’ve been blessed with good health and no money problems. I was an athlete when I was younger, so maybe I’ve aged more gracefully than most. Haven’t been a practicing athlete in a long time, though. These days, I mostly sit around in the library and read. My brain is still ticking and I want to keep it that way. Today, I’m having lunch with my friend Lewis after I finish in the library. My life may not be the exciting fiesta it once was, but it’s all right, most of the time.
Some days, though, I start thinking about my athletic years. I was a wiry young kid with a lot of energy. I enjoyed swimming, but always had an excessive fear of the deep end of the pool. It seemed murky and tainted to me. The blue seemed to darken ominously over the depths, luring in swimmers to certain doom. I felt that if I ever touched the bottom at the deepest point, I would never come back up. The fact that others swam in that part of the pool without incident failed to reassure me. The water was just waiting to swallow me forever.
Jack Mizell’s family had a swimming pool. Jack and I were the same age and we’d been next-door neighbors since we were young boys. The two of us and the other kids on the block often swam in his pool during the summer.
I was grateful to Jack for never making fun of my fear. If anyone started razzing me, he would shut it down. “Walt doesn’t like the deep end. So what? Leave him alone or go home.” I silently thanked him for the support and for calling me Walt instead of Walter. My parents insisted on Walter, which made me sound like a champion nerd.
I was never going to become a competitive swimmer, so I became a track star. Forgive me for being immodest, but I was very good. I won medals all the way up to the state level. Whenever I won a race, Coach Hardesty awarded me one of his famous toothy grins. It was supposed to be an honor but some people found it creepy because he looked like a piranha when he grinned like that. I would stand there on the podium getting my prize, with the announcer calling me Walter Brantley, which I hated, and Coach Piranha-Grin cheering for me, which I loved.
Jack was also on the track team. In our freshman and sophomore years, I was a lot better than he was. I never lorded it over him, and I can’t say I even felt smug about it. It just seemed like the way things ought to be, and how they would remain. I was number one on the junior varsity team as a freshman, and the surprise star of the varsity team as a sophomore. Jack was somewhere way down the line. He was kind to me about my pool phobia, and I reciprocated with cheerful support of his second-string efforts in track.
Something changed in the spring of junior year. Jack had improved substantially with no apparent effort. He had simply hit his athletic maturity a little later than most. I was happy for him, at first. He moved from also-ran to mid-pack, and would sometimes be among the leading runners.
Warm weather had come early to Atlanta that year, and the Mizells opened their pool for the summer in the second week of May. Jack and I inaugurated the season with an afternoon swim. I pulled off my shirt and slung it under the half-finished cabana that Mr. Mizell had been working on for years. He was always going to finish it “next summer,” but it appeared doomed to remain a shell; a wooden bus-stop shelter. As a show of earnest dedication, Mr. Mizell had left his tool chest under the unfinished cabana. We initially worried about stepping on stray nails he might have left lying around, but those fears were unfounded. The tool chest hadn’t been opened since we were in junior high school.
Jack dove into the pool as I reflexively looked away. When I heard him emerge from the depths, I let out the breath I had been holding. I carefully climbed down the ladder into the pool, enjoying the feel of the lukewarm water devouring my legs and then my whole body.
“Are you excited about the meet at the end of the week?” Jack asked. It had to be voiced; it was all that either one of us was thinking about at the moment. Well, except for cheerleader Holly Sutton, but we were always thinking about her.
“I’m optimistic,” I replied truthfully. “How about you?”
Jack took a moment to answer. “I don’t know,” he said. “I’ve always enjoyed running but I never expected to be in contention for a top finish. Do you think I have a chance?”
“Maybe; who knows?” I answered lightly. I wished that were a friendly lie, like it always had been. Today it was the truth.
Jack gave me a crooked smile. “If I beat you, you won’t be mad, right? We’re both supposed to do the best we can.”
I gave him a wicked grin in return. “Never gonna happen, but you can dream.” Without warning, I playfully splashed a wave of water over him. “Didn’t even see that coming, did you?”
I was the one who didn’t see it coming, or didn’t want to admit it was coming. Jack finished first in my best race at the meet. I was second and it wasn’t close. I didn’t finish better than second in any other event and was mortified. I gave Jack a congratulatory handshake, but he looked startled and pained. I think I gripped his hand as tightly as I was clenching my teeth. Jack got the piranha-grin from Coach Hardesty and I got called Walter by the announcer.
Jack and I tried to paper over the awkwardness at his pool the next day. His parents were off at a flea market for the afternoon, so we had the place to ourselves. We had finished our first round of swimming and were lying on towels spread out on the warm concrete next to the pool.
“Quite a race yesterday,” Jack began cautiously.
“Congratulations on your win,” I said, trying to muster some goodwill I didn’t feel in the least.
“I know it’s weird,” said Jack. “I’ve just gotten so much better and I keep improving with every race. I might even win some races at the state finals.”
“Yeah, that would be amazing.”
“Well, sort of. I’d be thrilled but it feels strange. I want to make sure you wouldn’t be too disappointed. Especially since we’re both going to be on the track team again next year.”
That wonderful thought had already occurred to me. If Jack kept running at his newfound level, I might never win another race.
“Competition keeps us both at our best,” I answered. “I’ll win the next race. Don’t you worry about that.”
Jack’s face relaxed and he gave me his first natural smile of the day. “Well, I guess we’ll see. Don’t expect me to slow down for you.” He closed his eyes and lay still on his towel.
I stood up and stretched. I walked over to the unfinished cabana and returned a minute later. I sat down next to Jack and spoke his name. He opened his eyes.
From behind my back, I withdrew the hammer I’d retrieved from Mr. Mizell’s tool chest. I raised it high and brought it down on Jack’s forehead as hard as I could. He was unconscious before he even understood what I was doing. I pushed him into the deep end and let him drown. There was too much blood. It looked terrible in the pool. Making the blue one red, to misquote that play we were reading in school.
There was some blood on Jack’s towel. I rinsed it out with pool water. I washed off the hammer by swinging it to and fro in the pool, hypnotized by the slow arc. I polished the hammer with the towel and returned it to the tool chest, wiping down the chest when I was done. Then I bundled up Jack’s soggy towel with my clean one and stuffed them way down in the hamper.
I told the police that Jack had done a bad dive into the pool. He hit his head on the bottom and drowned before anyone could save him. But it turns out that a hammer wound looks nothing like the injury you’d get from banging your head on solid concrete. I was too inexperienced to know that. I never killed anyone else, so I never had a chance to improve my technique.
No one had any sympathy for me. Even my parents were too horrified to be fully supportive. I was tried as an adult and sentenced to life without parole.
So here I am, more than fifty years later. Prison life isn’t as terrible as people claim. Oh, it was much worse at first, when I was still young. Let’s not go into the details. But now I’m a fat old fart of no interest to anyone except the penal system of the state of Georgia. The prison library is small, but I enjoy my time here. They let me read for as long as I like.
Today I’m going to have lunch with my friend Lewis. He killed a waitress in Duluth a long time ago. He’s a funny guy. We have good conversations over our meals. I’ve heard all his jokes and he’s heard mine, but we can still share laughter and friendship.
Sometimes we talk about sports. But never about swimming.
by 
Carl Tait
Latest posts by Carl Tait (see all)
- The Deep End - August 7, 2020
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