The Letter

Undertow

Chapter 27: The Letter

He sat at the kitchen table in the house on Tenth Avenue with a legal pad and a pen and the intention of writing a letter to the mother of Tommy Raines, an intention he had carried for ten years the way he carried the loss itself, in the chest, in the space behind the sternum, in the place where the buzzing lived and where the loss lived beside the buzzing, the two residents of that interior space coexisting the way the ocean and the shore coexisted, the one always touching the other, the one always shaping the other, the loss shaping the buzzing and the buzzing shaped by the loss, the two things that were two things and one thing, the work and the weight, the saving and the not-saving, the 214 entries in the notebook and the one entry that was not in the notebook because the one was not a save but a loss, and the loss did not have a page, the loss had a space, a gap, a silence between entry 156 and entry 157 that was the silence of July 19, 2016, the silence that was Tommy Raines.

The legal pad was yellow, the pad he had bought at the CVS on Route 35, the lined pages, the standard yellow of the standard pad, the paper that lawyers wrote on and that students wrote on and that James Calloway was now writing on in his kitchen at nine o'clock on a Thursday evening, three days before Labor Day, three days before the last day of the last season, three days before the climbing-down from Stand 4 for the final time and the walking to the water and the standing in the shallows and the ending that was the ending.

He had tried before. He had tried twice. The first time was in 2016, three months after Tommy drowned, in October, in the off-season's first weeks, when the absence of the stand and the scanning and the daily work left a space in the day that the loss filled, the loss expanding into the hours the way water expanded into a container, taking the shape of the available space, filling the corners, the loss occupying the October evenings the way the ocean occupied the basin, completely, to every edge. He had sat at this table and he had picked up a pen and he had written: Dear Mrs. Raines, and then the pen had stopped, and the stopping was not a decision but a seizure, the hand unable to form the next word, the next word being the word that would follow Dear Mrs. Raines and that would have to be a word that did something with the loss, that carried the loss from the chest to the page, and the carrying was the thing the hand could not do, not then, not three months after, the hand still holding the weight too tightly, the hand unable to transfer the weight to the paper because the transfer would be the opening and the opening would be the flooding and the flooding was not a thing James could permit in October 2016, three months after, the wound too new, the tissue too raw, the opening too dangerous.

The second time was in 2019, three years later. He sat at the table again. He picked up the pen again. He wrote: Dear Mrs. Raines, I am writing to -- and then the pen stopped again, the stopping happening at a different word this time, the stopping happening at the to, the to that was the intention, the to that said: I am writing for a purpose, the purpose being the thing that James could not name, because the purpose was not apology, because the apology implied fault, and the fault was not his, Dr. Okonkwo had said the fault was not his, the ocean was the fault, the current was the fault, the physics was the fault, and James knew this, knew it intellectually, knew it the way he knew the swell height and the current velocity and the water temperature, as data, as fact, as the professional assessment of the conditions that had produced the outcome, and the outcome was the loss, and the loss was not his fault. But the knowing was not the feeling, and the feeling was the thing the pen was trying to write, and the feeling was not the fault but something else, something the language did not have a word for, the thing that lived in the space between the fault and the grief, the thing that was not guilt but that occupied guilt's territory, the thing that said: I was there, I was the guard, I was the person on the stand, the person whose job it was to prevent the thing that happened, and the thing happened, and I did not prevent it, and the not-preventing is the thing I carry, and the carrying is not guilt but is shaped like guilt, is weighted like guilt, is the thing that lives where the guilt would live if the guilt were mine, and the guilt is not mine, but the space is mine, and the space is full, and the full is the weight, and the weight is the letter I am trying to write.

The second draft went into the trash. The second draft was the Dear Mrs. Raines, I am writing to that was the beginning that did not continue, the intention that did not find its expression, the to that did not find its object, the sentence that began and that could not finish because the finishing would require the saying and the saying would require the words and the words were not there, were not in the kitchen, were not on the legal pad, were somewhere else, somewhere in the future, in the place where the words would eventually form, the place that was not 2019 but was later, was further, was the place the carrying would carry him to when the carrying had been carried long enough.

Now. Now was the third time. Now was the Thursday evening in the kitchen, three days before Labor Day, three days before the end. Now was the pen in the hand and the legal pad on the table and the nine o'clock September dark outside the window and the house quiet and the house empty and the emptiness being the condition, the condition that the letter required, the silence that the writing required, the absence of the other things -- the radio, the whistle, the patrol, the scanning, the standing-between -- that left the space for the thing that was not the work but that the work had produced, the weight that was the work's byproduct, the residue, the sediment that twenty years of entering the water had deposited in the chest, and the sediment included Tommy, and Tommy was the letter, and the letter was now.

Dear Mrs. Raines,

He wrote it and the pen did not stop. The pen moved past the Dear and past the Mrs. and past the Raines and past the comma and continued, the continuing being the thing, the thing that had not happened before, the passage past the point where the previous drafts had seized, the forward motion of the pen that was the forward motion of the years, the ten years that had carried the weight from 2016 to 2026, the ten years that had not diminished the weight but that had changed the carrier, had changed the body that bore the weight, had changed the hands that held the pen, the hands that were now thirty-eight-year-old hands and not twenty-eight-year-old hands, the hands that had made 214 saves since the loss and that had carried 214 people from the water to the sand and that had learned, through the 214 carryings, something about the carrying that the twenty-eight-year-old hands had not known, the something being: the carrying does not stop, and the not-stopping is not the failure, the not-stopping is the carrying, and the carrying is the thing you do with the thing you cannot put down.

My name is James Calloway. I was the captain of the Asbury Park Beach Patrol on July 19, 2016, the day your son Tommy entered the water at Asbury Park beach.

The facts. The facts were the beginning, the place the letter could start without the opening of the thing, the facts being the surface, the surface text that the deeper text lived beneath, the way the current lived beneath the surface of the ocean, the facts being the date and the name and the title and the location, the information that the incident report had captured in its boxes and its triplicate and that the letter now began with because the beginning had to be somewhere and the facts were the somewhere, the solid ground, the sand on which the running began before the swimming began.

I have wanted to write this letter for ten years. I have started it twice before and not been able to finish. I am writing it now because I am leaving the patrol in three days, and the leaving is the thing that has made the writing possible, or necessary, or both. I do not know which. I do not know why the leaving opens the thing the staying kept closed. But the leaving is happening and the writing is happening and I think they are the same thing, the leaving and the writing, the ending and the telling, the closing of the career and the opening of the letter.

He stopped. He looked at the words. The words were on the page. The words were in blue ink on yellow paper, the blue Bic ink, the same ink that had written the notebook entries, the 214 saves recorded in the same blue that was now recording the thing that was not a save, the ink being the constant, the ink being the through-line, the ink connecting the saves and the loss, the notebook and the letter, the blue that was the color of the record, the record that was the life.

I was on Stand 4 when your son entered the water. Stand 4 is the center of the beach, the captain's stand. I saw your son walk into the water with his friends. I saw his friends stay in the shallows. I saw your son go deeper. I called it on the radio. I came down from the stand. I ran across the sand. I entered the water. I swam to where your son had been.

He had been. The tense. The had been that was the past, the past that was the loss, the past that was the grammar of the thing that had happened, the grammar that said: the boy was here and then the boy was not here and the not-here is the past tense and the past tense is the loss and the loss is the grammar of the letter, the grammar that the guard could not change, could not revise, could not edit the way a writer edited a draft, because the loss was not a draft, the loss was the final version, the version that could not be revised, the version that was the fact, and the fact was the tense, and the tense was had been.

I swam for seven minutes. I dove to the bottom. I searched with my hands. I did not find him. The Coast Guard searched for four hours. They found him the next day, a mile south.

He wrote it. He wrote the facts of the loss with the same pen and the same ink and the same hand that had written the facts of the saves, the parallel recording, the parallel notation, the save's format applied to the loss's content, the date and the conditions and the actions and the outcome, except the outcome was not the save, the outcome was the loss, and the loss was the thing the letter was about, the thing the letter was trying to carry from the chest to the page, from the guard to the mother, from the person who was there to the person who was not there but whose son was there and whose son was in the water and whose son was the thing the letter was about.

I do not know why your son went into deeper water. I have thought about it every day for ten years. I have told the story to the department psychologist every year. I have told it the same way each time because the story does not change, because the facts do not change, because the water on July 19, 2016, did what the water did and the guard on the stand did what the guard did and the boy in the water did what the boy did and the doing is the done, the done is the permanent, and the permanent is the thing I carry.

He paused. He looked at the kitchen. The kitchen was the kitchen. The laminate counter. The window above the sink that showed the dark yard, the small dark yard of the rented house on Tenth Avenue in Neptune Township, three miles from the ocean, twelve minutes from Stand 4, the distance that was the distance between the two lives, the beach life and the house life, the life of the scanning and the life of the sitting in the kitchen writing a letter to the mother of a boy he did not save.

I am not writing to apologize. The department investigation found that the patrol followed all protocols. The conditions were red flag. The beach was posted. The guards were in position. The response was within the standard time. I swam four hundred yards in heavy surf. I dove repeatedly in eight feet of water with three-foot visibility. The investigation found that the response was adequate, that the outcome was a result of the conditions and not of the response.

He stopped again. The word. Adequate. The word that the investigation had used and that the word adequate was the word that did not fit, that did not describe, that was the word for a thing measured from the outside, from the bureaucratic distance, from the desk and the form and the triplicate. Adequate was not the word for the swimming and the diving and the searching with the hands in the sand and the not-finding. Adequate was the word for a bridge that held the weight. Adequate was the word for a test score that passed the threshold. Adequate was not the word for a man in the ocean who reached for a boy and closed his hands on water.

He crossed out the paragraph. He drew a line through the words about the investigation and the protocols and the adequate. The crossing-out was the editing, the revision, the removal of the words that were not the right words, the words that were the department's words and not James's words, the words that belonged in the incident report and not in the letter, because the letter was not the incident report, the letter was the other thing, the thing the incident report could not contain, the thing that lived beneath the facts the way the current lived beneath the surface, the thing that the mother needed to hear that the department did not know how to say.

He wrote:

I am writing because I have carried your son for ten years and I am about to leave the place where I carry him and I wanted you to know that he was carried. I wanted you to know that a man on a wooden stand saw your son in the water and went in after him. I wanted you to know that the going-in was immediate and the swimming was fast and the reaching was desperate and the not-finding was the worst thing that has ever happened to me, not because I failed but because the water was the water and the water does not yield to the swimming and the swimming does not always reach the person and the not-reaching is the thing, the thing that I carry, the thing that I have carried for ten years on the stand and that I will carry for the rest of my life off the stand.

He stopped. He read the words. The words were the words. The words were not adequate and the words were not inadequate. The words were the attempt, the reaching, the swimming toward the thing that the words were trying to reach, the thing that was the saying of the thing the ten years had contained, the ten years of the annual telling in Dr. Okonkwo's office that was the professional telling and that was not this telling, this telling being the personal telling, the telling that was not for the department file but for the mother, the mother in East Orange or wherever the mother was now, the mother who had a son named Tommy who was fifteen and who went to the beach with his friends on a bus and who walked into the ocean for the first time and who kept walking.

I keep a notebook. I have kept it for twenty years. It contains every save I have made -- 214 entries, each one a date, a person, a set of conditions, an outcome. Your son is not in the notebook. Your son is not an entry. Your son is the space between entry 156 and entry 157, the gap, the silence, the page that does not exist because the save did not happen and the not-happening does not have a page.

But your son is in the notebook. Your son is in every entry that follows his. Entry 157 carries him. Entry 158 carries him. Every save I have made since July 19, 2016, carries your son, because the save that did not happen is present in every save that does happen, the absence shaping the presence the way the channel shapes the current, the loss shaping the saving the way the not-finding shapes the finding.

He put the pen down. He put the pen on the legal pad and the putting-down was the pause, the pause that was not the stopping of the previous drafts but the resting, the breath between the sentences, the space that the writing required the way the scanning required the blink, the brief interruption of the attention that was not the end of the attention but the resetting, the recharging, the moment of the not-doing that made the doing possible.

He picked the pen up. He wrote:

I do not know if this letter will help you. I do not know if you need help. I do not know what ten years has done to your grief, whether the grief has changed or diminished or hardened or dispersed or done some other thing that grief does when the years pass over it the way the tides pass over the sand, rearranging the surface but not the substance. I do not know what your grief looks like now. I know what mine looks like. Mine looks like a boy in the water who is not there when I reach the place he was. Mine looks like hands in the sand that feel shells and cold and not a body. Mine looks like the seven-minute swim back to shore after the not-finding, the longest swim of my life, the swim that was not a rescue but a return, the return of the guard who went in and did not bring back the thing he went in to bring back.

I wanted you to know that the thing you lost was seen. The thing you lost was seen by a person whose job it was to see and whose seeing was not enough and whose not-enough is the thing I carry and that I will carry and that the carrying is the closest I can come to the honoring of your son, the honoring that is not a ceremony but a weight, not a memorial but a carrying, the daily carrying of the thing I did not save in the body that does the saving.

He put the pen down. He looked at the letter. The letter was three pages of legal pad, the yellow paper covered in blue ink, the handwriting that was his handwriting, the small precise capitals that he used for the notebook and that he was using now for the letter, the same hand, the same ink, the same notation, the recording that was the recording, the marking-down of the thing that had happened and the thing that had not happened and the thing that the happening and the not-happening had produced, which was the letter, which was the three pages, which was the words.

He did not sign it. He did not write Sincerely or Respectfully or With sympathy or any of the conventional closings that the conventional letter required, because the letter was not conventional, the letter was not a thing the conventions contained, the letter was the other thing, the thing that lived outside the conventions the way the ocean lived outside the beach, the thing that was larger than the form, the thing that the closing could not close, because the thing was not closeable, was not endable, was not the kind of thing that a word at the bottom of the page could conclude, because the thing was the carrying and the carrying did not conclude, the carrying continued, and the letter's ending was not the carrying's ending, and the carrying's not-ending was the truth, and the truth was the letter.

He wrote: James Calloway. Stand 4. Asbury Park.

He put the pen down. He looked at the letter. He looked at the three pages. He did not fold them. He did not put them in an envelope. He did not look up the address. He did not stamp the letter. He did not carry the letter to the mailbox at the corner of Tenth Avenue and Neptune Boulevard, the blue USPS mailbox that his father had walked past six days a week for thirty-seven years on Route 412, the mailbox that was the portal, the opening through which the letter could enter the system that would carry it from Neptune Township to East Orange, from the guard to the mother, from the man who did not save to the woman whose son was not saved.

He did not send the letter. He did not send it because the sending was not the purpose. The purpose was the writing. The purpose was the transfer from the chest to the page, the carrying of the weight from the interior to the exterior, the movement of the thing from the place behind the sternum where it had lived for ten years to the yellow legal pad where it lived now in blue ink, the transfer that was not the elimination of the weight but the sharing of the weight, the sharing with the paper, the paper now holding what the chest had held, the paper bearing what the body had borne, the paper doing its work the way the rescue can did its work, the intermediary, the thing between the carrier and the carried, the tool that held the weight so the body did not have to hold it alone.

He folded the letter. He folded the three pages in thirds, the standard letter fold, the fold that his father had made a million times on Route 412, folding the undeliverable mail, the mail that had no valid address, the mail that was returned to sender, and the letter was the returned mail, the letter that would not be delivered, the letter that would stay with the sender, the letter that was not for the mother but for the guard, the letter that was the guard's, the guard's own returned-to-sender, the thing written and not sent, the thing said and not heard, the thing expressed and not received, the expression being the purpose, the expression being the thing, the thing that the ten years had needed and that the three days before the ending had finally permitted, the permission that the leaving gave, the leaving opening the thing the staying had kept closed.

He took the composition notebook from the kitchen table. The notebook had been in the house for a week, since the Thursday he had brought it home from the locker, the notebook with the black-and-white marbled cover, the stitched pages, the twenty years of entries, the 214 saves in blue ink on wide-ruled paper. He opened the notebook. He opened it to the first page. The first page was the first entry.

6/28/05. Stand 2. 2:17 PM. Rip current, south end. F, ~9. Solo rescue, rescue can. Lateral swim across rip, approximately 80 yards. Victim conscious, coughing, ambulatory. Mother present. No EMT transport. Save #1.

The first save. The nine-year-old girl. The rip at Stand 2. The mother running across the sand. The face doing the thing. The beginning. Save number one, recorded in the blue ink that was the same blue ink as the letter, the ink that connected the first save to the last letter, the beginning to the ending, the girl who was saved to the boy who was not, the two entries in the life's ledger, the positive and the negative, the save and the loss, the living and the dead, the rescued girl growing into a woman who was now twenty-nine years old and who was alive because James had been on Stand 2 and had seen the thing and had gone in and had reached her and had brought her back, and the not-rescued boy who would have been twenty-five and who was not twenty-five and who was not alive because James had been on Stand 4 and had seen the thing and had gone in and had not reached him and had not brought him back, and the reaching and the not-reaching were the notebook and the letter, the ink and the ink, the blue and the blue.

He placed the letter in the notebook. He placed it between the first page and the cover, the folded yellow pages resting against the marbled cardboard, the letter beside the first save, the loss beside the beginning, the two things together in the book that held the career, the book that held the twenty years, the book that held the 214 and the two, the saves and the losses, the numbers and the silence between the numbers.

He closed the notebook. He held it in his hands. The notebook weighed almost nothing. The weight of paper and cardboard and thread and ink and the folded letter, the physical weight that was measurable in ounces and that bore no correspondence to the other weight, the weight that was not physical, the weight that could not be measured in ounces or pounds or any unit the scale recognized, the weight that was the twenty years and the 214 saves and the two losses and the ten thousand mornings and the ten thousand scans and the 214 entries into the water and the two entries that did not end with the carrying-to-shore, the weight that was the career, the weight that was the life, the weight that the notebook held and that the letter added to and that the closing of the notebook now contained, the containing that was the notebook's function, the notebook holding the record and the record holding the life and the life being heavy with the things the life had carried and that the notebook now carried, the notebook that weighed almost nothing and held almost everything.

He put the notebook on the kitchen table. He turned off the light. He went to bed.

Outside, twelve miles east, the ocean did what the ocean did at night. The waves arrived at the shore. The waves departed from the shore. The arriving and the departing were the ocean's only work, the only work the ocean knew, the work that continued in the dark without an audience, without a guard, without the eyes on the stand, the work that was the water's work, the tireless repetitive ceaseless work of the water arriving and departing, arriving and departing, the rhythm that was the rhythm, the pulse that was the pulse, the thing that was the thing.

The letter was in the notebook. The notebook was on the table. The guard was in the bed. The ocean was in the dark.

Three days.