Swim to Me (21 page)

The air roared into the empty mike. A lurching camera stayed on Delores as she swam toward what might have been the speck of a boy.

“She appears to be swimming against the tide . . .”
Chuck continued.

The riptide tore at her, but she knew enough not to fight it and stayed beneath the waves where it was less chaotic. Despite the stinging salt, she was able to keep her eyes open. “Swim, Westie, swim.” The words rushed through her and filled her with calm. She'd swum out far enough to where the waves were quiet. In the distance, she could make out the head of the little boy. He had red hair, thatches of which would appear, then disappear, in the course of the currents.

“She is swimming toward something. I can't quite make it out, but it could be the young child . . .”

The water was almost tranquil out here. She swam until she could grab the boy under his chin with her right hand. Then she reached across his chest with her left hand and secured her hold under his right armpit. She hadn't done this cross-chest carry since she learned it in the Bronx, yet she felt as if she'd been practicing every day. The boy's shirt rode up on him, and she could feel his tiny ribs in the palm of her hand. “Swim, Westie,” she said in his ear. “Stay with me and keep swimming.” She could hear the boy crying, so she knew that he was conscious. She did the scissor-kick and followed the pull of the tide, knowing that at some point it would carry her close to shore.

“She appears to have reached the child . . .”

She stayed above the water, the boy firmly in her grasp.

“. . .
and now she is pulling him back to shore . . .”

She hadn't realized how tired she was until they finally reached the shore. When she tried to stand, her legs went wobbly underneath her.

“She's collapsed on the sand . . .”

People who'd been watching from the shore rushed forward to help her.

“. . . people are coming from everywhere to try and help her. She still has the child in her grasp. Incredible.”

Armando remembered that they kept an old gray blanket in the back of the van, which they used to wrap the lighting equipment. He ran and got it and made a bundle of the two of them.

“She must be freezing and in shock. Someone has just wrapped her and the child in a blanket . . .”

Water streaked across everyone's face. Tears, salt water—who could tell the difference? The boy's father squatted beside Delores
and hugged her. From the way his lips tightened as he spoke, it was clear how shaken and grateful he was, but, with the waves and wind, it was hard to hear him.

“. . . the man crouching next to the two of them appears to be the little boy's father. We can't make out what he's saying, but clearly he is overcome with emotion at what has just transpired here.”

The boy reached out to the man, and he lifted him into his arms. With the child nuzzled into his chest, the father rushed off away from the crowd before Doug could get his name and age.

“We don't know the name of the child or his father, and we may never know who they are. But they will certainly never forget the name Delores Taurus.”

For a man who prided himself on his unflappability, Chuck was visibly moved. Anyone with a color TV would notice the flush in his cheeks. The tightness in his throat was there for all to hear.

“This is one of those moments in live television when even those of us who've seen it all are rendered speechless. I am . . . well, I am overwhelmed. We'll be back to you in a minute with more about Hurricane Claudia.”

When the red light on the camera was off, Armando helped Delores to her feet, draping the blanket around her shoulders. He put his hand on the small of her back and helped her to the van. She lay on the floor in the back of the van, and he sat down next to her. “You need to get into something dry,” he said, pulling off the blue Disney World sweatshirt he was wearing underneath his rain jacket. “Here, put this on, and wear the blanket around your waist.”

His gesture brought her back to where she was, and even made her smile. “You're always giving me your clothes,” she said.

“Don't you think it's better that way than the other way around? I'll wait outside while you change.”

“Holy shit,” cried Doug. “That was unbelievable. And we got it all on tape.” Then the weight of it all sank in.

On the way back to the studio, no one spoke for a long while. Then Doug started: “Can you imagine Sommers hopping up and down in those little shoes the whole time?” he said. “He must have been going out of his mind. I'll bet you any amount of money that I know what he'll say to Delores when we get back.” He mimicked Sommers's rat-a-tat delivery: “Delores, sweetie, that was magnificent.
MAGNIFICENT
! They'll love this in New York. It was an inspired idea, genius really, me sending you out there. You must admit.”

They all laughed except for Bo. He stared out the window as if he hadn't heard a thing. “I thought you were a goner. You and that poor little boy, I swear to God, I really didn't think you'd make it.” The van got quiet again, but for the constant thud of the rain. Delores was next to Armando in the front seat. He studied her face and noticed her flinch at the mention of the boy. He reached over and squeezed her hand, a gentle, quick squeeze. His hand was warm and she found his touch comforting. She was filled with a longing to curl herself around him. She crossed her arms and hugged her shoulders, determined to resist the urge.

When they finally made it back to the studio, Delores held the blanket tightly around her, aware of what a sight she was with her tangled wet hair, bare feet, and oversized Mickey Mouse sweatshirt. They rode the elevator to the eighth floor, and when the doors opened, Sommers and Chuck were standing there, waiting for them. Chuck was still in his suit because he was always in his suit. He reached out his hand to shake Delores's hand, but she was holding on to her blanket with both hands. So he put his hands in his pockets and spoke in his perfectly modulated tones. “You certainly put
on quite a show out there, young lady,” he said. “Your courage and determination are startling.”

Sommers was dwarfed behind him, wearing a T-shirt and a pair of blue jeans. Delores could see the tension in his face from the way his eyebrows bounced up and down. He reached out and awkwardly squeezed Delores's arm. In her bare feet, she was the same height as he was. “I'm so sorry to have put you through that,” he said, without his normal ebullience. “You had me going, Miss Taurus. I was scared, I gotta tell you. Really scared.” His voice filled with emotion, and he turned away from her. Through his cotton T-shirt, Delores could see how small and close together his shoulder blades were, like folded butterfly wings. It didn't make her like him any better, but she saw how vulnerable he was. He continued: “But you were tremendous out there.” Doug rolled his eyes as if to say, “Here we go!” Sommers went on: “I know that I can be a bit . . . well, you know how I can be. But you really were tremendous. And to say that you'll wow New York is an understatement. This is just the beginning for you.”

Delores was too tired to think about beginnings. All she could think about was Westie and Thelma and the silky quiet waters of the Springs. The storm wasn't due to hit hard until morning, plenty of time for her to get home. She turned to Armando. “Do you think you could drive me back to Weeki Wachee?” she asked. Sommers nodded and gave them a thumbs up.

As soon as they got into the van, Delores leaned against Armando and fell asleep. He thought about what he'd have done had he been in her place earlier that evening, and about how much the inside of the van smelled like the sea.

L
IFEGUARDS AT BEACHES
everywhere perform acts like this one all the time, rescuing the lost and reckless, mostly in total
anonymity. But live TV reporting was still a new phenomenon, and local stations would cover supermarket openings and greased-pig-catching contests just to show off their new equipment. So the story of the little boy saved by the TV weathergirl instantly became a big one, partly because of the inherent drama playing out on the screen, but mostly because the hero was a girl, and not just any girl, but Florida's favorite mermaid.

Later, the story would take on its own mythology. Doug would tell the story with an emphasis on his own coolness under fire and claim that Sommers had squealed to Delores: “That was magnificent. Magnificent!” Chuck Varne would liken it to Murrow's reporting at Trafalgar Square, with the bombs dropping and the sirens wailing. And Sommers would tell it as if he had directed an epic: the winds had been raging at seventy-five miles an hour; the tides had been ten feet high; the boy had been half dead.

But what really happened was true enough to make its way into living rooms across the country.

Dave Hanratty was no stranger to hurricanes, having lived through the big one in '35. He understood that hurricanes were bad news for anyone in their way and that circuses were particularly vulnerable. There are animals to shelter and equipment to tether. Circuses are also filled with people for whom danger is commonplace. Try telling the sword-swallower or the guy who gets shot out of a cannon that a storm has the power to uproot a tree or whisk the roof off of a house. They'll take it as a dare. Watch me ride the wind, they'll say, or roll over it in a barrel. Then there were the trailers. He never liked to be inside a trailer when the winds came up. It made the Tilt-A-Whirl feel like a ride in a kiddie car. And the racket—the creaking, banging, and rattling of it all.

Hanratty was also a man who understood how to protect his investment and minimize his losses, and, to that end, he'd made an arrangement with Rex three years earlier. He would pay for installing awnings on all the windows and would cover his insurance bills if Rex would let the troupe take shelter in the Giant Café whenever the wind or rain threatened to get out of hand. That way, everyone would be under one roof and he could keep an eye on them. The café also had a telephone and a small television set, which was more than anyone in the circus other than Hanratty had.

A somber, heavyset man with jowls that almost fell off his face,
he always wore a hat and a jacket, even on the hottest days, because he had come of age at a time when that's how gentlemen of distinction dressed. The irony that he was in a profession requiring everyone around him to be half nude most of the time didn't escape him. If anything, it added to the aura of power and respect that he cultivated. He'd made a bundle in the circus business, starting up in the Florida panhandle with only a cart and some unfortunate freaks—the latter a fact now obliterated from his biography and, almost as successfully, from his memory.

He had a knack for knowing what would entertain people and hold their attention and a talent for hiring people whose nerve and prowess knew no bounds. From the beginning, he never mingled with his workers. They knew nothing about him other than that he was enormously wealthy, and that, while they were in his employ, he virtually owned them. That was enough so that on the afternoon before Hurricane Claudia was scheduled to blow into town, they packed up what valuables they had and shut down their trailers and, with Lucy the chimp in hand, headed to the Giant Café, just as Hanratty had ordered them to do.

With the jalousies closed and the awnings snapped into place, the café was stifling. The trainers had, only hours earlier, led their elephants and lions into the animal houses, and their pungent odors mixed with the others: the camphor smell of the liniment that the jugglers smoothed into their joints; the cloying fragrance of the French cologne that Carmen, the aerialist, doused on herself each morning; the tang of freshly brewing coffee and the bubbling of stale vegetable fat. It was a concoction potent enough to make your eyes water and your stomach seize up.

Hanratty removed his hat but kept his jacket buttoned. He waited until the troupe settled down, then stood up in front of the café and clinked a water glass with a teaspoon. “Ladies and gentlemen, I am
sorry for the disruption,” he said, “but according to the bulletins from the National Weather Service, we've got one doozy of a storm headed our way, and I have deemed it wiser for us to stick it out for the time being inside these walls of concrete. Mr. Rex has been kind enough to offer up some free pie and coffee for everyone, so let's all settle in and pray for the best.” Hanratty bowed his head as if to lead a group in a moment of silence, but before anyone could say, “In the name of . . .,” Sichey the clown was balancing a spoon on his nose and Leonard Arroyo had sprung into a handstand on one of the tables.

Roy sat quietly in the back of the café, scraping the meringue off the top of his pie and forking the sweet lemon filling into his mouth. He never understood putting things on top of food. Food was food; why try to fancy it up with whipped cream or some ridiculous French gravy? Gail had been forever slapping a scoop of Breyers vanilla on a slice of apple pie and calling it pie à la mode. It didn't make anything different. The apple pie was still apple pie; they were still who they were. That whole French bit drove him nuts back then. He started to get angry even thinking about it. So he quickly turned his mind to the free pie and had a second helping.

As the afternoon drew on, the troupe grew quieter, sated by pie, heat, and the narrow confines of the place. From time to time, one of them would put his head down on the table and nod off for a while. Rex sat off in a corner with the midgets, and they passed the time by telling each other jokes. Even Lucy, who had been running up and down the café, throwing her arms around people and grinning her mocking smiley faces, had settled down in the lap of her trainer. It left them with little to do other than listen to the reports from the radio or watch the quivering black-and-white pictures on the television.