Bethany Blue

Bethany Blue Chapter 1 Hazing, gazing creature of the sky, The cloud it rambles within her eye. Floating lazily across the celestial dome, She intuits chaos transposing the Known. Summertime 1977 “Sometimes the sky is so beautifully blue it makes me so happy to be alive. Do you know what I mean?” Terri said as she leaned back in the lifeguard chair and slanted a look down at Veronica cleaning up debris on the pool deck from last night’s storm. Veronica stuffed a thin branch with spindly green leaves still intact into a rubber trash can. She scanned the pool, as children perched on the coping stones, toes dangling above the water surface, anxiously eyed the wall clock at the clubhouse waiting for the adult swim to end. “I like the sky when the sun begins to sink and it turns all different shades of heart-crushing purple as though the end of the world were near—savor it while you can.” She looked up, a singular cumulus cloud lollygagging in an azure sky. “That kinda blue gives me hope, which is always dicey,” she said in a tone indicating no further discussion needed. Checking the time— ten forty-four and forty-five seconds—Terri lifted her whistle to her mouth and fixed a look on the kids leaning over the edge of the pool as though daring their bodies to take a premature plunge. She took a deep breath, held it for a moment until the second hand struck twelve, and blew on her whistle—preeeeeeeet!—and all was right in the world of preadolescence, as the children splashed into the water, within seconds shrieking, “Mar…co … Po…lo.” This was Terri Landers second season lifeguarding at the back pool in Bethany West, a neighborhood of over five hundred modest homes, a ten minute bike ride from the Bethany Beach boardwalk and the Atlantic Ocean. It was an ideal job at the larger of the two community pools, one block over from the house her parents were renting for the second summer in a row. What more could a twenty-years-old college girl want? Terri let out a short, sharp breet on her whistle and yelled, “No running,” to two boys scooting along on the pool deck. They slowed to a hurried walk before both dove into the deep well. It was the tail end of June, and the summer season was about to crank up—big time. Nine months a year, Bethany Beach, Delaware, was a sleepy little resort town, but come summer and especially from the week of the Fourth of July to Labor Day weekend, it was a ruckus of tourist of all ages and sizes, predominantly white—rarely did Terri see a person of color—with a long and strong Catholic influence resulting in the establishment, years back, of the Parish of St. Ann Church, which was across Garfield Parkway from the main entrance to Bethany West. At eleven o’clock, Veronica relieved Terri from the guard chair. A smattering of leaves, floating on the surface of the pool, was all that remained from last night’s storm. The source of the arboreal debris was a stand of trees situated between the pool and a pond that was connected by a shallow channel to the Assawoman Canal. “The canal was dug out by immigrants in the 1890’s with picks and shovels,” Greg, the pool manager/head guard and a local boy, had told Terri, a few weeks back, when she had asked when it was built. “Makes our light duties seem recreational,” Greg added. And in a way it was recreational, Terri thought as she leaned over the shallow end and scooped leaves from the water with a leaf skimmer, a net attached to a long pole. After collecting the last of the leaves, Terri retrieved a children’s plastic sand pail and a sponge from the storage closet in the clubhouse, splashed in a couple of squirts of dish soap, and filled the pail with warm water from the one of the two shower stalls in the women’s room. She then entered the pool via the steps at the shallow end. She stood waist deep in the water, scrubbing the tiles below the coping stones, sliding toward the deep end until she could no longer keep her head above water. Gripping a coping stone, she continued the cleaning process: scrub, rinse sponge in pail on coping stone, move pail and self forward as she worked her way around the pool. It was a monotonous task, but Greg was a stickler for a clean pool: “Left unchecked algae can produce dangerous toxins,” he had said at the first and only guard meeting, in the conference room of the clubhouse, a half-hour prior to opening the pool for the season. “We must be vigilant in maintaining a clean and safe environment from the bathrooms, to the pool deck, and …” Greg raised a cautionary finger, before continuing, “maintaining proper pH and chlorine levels in the pool.” Terri did stay vigilant when in the guard chair, her eyes peeled for any sort of trouble in or out of the pool. Even when scrubbing tiles, she kept a watchful eye on the tireless clusters of children bobbing in place while chattering rapid-fire over each other or racing from one of the pool end to the other. Parents, sitting in lounge and deck chairs, also kept a watchful eye. “Timmy, I told you to wait thirty minutes after lunch before going back in,” one mother said, motioning for her son to exit the pool. “Mo-o-om,” Timmy said, “I’m fine.” His mother walked up to the pool edge and indexed-fingered him out of the water. Typical day at the pool, Terri thought as she exited the shallow end. On the way to the clubhouse to return the bucket and sponge, her mind drifted to the hubbub of the upcoming weekend. And with Matt, a Bethany Beach ocean guard—whom her mother described as “dangerously handsome”—wanting to take their relationship to a more “personal place”—it could get very interesting this upcoming Fourth of July weekend.