Red Kayak Read online

  Tilly started barking as I picked up speed.

  “Quiet!” I hollered.

  I wondered if I should waste my time going up any of these little creeks and inlets now that they had found Mrs. DiAngelo downriver. But Tilly was barking up a storm and stood with her nose pointed toward the riverbank, where some of the water curled into a small cove.

  It was hard to ignore Tilly’s instincts. Once, she barked at the ceiling in our basement so insistently that my father pulled down part of the insulation and found a possum’s nest made out of leaves.

  “Better not be a squirrel or something stupid like that,” I grumbled as I swung the boat toward the cove. I bit my lip uncertainly.

  Suddenly Tilly had her front paws up on the edge of my boat. Her tail thumped back and forth, hitting my knees.

  “What is it, Til?” I asked, squinting to see through the drizzle.

  I slowed down the motor as we approached the narrow channel to the cove. Tall marsh grass obscured my view to the right, but as soon as we had motored around it, I glimpsed the remains of an old dock—a place where J.T., Digger, and I used to fish—and a single, bright spot of yellow.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  It was Ben. But as I drew closer I could see that he was motionless, his small body hunched forward, the back of his life jacket caught on a jagged piece of old piling that jutted out of the water like a rotten tooth.

  “Ben! Are you okay?” I hollered, pulling the boat up alongside.

  His eyes weren’t right.

  “Move!” I ordered Tilly. Right away she jumped back into the narrow space in the bow.

  I flipped the engine into neutral and reached over to pull in Ben. He was a lot heavier than I would have thought, probably because he was so waterlogged. The water was cold, too. I grabbed hold of the collar on his life jacket and summoned all my strength to “unhook” him from that piece of wood. For a second, I lost my balance and nearly went in headfirst myself. But I fell backward instead, never letting go, and managed to pull Ben into my boat on top of me. It was a rough landing, and I hit my elbow hard on the gunnel. I just hoped I hadn’t hurt Ben.

  The first thing I did was get his wet life jacket off—that and his soaked parka. Then I took off my own coat, wrapped it around him, and put my baseball cap on his head. I rubbed his hands. I patted his cheeks. But he looked terrible lying there on the damp wooden floor of my boat, his face pale as a sheet, his eyes half shut and his lips as blue as a fresh bruise.

  I was scared to death because I didn’t know what to do! I pulled the cell phone out of my pocket, but my hand was shaking so bad that the phone slipped right out of my grasp, hit the edge of the boat, and disappeared into the water.

  “Oh, no!” I exclaimed.

  I looked back at Ben. He needed help. I had to quit messing around.

  What do I do? What do I do? I was asking myself. What would Carl do? And I remembered those guys at the fire station talking about the ABC’s. The first thing you did in an emergency was ABC’s.

  A was airways. I looked at Ben’s nose. Clear as far as I could tell. Quickly, but gently—I knew you had to handle cold people carefully because of their hearts, their hearts can go kind of nuts and not beat right—I rolled him onto his left side. Some water trickled out of his mouth.

  “Good,” I said out loud. “Good, Ben.”

  B was what? B was breathing. Was Ben breathing?

  I pulled the choke out to flood the motor and shut it off so I could hear. But I couldn’t hear anything! I put a finger under his nose and didn’t feel anything. Was it because my fingers were numb with cold? I stared at his chest, but I couldn’t see it moving. Quickly, I felt with two fingers against his throat for that artery, the big one up there under your jaw. But I couldn’t feel anything.

  No, I decided. Ben wasn’t breathing.

  Quickly now—I knew I had to—I rolled Ben back onto his back, then I bent over, pinched his nose shut, covered his small mouth with mine, and gave him two breaths. His lips were so cold they didn’t feel real.

  I checked again. He still wasn’t breathing.

  C. I remembered that C was circulation. Ben needed his blood to be moving around, too.

  “Oh, God ,” I moaned, thinking: I’ve got to do it. I’ve got to do CPR! I had been taught how—Dad and I took a class at the community center. We practiced on a dummy, and I watched Carl do it more than once. But would I remember?

  I tilted Ben’s head back a little, pinched his nose again, and started by giving him one breath. Then I sat up, put the heel of my right hand on his chest, covered it with my left, and pressed down. Five times I pressed down. Five compressions. Then I bent over for another breath. Then five compressions. Then another breath. Then five compressions.

  I did not think about anything else as I did this. All I was doing was counting and pushing and breathing and praying inside that Ben would start breathing.

  “Come on, Ben!” I begged him.

  Five compressions. Then another breath. Breathe, Ben, breathe!

  Ben needed to get to that ambulance fast. I had to get him down to the marina at Rock Hall. It wasn’t that far, but I wasn’t going to get there sitting here in the creek.

  Five compressions. Another breath.

  I paused long enough to start the motor again and put the boat in gear.

  Five compressions. One breath.

  Then I headed my skiff in the right direction, grabbed the stern line, and looped it around the outboard’s handle.

  Back to Ben. Five compressions. One breath.

  Quickly, I reached for the stern line and wrapped it around a cleat to keep the motor straight.

  Five compressions. Another breath.

  As if all that wasn’t bad enough, it started to rain hard, too.

  I ignored it. I ignored the rain, the cold—everything—and just continued. Five compressions, another breath, a quick check to make sure the boat was headed in the right direction.

  I glanced up and down, but there was no one in the river. No one! I headed the boat downstream to Rock Hall and kept working on Ben.

  Five compressions, one breath. All the way down the river with the rain lashing my face and blurring my eyes until I saw a whirring ambulance light at the landing in the distance.

  I kept on with the CPR. I knew I couldn’t stop. Maybe I should have. I could have slammed the boat into high gear and opened the throttle. But I also knew that Ben needed me to keep breathing into him.

  Five compressions, one breath. We were almost at the landing. I heard someone yell my name, and Tilly started barking. Then more people were hollering, and there was a bank of flashing lights. At least two police cars, an ambulance. It was all a welcome blur. I continued with five compressions, one breath.

  Suddenly Jimmy Landers, one of Carl’s coworkers, was hollering real loud. “Keep it up, Brady! Keep it up! That’s it! Pull the boat in—we’ve got it! Don’t stop, Brady!”

  Things happened even faster after that. Jimmy was down beside me taking over, then lifting Ben up onto the dock, where Carl took him and continued the CPR. Then Jimmy jumped back up on the dock, too, and I saw Carl place his fingers on Ben’s neck, checking for a pulse. Someone else pulled in the boat while Carl and Jimmy kept working on Ben, even as they carried him to the ambulance.

  Before a policeman closed the back doors of the ambulance, Carl shouted, “We’ve got a pulse!” There wasn’t time for him to say anything more. The doors were closed and the ambulance took off, siren wailing, lights flashing.

  Completely out of breath, I stood on the landing—I don’t have a clue how I got there—and watched the lights disappear. I thought about how we were all going to be on that rescue show. We were all going to be on Rescue 911, I thought. All of us, I bet. Tilly, too.

  A policeman came over and put his arm around my shoulders. “Good job, son,” he said. He led me over to his cruiser and gave me a jacket. “Go ahead. Get inside and warm up.”

  “My dog,” I mumbled. I wa
s so out of breath I felt dizzy. “I can’t leave my dog in the boat.”

  The policeman called for someone to get Tilly, and both of us, Tilly and I, got in the backseat of the cruiser to warm up.

  “They’re taking him over to Lester Krebb’s field, where they’ve got a medevac helicopter coming,” the policeman told me. He pulled out a notebook. “When you’re ready, I need you to give us a little report.”

  I told him how I had found Ben. When the officer was satisfied, he offered me a ride home in the cruiser. But I wanted to get my boat back, too. I assured him I could get home on my own.

  “I don’t doubt it,” he said, grinning.

  The rain had let up some, so the policeman let us go. He said he would call both my parents to let them know I was okay and that I was headed home.

  Back in the boat, I put Ben’s life jacket and his soaked parka to one side and picked up my Orioles hat from the floor, where I’d done the CPR on Ben. It must have fallen off when they picked him up. It felt a little strange, putting that hat back on my head after what it had just been through. But my head was cold. And I needed to get started.

  Everyone else had left the landing by then. It was over. I began to feel a little relieved. Tilly and I headed upriver just as it started to rain hard again. But Carl’s voice—We’ve got a pulse!— echoed in my ears, and I smiled. I think I could have driven through a blizzard right then. I felt both drained and elated.

  I’ll tell you this: I am not the type of person who prays very much. Hardly at all really. But about a minute later, I stopped that boat right in the middle of the Corsica River, in the pouring rain, to fold my hands. I just sat there with the engine in neutral, resting my head against the fingers of my tightly folded hands, because it had just hit me what happened. I’m not saying I cried, mind you, but I did have tears in my eyes.

  I thought about how it all happened. About fate. I mean, what if Dad hadn’t been working in the shop that Monday? Normally, he’d be out on the water. If he had been, he wouldn’t have come to get me out of school. There wouldn’t have been the extra person to check the little creeks and coves the way I did.

  I knew then I would never be the same person anymore. Because that day on the Corsica River, the day I lifted Ben off the piling, I had straddled the invisible line between life and death that runs down all our lives every second—with every breath we take. And thanks to some good luck and timing—thanks to Tilly, and God, too—I had pulled Benjamin DiAngelo from one side to the other.

  CHAPTER SIX

  I didn’t set out to be a hero. Honest. I just wanted Ben and his mother to be okay.

  It’s true I thought about that rescue show. I even wondered if they’d ask Tilly and me to do the reenactment. And I was sure Mrs. DiAngelo would thank me personally because she was such a nice person. I even envisioned her bringing me a plate of that almond biscotti I raved about at her house. But I didn’t think anyone else would make a real big deal out of what happened.

  As I drove the boat home after the rescue, I made a decision. I would give Ben my entire set of LEGOs Aquanauts. The little deep-sea divers had been my favorites. But I didn’t play with them anymore, and I kind of liked the idea of Ben having them there when he got home from the hospital.

  At the dock, Mom waited for me under an umbrella. I wondered how much the policeman had told her when he called. I also wondered what she and Dad were going to say when they found out I dropped our cell phone in the water.

  Slowing the motor, I steered my skiff up close to shore so Tilly could hop out in the shallow water. Then I backed the boat up into the slip, turned off the motor, wrapped lines from the dock around my cleats, and threw Ben’s coat and life jacket up on the dock. The wooden ladder was slick from the rain. I held tight as I took each step and pulled myself up onto the dock.

  “I just talked to Carl,” Mom said, opening her arms.

  I hugged her back. Tilly ran up on the dock and nuzzled our legs, her big, wet body practically knocking us over. I was glad to be home, but my heart still pounded. And every time I thought of how Ben looked with his eyes half closed and his lips all blue, I turned to jelly inside.

  “Come and get some dry clothes on,” my mother said, pushing the wet hair off my forehead. When she bent over to pick up Ben’s stuff, I offered to carry it.

  Tilly shook herself off and walked up the hill with us.

  It had only been a few hours since I left for school that morning, but as I entered the house, it felt as though I’d been away for a year. The smallest things seemed so welcoming. The vase Mom had made in her pottery class filled with dried cattails. The small mahogany table with the picture of me from sixth grade. The way Dad’s dirt-caked work boots rested on a piece of newspaper inside the door.

  I put Ben’s things on the floor and wiped Tilly off with an old bath towel we kept in a basket inside the front door. Then I took off my wet shoes and went down the hall to my room. When I opened the door, a bubbling, underwater sound filled my ears. It was only the fish-tank screensaver I’d left on the computer, but I turned it off before taking a long, hot shower. By the time I was getting dressed again, I could hear my father’s voice in the kitchen.

  Mom had a cup of hot chocolate waiting for me and pulled out a chair.

  “Good job, Brady,” Dad said, shaking my hand, then pulling me over for a big hug. He was wet to the bone, but I didn’t care. “Some morning, wasn’t it?”

  “Unbelievable,” I said. “Where were you?”

  “Most of us went on down the river toward Queenstown thinkin’ the current pulled the kayak that way. We figured they’d all end up in the bay, probably down toward the bridge somewhere.”

  “You know, it was Tilly who made me look over toward that little place off the river,” I told Dad. “I’m not sure I would have gone in there and seen Ben if Tilly hadn’t barked up a storm.”

  “Good girl!” Dad clapped his hands softly, and Tilly rushed to him for a vigorous scratch behind the ears.

  “I forgot about that place,” I told Dad. “You know where I’m talking about? J.T., Digger, and I used to go fishing there? Swimming, too, sometimes.”

  “Oh, yeah. There’s an old dock—”

  “That’s it!” I said.

  “Well, I’ll be.” Dad shook his head and patted my shoulder. Then he went to change into dry clothes. Afterward, we sat at the kitchen table for a long time talking about everything, so Mom heard the whole story a couple of times. She made us thick turkey sandwiches, then cut up an apple and sliced some cheese. Both Dad and I were starved for lunch.

  It felt great to have done what I did and to have both my parents so proud of me. They didn’t even care about the cell phone I lost. Dad dismissed it with a wave of his hand. “We can get another one of those easy.”

  Before we even finished eating, though, the telephone started ringing. Word had gotten around. The first call was from Carl, who had just driven the ambulance back to the station. My father talked to him briefly, then handed me the phone.

  “You okay?” Carl asked.

  “Fine,” I said. “How’s Ben?”

  “They airlifted him over to Children’s Hospital down in D.C.,” Carl said.

  “Did his mother go, too?”

  “No, but his father was there. He went,” Carl said. “They took the mother down to Easton. But I think she’s okay, Brady. She was able to talk a little after they got her warmed up at the hospital.”

  “Did she tell you what happened?” I still didn’t know how they lost the kayak.

  “She says it was getting windy and rough. She tried to take it to shore, some little cove somewhere, she said. She was almost to shore, but couldn’t quite make it because the kayak was so full of water. All of a sudden, she said, it was gone. She said she managed to hook Ben to a piece of old piling before she got pulled out with the current.”

  “How long were they in the water?” I asked.

  “She’s not sure.”

  “Did she sa
y why, Carl? Why’d they go out there on such a bad day?”

  “Ben wanted a ride before they went away for a couple days. She said he loved that kayak and begged for one little ride before they left.”

  While he was talking, I tried to picture in my mind what had happened and felt all over again how scared they must have been.

  “I just wanted to tell you what a super job you did, Brady. Everyone’s talking about it. Down here at the station, we’re real proud of you. I told your dad, I said, ‘Let the kid take tomorrow off, he deserves it.’”

  “Oh—thanks, Carl. But I can’t. I’ve got a social studies exam.”

  “Suit yourself,” Carl said. “You want a ride in the morning? I’ll flash my lights for you all the way.”

  “Nah, it’s okay.” I knew tomorrow was Carl’s day off. “I can take the bus.”

  “All right. But you take it easy, you hear?”

  “I will.”

  We hung up, and right away the phone rang again. This time it was Captain Dressler from the fire department telling me what a superb effort I had made. He said he was going to recommend me for some kind of award.

  Later, after school was out, the phone rang some more. Two kids from my class wanted to know if it was true. My uncle Henry down in Grasonville called to say he heard about it at the gas station. Then, at eight o’clock that night, when I was taking Tilly outside, a reporter called.

  I had talked to a reporter once before, when I was nine and a newspaper did a story on me being one of the youngest kids in Maryland to have a commercial crab license. It was different then because Mom and Dad were with me, and they did half the talking. This time Mom asked me first if I wanted to be interviewed. When I shrugged, she handed me the phone and went back to the kitchen.

  “Here,” Dad offered. “I’ll take Tilly outside.”

  I sat down in Dad’s chair in the living room and put my feet up on the hassock while the reporter and I talked. He seemed like a nice guy. Craig somebody. He said what I did was pretty amazing, and he wanted to hear the whole story—everything. So I told him. Except that I didn’t include how we’d seen the red kayak that morning, and how we didn’t bother to call out a warning.