Each one a nation, p.1
Each One a Nation, page 1
D.S. Davis
Each One a Nation
First published by Nightbloomer Publishing 2024
Copyright © 2024 by D.S. Davis
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise without written permission from the publisher. It is illegal to copy this book, post it to a website, or distribute it by any other means without permission.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author's imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
First edition
ISBN: 978-1-7336438-9-4
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For my friends.
For Raymond E. Stryjewski and Raymond E. Stryjewski Jr.
For Rick Maida
I
Part I: The Potential
“If youth is the season of hope, it is often so only in the sense that our elders are hopeful about us; for no age is so apt as youth to think its emotions, partings, and resolves are the last of their kind.”
George Eliot, Middlemarch
One
“Man cannot be God but he can create in the way God does,” says the slouched old man behind the metal desk. He repeats the mantra thrice, as he does every morning as soon as he sits in his chair. “Man cannot be God,” he says a final time, raising a finger to the sky, “but, he can create in the way God does.”
His office is completely dark. His warped fingers hover over the top of his desk while his Vulcan toes waggle in tube socks beneath it. He opens his eyes and ends his mantra. A saber of light materializes under the door, diluting the darkness before correcting itself into a soft, fluorescent underglow that warms the room. The walls around his person illuminate and the eyes of hundreds of framed headshots appear from the black. They are all his creations. They stare down at him from the white brick and in the final quiet moment, before anyone comes through the door, he consults them silently. Then the door swings open and the light shines in. His son, Bobby Jr., enters with an armful of groceries and the other hand wrapped around a gas station coffee.
“Otno, Bobbo, how they swingin’?” he asks his son.
“Eh, low and heavy, Pa,” says Bobby, “they could use a tug in the right direction.”
The two smile but regard each other like mangey dogs both tired and sublime, badgered by week after week of early mornings and focus. On the other side of the door is a warm, steamy room made completely of glass. White banners containing names and precise times from yesterday’s champions hang high against the bright red rafters of the Gwinnett Aquatics Center — owned by the county but operated by Robert Catman Sr. through his Gwinnett Aquatics Team, the greatest that greater Atlanta has ever seen. He has been the program’s director for over forty years and has shed literal blood, literal sweat and literal tears on almost every square inch of the building. He has slept, on many a night, in his office, in his chair, sitting straight up, just thinking about the next day.
For Bob Jr. though, it is the opposite. He showed up one day when he was four, and now he looks around, nearly forty, and has yet to leave for any extended period. All of Bobby’s full-color memories exist with shades of red and white and in the light of water. The two men sit around and discuss their charges until, after a while, they begin to arrive. They funnel in like refugees and listen to clicky music in over-ear headphones and acknowledge one another with animal grunts and spasms of the jawline. Almost always, they are eating. They eat from the second they wake up until the moment they fall fast asleep on their parents’ kitchen tables with their hair not yet dry. They disappear behind industrial doors and the arena is silent again for a small while as the water continues to tremble from the slamming of the doors.
Eventually, Senior appears on the catwalk above and rests his elbows on the metal. His concept of what is before him is bastardized by nostalgia the way spaces become when a person has done too many things well within their borders. The building has not merged with the self the way countries do to dictators, but rather, it has elevated itself from the natural plane to that of the old man’s mind and molded in as somewhere else. He can go there at any time.
The athletes file out to the near pool and begin plopping into it as Junior hustles down the stairs and begins to politic among the rank. He interacts with whatever few will acknowledge him and pulls a couple more aside for what he calls “baby-step chats.” Nearly one hundred swimmers, split unevenly into two teams now move in and out of the water, in the midst of routines that are so routine they no longer need to make sense.
Three of the underclass group meet between the locker rooms to chat with the eyes of Senior watching them intently from above. The smallest of them, a girl named Mallory, is also the smartest. She carries herself inwardly, as though it’s possible for one to curl up into oneself and disappear to somewhere more comfortable. Newly fifteen, she’s found herself oddly renewed by high school. Peyton, the tallest of the three but only by a small amount, is still very much a boy, with dangling arms and unsightly kneecaps and a keen clumsiness in both speech and motion. The third is Sloane Streeter, who has been flawlessly charismatic and dexterous since she first drew breath. The three have been friends and neighbors for the entirety of their young lives. They exist as a thing apart from the rest of their peers; a unit, a tribe, something built by time. They discuss the upcoming weeks for the two members not yet present.
“Devyn’s dad comes home next Friday; Seth’s next Wednesday,” says Peyton Crow, stretching his arms and tugging at the length of his goggles.
“It’s going to be hell for Devyn,” says Mallory, sitting on the soggy floor in a butterfly stretch.
“Sure is,” says Sloane, who sits on the bench, waiting.
“But Seth likes his dad, right?” asks Mallory.
“Sure does,” says Peyton. “Love’s him.”
“Does Seth’s dad like Devyn’s dad?” asks Sloane.
“Hell no,” Peyton and Mallory answer in unison.
“What about your dad?” Sloane asks Peyton.
They all pause and wait for Peyton’s reply.
“My dad doesn’t trust either of them.”
They can feel Catman pacing above them which means he is going to press the timer soon. The GAT sessions do not have an approximate start time. The rule is that the session will begin sometime between five and five-fifteen, but if Catman has already turned on the timer and a person is not in the water, they’re cooked, they’re toast, they are eviscerated to the degree that GAT swimmers often, in their college years, counsel one another about the possibility that it was all just a weird collective dream and that none of it actually happened. Catman didn’t exist. They didn’t reach actual heights in a very difficult sport. Things were never broken until they were obscenely older versions of themselves. They give one another therapy in loud undergraduate bars and wonder if it could be possible that they had just been through something really torturous, but that somehow it made up their fondest memories. Had they, they wonder aloud, somehow enjoyed a very pleasurable collective amnesia?
Peyton stares blankly into the white banners with their names and their times. He’s hypnotized by the faint blips of moments caused by the air conditioning that makes it all look like a cohesive, silent wave, like grains fainting slightly in the breeze.
“Otnow! I’m warning y’all today,” says the crackling Cajun voice from above, “if y’all ain’t in the water by the sounda this horn I swear to God.”
Peyton, Sloane, and Mallory sprint across the deck and dive in. They appear at the surface with crooked goggles while the upperclassmen in the next pool shake their heads in a terrified attempt at pity. Seth McWhite treads among them. He is a sly junior, tall, lean but already beginning to curdle slightly along the rims of his hips. He is the oldest of his friends; all he wishes to do is graduate and to be done with the madness and the meaninglessness of youth.
Old Robert Catman Sr. begins to labor first to the stairs and then down them, slowly approaching each step, slowly lowering himself to the next step. Finally, he reaches the pool.
“Otnow!” he repeats. “Here-uh we go.”
He slams his hand against the buzzer. It gives slightly but does not activate the timer. He watches in horror as none of his athletes move.
“What’ina hell?” he mutters.
His temper flares, but before he explodes his son steps in and says, “Timer’s jammed, Coach; give it another press.”
The elder Catman says, “Ark,” and presses the button. The buzzer sounds with one sharp and aggressive noise and the water begins to move in a cycling orchestration underneath the old man. Fountains of it splash into the air behind and between the young swimmers while buckets worth of it bail over the pool’s boundaries and onto the aerated deck. The sounds of splashing and gasping and hands slapping water echo loudly throughout the arena while the sun begins to rise, littering the gray light with shades of radiant orange. Somehow, from all of it, the Catman duo begin analyzing and evaluating individuals. Bobby Jr. has never taken attendance formally, as he can do so simply by watching them warm up. He works lane by lane, splash by splash to find missing bodies and he notices one today. Devyn Del Rio is absent.
“Y’all look like cabuncha floatin’ floaters. My god, boy! Like some turds the
Bobby, feeling like his dad wastes a tremendous amount of time and energy on grandstanding, does not acknowledge him. But his dad continues anyway, berating the team before sounding the buzzer again, bringing the session to a stop.
“I swear to God we will stay here all day. You will miss school if this is how this morning is going to go.”
As a lecture ensues, Bobby notices that the door behind Senior is opening, and Devyn is pointing her head through to see if the coast is clear. Bobby, aiming to cause a distraction, sees the opportunity to do the very thing that would hold his father’s attention the longest. He plans to agree with him.
“Dammit!” he yells.
The entire crowd of swimmers in the pool turn to face him at once, and so does Senior.
“Dammit, Coach! You’re right, you’re so right, an absolute buncha turds! Some turds in the pool! Some gotdang turds, Coach!”
As a glimmer of hope cringes across the old man’s face, Devyn squat-runs through the door and into the locker room to change quickly and attempt to sneak by again.
“Well anuhway,” grunts Senior, “let’s get on with it.”
He slaps the buzzer again and waddles back to the stairs, climbs halfway up, catches his breath, and begins again as Devyn pokes her head from the locker room, sees the old man on the stairs, sprints across the deck and dives in, just nearly missing Peyton Crow in lane two.
Senior settles into his spot on the balcony outside of his office, his forearms resting on the cold red metal. This is what he calls the conditioning phase of his program. “You want to be a swimmer?” he often asks them. “Then get in the pool and swim.” The juniors, seniors, and any visiting professionals get the far pool. From there, they watch as the younger kids go through what they’ve had to go through themselves, and a small part of each of them feels something borderline sexual about seeing it done to someone else.
“It’s called conditioning,” says Seth to Max Crow, Peyton’s older brother, “not so much because of the physical condition we obtain, but because they are literally conditioning us.”
“They call it conditioning, what’s the big deal?” says Max. “We get in, we swim, it’s conditioning. We go home, we eat something. What? What do you want?.”
“But they are teaching us to honor them with our pain,” says Seth, “to give them our pain so that they may approve of us.”
“We’re seventeen, man,” says Max, “we’re seventeen and we’re at swim practice. People have done this for decades; centuries.”
Catman yells a hawkish threat at them from above.
“Otnow, old folks, I’m wutchin’ yull too now!”
Every swimmer in the far pool simultaneously splashes below the surface and begins to move laterally. Meanwhile, in the near pool, some of the younger kids have given up. They resort to a death clench on the side of the pool and try to look miserable enough for somebody to feel bad for them. A few of them begin laughing at their own doom. They are new, only babies, and do not understand that they are committing mortal sins. Among them is Peyton Crow, who thinks of his mother and what she might have to say about it all.
“Crow!” screeches Senior. “Whatinuh?”
He begins his trek back down from his perch in the same painful way as before. Peyton spazzes between jumping into the water and awaiting his punishment. He nearly forgets how to breathe. When Senior reaches the bottom, he kicks off his sandals and clops through the newly splashed puddles of water accumulating on the deck. A few of the wall stragglers have returned to the fray, but Peyton, feeling himself dead in the rights, grips weakly to the wall and waits for the pending thunder. Senior reaches the boy and drops to his knees next to him.
“Crow,” he whispers, bending very close to the boy’s face, “listena me. You are very weak, you are not good at swimmin.’ But your brothers are big guys, they’re athletic, your father was athletic. Otnow, you’ll figure this all out.”
Peyton nods his quivering, goggled face feeling something like love toward the old man.
“But until then,” says Catman, his demeanor changing drastically, “you’ll swim.” He unhooks Peyton’s fingers from the wall with his crooked toes and watches him fall beneath the water. The older kids who have stopped again to watch begin to laugh, which draws his fury back to them.
“Otnow!” he shouts and begins his slow creep around the close pool’s perimeter. But he stops to grab Bobby by the arm, leaning in and telling him, “Listen, Bobby, that little bitch was late and you helped her sneak in. Don’t do it again.”
He continues on to the other side of the pool where he commences to target somebody else. Junior leans over the side of the pool to check on Peyton Crow, who has yet to emerge. He’s just sitting down there dreaming about being at home, about it not being so early, about a coach who isn’t a tyrant, about girls. What do girls feel like? he thinks. But he runs out of breath and begins his sad journey to the surface where he breaches into the echoing sound of Robert Catman Sr. eliminating an upperclassman verbally. He has half a mind to just grab a gulp of air and head back down. He feels like a terrified little boy in front of his friends, and he wants to never feel that way again.
“Swim, Peyton!” yells Bobby. “Just go slow but don’t stop.”
Peyton begins to kick and throws his hands forward, drawing the water to his sides, he slowly moves across the water’s horizon.
When the puking begins, Catman calls it quits for the day, but only physically. The upperclassmen are dismissed and head to their respective locker rooms to change. Senior gathers the remaining fifty athletes on a single set of small bleachers. They are forced to cram in so that everyone, even in their soaking wet suits, fits. No towels are permitted. No talking is permitted. If anyone talks, they are ordered back into the water where they will swim until his speech has concluded. Peyton Crow, Devyn Del Rio, and Mallory Barber sit crammed together in the middle of the crowd. Peyton mumbles to himself about how he is surely going to quit.
“Peyton, shh,” Mallory says, “you know what he’ll do.”
Peyton quiets instantly as Robert Catman Sr. begins to speak.
“Otno,” he says, “look around the place, look at the banners, how do you think this all happens? Do you think these names just get sewed on by a little fairy when yull aren’t here? Nope, that ain’t it. See, all this takes some time and effort and all I’m seeing out of yull is attendance and infirmity. Laziness, sloth, apathy. Yull show up late, yull half-arse the reps, and yull wonder why our best days seem to be behind us.”
The whole lot of them scatter their eyes around the ceiling like spotlights pretending to see beyond the dank semi-darkness of the open arena. Catman seems to stare at all of them and none of them at once as he waits for a representative to step up and say something. After an anxious moment, they avert their glances from the banners on the walls and the ceiling to each other, desperately scanning for the one who is going to speak for them. A nervous heat rises over them.
“Yuhnowut,” he says, sighing, “y’all ain’t even worth it. Sit here together until it’s right.”
With that, he wheels around and dives into the pool, appearing yards beyond his point of impact, and gliding gracefully but very powerfully to the opposite side of the pool, where he pulls himself out, recovers his flip flops, and begins his painful ascent up the red stairs. His flip flops fart and suck beneath his feet until he disappears behind his office door.
“Figure…it out?” asks Sloane Streeter.
“I think we’re supposed to all chat about what we could do better and send a representative up there to tell him what our plan is,” says Mallory.
“But Mallory,” says Sloane, “send somebody up there?”
“I’ll do it,” says Devyn, “I’ll tell him our effort was poor and that we’d be better tomorrow.”
The pale, bony girl appears from the crowd and slops through the puddles and up the clanky stairs to the office where she disappears behind the door.
“Oh my God,” says Peyton Crow, doing the sign of the cross for good measure.
