One One-Thousand

One One-Thousand

I love her. I have always loved her. The realisation dawns on me and takes my breath away, what little I have left. I rock back on my heels and resume pumping her chest, struggling to recall my High School First Aid class from thirty years before. Her body feels cold, lifeless, fragile under my rough hands: how I imagine her corpse will feel. Light-headed from the rescue breathing, I try to bury the thought and concentrate instead on squeezing her reluctant corpuscles around her body. One one-thousand, two one-thousand...

Like the rhythmic ticking of a metronome, the mantra running through my head winds back the decades to a summer afternoon on the family farm where I’m playing Hide ’n Seek with friends. There were five of us in the gang. The two girls called it a club, but Billy, Toby, and I knew it was a gang. We’d only let the girls join because Susan was Billy’s kid sister and he insisted. And as for Sam, she was more like a boy anyway, with her short spiky hair that she usually wore orange, or occasionally purple. That afternoon, Billy was taking charge, as usual.

“This is how we’ll do it,” he said. “One of us goes off and hides, and after thirty seconds the other four go looking.”

“Seeking,” I said, striving for consistency, even back then. He ignored me.

“If you find the hider, you hide with them, so now there are only three of us looking.”

“Seeking,” I muttered.

“And so on, until we’re all back together. Then we start again.”

“How do we know what thirty seconds is?” asked Sam. None of us had a watch.

“You count them, like this: one Mississippi, two Mississippis...up to thirty,”said Billy impatiently.

“That’s silly,” said Sam. “You can’t have thirty Mississippis; one is more than enough. How about one hippopotamus, two hippopotamuses...?”

“Hippopotami,” I said.

“It should be one Donizetti, two Donizettis...” said Toby, who was musical. “After all, we’re playing Haydn Seek... Get it?” None of us did, so he had to explain. “Their lives overlapped you know,” he said, trying to cover his tracks.

“I prefer Donny Osmond,” said Sam.

“It’s one one-thousand, two one-thousand...” said Susan, settling the argument; “and I’m going to hide, so shut your eyes and start counting.”

I was the first to find her, nestling between two hay bales in the barn loft.

“Oh, good; I hoped it would be you,” she said, smiling up at me and making my heart lurch. “But what took you so long?” I squeezed in beside her, not knowing how to reply. “When I grow up, I’m going to remember this afternoon,” she said, leaning against my shoulder. Then she closed her eyes and kissed me.

Until today, that was the only time our lips had touched. Last time they were warmer and not so blue, I think. Nine one-thousand, ten one-thousand...

The reunion had been Billy’s idea. We’d all kept in touch, more or less, exchanging Christmas cards and so on, but never quite managing to get together since graduation.

“This year, let’s just do it,” he said over the phone. “None of us are getting any younger.”

‘Is,’ I thought, my training as an editor never far from the surface.

“It’ll be just like old times,” he added.

I had my doubts about that, but all I said was: “okay.”

Billy insisted we came without partners which suited me well, so there we were—the old gang—drinking and lounging on the dock of the family farm I’d inherited a couple of years before. We’d been swimming earlier, but now it was getting dark and the harvest moon was rising over the river, adding its soft light to the hurricane lantern I’d lit at dusk.

Slightly buzzed from the wine, I gazed in fascination at Sam’s hair which was dyed in a checkerboard pattern of black and white squares. How did she do that... and why? 

“You married, Billy?” asked Sam, out of the blue.

“Between wives,” he said shortly. “Again.”

“How come you’ve never been married, Sam?” asked Toby. “You’re not...” he paused. “You’re not... you know, are you?”

“Well, duh!” said Sam. “I thought you all knew; Susan certainly does. I came on to her once, after the Senior Prom it was. Remember, love? No dice, in case you lecherous men were wondering,” she added. Toby looked uncomfortable.

“But you know I love you, sweetie...” said Susan. 

“...just not in that way,” they said in unison, as if they’d rehearsed it.

“More’s the pity,” murmured Sam, looking at me.

“We should play Hide ’n Seek,” I said, trying to ease Toby’s embarrassment.

“No, we shouldn’t,” said Sam. “You and Susan would go off and neck in the barn, and it would take forever for the rest of us to find you, just like last time.”

I joined Toby in his embarrassment.

“Let’s see which of us can hold their breath the longest underwater,” suggested Billy, always competitive.

“Forget that,” said Sam. “Do you have any idea how long it took me to dye my hair like this?”

“I’ll give it a try,” said Susan, “but not against you, Toby. You hold your breath for a living. You can count the Donizettis instead.”

“Fancy your remembering that,” said Toby, who played the French horn in a national orchestra.

“I remember everything about that afternoon,” she replied, catching my eye.

Standing on the dock with her toes curling over the edge, Susan began taking deep breaths to prepare herself for the challenge.

“Are there any water snakes?” she asked me.

“It’s all right, you won’t bother them,” I said.

She stuck her tongue out at me, as if we were back in kindergarten.

Ignoring Billy’s contest, Sam asked me: “how ’bout you? How’s your love life?” Susan stood very still.

“Well, after College, I got married,” I said, “the way one does...” Susan’s final breath sounded more like a sigh.

“Here’s goes nothing then,” she said, almost to herself. Then “’Bye, everyone,” and she jumped into the darkness.

“Start counting, Tobe,” said Billy.

“One one-thousand, two one-thousand...”

“...but it didn’t work out, so I got divorced. The way one does,” I added, as I watched Susan’s ripples spreading across the water and catching the moonlight.

“Twenty one-thousand...” Toby counted off the passing seconds. “Thirty one-thousand...”

“How long can people hold their breath?” asked Sam.

“Without training? About a minute,” said Toby. “Sixty one-thousand...” 

“She’s just trying to impress you,” Sam said to me. 

Me? I thought. Why me, especially?

“Seventy one-thousand...”

“When should we panic?” asked Sam.

“Now!” I said, as the penny finally dropped. I leapt into the water.

Feeling around, I found her almost immediately, lying motionless on the river bottom. Thank goodness, she hadn’t tried to hide. I dragged her body back to the surface, and three speechless friends reached down to help me haul her onto the dock.

“Stand back!” I said, sounding like someone who knew what he was doing.

One one-thousand, two one-thousand...

“It’s no use, she’s gone,” sobs Sam after a while.

No! I think. Not just when I’ve found her. I pinch her nostrils, blow in more rescue breaths and then start the next round of chest compressions. But I’m beginning to tire, and the thought that it’s time to give up lurks in the shadows, creeping ever closer.

“Let me take over,” says Billy. No, she’s mine, and it’s all my fault, I think. But I’m desperate now, light-headed, tears streaming down my face. How can you ever stop giving CPR? One one-thousand, two one-thousand... 

At the end I’m gasping, exhausted, beaten. The night closes in around me, but through the roaring in my ears, do I hear a voice?

“What took you so long?”

THE END