The Lifeguard

If Tropicana Cherry is your strain, this is your sign: the Lifeguard. The town pool at the top of the valley, the hottest afternoon of the year, a deck too hot to stand on, and you standing on it anyway with the whistle at your lips, counting heads in tens.

If Tropicana Cherry is your strain

You are the one who watches so everyone else can play. On the hottest afternoon of the year, when the whole town has given up and come down to the water, you climb the tall chair, settle the red float across your knees and start counting. Heat that flattens other people wakes you up; the hotter it gets, the clearer you see. You like a full pool the way some people like a full house.

You see everything at once and say very little. One short whistle and a pointed finger is a whole paragraph where you come from. You count heads in tens without moving your lips, you know who is tired before they do, and you can tell from the shape of the one cloud on the far peak whether it is coming this way.

At your best you make a crowded, noisy place safe enough to get louder. People jump higher off your board. They try the deep end for the first time because you are there, and they never quite notice that you were the reason. You are sweet with everyone and sour about exactly one thing, which is running on the deck, and the town loves you for both.

Your flaw is that you never stop counting. You count heads at the grocery store, at weddings, in the back of the bus. You once counted a whole choir twice during a single song. On your one afternoon off you sat beside somebody else’s pool and caught yourself checking their deep end. The people who love you have learned to say “everybody out” when it is your turn to rest.

What you need is shade, a tall chair, water clear enough to see the drain, a thermometer that tells the truth, and the ten minutes after the gate is locked, when the pool goes flat and the whole bright, cold, impossible thing is finally yours.

Your hour: The hottest afternoon of the year
Your place: The tall chair by the deep end
Your object: A silver whistle on a red lanyard
Your tempo: Ten heads at a time
Your weather: Heat shimmer, one cloud on the peak
Your flaw: You never stop counting

Your people

The Sprinter (Green Crack)The Sprinter has never once walked on your deck. You whistle, she waves on the way past, and you both enjoy it more than either of you admits.
The Aurora Keeper (Northern Lights)The Aurora Keeper waits all night for her sky; you hold the hardest ten minutes of the hottest day. Neither of you has ever hurried anything that mattered.
The Funky Gourmet (Blue Cheese)The Funky Gourmet keeps asking to throw a party at the pool after closing. You keep saying no. You will both say yes on the last night of summer.

Things you say

Walk, please. The water will still be here.
Three blasts out, one long one in.
I count heads, not hours.
If I can see the drain, it’s a good day.
Sweet in the water, sour on the deck.

A scene from your world

Everybody out

The thermometer by the gate ran out of red at noon, and by two o’clock the whole town is in the water. There is no sea for a thousand miles in any direction, so this is the beach. The Lifeguard climbs the tall chair the way he has climbed it for forty-one summers, one rung at a time, and settles the red float across his knees. The deck is too hot to stand on. The tangerine umbrella over his head makes a small, exact circle of shade, and he sits inside it like a man inside a decision.

He counts. Ten heads in the shallow end, ten more, the lap lane, the line at the foot of the high board, the old swimmers doing their slow backstroke along the far rope. He counts without moving his lips and starts again when he reaches the end, because the number is never the same twice. A man breaks into a trot along the deck. One short whistle, one finger. The man slows to a walk and grins, the Lifeguard grins back, and that is the whole conversation.

At ten to four he blows three blasts, and the pool empties. Rest break. Everyone hauls out onto the hot concrete and lines up along the edge with their toes curled over the gutter, groaning, and the water, for the first time since noon, begins to go still. It is the hardest ten minutes of the year, and everybody knows it.

He climbs down and walks the deck once, the way he always does. He checks the ladder rails, the drain, the bolts on the high board. He picks up a lost sandal and sets it on the fence beside the drying towels. At the deep end he stops and looks down. The water is flat as glass now, and in it, upside down, sits the snow on the far peak: the coldest thing for a hundred miles, floating in his pool.

Back in the chair, he lets them wait one breath longer than they think they can stand. Then he lifts the whistle and gives one long note. They jump all at once, the whole edge of the pool, two hundred of them, and the water comes up white and falls back with a sound like applause. For a second the heat breaks.

He is already counting. Ten heads in the shallow end. Ten more. The line at the high board is forming again, and someone he has never seen before is climbing it. He moves the red float an inch on his knees, so that it is ready and so that the climber can see it is ready, and watches them walk to the end of the board.

The pool

The tall chair: White-painted wood, six rungs and a seat worn smooth, under a tangerine umbrella. From up there the whole pool fits in one look, which is the point of it.
The red float: Cherry red, with a long strap. It lives across the Lifeguard’s knees and has spent forty-one summers being ready, which is the most important thing a float can be.
The high board: Tangerine orange, at the top of a tall white ladder over the deep end. There is always a line at its foot, and always one person standing at the end of it for a long time.
The deep end: Fed by snowmelt off the peak, it stays cold on the hottest day. When the water goes still, the peak floats in it upside down.
The gate thermometer: An old red-and-cream dial by the turnstile. On the hottest afternoon of the year it runs out of red, and the whole town takes that as an invitation.
The rest break: Ten minutes before every hour: three blasts and everybody out, one long note and everybody in. In between, the water goes flat and the town waits at the edge, toes over the gutter.