GRACIES POND

"Our parents said we have to let you play with us?” Bill screamed. Gracie, standing on the top of the bank, with her hands on her hips and ponytail going up and down as she nodded said, "That's right.” It made me feel like turning inside out. I looked at Bill and couldn't believe my eyes. He was smiling. Then, he winked at me. I was confused.

"Okay," Bill said, but to be a pirate you have to pass an initiation. You have to swim across the pond or you have to leave for good.

My hero had come through again. No one had ever swum across the pond, at least not Bill and I, and she didn't even have a swimsuit on. I knew we had won!

Gracie's blue eyes shifted from us to the pond, surveying the one hundred-fifty foot across, and then walked down the bank toward us. "Okay", she said.

Both of our mouths dropped open at the same time. Gracie sat down at the edge of the water and started taking off her tennis shoes. Bill whispered, "Don't worry she won't go through with it.”

"Remember the time we told Peewee Harris to join our club house he had to eat a worm and he did, and we didn't even have a clubhouse", I said.

"Oh yeah I forgot about that”, Bill answered.­

Standing by the water in her cut off blue jeans and pink blouse, void of shoes and socks, Gracie put one foot ankle deep in the water. "Feels cool", she said with a slight shake in her voice.

"Do you even know how to swim?” Bill asked.

"I've been taking lessons at the Y.M.C.A.", she replied snottily.

Oh how I despised girls, but something about Gracie was beginning to change that in me. I guess it was because she sat down in the dirt and actually got dirt on her. Then, Gracie was up to her knees, then thighs, then waist. Looking back over her left shoulder as if asking "far enough." I noticed a slight shiver run through her. She was already further out than we thought she would go. Seeing that we were not going to tell her that was far enough, she turned and leaned forward and started swimming out toward the middle.

Bill and I looked at each other with surprised and scared expressions on our faces.

Standing there on the bank for what seemed like a lifetime, but actually a matter of seconds, we saw that Gracie could have used more lessons at the "Y'. She wasn't swimming like anyone I had ever seen. Of course the only one I had seen was "Tarzan"

at the Roxy in town.

Gracie was slapping the water with her hands and making large splashes with her feet. She was getting farther out, and closer to what I feared most, the middle.

We both started hollering as loud as we could at Gracie. "Stop. Come back. That's far enough. Okay, you're a pirate.” But, Gracie couldn't hear us. She had her face and ears in the water most of the time.

All of a sudden bill grabbed the old inner tube we used to paddle around in, and ran and jumped in the water and got his butt in the middle and started rowing with his arms out after Gracie.

Then Gracie started losing her rhythm and slowed down and started sinking a little.  Bill started rowing faster, his arms looking like paddle wheels.

By now Gracie had made it a little past the middle, kind of like the point of no return.

Then Gracie stopped and started a kind of splashing and disappeared. Bill was steady paddling, but not moving as fast as he had been.

Seeing all of this unfold, I started thinking, "Were going to prison for murder...maybe the electric chair, or gas chamber" I then started screaming, "Oh God... Please God help her, don't' let her die", possibly my first prayer.