Free The Night Swimmer by Matt Bondurant Page B

on the wide, flat teak transom the name in gilt gold lettering: Fortune.
    That’s a hell of a ship there, Fred said.
    Some nice swimming spots, I said.
    Too cold, Bill said. Water is far too cold.
    Fred slapped my knee, jostling his cup of wine.
    Not for her. My wife here has a gift.
    You’re joking.
    She can get in water, Fred said, that will kill most of us, paddle around all day. She could swim from here back to Baltimore. Or all the way out to Fastnet.
    We are at least four miles, Bill said.
    She’s done it before, Fred said. She’s done Alcatraz, Lake Michigan, swam all the way across Lake Champlain a bunch of times. She can go for hours.
    Well, Bill said, just promise me you won’t jump off this boat!
    I was looking for Fastnet. Bumps and peaks seemed to rise up and disappear and the water deepened to a rich royal blue as we passed westward.
    How do you do it? Bill said, I mean just keeping your head down in the water for that long. How do you hack the boredom?
    I don’t really know, I said. I don’t get bored. You can just listen.
    Listen to what? Bill asked.
    The inner workings of your body, the actual sound of your muscles and tendons working. The process of breathing, your lungs. Your heartbeat.
    Sort of like a form of meditation, Fred said. Or sensory deprivation.
    Not deprivation, I said. More a matter of being able to allow your body to focus on one set of sensory inputs and your mind on others. It creates a kind of separation. Like two distinct beings.
    Huh, Bill said. He squinted at me, one hand resting on the steering wheel.
    Maybe it’s just me, I said. I don’t know. But you can listen to what is happening. You can hear if something is wrong.
    My mother, a classic hypochondriac herself, told me that what defines hypochondriacs is how they are overly attuned or so sensitive to the feelings and sensations of their own bodies that they begin tointerpret these sensations as signs of illness when really they are just the body going on about its business. Fred was the inversion of this idea; he never listened to his own body. He would walk around with pneumonia, broken ribs, a splinter the size of a toothpick in his palm without noticing a thing. He was not immune to illness, but its effects baffled him. When he got the flu he shuffled about muttering as if there was something going on he just couldn’t grasp, like some kind of magic was being employed.
    It’s also surprisingly interesting down there, I said. You have things to look at. Fish, weeds, stuff on the bottom, jellyfish. Out here you have waves and currents and things to think about too. The weather. What’s happening on the surface takes up a lot of attention.
    Last time I was in the ocean, Bill said, was off Guadalcanal in ’forty-three. Don’t plan on doing it again.
    I pointed to a small grayish tick on the horizon.
    Is that Fastnet?
    Bill got a set of fat, heavy binoculars from below and handed them to me. I brought the horizon into focus and after I’d traced it to the south for a few seconds Fastnet leapt into view. The rock was heavily bunched and folded, like a clenched fist, the white lighthouse emerging like a protruding finger. Lowering the binoculars, I contemplated the long stretch of water between the western edge of Cape Clear and Fastnet. Open ocean, deep water. I felt my heart beginning to thump in my throat.
    I’d like to swim out there, I said. I could go from the South Harbor of Clear. How far is that?
    At least three miles each way, Bill said. But you can’t. The seas rarely cooperate. It gets rough out there.
    The swells were perhaps two to three feet on the outer edge of Roaringwater Bay. The sea undulated in gentle rolls toward Fastnet, wide troughs that would be easy to navigate. A swell every six to eight strokes in my normal breathing pattern.
    It looks great, I said. The weather’s nearly perfect right now.
    Bill shook his head. He spread the map out on