Free Water Dogs by Lewis Robinson Page B

aiming for the buoy.”
    “She’ll be fine,” said Gwen. “She’ll figure it out.” Gwen would do this sometimes—invest her own intelligence in people or animals with lesser gifts. Then Gwen said something that made everyone feel even more uneasy. “She’s a prize dog—she’ll be fine.”
    Nixon was bearing down. They saw her clearly: a brown seal in the waves, highlighted by the cherry red buoy, which must have been attached to a stray metal lobster trap—perhaps unattended for weeks, perhaps full of crabs and urchins and sculpin and lobsters, with bricks built into its sides to help it stay on the bottom. Even so, it seemed as though she was covering ground, dragging the heavy trap several yards across the rocky ocean floor. After a few minutes, though, she really didn’t seem any closer, and her head was lower in the water. They watched as a tall, thick swell passed over her—a wave that she normally would have risen with, but the tether held her under. After the wave passed, her head and the buoy were in view again. She snorted, loudly enough that the whole family could hear.
    “Shithouse!” yelled Littlefield, but everyone else was quiet. Coach was unlacing his brown boots.
    “William, what are you doing?” asked Eleanor.
    “That dog’s going to drown,” said Coach. He’d taken off his parka, too, and was unbuckling his belt.
    “It’s March, William,” said Eleanor. “You can’t go out there.”
    “Jesus,” snapped Coach. When he yelled, it got everyone’s heartbeat going. “You want the dog to die?”
    Gwen was starting to cry, so Bennie hugged her. “Come on, you crazy hound,” she said.
    “Well, I don’t want
you
to die,” said their mother, who looked confused and startled. Gwen held a similar expression while she took Coach’s clothes from him as he disrobed. “Just come back quickly, if you can’t get her,” their mother said.
    “I’ll get her,” he said.
    Coach was naked now, and by the way he moved down the shale, in nearly a run, it was clear he was ignoring the pain in his feet. They’d allseen his body in the bathroom—there was only one upstairs in the Manse, and all five of them used it—but here, his white body cast against the gothic browns of Cape Fred, against the backdrop of black water, he looked like some version of Early Man. He still had most of his Marine Corps muscles. His back and his legs were strong. The family followed him to the water’s edge, but even with boots on, they couldn’t get down there as quickly as he had. When Gwen and Bennie and Littlefield and Eleanor reached the waves, Coach had already lowered himself in. That was the trickiest part—getting into the water and away from the rocks while the waves came pounding in. He lost his balance when the first wave crested, but he put his hands down on the shale in front of him and took the frigid roller in his face before scooting out into deeper water.
    He swam a breaststroke toward Nixon, which seemed to take too long, and when he reached the dog, she was still intent on bringing the buoy back to shore but was low in the water now, just keeping her nose above the surface. When Coach reached her, he ripped the buoy out of her mouth, jerking her head to the side. He threw the buoy overhand behind her, and she weakly started to U-turn again, to fetch the buoy once more—Bennie loved her for this—but Coach grabbed her collar and redirected her toward land. Once they were on course, he didn’t need to hold on to her. They swam side by side. For all her diligence, she, like most dogs, didn’t dwell on the past. Her owner was swimming beside her, and she had no ball in her mouth. She kept swimming.
    Ten yards away, Gwen started cheering them on. “Almost home, almost home! Let’s get some, soldier! Here we go, here we go!” Eleanor was silent, gripping the collar of her coat. Nixon and Coach were barely making progress. Coach’s stroke had switched to a kind of dog paddle, and his eyes