One

Reverberating with panic, the girls’ shrill squeals jolted Jackson Levee from his reverie.

The wind accelerated, forcing the surging waves into collisions of small geysers lasting no more than a few seconds. Jackson observed the phenomenon of the waves and wind as he walked along the shore in St. Brendan State Park, a one mile trek between the pier on the west end and the jetties on the east. Heading west, he passed two girls and their mother where there weren’t any other people. The boardwalks teemed with Memorial Day vacationers from Alabama and Georgia, scurrying like a riot of ants disturbed from their nest. They frolicked onto the white sand from the park in Gulf City Beach all the way to Pensacola, a stretch of beach nicknamed the Redneck Riviera. As Jackson first passed them, the girls romped on the waves ten yards out and yelped with high-pitched delight in voices that pierced the cacophonous surf while their mother lay face down on a straw mat, her face turned towards the dunes. At the end of his walk, he would spend a half hour in the water, his therapy and restoration, always recollecting his father’s dictum: salt water cures everything.

Small, puffy clouds pasted themselves against the blue sky, Least Terns swirled about, and laughing gulls cackled on the sand. An occasional pelican careened into the water kamikaze style. The jagged-top white dunes, crowned with sea oats, rose up to the north. The salty Gulf smell invaded his nostrils when the wind accelerated, switching from northeast to east southeast, churning up the waves. Near the pier, Jackson threaded his way through the throngs of beachgoers whose presence irritated him, so he turned and plowed through the sand with determined vigor, his feet sinking in the soft spots.

Then he heard the girls again.

Their mother pushed herself off the mat and yelled for them. “Hadley! Haley! Come back in!”

Jackson made out a muffled cry. “We can’t!”

“Oh, God. Please! Somebody help them!” she pleaded to no one in particular.

Jackson wavered. Was he supposed to go in after them? The list of would-be rescuers who drowned in the Gulf was legion. He glanced around to see if someone else was going in, but no one was near, and the mother seemed paralyzed. He kicked off his flip-flops, took his keys out of his pocket, threw them on the sand, tossed his sunglasses next to them, and plunged into the water.

An anarchy of white and blue cresting water lunged towards him. For a few seconds, disassociation struck him as if, separated from his body, he watched himself defy the breakers. Who was this who plunged in without reckoning he could drown too? As his head surfaced after diving under the first three-foot wave, a second breaker smacked Jackson in the face, the force of the water twisting his body and knocking him backward and off his feet. He spat saltwater and jumped up to see over the onrushing surf. About twenty-five yards out, caught in a rip current and in danger of drowning, the two girls screamed for their mother as they clutched the pink mattress float bobbing up and down in the Gulf of Mexico.

After recovering from the second wave and spotting the girls, he swam towards them against the breakers, the strong southeast current pushing him out of a straight path, forcing him to struggle to counter it. When he sensed he was close, he looked up. One of the girls had fallen off and hung onto the raft with her skinny arm. The other girl had vanished.

“Haley! Haley,” the girl clinging to the raft whimpered.

Jackson reached her. “Easy,” he said. “I’m going to put you on the float.”

“Where’s Haley?” she cried.

Jackson simply grabbed her by the waist and shoved her onto the float.

“Where’s Haley!?” she cried again.

“You hang on,” he ordered her.

“Haley! Where’s Haley? Get her!”

Jackson scanned the surface of the immediate area but saw nothing. He submerged and opened his eyes in the stinging saltwater, the world under water a blue blur, a world of dull noise. He whirled around three hundred and sixty degrees, or so he thought. He couldn’t quite orient himself under water. He came up for air.

“Did you find her?” the girl cried through wet strands of blond hair.

He sucked in air and dove down on a trajectory to the bottom, forming himself into a ball to sink faster like his father taught him to do when Jackson was a boy. On the bottom, he opened his eyes. Nothing. No girl. Now Jackson felt dread, the throb of failure. He looked around as long as possible. Then he started to ascend when his right foot kicked against something fleshy. He turned and saw the vague form of a child. He had kicked her in her buttocks. She hovered there, motionless, her flaxen hair billowing, her arms spread as if welcoming. Jackson wrapped his right arm around her waist, and with his left arm paddling and his feet kicking, he carried her to the surface, back to the other world.

They came up a few yards from the southwards drifting raft. He swam Haley over.

The other twin, Hadley—he suddenly realized her name—registered something like heartrending ecstasy when they arrived.

“Haley! You found her!”

Jackson hoisted a limp Haley onto the raft. “Okay,” he said. Can you kick?”

“Yes,” Hadley responded.

“Kick! Hold on to your sister too.”

Hadley draped her thin arm across her sister’s back and clutched her shoulder.

The rip current had played out, so Jackson placed his hands on both of their backs and kicked, the waves propelling them. He saw a park ranger’s truck and a sheriff’s beach patrol SUV on the shore. Two men waded out to them, one in a ranger’s green uniform, the other clad in a blue shirt. The deputy in the blue shirt reached the float, and Jackson let go of the girls. He could stand now. The ranger approached him.

“Are you okay?”

“Yeah, fine,” Jackson replied, taking deep breaths.

The ranger assisted him to the shore where the deputy worked to revive Haley as Hadley, her mother, and several onlookers gathered around, their faces all masks of trepidation.

“I’m sorry, mama,” Hadley said in tears. “I let go of her hand. I tried not to.”

“Please help her,” her mother pleaded with the deputy, her Georgia accent steeped in dread.

He said nothing while he compressed Haley’s chest.

Jackson moved away a bit, collapsed onto the sand in a sitting position, wiped the water from his face, and watched.

The deputy turned Haley on her side, whacked her back, and she coughed up a beaker full of Gulf water. She coughed a second time without emitting water as an ambulance pulled up. Two EMTs hopped out of the vehicle.

“Will she be all right?” the mother asked the deputy.

“She needs to go to the hospital. She spit up water, and it might’ve gotten into her lungs,” the deputy explained to the EMTs.” He turned to the mother. “That’s serious.”

“Please,” the mother said. “Please.” She sighed loudly and bent down to caress her daughter, whose eyes were open but glazed and unfocused.

One of the paramedics rushed to the back of the truck and returned with a stretcher while the other listened to Haley’s chest with a stethoscope.

“I tried not to let go of her hand,” Hadley said to her mother, trembling. “I tried not to.”

“How old is she?” the EMT with the stethoscope asked, indicating Haley.

“She’s nine. They’re both nine.”

“What’s her name?”

“Haley.”

The EMT took Haley’s right hand in his and bent his head down close to her. “Haley. Do you hear me? If you do, squeeze my hand.” Haley did not respond. The EMT tried again. “Haley, squeeze my hand.” Nothing. “Okay, let’s get her to the ER.”

“She’s all right, isn’t she?” the mother cried out,” her voice quivering.

The EMT stood. “They deal with this kind of thing all the time there,” he said. “You and your little girl can ride with us.” He and the other EMT positioned the stretcher, eased Haley onto it, and carried the stretcher to the back of the vehicle. The mother grabbed her cover up and pulled it overhead. When she neared him, Jackson, rose, and she hugged him. She smelled of Coppertone and cigarettes. He hesitated, his arms hanging at his sides; then, he loosely hugged her too, feeling the sweat on the back of her cover up.

“Oh, thank you. I couldn’t have gone out to them. You saved my girls. You rescued them. I don’t know how to…”

“It’s all right. I’m glad I could help. I hope she’ll be okay.”

She nodded, hugged him again, and then swung around to go back to Hadley.

“Ma’am,” the deputy said. “I’ll gather your things here and bring them to you at hospital. I have to get information from you for my report.”

“Yes,” the mother replied absently. She and Hadley walked to the back of the ambulance and climbed in with one of the paramedic’s help.

The deputy took Jackson’s information. A reporter from the local newspaper showed up. He talked to everyone. The deputy pointed Jackson out to him.

“I’m Larry Summers,” he said, introducing himself. “With the Gulf Times. Can I get your name and what happened?”

Jackson recounted the incident, making sure he told it in unembellished words, devoid of gallantry. Summers snapped a photograph of him and wrote it all down.

Jackson went home to his rented house. The living room and dining room were one room, really. The small galley...