Rust and Bone by Craig Davidson Page A

Niska’s snout, she takes you down into the water. Nearing the pool’s bottom you arch your spine and surge towards the surface. Then, with a thrust of her tail, Niska launches you from the water. That you hit twenty feet is a given—Niska’s feeling frisky, thirty’s a definite possibility. At the height of your ascent perform a snap-pike before slicing down into the water. It’s a shot of pure adrenaline: like being strapped to the nosecone of a Stinger missile.
    Twenty feet underwater and the outside world disappears. Gone the crowd, the music, the birds and sun and sky. The water bitingly cold and pressure beating against my eardrums, hamstrings screaming as Niska propels me downwards. The pool basin rushes at me: flaking blue paint, thin serrate cracks, the shiny disc of a quarter some tourist must’ve prompted his kid to toss into the pool—make a wish. Brace my neck and arch my back and then I’m hurtling up through the water at phenomenal speed, lungs burning, a pearlescent helix of air bubbles corkscrewing up to the surface.
    Niska’s mouth opens. My left leg slips inside. Thigh raked down a row of teeth, shredding the wetsuit. Rocketing upward, faster now. My crotch smashes the crook of her mouth and something goes snap . Jam a hand into Niska’s mouth and pry with everything I’ve got, her jaws a jammed elevator I’m trying to open. Whale gagging on the foot lodged deep in her throat, huge muscles constricting and relaxing. Bubbles swirling and ears roaring, mind panicked and lungs starved for oxygen, a bright flame of terror dancing behind my eyes and yet there remains this great liquid silence, all things distant and muted in this veil of salt water. A disconnected image races through my head: that famous black-and-white snapshot of a Buddhist monk sitting serenely in lotus position as flames consume him.
    Immense pressure shatters my tibia below the hip. A wave of pain roars up my spine and through my neck, nearly tears my skull off. Open my mouth to scream and water rushes in, electric ozone taste choking my sinuses and then I’m breaking the pool’s surface, hurtling up into the warm summer air, arms stretched towards the cloudless sky, gulls screeching, the syncopated beat of salsa music and the handicapped girl sitting beside her wide-eyed father, smiling an odd inscrutable smile.
    I hit the water again and then I’m paddling like a dog, kicking but not really going anywhere. I’m not afraid—have never felt calmer in my life, in fact—but my body doesn’t want to obey. It’s so silly, almost funny. Why is everyone yelling? The water’s red and the other trainers scream my name— Oh god over here, Ben, over HERE! —and I try to swim in their direction if only to shut them up but I can’t, my body’s all fucked so I end up paddling over to the wall. I try to get a grip on the wet concrete but my hands are sliced up, bloody, pinkie finger snapped at the knuckle and hanging like a half-opened penknife. Niska bumps my side, a gentle nudge and the screams intensify, earsplitting decibels and I’m thinking, Christ, will you people please shut up? Prismatic bars of color streak my vision as I stare into the stands, where the girl who’d been eyeing me slumps with her face buried in the chest of the fruit-hatted woman. I remember the blue of her eyes—as though cut from the sky—and wish she’d turn them on me once more.
    A cute but clingy trainer I’d pointedly ignored since fucking her late last summer tosses me a life preserver. Hook an arm through the blue plastic doughnut, towed to the pool’s edge like a bead on a thread. Hands dig into my armpits and drag me onstage. All the color’s washed out of things, the radiant reds, blues, greens, and pinks of the stage blended into neutral grays and then I see what’s left of my leg, a shredded mess, adipose tissues encased in a