A Year Among the Living

Excerpt, Chapter 1

My father no longer recounts the tale, "Best to leave the dead in peace," he'll say, if asked. But years ago, he told his story at one of the dog and pony shows he put on annually for the clinic's wealthy stateside donors. My brother Ellis and I were passing the hat among the patricians when he came out with it. Revelations about our father's life were rare and this one stopped us cold. Apparently, late one night, as the winter turned to spring, my father and his Cornell roommate Jack, left a rowdy frat party, half-drunk and laughing, with the idea to swim across Beebe Lake. At the shore, the touch of the freezing water convinced them to swipe a canoe from the college's outing club instead. They put the thing in the water, got in and pushed off from shore. In his next memory, my father's on the shore, sopping wet, down on both knees, his face warmed by the rising sun, hands clasped together, lips moving in a fervent prayer of thanks to God for saving him. Jack was nowhere to be found.

My father could swim well enough to pass the freshman swim test, but he could not tread water. He's got long legs that have the potential to kick at thousands of gallons of water, except that he can't figure out how to make them move like scissors. He can diagnose the weirdest aliments, can heal the sick and sometimes raise the dead, but he can't make his legs tread water. I was once in the Ganges River with him trying to teach him how to relax and let his legs do the work. He slipped into a deeper spot and let panic overtake him. If I'd been suicidal I could have done the deed just trying to hang on to him. And that, he reckoned the night he told his story, is exactly what happened to his missing roommate. In trying to save my father, Jack, an accomplished swimmer, found himself overcome by the cold water and a flailing man's panic, and drowned. My father, set adrift, somehow miraculously navigated to shore. The only explanation, my father knew, was that God had saved him for a higher purpose and agreeing with him, his audience filled our coffers to overflowing.