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death of a lifeguard.” I thought he meant during an attempted rescue, but far from it. His life ended in his apartment in Florida while screwing his neighbor’s wife; he was bludgeoned to death by the husband with the lifeguard trophy Kevin kept at his bedside.
Back to ’71. As happened often, I saw a man in trouble in a rip, grabbed John by the arm, and pointed. He took off with a rescue torpedo, a three-foot float with pointy ends. Alas, John went for the wrong guy, who fought him off, not understanding why this big dude kept stabbing him with the torpedo yelling, “Take thish!” So, I sent Cathy with a lifeline for the real victim. She got to him in no time and it was all going according to the book until, as soon as he was secure in her rescue hold, he started feeling her up. I pulled them in, a writhing mass of splash, Cathy splitting her effort between fighting him off and saving his life. The confused crowd couldn’t understand why the guards were battling the bathers while the fat white guy on the stand blew his whistle randomly.
Another time, Cathy reminded me, I sent her on what I thought was a routine rescue—into a sea of stinging jellyfish, as it turned out. Ouch. No wonder she didn’t reciprocate my crush....
The last time I saw Cathy was in a restaurant in Seabright ten years after our summer together. I was just dating Leslie, destined to be the love of my life. On the way to the restroom I saw Cathy at a table. She was a radiant young mother and at the moment unattached. We spoke for a few minutes and, I’ll ad- mit, “Green-eyed Lady” started to play. Then I gazed back to Leslie, and “Brown-eyed Girl” filled my mind. It’s still playing as I write.
Oh, the fish. Well, almost out of line, I had to tighten the drag. Then it went dead, and I assumed she’d thrown the lure. I reeled in the slack, continuing to tighten the drag. All of a sudden the line tightened again and I realized she was still on, swimming to- ward me. Shit, I thought, what if it is a shark! I backed up as fast as I could, reeling as I went, thanking the Lord when I reached solid ground. Then the fish turned back and my rod lurched. I glimpsed a silver flash in a green wave and “snap!” She was gone.
Richards received his BA from Brown Unversity in 1969, spent a year in Hawaii driving a cab, then attended graduate school in San Francisco and DC. He returned to New Jersey where he taught high school for fifteen years before relocating to Vermont where he con- tinued to teach high school as well as at the community college.“The One That Got Away” is excerpted from Jumping the Shark and Other True Stories, a collection of written works along with photographs to be published by the Mill City Press.
“I’d let the other guards go home and
stood alone in medium- rough, waist-deep water, casting near the rocks. My rod bent into a big bow and line started tear- ing off my Mitchell 305. What was this monster?”
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