'undercurrent'

Ollie was beneath a raincoat-yellow fountain. It was spurting water in all directions like a liquid umbrella. His hair was pasted to his forehead, and he was wearing nothing but a pair of bright blue swim trousers with sharks on them. He loved sharks. That was why, his mother always explained, he liked to bare his teeth savagely in pictures, so much that his eyes seemed to be devoured by his cheeks.

There were bleachers because of the kids taking lessons. Gerald seated himself on the top and watched Ollie raise his palm up to feel the water. He stretched so freely, like soft taffy being pulled. His ribs shown lightly through his healthy peach skin.

Ollie didn't like the actual pool, though. Even the shallow end was too much. He didn't know how to swim and of course Gerald could not teach him, having forgotten himself. Ollie was content enough with the whirly-gig fountains and the artificial shore of the wave-pool. It was supposed to look like sand. Ollie probably thought that all sand was stiff and skin-colored.

That morning Ollie had gotten up early, wolfed down a plate-sized waffle, and jumped into his grandfather's car with just one melting smile in Grandpap's direction. He loved Grandpap as much as his six-year-old heart could. Grandpap with his closet full of candy and frequent trips to the Rossburg Pool. Ollie had not yet discovered negative emotions toward family. The simplicity of his young world was admirable, but it baffled Gerald. To unlearn the adult mindset was the most difficult task of all.

A man about Gerald's age sat down next to Gerald, a foot away. The man was wearing a dark green blazer. His eyes were elsewhere. Gerald continued watching Ollie.

The man put his hands on his knees. "Growing up fast, aren't they?" he asked, his eyes intent.

Gerald looked over. The man's cheek was branded with a couple moles and several specks of discoloration. The man turned and looked at Gerald to signal that he expected an answer. He had chiseled eyebrows and a rectangular forehead.

"Yes," Gerald replied.

"How old's yours?" the man continued.

Ollie, underneath an oversized red showerhead, closed his eyes and let the water run over him. He was unusually content with playing independently, though he had met a few playmates on different occasions.

"My grandson," Gerald clarified. "He's six."

"Mm," the man sympathized, nodding his melon-shaped head. "Mine is four."

Gerald made a fist and curled his other hand around it in his lap. It occurred to him that they were trading ages with so much satisfaction that they could have easily been talking about cars or TV measurements. The unpleasant, bizarre undertow of the conversation disturbed Gerald.

Gerald envied the man in a perturbed way. Who was he to say that time moves too fast? He still had extra years, things he had yet to experience. Those years were gone for Gerald.

"What's yours' name?" asked the man.

"Oliver," Gerald stated.

The man nodded in false understanding. "Mine's named Aaron."

A vast silence. It was filled with the rapturous squeals of wet children, the splashing and gurgling of water, the occasional shrill noise of a lifeguard's whistle. Still, the half-conversation was heavy with expectancy. So Gerald spoke.

"Children are a handful, aren't they?"

The man laughed. "Yes, yes they are." He paused. "I try to make it easier on her mother, you know."

"Yes," Gerald said. "It must be hard."

"My daughter doesn't have a job. But I take Aaron when she wants to go out with her friends or have a day off. Today is her birthday."

Gerald looked at his wrinkled, clasped hands.

"My daughter works 8-hour shifts during the week," he said. "She has to put Oliver in daycare if she can't find a babysitter. There are plenty of them, I mean. Babysitters. But she knows she doesn't have to pay me."

Feeling victorious in the conversation, Gerald let it go. He searched the smaller bodies for Ollie and found him standing on the fake sand part of the wave-pool, charging toward little waves and jumping them when he pleased. Most of the kids in the wave-pool were older and toting or floating on rubber inner tubes. You could rent them, if you wanted to waste five dollars. Same with these odd foam things that Ollie had taught him were named "noodles." Gerald had seen all kinds of sights involving the usage of noodles. Kids rode them like seahorses, battled each other as if they were swords, and blew water through them as if they were elephant trunks.

Bored with Ollie's antics, Gerald followed the man's gaze. It had settled on one of the regular pools, which was being used currently to teach children how to swim. Gerald had seen these rituals before – the kids whom pleaded and squalled as the instructors tried to quiet them with pleasing names for the swimming maneuvers such as the "otter float" and the "doggie paddle."

Four-year-old kids can't learn to float on their backs! Gerald found the whole idea of swimming lessons ludicrous. Ollie loved the water just fine without the distress and torture the other kids were being put through. The realization that the man sitting next to him was monitoring a child being taught to swim made Gerald uneasy.

"He taking swimming lessons?" Gerald asked the man.

"Ye-up," the man replied. He brushed something off his pant leg and sat up straighter. "He's getting along well."

Gerald squinted in the direction of the lesson-kids, his eyes running along the train of small heads in the water. Ruling out the girls first, he narrowed the field to four little boys. He picked one with mild orange hair that was probably electric-orange when dry. That one, Gerald decided, was the man's grandson. Simply because its hair was the ugliest.

Attempting to again re-locate Ollie, Gerald glanced back to the wave-pool. No, there were only masses of inner tube teenagers there. Under the fountain were a handful of five-year-old girls in rainbow polka-dotted swimsuits with frills. In doing all this, he had overlooked the area directly in front of him, where a wet Ollie was lunging toward him.

"Hey Grandpap," Ollie sputtered, slicking his bronze-blonde hair out of his eyes. It made a bit of a wave on his head, feathering out in protest.

"Hey hey," Gerald said.

The man beside him looked over.

"Do you wanna go in the hot tub now?" Ollie asked. His teeth were little rows of white candy stuck up in his cotton-candy-pink gums.

"Sure, sure, I'll go," Gerald said, smiling at Ollie. He pushed his hands onto the steel of the bleachers and hoisted himself up.

He walked evenly next to Ollie. The hot tub was an octagonal hole made of plastic with violent, sneaky jets all along the insides. Ollie disliked the jets, and so Gerald wasn't fond of them, either. It depended on the day, whether he actually liked them or not. Some days they served their purpose seamlessly, massaging the tension out of his back. But more often they just made him red and itchy.

Ollie rarely submerged himself more than to dip his body in to test the heat he could endure. When he did, he would announce it to Grandpap to make sure he watched the courageous feat. Then down he would go, so that only his head was above the water, and just as quickly he would jump back up and whimper or huff "ah!"

Gerald rolled his jeans up and sat outside of the hot tub with just his lower legs in the water. He had not felt like dressing down that day. All the stalls had been taken and he would never undress in the open, with the sculpted husbands and lanky teen boys around.

Ollie sat next to Gerald. "Hot," he said. Only his ankles were underwater. "Did you see me? I jumped those waves! A lot of them!"

"I did see," Gerald said. "You are getting so good at that."

"I'm going out more, too, to get the big ones!"

"You are."

Ollie swished his feet around. Two women, three men, and a couple teenagers shared the hot tub with them. The women were gushing about treadmills, one man was gazing at the wave-pool, and the two others had flopped their necks against the top of the tub in relaxation. Who knows that the teenagers were talking about? Fireworks or physics class or sex, most likely.

Gerald put his hands on the slimy concrete he was sitting on and looked at Ollie.

"I'm hungry," Ollie half-whined.

"Are you about done here?" Gerald asked. He knew never to push it. One hour was enough, two if you were lucky.

"Yeah."

"Where do you want to go get lunch?"

Ollie's child-stomach drew in and he sighed with his mouth open. "Jameson's?"

"That sounds good to me."

Motivated by this newfound promise, Ollie sprang up. Gerald got up slower and gave him a shark-printed beach towel he'd brought along.

Ollie trotted into the men's locker room, bundled in the towel. Being afternoon, the locker room was crawling with half-naked bodies. A section of showers beat down on a crowd of anxious teenage boys and their athletic fathers. Gerald tried to ignore the people. All of them seemed younger than him, more magnetized to life and energy.

Ollie found himself a space on the end of a blue bench and Gerald grabbed the little green trousers with pockets on the sides out of his cloth bag. Ollie peeled his clingy shorts off without hesitation and traded them for his underwear and pants.

Gerald stood in the midst of steam and skin, trying desperately not to let his gaze wander. He gave Ollie the white t-shirt he had brought along, printed with a coiled Coral snake.

Ollie rumpled his hair with the towel. It came out spiky and a more casual shade of blonde. He put on a pair of sandals and stood up tall, as tall as Gerald's chest. Gerald patted his head.

"Ready?" he asked.

"Yup."

They walked out into the air, the real air that smelled foreign and spread about, not compact like the sticky pool kind. Gerald located his stormy-blue four-door and Ollie took shotgun, flipping his seatbelt behind him.

"That's not very safe, Ollie," Gerald said, turning the key. "You know that."

"But it feels bad the other way."

The radio was never turned on. Neither of them were too interested in music, politics, or talk shows. It was an older radio, but not so old that it had knobs. Gerald had bought the car from some thirty-something man with crooked but awfully white teeth. It was a "steal," he said.

The car had smelled like oatmeal ever since he bought it. It was a mystery as to why. Every time the heat or air conditioning was turned on, it would spread into the car like a spirit. It wasn't a pleasant smell, and Ollie found himself adverse to the food.

But Gerald had no intentions of buying a different car. It would definitely be a task, to gather all the coupons from the visor pockets and other places, to clear out the glovebox stuffed with receipts, old insurance paperwork, bungee cords and plastic cards. Gerald didn't carry a wallet; he couldn't stand the weight of the thing stuck in his back pocket. So he put every oil change punchcard and Safeway Club card in there and took them out when needed. He put money in his front pockets. They were deep enough.

Ollie didn't say much of anything while they drove; he never did. He was quiet and didn't cause much trouble. As an only child, he was cursed by the oblivious nature his mother had about his behavior. She thought all six-year-olds were withdrawn and individualistic. A father of three, Gerald chuckled to think of that being the case.

So Ollie only said a couple things, like "have you ever been to that park?" and "Grandpap, did you know that sharks don't have bones?"

Patiently Gerald replied "Really? Well, that's strange."

After caring for Ollie so often, Gerald lost track of how to speak to him. It was easier when all he had to say was "How's my little boy?" and Ollie would get dimples in his flawless cheeks and grab at the air. That was why Gerald and Ollie were selective in their brief conversations. Gerald feared he would be prying or that he would say something completely unfit to Ollie, and Ollie was not yet old enough to have conversations where he was the interrogator.

They came to Jameson's All-You-Can-Eat and picked out a booth. It was lunchtime, and overweight people dominated the restaurant. Gerald and Ollie went their separate ways once they grabbed plates. The plates were warm and butter-colored, and they came in stacks, like pancakes.

They met up back at the booth and sat across from each other. The overhead lamp hung like an upside-down, crystallized Tulip. Ollie had a soda with a bendable straw in it. His plate featured fries, chicken strips, and macaroni and cheese; none of the food touched any other food.

Gerald had some green bean casserole and a bun. "What kind of soda did you get?" he asked Ollie, picking up his fork.

"Graveyard," Ollie asked.

"Graveyard? What's that?"

Ollie smiled secretly. "You don't know what a Graveyard is?"

"No, tell me." Gerald chewed the gooey casserole with his good teeth.

"It's a bunch all mixed together."

"Oh, I see now," Gerald said, nodding. Only a moment later did he understand. "What's it taste like?"

"Good," Ollie said. That was the end of the conversation for a while.

Ollie ate one chicken strip, most of his fries, and a few bites of the macaroni. He ate with his mouth open, most likely unaware that it mattered. He would figure it out eventually, Gerald decided. He didn't need to be shoved. The world would take him when it pleased.

Gerald finished his casserole, had some steak and potatoes. The steak was tough on his teeth. He smashed the potato on his plate and ate the inside, not the skin. Ollie did the same thing whenever he had a potato set in front of him. It was unknown who started the trend.

It didn't take much to fill up Ollie. No matter how little he ate, he would signal the end of his hunger with a groan and a clutching of the stomach.

"Time for dessert?" Gerald asked.

"Yup," Ollie replied, and up he went.

He went to the ice cream machine, like Gerald had dreaded he would. Every time he saw his grandson push down the lever and maneuver his bowl under the stream of vanilla, he saw, instead, a thin teen boy with hair in his eyes, bent down over a sheet of homework.

Ollie went to the condiments. He flooded his ice cream with butterscotch syrup. He used a pink scoop to gather rainbow dot sprinkles. Gerald saw a man sifting through his tools, preparing to fix a loose gutter or put together a bed frame.

The sundae was complete with the addition of a spoon, but he was no longer Ollie, he was Oliver, and he was putting on his bifocal glasses in the morning.

Luckily he came and sat down, and Gerald looked into the face of naivete and promise. Ollie made funny faces as the cold ice cream went down his throat.

"Ollie?" called a bird-like voice. It was a little girl in hot pink spandex pants and a striped t-shirt. Her hair was curled and brown. She looked like a piece of candy.

"Oh, hi." Ollie got up and shuffled over to her in the nervous way that little boys approach little girls.

"Your hair looks different," the girl said.

Ollie pushed back his hair. "I went to the pool," he said. "I always go to the pool."

"I went one time," the girl said.

"I go there all the time," Ollie countered. "Since forever."

Gerald slid his grimy plate to the end of the table where they would eventually pick it up. With a sense of odd abandonment, he took a salt shaker from the other end of the table and rubbed his thumbs into the grooves in the glass.