Black Ribbon

first sputtered and the moment that cold, strong hand grabbed the cushion from my grasp? As I’ve worked it out, approximately the length of the long sit in Novice obedience, what I’d heard kind judges, Phyllis Abbott among them, refer to as the “one-hour long sit,” an exercise that lasts precisely sixty seconds. I’d dashed to the canoe, grabbed the cushion, run back, downed Rowdy, removed his lead and my shoes, hit the water, and kicked like hell. One minute? Certainly less time than the Novice long down. Objectively three minutes; subjectively, forever.
    Minutes or hours, my relief in reaching the drowning swimmer was so great that when those powerful hands snatched at the cushion, I shoved it into them. Kicking to stay afloat, cold now, deeply chilled, weighted down by the sweater and the loose khaki pants I’d worn to dinner, eager only to head for shore, I missed the cues. The coughing and flailing had stopped. Choking, spitting out water, gasping for air, uselessly beating the lake’s surface with frantic arms, my all-but-rescued victim had recovered all too soon, impossibly soon, had found breath never really lost, calmed feigned terror, and caught me unaware. Rigid fingers gripped my hair, dug into my scalp, and shoved me under. In some last-second reflex, I opened my mouth. Sucking for air, I breathed water that filled my nose and swelled in my throat. Stunned by the attack, bewildered by the underwater blackness, I kicked out blindly, fighting less for the surface than for some sense of where it was.
    The hands gripped my head, but as I sank under a great weight, I finally fought back. My fists bounced off a heavy body. Sharp nails raked across my face. Bending my legs frog-fashion, I aimed, kicked, missed, and succeeded only in tightening the grip on my hair. Momentarily releasing it, freeing my scalp from that excruciating yank, the hands grabbed again and, this time, delivered a sharp snap that sent hot pain rushing down my neck. In that last moment, nothing passed before my eyes, not my own death, certainly not my life. I neither saw nor heard nor thought a single thing. To die by drowning means, I think, to leave this world as we enter it: wet and helpless, all feeling.
     

 
    WITH THE STUPIDITY of panic, I kicked and strained. Finding my head inexplicably above water, I struggled to raise my entire torso, as if elevating my rib cage would somehow enable oxygen to enter my lungs through skin and bone, thus bypassing my impenetrable nasal passages and clogged trachea. Failing in my efforts to dodge nature’s plan, I was saved by a single full-body blow, a powerful whole-torso Heimlich maneuver delivered from somewhere underwater, a massive WHAM! that knocked the wind out of me and, with it, the water.
    The lake around me boiled and churned like the wake at the stern of some phantom powerboat, a ghostly Chris-Craft, the classic inboard, sleek and beautiful above, dangerous below, where the propellers slashed and drilled, slicing the water, grinding it up, disgorging it in twin waves of white-capped turbulence. My attacker thrashed and surged, bobbed, reappeared, lashed out, tried gliding under my rescuer, slipping around him, barging past him to regain that grip on me, shove my head beneath the water, and hold it there—this time— until I drowned.
    He hated water, loathed it, always had—avoided even shallow puddles, balked at a walk in the rain, shrieked in the bathtub—but now, his big snowshoe paws transformed to whirling blades, his heavy-boned legs ripping through the water, the big guy blocked my attacker’s every move.
    “Help!” I screamed. “Help!”
    Cries from shore answered mine. The beam of a big lantern flashlight played over the lake. From the dock, Cam’s voice called, “What’s going on there? Are you all right?”
    Shaking and numb, I managed a feeble breaststroke toward shore. His combat finished, Rowdy chugged at my side until I reached the sharp rocks of the beach. Seconds later, I was on the dock, and Ginny was ripping off her warm, dry sweatshirt, pulling it over my head, chastising me, issuing orders: “What did you think you were doing? You could’ve drowned! You’re shaking all over. What you need is...” And on and on, as if I were a naughty puppy.
    Frantic to rid his coat of water, Rowdy was zooming around in elongated loops and figure eights, zipping past the cabins, vanishing into the night, reemerging, veering, dashing toward the lodge,