THE STORY OF A YOUNG MAN
It has been a week of heartache.
In 10 days we’ve lost a dozen people on the highways. A blown stop sign, too many teens in a car, speed, drinking, drugs, innocent people hit head on by fools.
It has been a stunning and overwhelming carnage, unmatched in memory or statistics.
Unmatched for sheer senseless sorrow.
Three high school pals. Two young men, friends from work. A brand-new college graduate, driving her sister back from the movie store. A dad out on his motorcycle. A 64-year-old motorcyclist run over by a teen-ager. Two moms, whose children were about to wed. A husband and father in a wreck with a fish hatchery truck.
And then there was the kid who saved my daughter’s life.
His name was Brendan Barry.
He and a couple of pals were coming back from a party early Sunday morning, on Chili Avenue, when the whole world came loose and the car ended up tumbling into an unrecognizable mass of twisted and shattered metal.
Brendan was 20.
But I knew him when he was 13.
He and my daughter Aubrey were in the seventh-grade together and they were fast friends. He came over every day after school, though after he put the pencil in the microwave he had to wait outside on the porch until an adult got home.
And he faithfully did it, every day.
Seven years ago – on May 24, 2000 – it was a very hot day in our hometown. An insufferably hot and humid day when the worst of summer threatened at the tail end of spring.
And all the kids from town were looking for a place to swim. There were maybe a dozen of them, the circle my daughter ran with. Kids from school and girls from the soccer and basketball and track teams.
But nobody has their pool open in May and most of the kids had to go home and the group dwindled down to almost nothing when somebody thought of Buck Run. It’s a little stream down by the bus garage and most of the time it’s not good for much more than splashing in or catching crayfish.
But it was hot and summery and there had been thunderstorm cells in the area through the afternoon and Buck Run was a torrent.
There is a little waterfall that roared that day and Aubrey and Brendan were the only ones who got to it and they jumped out from its height into the water below two or three times and cooled off in its silty waters.
It’s a funny thing about racing water, especially when it goes over something or makes a turn. It rolls in onto itself and goes in odd directions, including down. It’s called an undertow and it sucks you down like a vacuum.
Aubrey and Brendan didn’t know anything about undertow as they found a new perch on the waterfall to jump in from. She was a little nervous but it was her turn to go in first and Brendan said – she can still remember it now – “I won’t let anything happen to you.”
So she jumped.
And the undertow took her and spun her and sucked her down. As she was sucked deeper she looked up in a panic through the water and saw Brendan.
And he jumped.
Right at her. Right at where the water had grabbed her and sucked her down.
A 13-year-old boy who had made a promise.
Somehow he got behind and below Aubrey, kicking off the bottom, pressing his hand against her back to push her face above the water. He would struggle and slip and she would be submerged again, fighting against the current and the undertow, but she would feel his hand grasping for her back, to shove her up again to take another breath.
While he was under water.
He saved her life, at the risk of his own.
And with their last strength they somehow broke free of the undertow and blacked out and were swept downstream.
He came to screaming her name.
She came to afloat on her back and grabbed at a root to stop herself, still dazed and incoherent. He ran splashing through the water shouting that she had to get up and get out.
Shivering and shaken they huddled on the bank until they could make their way home.
That Friday Aubrey’s track team won Sectionals. The buses came back into town with a fire department escort, sirens blaring and lights flashing.
The next year Brendan moved.
They kept in infrequent contact over the years and each took their different course.
Aubrey went on in school to be a top athlete and musician. She won the Junior Cup and was the prom queen and received several scholarships and just finished her second year of college.
And she has been a wonderful and beloved daughter.
And the way I figure it, every day since May 24, 2000, has been a gift to our family from Brendan Barry.
He and a couple of pals were coming back from a party early Sunday morning, on Chili Avenue, when the whole world came loose and the car ended up tumbling into an unrecognizable mass of twisted and shattered metal.
Brendan was 20.
It has been a week of heartache and sorrow.
- by Bob Lonsberry © 2007
