Blue corduroy overalls and a white tee shirt that reads GAP across its chest – I am just barely old enough to sit by the pool without supervision from Momma. I perch myself on the edge of the diving board, shaded by leafy branches of elm and birch that extend reaching hands over the patio sidewalk, and the daffodil gardens, and the cool waters of the deep end. I point my toes, rifting ripples into whirlpools, and watch closely as water bubbles white with motion, then dissipates to clear again.
Ruckus from the adults stirs my attention. I peer toward the commotion, following the recognizable voices of my family having an emphatic conversation. The pool sits atop a hill, met at the base with a lush creek bed of climbing ivies and sumacs. The leafy elms and birch make homes with deep roots and stumps here, where they lap up the sweet mudwater to grow big and strong and tall enough to shade uphill pools, and the patio sidewalk, and the daffodil gardens, and the cool waters of the deep end.
From downstream, I can hear our neighbors coming close, another emphatic conversation that melts into one as they meet my family at the creek bed. I become more curious still, deciding to pull my feet in and take a stand on the diving board. I snag my stuffed panda bear companion, whom accompanies my daily travels, and pick him up from the diving board too, so we can both get a better view of the creek down the hill.
I prop my panda on a shoulder and make a silly face at him.
“Panda-monium,” I say to him. He doesn’t laugh out loud, but I know he’s holding one in.
My family and our neighbors are now in view of my panda bear and me. Otto, the patriarch of the neighbor’s family, draws a rifle – something I can only name with hindsight. It looks comical to me at that age, a peculiar plaything born out of a fictitious world of sheriffs and bandits at high noon. And there is great irony, because though I may only faintly understand the concept of guns from Saturday morning cartoons, I don’t understand the great distance between children’s programming and the rifles, not animated, that exist in the adult world.
Otto takes a shot and I lose my senses. The sound is pervasive, a thick and heavy infiltration that booms, yet settles. I have never heard a sound so tremendous in volume, let alone a sound capable of moving after it struck its first chord. And a chord is a remarkably accurate description – the sharp strike of the piano with a pressed foot on the damper pedal. The sound is resonant as it collects in my ringing eardrums and I flinch with such vigor that I lose my piggy-backing panda friend and watch with terror as he falls into the cool waters of the deep end. His face stares back at me, bewildered, half-sunken and wet by the pool water that is soaking up his plush fur, and the only thing wilder than my reaction is the reaction of everyone else, or rather, the absence of one.
Not one move is made from my family and the neighbors. The sound was expected, enough foresight to place hands over ears and brace selves for the impact. The crowd disperses, and the moment has passed us as quickly as it introduced itself. The whirlpool dissipates to clear again.
Otto shovels a dead animal into a garbage bag and pulls the orange drawstrings into a tight knot. I watch him carry it back to his garage, open his garbage can, and casually toss the bag inside with the boxes of pizza and bottles of Corona that line the bin and cushion the fall.
Frederick, the patriarch of our family, treads up the hill to the pool and smiles when he sees me. He doesn’t know I’ve been outside.
“Daddy, what was that?”
“An armadillo.”
“An armadillo?”
“Yeah sport, an armadillo,” he laughs, but I don’t know what’s funny. “Hey – your panda’s in the pool. He’s swimming.”
Daddy walks away, so I don’t ask any more questions, and I know better than to go inside later and pester him about it. I lay down on the diving board, flat on my stomach, and stretch my arms out to retrieve my panda bear. I wring out the water as gently as I can and carry my companion to the other side of the pool deck where lounge chairs soak in the sunlight out from under the reach of the shade trees.
We sit in the sun, just the two of us, long after the chaos has abated to make sure my panda bear goes to bed warm and dry tonight. Bedtime comes, and still no one has attempted to explain to me why humans do the things they do. Under my covers, I drum up the grotesque image of my panda bear at the bottom of a trash can, helpless and trapped as humans open the lid and turn litter into quicksand. I give my panda bear a tighter squeeze. Momma used to tell me that all dogs go to Heaven, but never did I figure out where the armadillos go.