Woman from Khao Lak

Excerpt

From a distance we sounded like one of those outdoor birthday parties where the kids have been running wild since noon. A little closer, and you could hear outdated music spewing from the public address system. The same songs over and over. You’d think the neighbors would have been screaming to shut the place down. But, no, Walter, our pool manager and head lifeguard, played only the old stuff. All the boomers retiring their asses off in the neighborhood loved that crap. There was nothing you could do. So if you layered in the screams, the cannonballing, the splashing, the whistles of the lifeguards, and that low sizzle of bodies roasting in the sun, I’d say it was more like a carnival or a county fair once you got inside. The general atmosphere, I mean. That’s what it seemed like to me.

You can tell from the phrase “municipal pool” that we were never a posh, porcelain spa. We were an aging trough of concrete jammed into the side of a hill. Crossing the parking lot, you might start worrying that the whole thing could break loose and go bobsledding away at any moment. Me, I’d be nervous if I lived downstream from 490,000 gallons of super-chlorinated water and kid pee.

Randy F. Nelson

Randy F. Nelson is a multiple-award-winning writer and teacher whose stories have appeared in many national and international publications. He’s the Virginia Lasater Irvin Professor Emeritus of English at Davidson College, where he offered courses in creative writing and nineteenth and twentieth century American fiction. His first collection, The Imaginary Lives of Mechanical Men, won the Flannery O’Connor Award. Individual stories of his have also been recognized in The Pushcart Prize anthology and The Best American Short Stories.

Will Allison on “Woman from Khao Lak”

For those of you who aren’t familiar with Randy F. Nelson’s short stories, you’re in for a treat. Since the mid-1990s, Mr. Nelson has been publishing work that showcases his extraordinary range as a storyteller and his finely honed sense of what makes for a compelling story.

“Woman from Khao Lak” is no exception. The setting is a municipal swimming pool much like the ones where Mr. Nelson worked as a young man. The cast is a group of lifeguards, including our narrator, Trent Mendelson, who is now an old man, and who grabs you by the figurative sleeve because he has a story that’s too important not to tell.

One day a mysterious older woman shows up at the pool for a swim, demonstrating the impressive form that made her a collegiate athlete. Her name is Diana Byrne, and she may or may not have two kids, may or may not be having marital troubles, may or may not strike up an affair with the head lifeguard, may or may not be dangerous.

The story comes to a head when a seemingly minor, albeit frightening, incident turns into a major incident, a confounding spectacle the likes of which the lifeguard crew has never seen—and one that alters the trajectory of young Trent’s life.

Along the way, we pick up interesting tidbits about topics ranging from swimming pools and filtration systems to the mechanics of swim fatigue and the Khao Lak tsunami—seemingly esoteric subjects that orchestrally come to bear on the story’s climactic scene and its aftermath.

As with all of Mr. Nelson’s short stories, I knew I was in good hands from the opening lines and that I would be generously rewarded for my time—and I was, in spades, one reading after another. Please join me in welcoming this sure-handed storyteller to the pages of One Story.