This was the rhythm of Charles Darling where young Macaluso worked three summers. Jake visited on weekends, having become a local celebrity, being merely published. But that was well before the New York Times picked up on his next masterpiece, the second of five escalating works, before his widespread recognition as a personality. It was still in that first summer when uncertainty swirled.

"Look at that boy," referring to Grunt, as he was called, "What's to become of him?" Grunt was aptly named as he never uttered sentences without a preceding guttural noise. His face was strangely wide and his eyes were nearly horse like on the sides of the expanse of his face. His lips were hugely blunted and yet barely covered his grossly gum covered teeth. He grunted , "gnnnngh, whacheme dahve. Gnnnngh gnnngh," as he just fell over the edge into the deep water.

"GRUNT'S IN THE DEEP," Fred called, matter of factly as big John jumped quickly in and tossed Grunt out to safety with what looked like a water missile launch. "Hey, Grunt, you have to pass the test," referring to the guard lane kept free for guards practice and deep water skills testing. "Don't go in the deep water. OK? You can't swim. You might have a seizure in there." Grunt had about two or three of those a day. The kids would just hold his head out until the guards got him .

"Oinky, Grunt needs his shit!" Gerry the Pig as the kids often teased officer Penchant, or Oinky, had taken it on himself to keep medicine for Grunt in his shirt pocket. The pig label was not insulting here, as the barb was really at white hippies whose language this was, not theirs. Here Penchant was a man workin for the man. Just doing his job. They'd do it if they could get it. Penchant ran to the rescue making hog noises. The kids loved it. This show played every day.

Penchant pointed out the two older twins, clearly mulatto, well muscled boys who seemed to have special status here. "They're Denise's kids," looking at the blank stare, added "Bastion's labor? Charles Bastion?" then in desperation, "Charles Darling?"

"Them? She had them?" Mac was smiling in an - oh how neat - kind of way.

"They sort of own the place, a royalty thing. They're really great kids. Very decent, like their mamma, not that rotten kiddy dicking father of theirs. I shot the fucker. Don't tell anybody." Actually everybody suspected it was Penchant who shot Bastion in the foot as he was pumping yet another local girl, about twelve years of age, in the dark in the bushes behind the end of the lot. "Used my unofficial piece. Shame to have to ditch a good piece for a lump of shit like that. Bastard had no class. No class at all. My job is to protect these sorry ass kids. What do I do with a prick like that? Preys on children? Shoulda been his head."

"I heard that the Omega whacked him. Which is it?" Mac was skeptical of the bragging.

"That was later. Omega got the credit for both. They get credit for all the weird justices that pop up out of nowhere. Zorro!" flashing a Z gesture with his finger holding a silverized bullet, "They leave their mark - sometimes - though usually not. Lucky me they offed him when I was here in plain view! Took the heat off me. Let me tell you, I was suspected, but nobody was sure. I coulda wound up as Nalletto meat."

Gerry liked to show Marcus, because of his stunning innocence, how to hold a gun, clean it, check it, the works. "This is the safety. On. Off. On. Off. This can jam, so you always check here. See?" Marcus just pretended to be interested, "Hmmm. That's cool. Bullets. Go in there? Hmmm. I see. That's the trigger? Hmm." Marcus teased by announcing on the PA that, "Officer Penchant needs children for target practice. If you are under four feet tall, please report to the guard room."

Music was always lurking in the background at Charles Darling on the PA system.. When a lifeguard got a record of the musical Hair played on the sound system, a mocking of long hair and curdled face nose holding, circled the deck. Booo sssssss turn that off and shouted fecal references made it clear that this was neither music nor relevant here. Anything outside the city was equally irrelevant. The long long Chicago eight trial, later seven, Biafra starvation, and the Cally military fiasco only found dialog among the guards. Nixon's election had been a nonevent.

The pool was obvious to them. They saw its goings on, daily. Just why were two eighteen wheelers worth of chlorine powder, in drums, delivered? Hundreds of huge drums. Where did it all go that same night? Huh? Where? Charles Darling only used chlorine gas. Penchant made a jerk off gesture to that query and put it simply, "It's in the pool." That brought no argument. Mac had trouble with this, but let it go.

What he could not let go was the cool overcast day when he, alone, guarded the closed Charles Darling facility. A mysterious 'closed day'. Looking past the empty lifeguard stands, across cement decks, at the reservoir in the distance, he had no concept of the pool, of anything that it embodied, or that it mirrored. He could not see that this still portrait, this peaceful juxtaposition, was just another of its endless triumphs.

He wasn't alone evidently. But, he couldn't tell that from being there. He had to read about it in the papers. Even then, he didn't immediately comprehend what it all meant. It paled next to the reports of the 100 U.S. soldiers killed in one week in Vietnam. Did anyone, except him, even briefly give it a moment's thought, yet alone ask "What the hell are they talking about? Nothing happened that day. Nothing. I was there. What new fence? What paint? What wood? What rides? What free food?"

The paper accounts detailed the day's festivities. To celebrate the new twelve foot high hurricane fences just placed around the swimming facility and around the reservoir, the mayor's wife held an art festival. Wooden 4 by 8's were hung along the full length of the fence and painted by the area children. Three bands played and concession stands gave out free hot dogs and hamburgers. Prizes for the best art were awarded. The commissioner of parks and recreation, whose idea this was, could not be present due to a foot injury sustained in an evening safety inspection.

"Hey Frank, what fence? What wood? What art? I was here. Alone. Me and a few birds. What's the deal?" Mac demanded. Frank's steely eyes narrowed, "Don't ask! It's dangerous." Penchant again did his masturbatory pantomime into the deep end. Half of the kids jumped to the occasion and the deck was ringed with a mock jerk off into the water, as they chanted, "The pool, the pool, go blind for the pool," but they wouldn't explain.

There were races. Every year swimming, and walking in water races, diving, and other water events were held to a packed facility. The divers were magnificent. Form, complexity, grace, it was all there. Many of these youngsters excelled on trampoline, where they perfected their best stuff, sponsored by the local NAACP. That the guards had to pull most of the divers out of the water after their dives went pretty much unnoticed, just part of the event. Like Roosevelt's leg braces, class made them unimportant. Style made them invisible. Nobody judges a falcon by the way it swims. The divers made life as it was invisible. They parted the air with beauty. Beauty and style. Grand style.

The trophies were, unfortunately, also invisible, mere paper IOUs for trophies which never, never ever, were actually delivered to the winners. That is, except once, by devils. On that one occasion, the guards, not wanting to be once again embarrassed as deliverers of somebody else's lie, chipped in to get plastic trophies. In the process of getting them engraved by a catalog service somewhere in Kansas, an idea bubbled up from the mischief that percolated beneath the cement of Charles Darling. Photos. How about kids holding trophies in the newspaper? The news that trophies had actually been delivered, as promised, brought an angry Lou Dinfall all the way from city hall to see just what money had been "diverted."

"Who did this?" the recreation superintendent demanded. A few carefully staged pictures of little kids with some of Frank's old National and State Championship trophies, were hanging all over the guard house. One trophy twice the size of the winner was shown in the Black Vigil. It showed Frank, a small kid with a prodigious trophy, massively grinning lifeguards and no politicos. Vigil was initially reluctant to give credit to the system for anything positive, let alone fabricated, but yielded to it's mischief potential.

"We assumed it was your idea, sir," Fred complemented. "They were splendid! Damn, must be three thousand dollars in semiprecious metal alone in this one, not to mention the marble and alabaster."

"Marble? Who the fuck spent my money? Show me the expenditure! That's MY money! You give out PAPER! See?" screaming and waving a random piece of paper from the desk as the P.A. microphone was left on. A phone call from the mayor, who could hear this from City Hall, brought him down a few decibels as the P.A., turned up, could carry off the mountain all the way across the city below, to South Mountain.

"Shut that fucking thing off! Who's fucking with my fucking money. Who fucked my fucking .." losing his connection to spittle, "fuck!"

Fred loved this. Dinfall was still muttering "alafuckingbaster" as Fred continued "Sir, the trophies were delivered from Professional Trophies Unlimited in England. We didn't order them. It was, I thought, your secretary," who also happened to be Dinfall's mistress, "who signed... we're pretty sure. Where's that form? Mighta been tossed... Oh yeah, Grunt had it. Grunt to the guard room." Fred spoke into the microphone, again leaving it on, up full volume.

"Elizabeth? My Elizabeth?"

"Yes sir. Her name was on the lading slip. We figured you ordered the trophies. Very nice of you."

"She's for FUCKING!  I FUCK HER! SHE DOESN'T FUCK ME!" pacing madly, as another call from city hall requested that the PA system be muted. "Anybody delivers goods here, you call ME. Don't open shit unless you call ME!" The kids were rolling on the deck. Who needed television?

Every single bag of diatomaceous earth, like great bags of talcum powder minus the perfume, used in huge quantities to coat the tall vertical parallel canvas sheets in the water filters, every single bag, before being opened turned into a phone call, "Tell Mr. Dinfall, we have a large package here, needs opening." It took about twenty such trips from city hall to get the 'CALL ME' order remanded.

Fred prodded, "Some of the bags of filter powder have prizes inside, sir. You sure we shouldn't call you?"

"What?"

"I got a decoder ring." Fred was very secure in his job and really didn't give a toot, either way.

"Ass holes!" Dinfall stormed out.

It was this event that made Mac actually read the diatomaceous earth packaging. What was just a dusty powder that coated your teeth and made you look grey was now a curiosity. The bag was not meant to be exciting reading, but once read was riveting. One diatomaceous earth coating of the filters should last a full season, easily. "We get about half a day, then it's mud. This, in turn, caused reflection on the chlorine. Chlorine usage is also way way over the specs. Charles Darling was, in a sense, a huge test tube whose experiment wasn't working according to the laws of chemistry. OK, college chemistry, a little idealized. Physics had its weightless ropes and frictionless pulleys. Chemistry had its... what? Some practical, whatever it was, wasn't being figured in.

Mac spent hours, playing with calculations and even had every word on the bags and gas tank tags written down. "I'll take this with me. Can't hurt," he thought, visiting his advisor chemistry professor, to chat about med school next year.

To his advisor, with Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head playing on the lab radio, he posed a classic quantitative analysis experimental design question whose answer was - amido schwartz.