Grunting, Mr. Parker sat up in his chair. In the pool, some children were playing ‘Marco Polo’, where one kid closes his eyes and says ‘Marco’, and the other kids answer ‘Polo’, and the closed-eye ‘Marco’ kid tries to catch one of the open-eyed ‘Polo’ kids.

“Hey, kid.”

Turning sideways in his lounge chair, Spencer shielded his eyes from the sun with his hand. “Yeah?”

“I got a joke for you.” He scratched under his arms with thick fingers. “You know the difference between a dead skunk on the road and a dead nigger on the road?”

Spencer’s throat tightened. “I give.”

Huffing out of his chair, Mr. Parker yanked up the top of his bathing suit. “The difference between a dead skunk in the road and a dead nigger on the road is skid marks.” Spencer didn’t laugh, and Mr. Parker took that to mean he hadn’t understood the joke.

“There’s skid marks in front of the dead skunk, but there aren’t any in front of the dead nigger.” Laughing, he chugged to the edge of the pool and cannonballed in.

Spencer watched for the man’s head to break the surface of the pool, but for a long time it didn’t. After about fifteen seconds, Mr. Parker reappeared, and he swam to the side of the pool, kicking hard, splashing and scattering the ‘Marco’ kids and the ‘Polo’ kids.

Hauling himself up the ladder, Mr. Parker held his hand over the right side of his face. He hurried back to his chair, reached into a white beach bag, and pulled on a pair of dark sunglasses.

“Hey, kid.”

“What?” The jay was squawking again, louder and closer than it had been earlier in the day.

“Look here, kid. I got me a little problem. When I jumped into the pool there, I took a funny blast of water in the face.”

“You hurt? You need a doctor or something?”

“No, I don’t need no doctor. I need a diver. I lost my two-hundred dollar glass eye down there in the deep end of this piss-pot of a swimming pool.” The man’s face twisted into the same smile he had used on Ossie. “I’ll give you a crispy new twenty-dollar bill if you go down there with your flippers and skin-diving mask and get the eye out for me.”

Spencer said nothing.

“What do you say, Kid? Twenty bucks. That’s a heap for a little guy.”

On the surface of the pool, the light from the afternoon sun was shattered into crescents. Spencer thought of the money, of what he could do with twenty dollars. He thought of Ossie and his story about the snake.

“Sure. You got a deal, mister.” Sliding out of the lounge chair, Spencer lifted his new mask and fins from under his towel and walked across the rough cement to the edge of the pool. He sat, dangling his legs in the water. A shadow passed over his lap and Spencer turned to watch as the jay flew toward the back of the motel.

The Marco Polo game had ended, and the kids were out of the pool. It was empty, except for the eye.

Spencer rinsed his mask and then spat in it, rubbing the saliva around the glass to prevent fogging. He snapped a fin onto each foot. Stretching the rubber strap of the mask over the back of his head, he snugged the faceplate over his nose and eyes, and dropped into the blue.

Spencer was weightless, buoyant. Arms loose at his sides, he kicked hard twice. He swam in slow circles around the rim of the bowl that deepened and curved down to the bottom of the pool. He could hear the whine of the pump, transmitted through the pipes.

He ran out of breath and surfaced. Mr. Parker was sitting on the edge of his chair, his arms folded and resting on the mound of his gut. Spencer drew a full breath and dove again.
His body felt at home in the water, his motions effortless. He glided to the bottom, and there, about four feet from the main drain, was the blind blue eye. Spencer let out some air to decrease his buoyancy, and sank to the bottom, the faceplate of his mask inches from the eye. When he picked up the eye between his thumb and forefinger, it felt hot.

He laid the eye on the bottom of the pool, a few inches from the sucking pipe of the main drain, and watched as it bobbled nearer the hole. Finally, with an acceleration that pleased Spencer, the eye disappeared into the dark.

Surfacing again, Spencer swam with easy strokes to the edge of the pool. Grime was already accumulating on the tiles. He yanked off his fins and mask and returned to his chair.
Standing in front of the seated man, Spencer saw a white and pink pucker of skin where the eye used to be.

“Well, where is it?”

“Couldn’t find it.”

“What do you mean, you couldn’t find it? Where the hell is it?” A strand of spit connected the man’s lips, and it thickened and thinned as his lips moved.

“Sorry, mister. I just couldn’t find it.” He handed his mask to the man. “I have to get home now. You can borrow my mask if you want to look for yourself.”

The man threw the mask to the cement and a long thin crack appeared on the faceplate. “I don’t want to look for myself, you little asshole. We had a deal. Twenty bucks, that was the deal, remember?”

“That’s all right. You can keep the money.” Spencer gathered his towels, mask, and fins and started toward the filter room.