PART 2 — THE POOL
Mrs. Delgado turned her phone around so Chad could see the screen. It was a photo of the little girl in the polka-dot sundress, laughing, blowing out two birthday candles.
She is two now, Mrs. Delgado said. Last August she was eighteen months old. She wandered out the back gate while I was on the phone for ninety seconds. Ninety seconds.
Her voice broke. She said a man cleaning the pool two houses down heard the splash over his own equipment. He jumped two fences in his work boots, pulled her out, and got her breathing again on the pool deck before the paramedics even turned onto the street.
The man Chad called a frog-fisher had vaulted two fences in the Florida heat and breathed life back into a baby who would not be alive to blow out those candles without him.
I did not even know his name that day, she said. The paramedics took her and he just went back to work. It took me a year to find out who he was. Then she looked at Chad. He was here tonight. You toasted him. And you laughed at him.
She carried her daughter around the table and put her in Joeys arms. The little girl grabbed his nose and giggled.
Chad, in his white linen pants, did not say a word.
Joey held that baby and his eyes went wet and he said, best tip I ever got on a Tuesday route.
My son tests the chlorine in rich mens pools. One August afternoon, he gave a mother back her whole world.