Fresh Voices

Jared Goyette has been reporting full-time since March, after some intern work at the Philly City Paper. He's in his first newspaper job at the bi-weekly Press and Standard in Walterboro, S.C.

He was at Tom French's week-long narrative seminar at Poynter a few weeks ago. He sent me this deadline narrative for feedback and agreed to let me post it here.

Check it out:

Mary McClam and Mary Freeman, with white hotel towels wrapped around their shoulders, sat on two beds in a room at the Quality Inn on Jefferies Boulevard in Walterboro. A Bible lay on McClam's bed, along with notes for a presentation she planned to give the next day at a Pentecostal woman's conference. Their hair was wet, as just a few hours ago they had stood outside in the rain, by the pool, and recited a prayer for the unconscious man who lay in front of them. They prayed that God would rebuke the spirit of death and let the man live.

His eyes were rolled back in his head. His clothing was drenched, and he wasn't breathing. One man knelt beside him and gave him CPR, while another man pressed down on the man's chest. He didn't respond.

Earlier that evening Jack Wesley Tyson, 22, left his room at the Quality Inn to check the weather. Back home in Hilliard, Fla., Jack, who has short blond hair, thick arms and a strong jaw, works framing houses.

He was hoping to go to a bar with his girlfriend and a group of friends. They had come to attend a horse convention, where Jack planned to buy a new saddle. He didn't know where they would end up, but whatever happened, it was bound to be better than the night before, when Jack was smoking the wrong kind of cigarette and a black and gold car from the Colleton County Sheriff's Office drove by. He still got upset when he remembered how, he said, the deputy had bent his girlfriend's arms behind her back and cuffed her to pressure Jack into confessing that he owned the marijuana.

"That's my stuff," he had said, and the deputy released the girl.

Jack and his friend Roger Holman were arrested, charged with simple possession of marijuana, and spent the night in jail. But it only takes an instant to go from culprit to hero, as Jack and his friend would soon discover.

Now, they were just out to have a good time, but it wouldn't stop raining. The National Weather Service had issued a severe thunderstorm warning for Colleton County earlier that evening. The worst of the storm had passed, but streaks of lighting still flashed across the sky.

He left his hotel room at the Quality Inn and stood outside on the common balcony. What he saw there startled him. In the center courtyard, about 10 yards away, a man was outside in the rain, lying down by the edge of the pool, and reaching into the water. Jack ran down to see if there was anything wrong, Roger followed close behind.

Below the man's outstretched hand, they both saw a silhouette of a body at the bottom of the pool.

As Jack would later learn, the man at the bottom of the pool had drunk too much, and had decided to try swimming when he went down. The man's friend didn't know how to swim, and had tried to reach for him, getting as close to the water as possible, but it was too far.

Someone had to get the man out.

There was no time to talk. Jack stripped down to his boxers, jumped in, and lifted the man from the bottom of the pool.

He seemed to weigh over 200 pounds and was wearing a waterlogged button-down shirt and slacks. Jack recognized him as he laid him down on the pavement — he appeared to be his late 50s and had been walking in the courtyard earlier that evening.

Someone would later say that his name was Paul, and that he was there for a family reunion. When Jack last saw him, Paul appeared to have a thin stomach, but now he had a pot belly. His stomach and lungs were filled with water and chlorine. He wasn't breathing.

Jack, who had taken a course on CPR as a child, pressed down on the man's stomach, while Roger performed mouth-to-mouth. Next to them, McClam and Freeman, the two Pentecostal women, began to pray. They had seen the drowned man pulled up from the water, and had run from their rooms to pray by his side. McClam touched the man's hand and head as she recited prayers. Along the balcony that ringed the pool, about 15 other women and a pastor from the same church group joined in, as they held hands and prayed together for the man's life.

Jack and Roger turned Paul over, and water came pouring out the downed man's mouth. He began to breath again.

Richard Ellis, a battalion chief with Colleton County Fire-Rescue, was one of the first firefighter-paramedics to arrive on the scene. He used a device to force oxygen into the man's lungs, and rushed him to the hospital.

"There is no question about it, if that man had not pulled him out of the water exactly when he did, and had he not got him to breathe exactly when he did, he would have died," Ellis said in an interview.

Barry McRoy, director of Fire-Rescue, said that the man only had moderate levels of fluid in his lungs, and should have a good prognosis, as long as he doesn't get pneumonia or have any other complication. McRoy was not authorized to release the man's name, and the man's wife, when contacted by The Press and Standard, wished not to be interviewed.

About an hour after the man was taken to the hospital, Jack Tyson stood outside of his hotel room, and talked about his experience. A soft-spoken young man, he attributes his ability to stay calm under pressure to his experience with hunting, and being raised in a rural part of Florida.

"Out in the country, in the woods, you see a lot of things," he said. "I just stayed calm, and did what I had to do." Jack still didn't have time to talk, his friends were waiting for him. They were finally on their way to the bar.