The Heart is a Lonely Hunter - Carson McCullers [115]
It was like the deep, quiet woods made them timid, and they walked softly along the bank beside the creek.
‘Don’t it look pretty.’
Harry laughed. ‘What makes you whisper? Listen here!’ He clapped his hand over his mouth and gave a long Indian whoop that echoed back at them. ‘Come on. Let’s jump in the water and cool off.’
‘Aren’t you hungry?’
‘O.K. Then we’ll eat first. We’ll eat half the lunch now and half later on when we come out’ She unwrapped the jelly sandwiches. When they were finished Harry balled the papers neatly and stuffed them into a hollow tree stump. Then he took his shorts and went down the path.
She shucked off her clothes behind a bush and struggled into Hazel’s bathing-suit The suit was too small and cut her between the legs.
‘You ready?’ Harry hollered.
She heard a splash in the water and when she reached the bank Harry was already swimming. ‘Don’t dive yet until I find out if there are any stumps or shallow places,’ he said. She just looked at his head bobbing in the water. She had never intended to dive, anyway. She couldn’t even swim. She had been in swimming only a few times in her life--and then she always wore water-wings or stayed out of parts that were over her head. But it would be sissy to tell Harry. She was embarrassed. All of a sudden she told a tale: ‘I don’t dive any more. I used to dive, high dive, all the time. But once I busted my head open, so I can’t dive any more.’ She thought for a minute. ‘It was a double jack-knife dive I was doing. And when I came up there was blood all in the water.
But I didn’t think anything about it and just began to do swimming tricks. These people were hollering at me. Then I found out where all this blood in the water was coming from.
And I never have swam good since.’
Harry scrambled up the bank. ‘Gosh! I never heard about that.’
She meant to add on to the tale to make it sound more reasonable, but instead she just looked at Harry. His skin was light brown and the water made it shining. There were hairs on his chest and legs. In the tight trunks he seemed very naked. Without his glasses his face was wider and more handsome. His eyes were wet and blue. He was looking at her and it was like suddenly they got embarrassed.
The water’s about ten feet deep except over on the other bank, and there it’s shallow.’
‘Less us get going. I bet that cold water feels good.’
She wasn’t scared. She felt the same as if she had got caught at the top of a very high tree and there was nothing to do but just climb down the best way she could--a dead-calm feeling. She edged off the bank and was in ice-cold water. She held to a root until it broke in her hands and then she began to swim.
Once she choked and went under, but she kept going and didn’t lose any face. She swam and reached the other side of the bank where she could touch bottom. Then she felt good.
She smacked the water with her fists and called out crazy words to make echoes.
Watch here!’ Harry shimmied up a tall, thin little tree. The trunk was limber and when he reached the top it swayed down with him. He dropped into the water.
‘Me too! Watch me do it!’
‘That’s a sapling.’
She was as good a climber as anybody on the block. She copied exactly what he had done and hit the water with a hard smack. She could swim, too. Now she could swim O.K.
They played follow the leader and ran up and down the bank and jumped in the cold brown water. They hollered and jumped and climbed. They played around for maybe two hours. Then they were standing on the bank and they both looked at each other and there didn’t seem to be anything new to do. Suddenly she said: ‘Have you ever swam naked?’
The woods was very quiet and for a minute he did not answer.
He was cold. His titties had turned hard and purple. His lips were purple and his teeth chattered. ‘I-I don’t think so.’