The Studs Lonigan Trilogy - James T. Farrell [378]
They paused at the pebbly shore line. Studs suddenly felt himself small and puny, and he stood, with the incoming waters curling over his feet, sticking his shoulders back and throwing out his chest. He ran through the waters, dove under in shallow water, and popped up wetted, with drops trickling from his mussed hair.
“Come on in, it won’t hurt you,” he called while Catherine waded in carefully.
“You let me come in my own way!” she shouted back, proceeding slowly, as if afraid to wet her swimming suit.
All about them the water was jammed with a shouting, splashing, joshing, kicking, swimming, diving, ducking, plopping crowd, and Studs’ ears hummed from the noise they made. He turned his back on Catherine, who was up to her waist, dove under, bobbed his head up, swam out for about fifteen yards. He stood up in water that covered his chest, singled out Catherine by her white bathing cap, and watched her swimming breast stroke toward him. He cut back toward her, taking crawl strokes, and circled around her, blowing on the water, spouting it out of his mouth, diving under, coming up, a serious and studied performance which he wanted her to notice by thinking that he was just like a fish in the water. She swam beside him to the diving board, about two hundred yards out and extending off the breakwater rocks that cut vertically through the water. Both of them puffed as they climbed onto the jagged rocks.
“Come on and dive with me,” he said.
“I’m afraid. I can’t dive.”
“I’ll teach you.”
“No, you go ahead, and I’ll watch.”
He crossed a few feet of jagged stones to the almost spring-less diving board, and waited while a tall, solidly built, dark-haired chap went off. He followed, hitting the water with a big splash, and swam around randomly, liking it, taking easy strokes. His arms began to seem leaden, and his back started to ache. He labored toward the diving board, climbed over the sodden piles and stones with lurching movements, and, puffing as his hair dripped, stood over Catherine. A brief spasm-like pain cut his heart, and passed too quickly to cause him worry.
“You’re a good diver,” Catherine said as he sank beside her.
“That one wasn’t so good. I hit the water too heavy. I used to be pretty good but I’m out of practice,” he said, smiling modestly, breathing with effort.
His eyes roved the beach, colorful with bathing suits, alive with a mass of people who stood, walked, sat, their shouts and talks rising into a study, drumming roar. He watched two fellows tossing a ball and he thought he’d like to join them, and then he saw a girl falling off a fellow’s back in a game of leap frog. He felt a part of this scene, of many people all having a good time. Close to shore, a group of fellows were ducking a girl who screamed and giggled loudly. Nudging Catherine, he pointed, smiling.
“They certainly have their nerve,” she said.
“It’s all in fun and she seems to like it.”
“You men, you think that a girl likes anything you do to her, just because it’s you doing it. You’re just babies when it comes to understanding girls. And let me tell you further, that being ducked is not my idea of fun.”
“Look out or I might be ducking you.”
“William Lonigan, don’t you dare,” she said in mock-challenge.
“Is that a threat?” he asked, liking it as she tousled his hair.
He watched a girl, her skin tanned almost the color of chocolate, posing her athletic figure on the diving board.
“Mama, what a broad!” he heard a fellow nearby on the rocks exclaim just after she had dived neatly.
Them’s my sentiments, he told himself, trying to single her out in the water. He feared, though, that Catherine might have caught him watching her.