Mohawk

was even darker below the surface than above, and after several scissors kicks Dallas began to suspect he had miscalculated the distance between them. His strategy was determined, however, and he refused to surface until he felt naked flesh. For her part, Anne knew precisely what he was up to and was able to trace his progress easily since only his head remained thoroughly submerged. When he finally arrived, half oxygen starved, fully expecting to embrace the loins of his beloved, he was greeted instead by the small of her foot planted firmly in the center of his forehead. The surprise of finding himself propelled backward drove the remaining air from his straining lungs, and he sucked in brackish water before managing to surface.
    The first thing he saw was Anne stroking shoreward toward the log and her clothes. Coughing and sputtering, he started in pursuit, not entirely certain he had been rebuffed. Clearly, unless someone else was with them in the lake, he had been, but he still couldn’t believe it. Dallas also couldn’t tell whether the figure retreating before him was naked, but it certainly looked naked, and he tried desperately to catch up. But where Anne seemed to knife effortlessly through the water, he pitched forward again and again as the sand gaveway beneath his socks. His lungs began to fill with water, and he discovered, when he tried to call out, that he was capable only of gurgling noises. When he finally stumbled out of the lake, he was too exhausted and nauseated to mount much of an attack. Dropping to his knees in the sand, he sputtered “I … I … I.…” The tops of Anne’s breasts glistened in the moonlight, and he felt his hopes plunge, so terrible was her beauty.
    “You should be ashamed, Dallas,” she said.
    He struggled to his feet. “I—”
    “Look at you.”
    Dallas did as he was told and was surprised to discover an erection in the very process of deflating. Mistaking her meaning, he said, “It’ll come back. Just let me touch you.”
    But her permission wouldn’t have made any difference, because the gin and lake water, churning more violently than ever, began to rise even as his penis descended. Burning with despair, he formulated a more modest plan. At the very least, if he lunged forward in a crude, last-ditch assault, he might bring her to ground and bury his sorrow in her breasts before she could summon the strength to cast him aside. Surely he deserved that much.
    He was cheated, though, just the same. At first his legs refused to function, then they carried him in the direction opposite from the one he intended, off into the trees where he dropped to his knees again and began to retch.
    Anne did not follow and, instead, found her clothes and shook herself dry as best she could after wringing out her long hair. Rather than put on her dry clothes over them, she removed her wet bra and panties and, after wringing them out, used them like a sponge toblot herself semidry. The night air was lovely and cool on her skin, and she felt the exhilaration of her nakedness, such an utterly abandoned and delicious and hopeless feeling that she wanted to cry, by herself, for a very long time. She had not heard Dan return; he stood watching her from the exact spot where Dallas had knelt a few minutes before. Somewhere out on the lake a night bird called. That was the only sound.

16
    For several days after his beating, Randall Younger looked fairly impressive—one eye swollen shut, his cheek a purple fruit above the fracture, his lips and nose lacerated. His mother was terrified when she saw him, and he made matters worse by refusing to explain what had happened other than confirming the obvious—that he’d been in a fight. She was so frightened and angry that she threatened to transfer him to Sacred Heart, the Catholic junior high. There was no reason to fly off the deep end, he said, and that made her madder still.
    Actually, as far as Randall was concerned, things hadn’t worked out badly. Stories about what had transpired had widely circulated by the time he returned to school on the Tuesday before Thanksgiving, and when the other kids saw the way he looked, he recognized their admiration. Even better, the teachers made no objection to his wearing sunglasses indoors, a privilege never before extended. But strangest of all was the immediate camaraderie extended him by the very boys who had thrashed him so mercilessly. He met several of them in the halls that first day