We walk through the trees edging the water to a place that slopes all gentle into the river.
Near the bank, the boys strip down to nothing but their underdrawers, dropping their trousers and shirts and shoes like cow pies along the shore. Jeremiah is the tallest and anybody would say he’s the handsomest too, all muscle. Jimmy is the first one to the water, where the earth turns to hard-packed mud, his freckles standing out on his pale skin. He moves careful into the river, testing the bottom like he always does.
I leave my shoes next to Jeremiah’s and roll up my trousers to my knees, trying not to see the dirt ground into my hems. I wade to where the water licks at the cuffs, the last one to get in the river flowing smooth and flat. Jeremiah is already out past Jimmy and Henry, the water lapping at his thighs, his milk-white belly sucked in tight at the cold of it, a line of grime marking his collar. I am thinking about sinking all the way into the current and swimming out to him when we hear crashing in the brushes and loud whoops.
It ain’t much of a surprise when Sully bounds out of the bushes. The surprise is when Edward and Hiram and Will come chasing after him. Sully don’t even stop moving to get himself undressed, kicking off his brogans in a patch of grass, stepping on the toes of his socks to pull them off and hopping out of his trousers, leaving them in one pile, his shirt in another close to the water.
Will stops at the bank, but Edward and Hiram strip and run into the water right behind Sully. Sully is the skinniest thing, all arms and legs, yelling as he leads them splashing past me, the cool water drenching me. When he gets to where Jimmy teeters, moving careful out into the river, where it is too deep to run, Sully dunks himself underwater and Hiram follows right after him, jumping in with a big splash, leaving Edward, his broad back covered with black hair, holding his arms out straight like a scarecrow’s, moving slow like the water is thick.
Sully bobs up from the river, yelling, ‘Feels great! Why ain’t you boys in yet?’ and then splashes Jimmy until all Jimmy can do is sink himself, while Hiram floats on his back, spouting water from between his teeth. Will leaves his clothes folded neat at the river’s edge and starts walking out to where I am standing, and that is when I see my shirt is sticking to me, the thin white fabric showing what’s underneath.
‘You coming in?’ he says.
I cross my arms over my chest and shake my head. ‘Don’t swim,’ I say, and all the fun goes out of the afternoon for me.
‘What you mean, you don’t swim?’ Henry says, turning back to look. ‘We’ve all been swimming with you before.’
Sully stops splashing on Jimmy long enough to yell, ‘Come on, Ross! You getting shy on us now?’ Something about the glint in his eye when he says it gets me thinking it ain’t by accident the other boys came swimming with him.
‘What’s the matter, Little Soldier?’ Edward calls. ‘You afraid of water?’
‘What you ought to be afraid of is what happens to Rebel lovers,’ Hiram says. ‘I hear they don’t swim too good.’
‘I ain’t swimming,’ I say, cutting each word short, keeping watch on Hiram. It ain’t easy, not when the water is cool and clear. Not when swimming at the creek with Jeremiah is how we first got to talking about our farm in Nebraska. But I don’t like the feeling dripping off these boys when they look at me.
‘How did you grow up and not learn to swim?’ Will asks.
‘Just did.’ Then I add something that is the truth, something so the lie won’t feel so bad. ‘My Mama worked so hard having me and my sister, she was afraid of us drowning.’
‘I could show you,’ he says. ‘If you want to learn.’
Will stands still a moment, waiting for my answer, but Jeremiah starts yelling, ‘Get out here, Will! What’s the matter? You afraid of fish?’
Will raises his eyebrows and gives me a shrug before inching farther out into the water.
‘I bet me and Edward could get Ross in.’ Hiram grins and starts moving toward the shore. ‘Teach you to swim real fast.’
Hiram is always in the fray when poker games break out into shouting, and the story goes it was him who gave Edward that black eye when they first enlisted. I don’t know what I was thinking, standing between him and Rebel Rose.
‘Two dollars says Ross swims worse than a bag of drowned cats but puts up as much fight,’ Sully laughs.
I back away like a runt pushed out of the nest, while Hiram smirks and the rest all watch, bitterness boiling up in me with each step.