I Shall Be Near to You(46)

‘That’s all right,’ I say, looking at my mess plate. ‘This works.’

‘I don’t have much use for it,’ Will says. ‘And you’re always cooking for me …’

‘If you don’t want it,’ I shrug, wondering why he bought a mucket from the sutler in the first place, but it has a nice handle for hanging over the fire so I ain’t asking any more about it.

‘Here,’ he says. ‘You can keep it.’

I look at him sideways. ‘You just trying to lighten your pack? Give me the heavy stuff?’

‘Jeremiah!’ Sully hollers. ‘I think Will here is sweet on your cousin!’

The color comes up in Will’s cheeks. ‘I thought maybe you could use it.’ And then he ducks his head and scurries back to his tent before I can even say a word of thanks, but not before Jeremiah gives me a sharp look and it dawns on me that Will bought that mucket as a gift.


IT IS JUST past noon when we head to the river, Jeremiah, Henry, Jimmy, Sully, and me. The four of them are like a family of skunks weaving in and out and around each other as they make their way down the hill away from our rows of tents, and I am remembering burning Summer days picking ripening seed heads from the hayfields walking to the creek with the four of them, getting our swimming and fishing in before the harvest. I rub my fingers down from my temple and the dust and sweat pills up under my fingers, almost black. I ain’t ever felt so dirty in my whole life.

We have only just gotten to the path worn into the grass, when Sully slaps his knee and says, ‘Damn it all! I’ve got to go back to camp—’

‘You forget all that laundry you was aiming to do?’ I ask him.

‘Something like that. You all go on ahead—I’ll be right back.’

Jeremiah shrugs. ‘We won’t go far from the trail.’

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.’