Ettie left the sheltering rocks. The area ahead was a barren slab of granite that angled slightly downward. It offered no protection. If the girls happened to look toward the end of the lake, they would see her crossing. She squirmed along on her belly, watching them.
The girl in the lake had started to swim. The one crouched on the bank was scooping up water and rubbing it on her shoulders and breasts as if to get used to its cold. The skinny one, cringing and hugging herself, was wading in slowly. None of them so much as glanced in Ettie's direction.
She reached the end of the open space without being seen, and crawled behind a rock. She peered over its top. The small inlet where Merle had been fishing was no more than thirty feet away. Plenty of shelter between here and there. As quickly as she could, she rushed down to it. From the recessed shore, the girls were out of sight. She heard splashing and voices, then a sudden outcry that knotted her stomach before she recognized it as a shriek of laughter.
They're having a great time, stupid bitches. If they knew.
She hopped across the water on stepping stones, and crouched at the base of the outcropping. Merle's abandoned fishing pole lay against the rocks in front of her, a shriveled bit of beef jerky on its hook.
Ettie worked her way up the slope, then peered over the top, first at the swimmers, then at the rocks along the bank. From this height, she expected to see Merle crouched behind a boulder.
She didn't see Merle. But she saw his scattered clothes.
A movement caught her eye. To the left. In the water. Just below a jutting clump of rocks. All she saw, at first, were rings, rippling outward as if a stone had been tossed in. Then there was the pale blur of a body sliding along beneath the surface.
Rage seized Ettie. She wanted to scream and yank Merle from the water. The fool! The
She scrambled to the top of the outcropping and stood up straight. The first girl was floating on her back, arms out to the sides, her wet breasts shiny in the sunlight, her matted pubic hair glistening as she kicked closer and closer to the long, gliding form of Merle. The boy couldn't be more than a few inches below the surface, but he hadn't come up for air, yet, and none of the girls knew he was there.
'You!' Ettie shouted. 'Girls!'
Three wet, astonished faces snapped toward her.
'Get out! There's snakes! Poison snakes. Water moccasins!'
Two of the girls screamed and started splashing for shore even while Ettie yelled. The third, the one who'd started it all by leading her friends down to the lake, trod water and looked around. 'I don't see any,' she called.
'There!' Ettie snatched up a stone and hurled it. The girl turned to her right as it smacked the water. Not far to her left, Merle's head broke the surface. 'Right there! See it?' His head turned toward Ettie, then quickly submerged.
He knows he's found out, she thought. Sure enough, the pale blur of his body turned beneath the water and started back.
'Tracy!' called one of the girls.
'Come on, Tracy,' yelled the other. 'Let's get out of here!'
Both girls stood on the far shore, cowering and clutching themselves, trying to hide their nakedness from the intruder as they yelled to their friend.
Tracy frowned up at Ettie. 'You're some kind of a nut,' she said. Then she swam casually across the lake.
Merle, still underwater, reached the cluster of rocks where he'd started. His head popped up. 'Stay down,' Ettie snapped.
The girl waded ashore on the far side. Before rushing to join her friends, she thrust her middle finger at Ettie.
'Mom?' Merle sounded pathetic.
'Stay down. I'll tell you when to come out.'
He waited, only his head out of the water, while Ettie watched the girls get into their clothes, swing their packs on, and start toward the far end of the lake. 'Okay now?' he asked.
'No. Stay where you are.'
The trio, often glancing back, reached the footpath and started striding toward the main trail. Ettie turned away. She climbed down the rocks, snapped the baited hook off the line, and picked up the springy stick Merle used as a fishing rod.
She carried it up the slope. When the girls were out of sight, she stepped down and walked along the shore to where Merle was waiting. 'Okay,' she said. 'You can come out now.'
'You gotta look away.'
'Get out!'
He sighed. 'Yes, ma'am.' He stood in the waist-deep water and waded ashore, both hands cupped over his groin.
'You haven't got no sense at all, boy.'
'The Master, He — '
'Don't you go laying it on the Master! Weren't nothing but your pecker wanted those girls. Bend over.'
'Ettie, please.'
'Do what I say.' He bent over, and she swung the fishing pole hard against his rump. Crying out, he clutched his buttocks. 'Move your hands.' He was sobbing. As his hands dropped away, Ettie saw a red stripe across his skin. Her throat constricted, and Merle went blurry as tears filled her eyes. She drew back the switch to strike again, but instead of swinging, she threw it down. 'Go on and get dressed,' she said in a shaky voice. 'And don't you ever do nothing like that again, or you'll be the sorriest man that ever walked on two legs.'
'Yes, ma'am.'
Ettie walked away.
Hey, look!' Julie's arm swung up, and she pointed.
Nick gazed up the shadowy trail. Off to the side, he saw a small cleared area between two trees. It was a patch of raised ground, roughly rectangular, enclosed by a border of small stones. A weathered plank of wood tilted from the earth at its far end.
'A grave,' Julie whispered.
'Naw.'
'Sure looks like one.'
Leaning into the straps of his heavy pack, Nick hurried toward the mound. Julie stayed close to his side. He was nervous and excited, as if they were the first ever to discover this forbidden site. He stopped at its foot. The hump of ground was roughly the size of a small man. Words had been carved into the wooden marker. His eyes followed them as Julie read aloud in a hushed voice: ' 'Beneath this earth lies Digby Bolles. Poor man ran out of Dr. Scholl's.' '
Nick felt a mixture of relief and disappointment. 'It's a joke,' he said.
'I guess so.'
'Somebody went to a lot of trouble for a practical joke.'
'Some people do,' Julie said, and gave him an amused look. '
Nick nodded. He thought of their brief, wild run behind the tents, the screams of the twins, how daring he'd felt through the whole experience. Running in only his T-shirt and shorts, Julie close to him in the dark. The way he'd wanted to grab her and pull her tight against him, and kiss her.
'We'll have to do that again sometime,' she said.
'We'd catch hell,' he told her. 'I wouldn't mind, though.'
