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Show 7? AH, SWIMMERS! 241 did not leave her, could not leave her, and widi head bowed I peered out at her. She sat there sleepily for a moment, then stood up and yawned, stretching for one glorious instant full and indolent in die sun. She had risen from her tumbled bed as from a white-foamed sea, and she moved out of sight without once glancing out her window, as innocent as a naiad, as unconcerned as Eve, as proud as a queen who does not even have to recognize that windows exist I nearly swooned. Inside me the ringing had mounted to a terrible congested churning, my chest constricted and I gasped for breath. For a moment I felt as panicked, as wildly threshing as if I'd fallen into the deep end without knowing how to swim. Hurrying inside, I threw myself into the work of loading and my father looked amazed upon the change in me, dunking I panted from hard work. Then that house was locked and abandoned at last, my fadier and I climbed into the high cab of die truck and he started and turned and backed and started until we were headed out the driveway. There he stopped, lighting a cigarette while the women, my mother and the girls, got settled in die Pon-riac, and then he waved them on, meshed into gear and we rolled slowly down the driveway. Both of us glanced over for one last look at her window and her white tumbled bed, and then we were on our way, riding out of that town and away from Ted and Shirley and the window forever, riding on toward a new and larger town, to highschool and my fourteenth birthday and whatever else die future held. On the highway my father flipped his cigarette, settled back and began to whistle. Then he leaned forward, peering up at the sky through die windshield. "Gonna be a nice day," he said. "A real nice day for moving." Yes. And as he settled back to resume his whistling, I grinned like a fool. For I had no regrets, I felt no loss. Indeed, my heart was saying thank you to that girl with butter-yellow hair and impossibly beautiful breasts, all of me was saying thank you for a sun-gold vision I would never forget and could never deny. Again I felt diat strange marvelous ringing and I knew then that it was die old Adam in me, and I looked at that man with pursed lips tooting merrily beside me, he who had also looked into that window, had seen that beauty, had felt a man's desire. Yes, and lucky for me he had, my father. I had to laugh at us, really, us two window peepers. Such a fright I'd got, falling out of innocence, and it was only the shallow end after all. So, head still above water, I too leaned back and picked up his tune, tapping my toe. And on we went, the loaded truck taking the road smoothly, die sun shining, the wind blowing fresh. On to deeper waters. Ah, swimmers! |
