Young Lonigan - James T. Farrell [72]
Kenny and Studs swam out where it was cold and deep, and there was no one around them. They dove, splashed, floated, splashed, swam, snorted. They were like happy seals. Studs got off by himself and wheeled and turned over in the water like a rolling barrel. He called over to Kenny that it was the nuts. Kenny yelled back that boy it was jake. They swam breast-stroke, and it was nice and easy; then they did the crawl. They went out further. Only the lake was ahead of them, vast and blue-gray and nice with the sun on it; and it gave them feelings they couldn’t describe. Studs floated, and looked up at the round sky, his head resting easy on the water line, himself just drifting, the sun firing away at his legs. It was too nice for anything. He just floated and didn’t have anything to think about. He looked up at the drifting clouds. He felt just like a cloud that didn’t have any bothers and just sailed across the sky. He told himself: Gee, it was a big sky. He asked himself: I wonder why God made the sky? He floated. He floated, and suddenly he liked himself a lot. Sometimes he was ashamed of his body, like when the old man came in to use the bathroom when he was taking a bath and didn’t have anything on, or like on the night he graduated, when he was in bed and had a time trying to sleep. Now he liked his body, and wasn’t at all ashamed of it. It moved through the water like a slow ship that just went along and didn’t have any place in particular to go and just sailed. About ten yards away he heard Kenny wahooing and singing about Captain Decker who sailed on the bounding main, and lost his . . . and Kenny seemed almost as far away as if he was on the other side of the lake. He splashed with his hands. Then he held his toes up and tried to wiggle them, but he got a mouthful. He turned and swam a little way, taking in a mouthful of water and holding it. He turned over and floated, spouting the water, pretending he was the most powerful whale in all the seas and oceans, floating along, minding its business, because all the sharks were leery of attacking it. He had a sudden fear that he might get cramps and drown, and he was afraid of drowning and dying, so he turned over and swam. But he wasn’t afraid for long. Then he and Kenny tried to see who could stay under water the longest, and they waved in to attract attention, so people on the diving board might think they were drowning and get all excited. He dove down, imagining he was a submarine, and the water kept getting cooler, and he kept his eyes open but could only see the water, clear, all around him. He felt far away from all the world now, and he didn’t care. He came up, choking for air, and it was like coming to out of a goofy dream where you are falling or dying or something. Kenny was up before him, and Studs, after he had gotten a good breath, told Kenny he wasn’t so good.
“Drowning ain’t my specialty. That’s not my trick!” Kenny yelled back.
They swam slowly in.
When they got on the beach, they gazed about and ran all around, looking for Iris and eyeing all the women to get some good squints. Kenny said it would be swell, like heaven, if all women wore the same kinds of swimming suits that Annette Kellerman did. Studs said it would be better if they didn’t wear anything. Kenny said women sometimes did go swimming without anything on. Studs said he’d give his ear to see