Floyd laughed. “You know something funny? We got nothin’ on neither!”

She laughed as if it were the funniest thing she had ever heard said, until Floyd, longing to touch her, found a way: he pushed her head under water. Bobbing up she sputtered and caught her breath and pretended to be offended. “That ain’t fair!” She made again as if to swim away.

Floyd, with Leon close behind him, dived and caught her by one ankle. She jerked away and turned to slap and splash water at Floyd. “Stop it, stop it, I say, you better stop it!” she said and let herself laugh to show she was not really troubled.

Leon, grinning now, splashed water lightly at her face. She giggled and splashed him back. All three were laughing and splashing, the boys toward the girl, and she toward them; and when she finally pretended, shrieking, to be bested, the boys began to splash water at each other. To interrupt them, lest they forget her, she cried, “Ain’t this a whole lot of fun?” She turned to float on her back, her breasts and the rounding of her belly projected boldly above water. Their silence told her they saw, and presently Floyd swam up beside her, and Leon swam up on her other side.

They floated quietly downstream, the boys face down, the girl face up.

Floyd reached a hand and touched a teat, and when the girl did not demur, cupped it. Leon watched and followed and stopped when the girl suddenly put her feet on the bottom of the creek and stood, looking at both of them solemnly, the water just touching under her breasts and seeming to float them. After looking at Leon, she focused her attention on Floyd. Her look left his face and went deliberately down his neck and chest, and saw beneath water, which wasn’t dark enough really to hide a body, that his thing was hard. She moved her eyes quickly away, as if startled, and took a step or two toward the creekbank.

Leon grabbed her arm. “Clovis!” Surprised at himself, he let her go.

She turned not to him but to Floyd. “He know my name,” she said.

Floyd laughed. “We know the name of every gal on the place.”

She walked away. “Well, you go bother ‘every gal,’ don’t bother me!”

He caught a foot as she clambered up the bankside. She kicked, but lightly. He was up on the bank with her, beside her, over her, on her. Shrieking and laughing, she pretended to fight him, but the blows of her hand were soft—they had none of that strength she used to pound dirty clothes—and her wriggling was not such as to discourage him. Indeed, it merely whetted the sensitivity of his now full-blooded dick.