They dived flat and shallow, hitting the water at almost the same time, its impact shocking and burning their bodies. They raced upstream around the bend, and when they stopped, they found themselves where they had started, and swam about in a leisurely manner until they had put enough time between now and then to look openly at each other without embarrassment.

Floyd swam over to a cypress tree, the roots of which grew down into the water. Between branches of its watered roots he found the melon he had wedged there. He rolled it onto the bank and swung himself up after it. Leon followed him. Raising the melon into the air, Floyd dropped it to the firm ground, splitting it into four pieces.

Each boy took a piece and scooped a hand into the ripe, mealy meat, and spat small black seeds into the creek as they ate. When they finished, their hands were sticky wet, so they swam again, and then walked back and forth on the bank as the shady hot air dried them. “We did it,” Floyd bragged delightedly. “We sure enough did it!”

Clovis had long since found her dress and put it on. She had no need to talk to anybody. She was very pleased with herself. Leon was her first white boy, and she shrugged, thinking how he did it just about like everyone else. She took the tin bucket by its wire handle and swung it as she walked off to find the berry patch. The berries were just right. She ate almost as many as she picked, but gathered enough to make a pie, and she walked back home thinking how good it was to be a girl.

15

The secret they shared had the effect of separating them. It did not occur to Floyd that what had happened would come between them, but when Leon closed up and wouldn’t talk about it, Floyd withdrew in hurt puzzlement. He showed himself plainly to Roscoe, who promptly assigned him work along with the others. Floyd went off with them, hoping Leon saw him go.

Leon had thought of Floyd only as Floyd, who had always been there and would always be there. He had never tried to put a word on what they were. But awareness of the blackness of Clovis gave him awareness of Floyd’s color and station in a way that made him miserable. He and Floyd had shared everything, even the tutoring at Oaks, which they had continued until a month ago when Mr. Jeremy Bartram made up his mind to go back to Savannah and see what the future held for him there. When he packed his maps and books, he gave the flute to Edna Davis who had been kind to him in her motherly way. She proudly set it on a mantelpiece in the living room.