We had all the boats tied together as usual. The Banini was rowing the front boat. I was climbing around from boat to boat and planning how I’d walk along the rocks to the place he had showed me, then get in the water and spear-fish from there. I remembered I had forgotten to bring a plastic bag for all the fish I was going to spear. I wondered if the Banini had one he would lend me.

I heard someone call my name from the beach. I looked up. It was Jennifer standing there. She waved at me and I waved back and wished there was a mirror in the rowboat so I could see if the cowlick on the top of my head was standing up or not. To make sure it wasn’t I spit on my hands and smoothed my hair a couple of times. When we pulled up to the beach Jennifer waded out to help the Banini by pulling the nose of his boat up to the sandy shore. I jumped into the water like the Marines in news reels I had seen jumping off their landing craft on Korean beaches. I miscalculated. I had jumped too soon so I went in up to my armpits instead of just to my knees. My head went under the water. When I came up I wondered what shape my plastered hair was in now. Did it look funny or good? Then I swam back out to behind the last boat and started to push it to show Jennifer I had jumped in the deep water on purpose like it was part of my job.

Suddenly I heard a voice right above me and looked up into Jennifer’s face. She had climbed into the first boat of our boat train whose nose she had pulled to shore and had hopped from one boat to the next till she got to the last one that I was behind pretending to push.

“What do you think you’re doing, silly?” Jennifer said.

“Oh hi, Jennifer.”

“Why did you jump in? You can’t do any good pushing.”

“I always do this, I have for years. Someone has to do it,” I said.

Jennifer shook her hair in my face and lay down on her stomach and hung out over the water with her pale blond hair falling all around me as I tried to push the boat.

Then she said, “Batty. You’re batty. You’ve always been batty.”

I just kept pushing and wishing I could think of some way to make it like I had finished the job but I couldn’t so I pushed the boat up toward the beach while Jennifer’s hair was in my face and she peered down at me and laughed. After watching me she reached over and pushed my head under the water.

When I came up I said, “Don’t do that.”