as he launched into a sprint that made it to Dorothy at second base. He grinned crookedly, as though his face was doing something against his will.
When Rena hit the ball – miles out, low-bouncing into the tawny edges of the field – she ran like hell, her breasts joggling side to side, and made it to home base while Daniel still mooched through the bunny-tailed grass, hunting for it. Michael, who was catcher now, tackled her to the ground and they rolled around in the pale dust, legs flailing, laughter hooting from Rena, Michael’s face shiny and determined, the top lip downy. He was ready to start shaving but there was no man here to teach him how. Dorothy saw his body against Rena’s, the way his shoulders had broadened, his strong leg jammed between that woman’s, breath coming from her in a regular panting sound, a sound that made Dot grind the nubby end of the baseball bat into the dirt as though she could drill a hole through the earth.
The humidity of the day gathered at last into rain, and the ball game was abandoned. ‘We’re going to play cards in my cabin,’ Rena said, an arm slung over Michael’s shoulder. ‘Anyone else?’
‘No.’ Daniel lifted Rena’s rusty bicycle from the grass and rode it over the ground towards the children’s cabin like he was Butch and Sundance both at once, wheeling in the rain. Dot and Evelyn looked at their brother, who flicked his head to get the wet hair out of his eyes, a short, proud gesture. ‘No,’ the girls said in unison. They passed the vegetable patch on the way back to their cabin, where Name was jogging along the rows of seedlings with her arms above her head in a rain dance, watched by the cat, who shivered under the tool-shed eaves, droplets scattered over the ends of its puffed fur like a net of crystals, and a trail dragging through the dirt behind them from the end of the baseball bat, showing where they’d been.
Daniel stood by the weir in the braided stream, poking its bank with a long stick, the water halfway up his shins. Stepping through the trees Dorothy saw him, and stopped under a gap in the branches, where white sunlight pooled onto her shoulder and ran down one arm. ‘Have you got anything?’
‘Got an eel. Had an eel.’
‘We could put it in Mike’s pillow.’
‘Mike says we’re too old for this place.’
‘True.’ But she liked it here. Their bare feet and strange clothes were like everyone else’s, and the food was good. At school people looked oddly at their American T-shirts emblazoned with brand slogans for a petrol company or bank or some other giveaway, Lee’s old clothes baggy on the girls, Michael in some handed-down shorts held up by Frank’s belt with extra holes punched along the leather. Ruth hated it the most, and had made friends with an older girl who passed on clothes made for an actual seven-year-old. She looked close to normal.
The water ran green-gold over the rocks, spangled where light came through the trees, and in places the current formed a pattern that was like the dévoré-velvet dress Lee wore. Dot’s heels skidded as she picked her way down the muddy bank, leaving soft grooves, and she stumbled into the water, bone-cold under the arches of her feet and between the toes, where silty mud oozed. Moss and waterweeds streamed in the current, as though they grew out of rocks. ‘Where’s the eel?’
‘His name’s Gordon.’
‘Where’s Gordon?’
‘Gone in there.’ A silky shadow brushed through the water and Daniel jabbed it with the forked end of his stick. Dot sploshed down on the stream bed, sitting up to her waist in water that soaked quickly through her shorts, T-shirt, over her skin, and she lay back so that it inched and breathed right over her hair, into her ears, and sound belonged to the submerged world. She stopped trying to fight the cold and it became bearable. The trees were dark in the periphery and the sky very faded and far away, and there was the splash of Daniel marching upstream, past the channel bend, towards the rocks where they had hidden the chocolate money.
Water pushed her hair around and from below the surface her cold ears heard a holler and Dot sat up and twisted to see. Down the stream floated a large, thick leaf, dark green with, now, as it bobbed closer, brown mould spots