the oars, and got out the small pair of diagonal pliers I carry in the tackle box. Then clamping on the motor, I started up the lake.
At first glance the long reach of the lake above the bend seemed to be empty and deserted, a continuation of the miles below it. There was the same wall of oaks, the weed beds and gaunt dead trees, and the water flat and brassy in the sun. A big slough led off into the timber on the right and I was almost past it before I saw the small boat landing just inside the entrance.
I wheeled about and turned in, cutting the motor and drifting up alongside the landing, which consisted of two big floating logs with boards nailed across them. There was a live box made of rabbit-wire netting alongside the float, and I could see a few catfish swimming around in it.
I tied the boat to the logs and went up the trail through the timber. There was a long clearing, with bunch grass and weeds, dead and brown now in the late summer, with a dust-powdered trail going back to the frame shack at the other end. The house was small, not over two rooms at most, with a sagging porch in front, and covered with old oak shakes the color of tarnished silver. It sat up off the ground on round blocks, and under it I could see the big black-and-tan hound lying in the dust. He rose and stalked dejectedly out as I approached, but there was no other sign of life. Grasshoppers buzzed in the warm morning sun, and there was a peaceful, almost drowsy stillness about the place that made you think of a painting or some half-forgotten fragment of a dream.
I stopped in front and called out. “Hello. Hello in the house.”
There was no answer and no sound of steps inside. I could see a feather of blue-gray smoke curling from the stovepipe and drifting straight up in the motionless air, and knew someone must be around nearby if there was still a fire in the cookstove. I tried again. “Hello in the house.”
The old hound looked at me sadly and gave a listless wag of his tail, but the silence remained unbroken. I could feel the hook pulling at my back and began to wonder impatiently if I would have to go down the lake after all. Damn, I thought. Turning, I walked around the side of the house on the bare, hard-packed ground. Someone had tried to grow flowers in a little bed along the wall, but everything was dead and withered now except the lone morning-glory winding along some white string stretched up past the window. The ground at the base of the vine was damp, as if it had been watered last night.
There was nothing behind the house except a privy with its door hanging crazily open on a broken hinge. There was no barn, for there were no animals except the dog, and not even a well. They must get water from the lake, I thought. A black walnut tree shaded the corner of the house, and on beyond the privy there was just the dead bunch grass stretching out toward the wall of timber closing it all in. I heard a squirrel chatter across the stillness, and inside the kitchen the fire crackled once inside the stove.
I was just turning to go back around in front when I saw a sudden flash of color in the edge of the timber and a girl stepped out into the clearing. What I had seen was a blue bathing cap, and now she came on toward me along the trail in the wet bathing suit, seeing me standing there but not changing the unhurried gait. It was a beautiful walk, and I watched her, trying not to stare, conscious of the crazy thought that she could be modeling a bathing suit instead of walking across a backwoods clearing.
It wasn’t one of those two-piece Bikini things, or even the fancy and highly colored ones usually worn around beaches, and even though it was very small and tight and clung to her like nylon with a static charge, there was still somehow a suggestion of modesty rather than display about it, probably because it was of the kind professional swimmers wear, smooth and black, and cut down for utility rather than advertising. You had an idea, watching her, that she was a good swimmer.
“Hello,”