The Swimming Hole

By the last week of August, there wasn't much left for us to do.

We'd already ridden our bikes everywhere our parents let us ride them. We'd played enough baseball in the vacant lot that nobody wanted to chase another ground ball through the weeds. School started in a few days, and none of us wanted to spend those days sitting around the house.

There were four of us that afternoon. Danny, Mark, Pete, and me.

We rode out to Jensen's Market because Danny had money.

I had a nickel. Pete had two. Mark claimed he had money when we left his house, but when we got to the store all he could find was a penny and a washer.

Jensen's sat near the edge of town, across from the grain elevator and just before the pavement narrowed toward the county road. It wasn't much of a store, but they had a row of glass jars near the register with candy in them, and you could still get enough for a nickel to make the ride worthwhile.

We spent nearly everything we had.

Outside, we sat on the curb with our bikes lying in the grass and divided up the candy. It was hot enough that the chocolate things had already started getting soft.

Nobody wanted to go home.

That was when Pete mentioned the pond.

His older brother had been there with somebody who lived out that way. At least that was Pete's story. There was a pond down one of the dirt roads past the edge of town, and according to his brother it had a good place to swim at one end.

“How far?”

Pete shrugged.

“Not very.”

That was good enough for us.

We weren't supposed to go much farther than Jensen's. Our parents didn't mind us riding around town, but the county roads were different. Cars went faster out there, and once you got beyond the last few houses there wasn't much around except fields.

We talked about it for maybe thirty seconds.

Then we got on our bikes.

The first part wasn't bad. We rode past the last houses and turned onto a dirt road Pete thought he recognized from his brother's directions.

After another mile, he wasn't as sure.

“You said it was close.”

“It is.”

“Where is it?”

“Up here.”

There was nothing up there.

Just another field.

We kept going.

The road had been dry for weeks, and every time a car passed, we moved onto the shoulder and waited for the dust to settle. By then the sun was high, our candy was gone, and nobody had brought anything to drink.

Nobody wanted to be the one who suggested turning around.

So we kept going.

Pete finally saw a stand of trees ahead.

“That's it.”

This time he was right.

The pond wasn't much to look at from the road. Most of it sat out in the open between fields, but one end narrowed into a patch of cottonwoods and brush. We pushed our bikes through the weeds and found a place where the bank sloped down to the water.

The water looked wonderful.

There was only one problem.

Nobody had a swimming suit.

We stood there looking at the pond for a while.

Danny suggested skinny-dipping.

At fifteen, none of us wanted to be the first one to agree to that.

The narrow end of the pond was surrounded by enough trees that we figured nobody could see us. We couldn't see any houses. The dirt lane was back through the brush. We'd ridden all that way, we were hot and covered in dust, and the water was right there.

Danny apparently decided that was enough. He started taking off his pants.

Then we heard a car.

All four of us stopped.

Through the trees we could see it coming down the lane.

We could also see, for the first time, how much of the pond somebody on the road could see.

Danny pulled his pants back up.

Nobody mentioned skinny-dipping again.

That left our underwear.

This was when we discovered that Pete and Danny had an advantage Mark and I had never considered.

They wore boxers.

From twenty feet away, their underwear looked enough like swimming trunks that nobody would think much about it.

Mark and I wore white briefs.

There was no mistaking ours for anything.

Pete was already taking off his shirt.

“I'm going in.”

Danny followed him.

Mark looked at me.

I looked at Mark.

The water still looked wonderful.

We went in.

It was cold enough that I forgot about my underwear for the first few seconds. We yelled and splashed and shoved each other farther out. The bottom was muddy between our toes near shore, but farther in the water was deep enough to swim.

For a while we had the place to ourselves.

It was worth the ride.

Then another car came down the lane.

Pete saw it first.

“Car.”

Danny and Pete kept swimming.

Mark and I immediately went deeper.

The car slowed.

There were two people inside. I don't remember who they were, and I'm grateful for that. I only remember both of them looking across the pond at us as they went by.

Mark sank until the water was under his nose.

I tried to do the same.

Then the car drove on.

Pete laughed so hard he swallowed pond water.

We stayed in longer than we should have. Nobody wanted to be the one who said it was time to leave. Eventually we climbed out and sat in the grass to dry.

Boxer shorts dry fairly well in the sun.

White briefs do not.

We gave them as much time as we could, pulled our clothes back on, and started for home.

It didn't take long for Mark and me to discover another problem.

We'd dried off pretty well everywhere else, but our underwear was still damp. Once we were sitting on the bikes, our pants started getting damp too.

Then the dust stuck to them.

Worse than the dust was the riding itself.

After a few miles, all four of us were standing on the pedals whenever we could.

Nobody said much on the way back.

By the time we reached Jensen's, we were dusty, sore, and ready to be off those bikes.

Then we remembered our parents.

We had left to buy candy.

We had been gone most of the afternoon.

We had ridden several miles beyond where we were supposed to go.

And Mark and I looked like we'd wet our pants.

We stood there with our bikes trying to come up with a story.

We couldn't.

So we rode home.

I don't remember whether I got grounded.

I don't remember what I told my mother, either. Knowing her, she probably knew I'd been somewhere I wasn't supposed to be.

What I remember is the four of us standing there at the edge of town, dusty and sore, looking at each other and trying not to laugh.

School started a few days later.

We'd gotten one more good afternoon out of summer.