THE LAKE
313
time. How would th.at be? Just don't say anything to Ma, Jerry,
and we'll have a good time. How does that sound?"
"All right, George," I said. I could always tell Mamma later
about the way George had treated me. He sat me up and put me into
his arms. He laughed, with his bronze laugh, at my elbow, and let
that arm hang down as we moved along. Perhaps twenty feet sepa–
rated us from the lake, but George covered them with the wary
gentle tread of one fearful of disturbing deer prey. He went down the
few rotten wooden steps one at a time. He turned and rested me
against the rocks, which led up to form a sort of lane before the
lake; it stretched, on the one side, to the steps we had followed, and,
on the other, around and out to the afar road, striking through a
region of bushes where berries were to be picked now and where
the trees hid
animals
for hunting in the winter. George left me there
for a minute, and walked over the weeded ground that led to a short
pier or landing. I remember that four row-boats were moored by
iron chains, and the stern of every row-boat, all of a shingling-off
grey paint, battered at random, hopelessly, to and fro, striking the
landing and bouncing away. George broke off a frond from the lake
and, keeping
it
in
his
mouth, shaped
his
fingers into a bowl, and
filled his palms with water. He needed to make a few trips before,
pouring the water onto my elbow and rubbing it with the frond, I
was clean. While he did this, I was fascinated by my view of the lake:
it seemed only a reflection of the sun, fiercely pumping eddies of
red water like a heart. George leaned on the rocks and took off his
shirt, scanning the landscape. I saw that the dock was in an alcove
formed by bushy juts and then expanded to a fairly broad space
of water, broken up with stumps of trees on which turtles basked.
Tw.o boats were out at the limit of the horizon, and I could see people
standing up in them, casting their fishing lines out in wide arcs against
the dense wilderness of the minor forest surrounding the entire lake.
"Why don't you rest here a little, Jerry?" he asked me. "I could
see how things are, and come back for you in a couple of minutes.
How would that be?"
"No.
If
you want me to tell Mamma, George. I will if you don't
take me."
"All right; but I'm going to let you know right now that you'd
better not say anything to Ma. 1'11 get even with you if you do."
George got me up on my legs and I, still agitated and bruised
from the fall, gradually got to the landing. He put my legs over the
