THE MORNING WATCH
223
than they would have at any other time, and Richard the more uneasily
crossed and uncrossed his hands in front of himself. Only Hobe, of any
boy Richard knew, never concealed his own body or his interest
in
another, and even now, Good Friday seemed to mean nothing to him.
He looked at them, and watched them look at him, with a coolness
which seemed almost amused. He urinated a few drops onto his belly
and rubbed it in with the palm of his hand, against cramps. He ·made
no gesture of covering himself and grabbed his testicles with one
I
hand
only at the instant he grabbed his nose with the other to leap with a
spangling splash into the water.
He bounced up with an incredulous strangling yell and began a
frenzied dogpaddle and both of them knew the water must be even
colder than they had thought, and that there was no longer any chance
of holding back. Jimmy went in feet first; Richard dove. The iron
water distended enormously just beneath him and for an instant, know–
ing the brutal shock and the pain to which he had now inescapably com–
mitted himself, he felt the fatal exhilaration of a falling dream and
had just time to dedicate within himself
for Thee!,
in a silent shout as
deafening bright as a smiting of cymbals, then plunged into the smash–
ing cold. Still crying
for Thee
within his ringing head, he slanted his
hands to dive as deep as he could go and, though his eyes were open,
could see nothing of the steep sandstone along which his hands guided
him, but only the stifled effulgence of light above. It was so much colder
than he had been able to imagine that in the first moment he had
felt almost unconscious, but the diver's reflex had locked his breath
and now that he searched from ledge to ledge downward along the
much colder bottom there sprang throughout his flesh such an ardent
and serene energy that he was aware of the entire surface of his
body as if it were fire, and every muscle seemed to feel its own exact
shape and weight, and he wished that he need never come up and lay
against the deepest trench of the bottom, his belly foundering in ooze,
his eyes shut, staying his hands on rocks. He lifted his face free of the
ooze and cautiously opened his eyes; he could feel, more clearly than
be
sure he saw, the light which enlarged above
him.
He turned his head
and looked up sidelong; there it was, a pure, heavy slab of still light
which qy imperceptible degrees shaded downward into most deadly
darkness. His chest and his head began to knock, it became harder
with every pulse to hold onto the rocks. 0 Lord let me suffer with Thee
this day, he prayed, his lungs about to burst; and took hold more firmly.
You got no right, his own voice silently told
him,
you got no right. No
right; but still he fought off his need for air, filling his cheeks with the
exhausted air from his lungs and taking it down again
in
the smallest
