roomâdining hall anyway, and they were chasing each other around the pool as if theyâd never stopped, their cheeks distended with corn mush and cauliflower, their bodies naked and brown and stippled with cuts, contusions, poison oak, dirt. He dropped the hose and moved toward the water like a zombie. Then he was in, the green envelope, the cessation of sound, his limbs moving under command of the autonomous system, pump and release, pump and release, till he cracked his head on the far side of the pool and heaved himself streaming from the water.
Somebody else was in now, cannonballing and shouting, the twoyellow dogs barking at their heels, Lydiaâwas that Lydia?âand the greenish water lapped at his knees and he was feeling he ought to shake the water out of his hair and get himself a plate of mush just for the ballast, when he locked eyes with Alfredo across the lawn. Alfredo gave him a look, niggardly little eyes, his mouth like a wad of gum stuck up under a desk at school, and Ronnie gave him a look back. He wasnât going to take any shit. He had as much right as anybody to be hereâLATWIDNO, right?âand he wasnât about to apologize to Alfredo or Norm Sender or anybody else. Then he felt a hand on his knee and it was Lydia, her breasts bobbing, the hair pressed flat to her head. âWhere you been?â she said. âWe looked all over for you last night.â The water lapped, dragonflies hovered. And then: âDid you hear what happened?â
No, he hadnât heard.
She blinked the water out of her eyes, snaked a hand up his leg, and he felt himself go hard against the rough wet folds of his cutoffs. âA girl got raped.â
âRaped? What do you mean raped? â
âI mean she was some runawayâfourteen, she was only fourteenâand Normâs freaked about the whole thing, running around the kitchen jabbering about the manâthe manâs coming, the manâs comingâand hide the dope and all, and clean this shit up, and do this and do that, and Alfredoâs right there with him. They want Lester out. And Sky Dog and the rest of them.â
Ronnie considered this, the water lapping at his legs, Lydiaâs breasts bobbing at his ankles, her hand crawling up his thigh. His normal response would have been something like âBummerâ or âHeavy,â but the moment was huge and hovering and his head wasnât clear yet, not even close, so he just stared down at the white ghosts of her legs kicking rhythmically beneath the surface.
âWhat I hear is they got her stoned, and then they pinned her down, and it wasnât just Lester and Sky Dog either. It was all of them.â She paused, kicking, kicking, the slow fluid rhythm of her legs. Che threw somethingâa scarred Frisbeeâat his sister and shelet out a shriek, and then the dogs started barking and Reba, at the far end of the pool, went off on a laughing jag, ha-ha, ha-ha, ha-ha. Lydiaâs hand was cold. She clutched him tighter. âSomebody said you were there,â she breathed, and then trailed off.
He was there. Sure he was. And heâd gotten into it with a couple of them too, hadnât he? Sure, sure. He must have. Because he didnât care how stoned he was or how voluntarily primitive it got, he wasnât about to stand by and watch something like that . . . And the thought of it, the thought of that cheap little acidic moment in the back house with all those null and void faces and the thump, thump, blat of the stereo and the girl with her stick legs flailing just made him feel so black inside he wished heâd never left home himself. What could he say? How could he explain it?
âYeah,â he said, âyeah. I was there.â
Lydia seemed to consider this a moment, her eyes glittering like planets in the uncharted universe of her face. She was a big girl, big in the shoulders and the hips, big all over, black