“And snapping turtles,” Pete adds.
“Yeah, and every one of ’em all scared off thanks to your kicking and splashing,” I tell them.
Frankie ain’t paying attention. Instead, he takes a deep breath and slips under the surface. Gracefully, he swims to the far bank, coming up for air only twice, making hardly no more than a ripple each time. My brothers and me watch him swim back to us in silence.
“See?” I say triumphantly. “He’ll do just fine on the expedition.”
“We ain’t swimming into them hills, fool,” Will snaps. “And just because he can swim all right don’t prove if he’s tough enough.” He looks to Pete. “Let’s get to jumping and then we’ll see.”
Pete frowns. He wanted to swim a while longer before we got down to business. Our cousin comes up alongside us, treading water quietly. “All right, Frankie. Time to climb.”
The valley spreads out below us like a painting, Apple Creek glittering yellow diamonds as it ribbons away through the trees. The wind whips across the stony tops of the pilings, blowing hot in my ears and in my hair. Already it’s dried the water from my naked body.
We stand at the edge to catch our breath. My arms still burn from that climb, and I’ve lost feeling in the tips of my fingers from gripping the stones so hard. Frankie’s chest heaves and his face is flushed, but if he’s scared any about the jump, he don’t show it. Pete stands with his hands on his hips, head back, eyes closed to the bright bowl of blue sky above. The freckles on his nose look darker in the sun. He lets the wind throw his blond hair back from his face. He is feeling every part of the day.
Will ain’t having any of it. He’s all business, with his arms folded across his chest and one foot slapping the stones impatiently.
“Come on, come on,” he says. “Get on with it.”
“Let him take his time,” Pete replies, not bothering to open his eyes. “We got all day.”
I see a heron drop from a tree on the far bank and go to point it out to them.
“Hey, you guys—”
Without a word, Frankie steps off the piling and into thin air.
I gasp.
Frankie falls. Arms out, toes together. It feels like forever. And still Frankie keeps on falling, getting smaller and smaller against the vast, deep green of the Sucker Hole.
His splash is a quiet little sound. Pete misses it entirely. By the time he peers over the edge, Frankie has already broken the surface. He treads water for a long minute, his head bobbing up and down in foamy white water. Then he looks up at us, and he waves.
We spend the rest of the afternoon swimming in the Sucker Hole. When our fingers get to wrinkling, we crawl out of the creek and lie on the sandy bank all in a row, like crocodiles, to dry in the sun. After a spell, the Sucker Hole gets glassy-smooth and peaceful again. It’s about three o’clock, and in sun that bright all you can do is close your eyes and watch the orange, fuzzy shapes that flit and float behind your eyelids.
I am almost asleep when Frankie asks his question:
“You fellas ever eat an eel?”
“Can’t say I have,” Pete answers sleepily.
“I have.”
That makes me open an eye. “That so?”
“Every Christmas,” Frankie tells us. “My grandmother dices them and fries them in a pan.”
“Huh.”
“Yeah, and you want to know something else?” Frankie asks.
“What’s that?” Pete yawns.
“They jiggle.”
“They what?” Pete looks at him.
“They jiggle,” Frankie says again. “The meat twitches in the pan. It looks like the frying pan is filled with live pieces of eel. Something about the heat makes the meat twitch. They’re ready to eat when they stop twitching.”
Pete chuckles. “That so? I’ll bet they taste like chicken,” he says.
We lie in silence for a time. Beyond slow-moving water, Knee-Deep Meadow hums.
Will starts snoring.
I imagine a panful of twitching eel meat and my stomach does a somersault. But then the valley sighs, and I feel its gentle breath move over my bare skin. That sun ain’t so bad when there’s a breeze blowing. And when the leaves whisper to each other . . .
Pete drifts off next.
It’s a little while before Frankie’s easy breathing tells me he’s fallen asleep too.
I lay an arm across my eyes to block some of that sun, and the orange, fuzzy shapes swimming across my sight go dark . . .
Sun is sinking low in the treetops and long shadows are stretching themselves across the bank when I wake up. Everybody else is still asleep, their easy snores drifting downstream in the current. I lie a while on coarse creek sand and wait for sleep to take me again.