It was about two years later after we had moved from the head of Evans Bay to Bird Cove Bay on Read Island, and shortly after my sister and I had returned from living with Grandma Betts, that the three of us spent the next few summers swimming every afternoon as the tide came in. The operative word here is swim, meaning none of us new how. But we used to have a great time playing in the salt water in front of our house and around the next bay by ourselves, out of site from both our mothers. The beach went out for about a quarter mile and it was mostly a black gooey mud, which made a squishy sucking sound when you walked and was good at sucking gumboots right off your feet. Before you knew it you were walking with only your socks in the black gooey ooze. The mud also made for great mud fights, between David, Dawna and I. Nobody ever won but it was sure fun to sling great gobs of the gooey black stuff at one another. The best thing however was that when the tide went out the mud got really hot by the sun. When the oncoming tide rolled over the hot mud it raised the cold salt water to bathtub temperatures, and it was lovely to play in. And play we did on old logs and pieces of wood and such, making rafts to push around with poles.
I always was somewhat envious of David as in my mind he was a bit more daring them I was and he was also a better aim with a rock, and that bugged me. I had proof of that and a scar to prove it. Well before I knew it he had taught himself to swim, before I did, and that really bothered me too. Before to long Dawna had taught herself to swim also, and here I was still too afraid to put my face in the water. At this point I was feeling a bit negative about the whole thing but still afraid to put my head under the water, when as luck would have it I fell off my raft head first into the water and came up swimming. I wish all my prayers were answered that easily.
David was really not a bad kid but was the kind of kid that would get into trouble mostly because he never thought of the consequences.
One day when Dawna, David and I were playing outside. David comes over to my sister and told her to put her hand in his pocket, and feel the little mouse. Dawna not thinking trustingly did so, and quickly pulled her hand out and ran home and told mom what she had found and it wasn’t a mouse. Mother immediately told my Aunt, and did David ever get in trouble and a lecture on what nice boys should and should not do to or with girls. David never did do anything close to that again. Of course this was a big deal in my mother’s eyes as even legitimate sex was only to be tolerated. I think she had sex three times, one for each of us kids.
Even though we don’t keep in touch to often I still visit David from time to time, I like to think that because of me he turned out OK, or maybe I should say in spite of me.
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