Nightswimming at the Ingram Dam 1969

from my novel Jackson - reflections on a summer night

I remembered Dale and I thought about that first kiss. Dale and his friend Jesse had come from Victoria, Texas. They’d spent previous summers working at the Double Mountain, but this summer was different. Both had been issued numbers calling them to serve in Viet Nam right after they got out of high school. They’d left Victoria and were hiding out at the ranch until they could make enough money to get up to Canada.

Everybody knew, even Lotte, which made the whole thing seem exciting and dangerous like we were all in a movie. Nancy was the ranch nurse at the Double Mountain. She was model pretty like girls in a magazine. She had long, thick dark auburn hair like Katherine Ross and was married to a college teacher who was still back home. Nancy and Jesse fell in love that summer and began having a secret affair. I’d watch them sneaking off in the heat of the day during our break time before we had to go set up for dinner.

The two of them would be giggling like they had a secret and run across the flat ground for the trees. There was a hidden place on the Guadalupe that only the locals knew about and I knew that’s where they were going. I’d see them running, their long hair blowing in the wind behind them like they didn’t have a care in the world. I’d watch after them until I couldn’t make them out anymore and my eyes hurt. Until they merged with the heat waves coming off the ground like an apparition. It was like a mother nature sleight of hand and I’d wonder if I’d even seen anything at all.

It was black as pitch like they say in the books, that night at the dam. We’d worked extra hard that day. I was tired, hot, and sweaty. It was a warm Texas summer night, the thermometer still registering at over ninety-five degrees. All of us jumped into a couple of the ranch jeeps and a truck and headed for the Guadalupe Dam. I’d never been before, but all the older ranch hands had gone and would talk about it while we were doing our chores the next day.

I was wearing my swimsuit from last summer under my red jeans. It was red with yellow flowers, a two-piece, but not quite a bikini. I have always loved a yellow flower. I had seen it on a mannequin in the Fair Store window and had to have it. I didn’t fill it out like the dummy, but Babe had told me I’d grow into it. I knew she meant my breasts. They were little tiny knobs that wouldn’t mature till I was in my midtwenties and the swimsuit was long gone.

We all took turns sliding down the dam and splashing in the cold, dark water. I saw that a few of the others were drinking cans of beer, but nobody offered me any, so I didn’t ask. I’d tasted my Uncle Bob’s once and didn’t like it. It was bitter and nasty. Just like Granny said when she told me never to drink.

She said once you took up drinking, it was near impossible to get shed of the habit. She knew what all of the liquors tasted like, which was strange because she was a lifelong devout Baptist who’d never drank any liquor. At her church, it was a sin to chew gum or dance, so beer drinking wasn’t an option. When they passed around the holy sacrament, it was broken up saltines and Welch’s grape juice.

Granny wouldn’t have liked the goings on at the dam that night, but I was having so much fun. They were treating me special, like a mascot, I guess, but also like I was one of them. It felt good to be accepted by the college kids. I can’t say exactly what time it was, but Dale came over and started a conversation with me. He’d never talked to me personally before, but I knew about him from the other girls I worked with at the ranch.

Both he and Jesse were so good looking. Jesse had that long brown hair that almost reached his shoulders, but Dale’s was short and curly. He was only eighteen, but he looked like a grown-up man to me. Even more than Jesse did. The fact that they were hiding out from the man added to their mystique. The man is what they called the law.

“Hey there, red pants,” he said, treading water. Then he sat down next to me on an underwater rock.

Boy, I thought, he sure has pretty white teeth. Babe always said you can tell a lot about someone by their teeth. A person with dirty teeth is a dirty person. I tried to figure out who he resembled, but he didn’t look like anybody famous that I’d ever seen. He just looked like himself. Like Dale. He had a big smile that I never wanted to forget.

“You haven’t been out here before.”

“No,” I said. “But I like swimming.” I sounded too eager.

He laughed anyway. “I’ve been watching you.”

I looked down at my chest and there was some wet toilet paper seeping out from the top of my suit. I hoped he hadn’t seen that. I wanted to duck under the water and get it out, but that would have been too obvious. I wondered what somebody in the movies would do in a case like this.

“Red and yellow’ll kill a fella’,” He said, kind of laughing as he said it. He must have seen the toilet paper. He reached over and took my shoulder. I had never had a guy touch me like that before and didn’t know what to do. “Come on over here,” he said. “Don’t be scared.” He said it like skeered.

Then, in a weird way, but so gently, he pulled me right up next to him. I could feel his warm, wet skin on my arm as we sat on our river rock that night and looked at the big Texas sky. I don’t think I’d ever seen so many stars as there were that night. “Here, let me fix that.” And he took his thumb and pulled out that soggy tissue from my bathing suit top. “You don’t need that, Jody. Look up there.”

He pointed up at the stars in the black night. “You’re as perfect as any of those stars in that sky.” That might sound hokey and made up to somebody else, but to me, It meant something. Like I mattered. It was the first time anybody had ever talked to me like that. Especially somebody like Dale.

We were standing in the waterfall from the dam, the power of it pounding down on us from all sides, which added to the drama of that moment. He took my chin between his fingers and pulled my face up toward his mouth. He began to give me a kiss. A real kiss. And, it was a French kiss. I had never been kissed before, but I knew about French kissing from junior high. Some of the wild girls from the eighth grade had done it. I didn’t know if I was ready to have a French kiss, but are you ever ready to do something for the first time?

It was erotic and I felt things, things I’d been warned all my life not to ever feel. Like the time Granny nearly blistered my behind for yelling out I had a hair when I was taking a bath. I remembered when I found out how children were procreated and how it almost gagged me. I had to explain it to Willie so she would know, but she never seemed as upset about it as I was. To be perfectly honest, it still causes me to gag a little when I think of the religious people having all their children. They always seem to have more than enough children and I knew what that meant.

Dale’s tongue was strong and he knew exactly how to do a French kiss. I didn’t have anything to stack it up against, but I could tell he was an expert and he liked it a whole lot. I smelled the beer on his breath and it tasted better on him than when I’d tried to drink it out of the can. I wouldn’t have minded if that kiss would have lasted forever, but it was over way too soon if you asked me. When everybody started loading up in the cars to head back to the ranch, Dale grabbed my arm. “To be continued,” he said. That was fine with me and I told him so.

I never saw Dale again after that night. Lotte had gotten wind of Jesse and Nancy’s romance. She always seemed to have a handle on everything that went on at that ranch. She’d notified Nancy’s husband, the college teacher, and he drove overnight to the Double Mountain the very next day. He’d showed up early in the morning and by nighttime, Nancy was gone. And so were Jesse and Dale. I don’t think anybody ever saw or heard of them again. I guess they went ahead and went to Canada. Sometimes when I see a flock of wild geese flying overhead or hear Neil Young singing “helpless, helpless, helpless,” I think about Jesse and Dale. When I read Sylvia Plath sometimes, I let myself think about Dale and hoped they made it there.

I should have loved a thunderbird instead.

At least when spring comes they roar back again.

I shut my eyes, and all the world drops dead.

(I think I made you up inside my head.)”

After they’d left, it was less than mystical there at the Double Mountain. The things I’d done before like taking a long hike and daydreaming, swimming in the river, riding the horses, even making beds, all lost the luster. I hadn’t realized how big a crush I’d had on Dale. I thought about his tight, curly brown hair and that big grin that made everyone want in on the joke. He had that way about him and you wanted to be included with his circle of people. Just to be around him. He was gone now and I figured I’d just have to make the best of it.

Nightswimming/R.E.M. -

https://youtu.be/ahJ6Kh8klM4?si=iZK4Dc9RfZiZxbqC

Nightswimming deserves a quiet night

The photograph on the dashboard, taken years ago

Turned around backwards so the windshield shows

Every streetlight reveals the picture in reverse

Still, it's so much clearer

I forgot my shirt at the water's edge

The moon is low tonight

Nightswimming deserves a quiet night

I'm not sure all these people understand

It's not like years ago

The fear of getting caught

Of recklessness and water

They cannot see me naked

These things, they go away

Replaced by everyday

Nightswimming, remembering that night

September's coming soon

I'm pining for the moon

And what if there were two

Side by side in orbit

Around the fairest sun?

That bright, tight forever drum

Could not describe nightswimming

You, I thought I knew you

You, I cannot judge

You, I thought you knew me

This one laughing quietly underneath my breath

Nightswimming

The photograph reflects, every streetlight a reminder

Nightswimming deserves a quiet night, deserves a quiet night #R.E.M. #nightswimming #1969 #summeroflove #frenchkiss #writing #memoir #Texas #ingram #hillcountry #Vietnam #draft #ranchlife