Had she shifted it a fraction, it would have encountered David squatting
on the bank washing himself. His long back, the red shirt drawn taut
across its bowed outline, showed the course of his spine in small regular
excrescences. The water that he raised in his hands and rinsed over his
face and neck made a pleasant, clean sound, that her ear noted with the
other sounds. Somewhere behind her Daddy John and Courant made a noise
with skillets and picket pins and spoke a little, a sentence mutteringly
dropped and monosyllabically answered.
David turned a streaming face over his shoulder, blinking through the
water. The group he looked at was as idyllically peaceful as wayfarers
might be after the heat and burden of the day. Rest, fellowship, a
healthy simplicity of food and housing were all in the picture either
visibly or by implication.
"Throw me the soap, Leff," he called, "I forgot it."
The soap lay on the top of a meal sack, a yellow square, placed there by
David on his way to the water. It shone between Susan and Leff, standing
forth as a survival of a pampered past. Susan's eye shifted toward it,
fastened on it, waiting for Leff's hand to come and bear it away.
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