Yarns Without Threads 

At the jetty where the water-skiers started from, a motor launch was filling up with passengers for a cruise on the lake. Somnambulistically, he lined up, paid his fare, and took a seat. There were not many passengers, and he wondered irritably why a plump, sandy-haired G.I. chose to sit down right beside him. The young man was festooned with leather cases of various shapes and sizes, suspended from his neck and shoulders by straps. He opened the largest of these cases and took out a film camera. As the motor launch chugged out towards the other side of the lake he began to take pictures of the receding shore.

- Great place, he remarked. Very scenic. But there's a terrible shortage of tail. You know what I mean?

Timothy thought he did, but could think of no useful comment to make.

- You found any tail since you got here?

Timothy assured him that he had not.

- Perhaps you're too young to be interested in tail?

Timothy responded with an ambiguous leer.

- I mean, what's a furlough without tail?

Timothy murmured his agreement that the question answered itself.

- The nearest I ever get to it is this goddam boat trip.

Timothy expressed puzzlement.

- You see that beach there on the other side of the lake? That's where the Krauts sunbathe in the nude. If you're in luck.

He snapped open another of his leather cases and took out a pair of binoculars, which he focused on the shore. He whistled through his teeth.

- Today we're in luck. Get a load of that.

He offered the binoculars to Timothy, who declined politely. The spectacle no longer held for him the interest it would have done once. As the boat drew nearer the shore, white figures became discernible against the dark background of trees. The G.I. fiddled with the lens of his camera, then pointed it like a gun at the shore. The apparatus whirred. The people on the beach were unquestionably nude, but unabashed by the boat's intrusion. They seemed to be mostly families with children. Some stood up and waved. Timothy waved back.

So all women had hair. Just like men, except that a woman's was more sharply defined, like a trimmed beard. It was funny, the little beard, but it was all right once you got used to the idea. He had been shocked when he saw it on the Jinx woman, but seeing it again on Kate he hadn't been shocked. It made women seem more like men. Perhaps they wouldn't find a man's thing ugly, because they weren't exactly beautiful in that part. There had been something beautiful about Kate and Don lying on the bed, but that was taking all of their bodies together. Taken all together they had looked rather beautiful, like a painting. Though all the paintings, and the photographs, he had seen of naked women had been deeply misleading.

The beach slipped away out of sight. The G.I. sighed and put away his equipment.

- Well, that's another reel for the archives, he said. Wait till the guys back home see this.