Being a young man growing up on a farm gave me lots of long hard days of work. It also gave me almost unlimited freedom. Days of being by myself with nothing around me but land. Visited only by my dad or our hired hand David.
David was a 40-ish slender man. Short thinning hair and skin that looked like leather caused by years of rough work in all kinds of weather. He had never married that I knew of and kind of kept to himself. He had lived and worked on our place as long as I could remember but I hardly knew anything about him.
Dad told me one day to head down a stretch of fence and told David to head down the other. He told us once we met up on the other side we could quit for the day. The work would take most of the day but we would be done and home before dinner time at least.
David was bigger, stronger and more skilled at fixing fence so he usually ended up getting around the backside before I did. He usually kept working till he met me somewhere on my part of fence line.
This particular day I was nearing the back corner and still hadn't seen David. I kept watching for him but hadn't seen anything. Working a little further I saw his atv and trailer on the edge of a hill just above our dam. He must have gotten done for the day and stopped to take a quick swim. I couldn't blame him for not wanting to help me out with my share of the fence. It was a hot day and a swim sounded pretty good to me too.
I drove up and parked and saw David lazily floating on his back in the middle of the pond. I walked down and stripped off my clothes and walked waist deep into the water before falling forward and letting myself disappear under the water.
Working on the farm with no one around it was perfectly normal to swim naked. We were the only family around for miles and there was no point in wasting time with swimming suits.
I stood back up spitting water out like a fountain. David opened one eye and asked if I got finished. "Yep" was my response before falling back into the water. David said something but I couldn't hear him under the water. He was probably busting my balls for taking so long. David was always teasing me for something.
I surfaced and started swimming out to where David was floating. I asked him if he was finished and he told me not to worry about his work.
I spit a mouthful of water at him and then swam away. David flipped over and swam after me catching me by my heel. His arms like iron grabbed ahold of me and pulled me back to him. I squirmed and fought and swam and was able to slither away due to being naked and slick with water and sweat.
I swam away as fast as I could hoping just to get back to where I could touch. I stopped and looked back and saw that David hadn't pursued me like I expected. He was following but at a lazy pace.
David swam to where I was standing and looked like he was going to say something till I reached out and shoved his head under. I jumped to the side and swam away quickly as his arms reached out blindly.