Soon a dim light burns in the bedroom above the hedge. As before, Roy's shadow slides across the visible wall. Tonight he avoids the window, and Nathan watches his shadow undress.

When that room goes dark, Nathan stands dumbly before his own window, reluctant to turn. When he returns to bed, a small fear seizes him. He replays in his head every moment of Roy's arrival, his stepping out of the car, his standing in the shadow, his undressing out of sight of the window. Nathan lies in bed and examines each of these images over and over. Something in the sequence of events frightens him.

Yet the following day proves to be all Nathan could have wished. In the morning he sits in the seat behind Roy again, and on the way to school Roy talks to him in an almost intimate way. At lunch Roy sits with Nathan and afterward takes Nathan to the smoking patio. No friend takes precedence over Nathan, and no girl excites his attention.

Only once, when Nathan asks about prayer meeting, does the little fear return. Roy says the meeting was fine but refuses to look at him. All further questions about Roy's church stick in Nathan's throat.

That afternoon, when Roy parks the bus under the pecan trees, he tells Nathan to hurry inside and change clothes, he wants them to go for a hike in the woods while there's still light. To an Indian mound, he says, beyond the pond and the cemetery. He grins and lets the bus motor die. The door hardly swings open before Nathan dashes for his house.

In the kitchen his mother stands at the sink washing a cake pan and icing bowl. The room shimmers with afternoon light, filtered through red checked curtains, adding color to her face and hands. "I'm making a coconut cake. Do you want a little piece of layer?"

"No, ma'am. I'm not hungry"

"It's still warm out of the oven, it would be good."

"I'm not hungry for cake right now."

This disappoints her a little, but she goes on smiling warmly. "Well, did you have a good day at school?"

"Yes, ma'am."

"Well, sit down and talk to me about it. What are you in such a hurry for?"

"Roy wants me to change clothes and come out to the woods with him."

She studies her dishes and frowns. Her glistening hands move deliberately. "What does he want you to go in the woods for?"

"To see this Indian mound."

"What do you want with an Indian mound?"

"I never saw one before."

She looks out the window. "There he is, too, waiting on you."

"Can I go? Is it all right?"

She goes on watching Roy, her face filling with worry. "I guess you can. But I don't want you to go too far." "Yes, ma'am, I won't."

"Remember, he's bigger than you are. You don't have to do everything he does." "Yes, ma'am, I know."

 She dries her hands and kisses Nathan's forehead without looking at him. "Put on your everyday clothes. I'll tell him you're coming."

Nathan rushes upstairs, furiously erasing his mother's sadness from his mind. 'When, school clothes exchanged for everyday, he returns to the porch, she is fussing with her plants, pinching a dead leaf off the ivory, wiping the leaves of a snake plant with a cloth. She says to be careful in the woods, don't stay gone too long. Nathan answers, yes ma'am, yes ma'am, and bursts into the yard. Roy awaits beyond the hedge. The two boys run side by side through the apple orchard.

The rhythm of running carries them a long way, beyond the meadow. They crash through underbrush but make no other sound. Leaves strike the skin of Nathan's arms, stinging and caressing. Roy leads him west of the pond and cemetery; he lopes deeper into the woods, glancing back to make sure Nathan is keeping up. Roy laughs at the glory of motion, a bright, incomprehensible sound that echoes through the woodland. He leaps across a narrow stream where drooping ferns make elegant green arches, and Nathan follows, light, running as if he will never tire.

The forest is something other than a neighbor now, it becomes a new world. As the density of growth increases, the pace of their running slows. Soon it is easier to walk than to run, and Nathan draws abreast of Roy. Roy gives a look that instructs, that says he is pleased. The Indian mound is pretty close once they cross the creek, he says.

The land is rising. Nathan climbs past bent saplings and red leafed dogwood; Roy has run up the hill a little faster than Nathan and pauses, breathless.

The forest thins and light spills into the lower tiers of growth. Beyond a glade of trees, on a flat of land, a long mound rises. Only green grass grows on the mound, as if all other kinds of plants have been magically forbidden. Golden sunlight tumbles along the gentle slope.

Roy hangs his shirt from his belt loops. When Nathan does not follow suit of his own volition, Roy reaches for his shirt buttons.

The air, Roy's hands, light spilling down. Roy offers Nathan the shirt, tenderness in his expression, then runs down the long slope. Nathan threads the sleeves through the belt loops of his pants and follows. Roy vanishes momentarily, but Nathan, heart pounding from the run, finds him. Roy is a strong silhouette against the bright mound, walking toward it. Nathan overtakes him halfway up the mound.

Nathan draws near shyly and Roy refuses to turn. Roy's back muscles shift in a rhythm that seems strong and good. The warm brown skin invites Nathan's hands, but he refuses to reach. They are still climbing. A curious fact, Roy's breath labors more than Nathan's. When on the crest of the mound Roy turns, his ribs are beating open and closed like wings.

Nathan lays his hand against the pounding in the cleft of Roy's chest.

Roy watches his hand, watches Nathan.

Their two fleshes are bright together, the two boys, warm like the colors of the late sky. The sun still has some descending to do, and they watch it and the clouds for a while. Roy settles along the ground, spreading out his shirt, and Nathan does the same. Soon they are layered against each other. Roy says the movement of the treetops is like the ocean. Nathan knows nothing about the ocean; he listens to the murmuring of Roy's insides, the ferocious heartbeat that shakes through them both. Roy is murmuring in Nathan's ear, a hymn from church, "There is a place of quiet rest, near to the heart of God." Nathan sings too, kissing Roy's soft throat, his collarbones, the underside of his chin. He can smell Roy's body, he can taste it with the tip of his tongue. Roy grips the back of Nathan's head as if afraid he will escape. He need not worry. Nathan knows the nakedness Roy wants, and soon achieves it. Roy arches with his body toward Nathan, a curve of yearning. He lies bare in the grass with a look on his face as if Nathan is making him sing through every cell.

They lie still while the sun settles into the green bath of leaves. Roy says nothing but Nathan can feel how his spirit darkens. The banded sky begins to drain of color as they dress. Roy stands with his hands in his pockets. He calls, "Nathan," in a strangled voice and Nathan walks close; he brings Nathan's ear to his mouth and says, "Please don't say anything about this to anybody. Okay? Please."

"I won't." For a moment, just a little, Nathan is afraid.

Roy has frozen with one leg in his pants, the other not.

"Is something wrong?"

"You just can't say anything about it. That's all." A bitter whiteness sheathing his expression. "It's near dark. We better get home."

But even then they linger in the forest. At first Roy holds Nathan's hand but later is ashamed or shy. Yet he refuses to hurry, walking slowly, never straying far. He brags that he knows all the land around his father's farm, he could find his way home in the pitch dark if he had to. Soon Nathan glimpses the cemetery through the trees, and then the pond, and they are walking along the tangled shore within sight of the backs of both houses. They slow their walking even more, and each reaches for ways to manage nearness to the other without seeming responsible for it. In back of the barn, Roy takes Nathan next to him, again furiously, as if the act makes him angry. "You can't do this with anybody but me. Do you hear what I'm telling you?"

Nathan's heart suddenly batters at them both. "I don't want to do it with anybody else."

"Just remember." Red-faced, Roy is already rushing toward his house.

Nathan wanders toward his own kitchen, hearing the sounds that indicate supper heading to the table. Already he is calculating the turns of the cycle, that tonight he will not see Roy, that tomorrow Roy will not say much on the bus. None of that makes him afraid, exactly. Nathan has no words for what does make him afraid. But he feels the chill of it as he descends into the house, where his mother has prepared a meal carefully but will hardly look him in the eye, where his father brings the Bible and a tumbler of whiskey to the dinner table, mumbling verses under his breath as he takes his seat. In the submersion of home, Nathan returns again and again to the image of Roy's body on the Indian mound, lost and bewildered under the power of Nathan's mouth.

Chapter Four

Their guest for supper is Saint Paul, and the text is Romans, chapter one. Dad reads neither aloud nor silently, he chants softly as if he is alone, the words a stream of sound that barely rises above the gold edged pages of God's holy word. Because that, when they knew Cod, they glorified him not as Cod, neither were thankful; but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened.

The whiskey sits at his right hand, the knife and fork at the left. Today it is real whiskey bought from the local package store, not the clear moonshine of weekends and holidays.

Mom, restless, gives the appearance of hovering slightly above the seat of her chair. Neither listening nor speaking, she chews her food in a mechanical motion. As always at mealtime, she wears a frightened expression, glancing from Dad to Nathan, then fixing her attention on her plate.

Dad reads: Professing themselves wise, they became fools, and changed the glory of the incorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man, and to birds, and to four footed beasts, and creeping things.

Nathan eats though he can hardly taste. When he sits at the supper table with Mom and Dad, the twisting of his gut is unrelenting, and every soft spoken word from the King James Bible reverberates.

They are a family during certain mealtimes and during church. Each night, each Sunday, they eat together, because they always have. The repetition echoes darkly through the country of Nathan's memory, through all the dangerous territories in which his thought may no longer move freely. Through all that he has forgotten and locked away.

Once there was a younger Dad, of firm flesh and clear skin, a Dad who could look Nathan in the eye when they talked, who could drink his whiskey on the weekends and stay sober through the week, who could play ball with Nathan in the yard. Once there was a Dad without a soft belly hanging over his belt, without the slackness of this one's jaw or the broken veins in his cheeks and nose, a Dad whose eyes were not yellow ringed with red. Once there was a man who could kiss Mom on the cheek with a clear heart, who could pick up Nathan in strong arms and toss him toward the ceiling like a toy. That other Dad remains, somewhere; but not here inside this pale body huddled over its gilt edged Bible. The spider veins tracing Dad's cheeks and the yellow skin of Dad's hands are frightening to Nathan. There is even the smell of rot that underlies his father's sweet aftershave. Being filled with all unrighteousness, fornication, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness; full of envy, murder, debate, deceit, malignity; whisperers, backbiters, haters of God, despiteful, proud, boasters, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents, without understanding, convent breakers, without natural affection, implacable, unmerciful: who knowing the judgment of God, that they which commit such things are worthy of death, not only do the same, but have pleasure in them that do them.

Nathan can be safe if he keeps his eyes lowered, if he focuses on the plate of food that he can never taste. He lets the holy utterances fall over him like the lightness of a quiet rain, bows his head as if in reverence and listens, without hearing. In his mind he is far away, in the woods with Roy, stepping through golden sunlight.

Soon the meal will end and Dad will retreat into the living room, where the television will drone deep into the night. No one will expect Nathan to go there. He holds his breath and waits, watching Mom's knotted hands as they whiten on the handle of her fork. She closes her eyes, and for a moment it is clear that she too feels pain from this last scrap of their togetherness.