Nathan hurries past the bruising bulk of Dad, who watches him enter but says nothing. Mom is seated at the kitchen table with a cup of coffee in front of her but refuses to meet his eye. She says her tiniest good night, aiming her voice into the cup.

Nathan tries to round the table to climb the stairs. But Dad turns and faces him. His eyes are bloodshot and his puffy cheeks are shadowed with heavy beard. "Hey Nathan."

"Hey Dad."

"You don't want to speak to your dad, do you?"

"I said hey."

Dad steps toward him and he retreats, slides past Mom and to the stairs. Dad has frozen in place. Mom is raising the coffee cup.

"Good night," Nathan says.

"Good night," she answers.

"Good night, Dad."

He runs up the stairs. He tries to get his breath.

He says good night to the window across the hedges. He goes to bed with his clothes on in case he has to run. He lies in bed with blankets up to his chin.

He expects trouble falling asleep but dozes at once. He seems to sleep deeply for a long time, then wakes with a start. There is a light in the hallway. It is very late in the night.

From the hall outside the door a voice says, "Nathan." Nathan's heart stops, then pounds. Nausea washes through him. He lies perfectly still with his eyes closed. The shadow of his father falls through the door.

"Did you have a good time when you went out tonight, Nathan?" The sound of something sliding against the wall. The speech is slurred, but still distinct. "I'm talking to you, Nathan. I know you're awake. I saw your eyes come open. Did you have a good time tonight?"

Still silence.

"You better answer me or I'm coming in there."

"Yes, sir. I had a good time." Soft. "Your mom was the one who said it was all right for you to go out. It wasn't me. I don't like it."

"Yes, sir."

If I close my eyes. If I do not see. Again the sound of sliding. Something against the wall. Closer this time.

"Where did you boys go?"

"Swimming. At the river."

"Did you go swimming too?"

"No, sir."

"That's right. You don't know how"

A deep breath. The shadow moves. If I close my eyes.

"I'm glad you had a good time." Silence. Softness of air against the window. "Open your eyes. Nathan. Look at your Dad."

"I'm sleepy."

"Open your eyes."

Mom whispers from the stairs. Her voice contains a familiar high pitched edge. Nathan remembers the sound, which he has not heard in this new house. "Harland. Harland. What are you doing up there?"

"I'm talking to Nathan." The sliding stops.

"Come to bed. Leave Nathan alone. He's tired."

"Let me check on Nathan. I'll be back down there in a little while."

"You promised me you wouldn't bother him." The note of hysteria rising.

"I told you it's all right. I'm checking on him to see if he had a good time." In the silence there is his coarseness of breathing, the sour smell of his body. Then retreating. "You shouldn't let him go out like that. He ought to come to church with us."

"He can go with us to church on Sunday. Come on downstairs."

Slowly, the sense of Dad's presence fades. When Nathan opens his eyes the room is empty.

Beneath the blankets he shivers. Moonlight flows through the window. Nathan listens till the house is silent He slips out of bed, creeping across the floor. Till morning he sits at the window, never closing his eyes.

Chapter Seven

As soon as the sun comes up, he hurries out of the house, stealing bread and a can of macaroni O's from the cupboard. He heads to the Kennicutt graveyard and sits there through the long Saturday, never moving beyond the silent graves.

His sense of time alters, and the day seems eternal. He has brought some of his schoolbooks and does homework in the morning, though in the chilly air he can only write for a certain length of time before he needs to warm his hands. From the high vantage of the cemetery he can see the whole shore of the pond, and he feels safe there at first. He holds his schoolbooks in his lap and scans the dark breadth of the pond. The world of Saturday morning, silent, unfurls.

Flocks of grackles descend like clouds coming down out of clouds, landing in the pecan orchard beyond the cemetery. The chorusing of their voices continues through the morning, an early flock, not much in a hurry, rooting through the leaves and branches for pecans that have fallen to the ground. The trees have begun to lose leaves, the green draped branches of summer have thinned and are lifted lighter. Even later in the morning when the sun does a better job of warming things, even then there persists the hint of autumn deepening.

He reads about the geography of Argentina, how the gauchos ride the pampas green and wide. He reads the history of the building of the pyramids by uncountable thousands of slaves. He reads about a boy who tries out for a baseball team, finds a hidden talent for pitching, and leads his team to a state championship. This last book he borrowed from the school library because he wanted to learn something about baseball, back in the long ago when it seemed to matter that he learn more about things like that. He knows that this feeling pertains to Roy in some way but he does not examine the link too closely, he reads the book in a dreamy way through early afternoon.

The presence of Roy is strong in the graveyard. Nearby is the place of the cherub, where Roy and Nathan lay on the ground. A long time ago this happened. Even now, the memory makes Nathan feel safe. But all his thoughts move distantly, and he cannot sustain any feeling; he reads and pauses, he breathes and stares at the ground. When he reads, the boy in the story is Roy, and that makes the book, too, move distantly, images far in the background. Roy absents himself from the scene. As if he were a dream, now dissolving.

Once, in the afternoon, Nathan returns to the house, tiptoeing across the back porch and through the open door. Mom lurks in the kitchen like a shadow. Dad's cigarette smoke curls in the motionless air, drifting from the direction of the living room. The weight of his presence drags Nathan as if toward orbit. Mom asks, silently, Where have you been? Will you come home? Nathan eats the lunch of soup and crackers, answers, silently, I won't tell you where I am because you might tell him. The softness at the center of her face houses her pain. But she accepts the silence and turns away, and Nathan, hearing the heavy footfall of his father, hurries to the yard again.

"Is that Nate?" Dad's voice echoes behind, but diminished. In the yard, where October is draining the leaves from green to brown, Nathan sidles along the hedge, out of sight of the windows.

Roy appears suddenly near the barn. He carries a pail in each hand. His flannel shirt is buttoned to the neck, the sleeves rolled to the elbow. He marches from the barn door to the chicken house, boots crunching the gravel. Nathan's heart beats fast at the sight. But Roy retreats into the murk of the chicken house without a word. Stung, Nathan hurries to the pond.

In the afternoon he tries to sleep for a while, making a bed of the blanket and wrapping it around his shoulders. He has not thought far ahead. He stretches out on the blanket and uses his schoolbooks for a pillow. Lying in such a way that he can still survey the pond, he has only to lift his head. He closes his eyes. Sounds follow, and he jerks his eyes open and scans his part of the world. One after another sounds intrude: a broken branch as if a foot were stepping on it, the similarity of something to a cough, the shrill cry of a bird, or the wail of distant wildcat. His eyes come open for each sound no matter how tired or near sleep he is. He scans the edge of the pond for his father. He cannot feel safe.

Twilight finds him curled against a tree, hoping he will not get redbugs this late in the year. He has begun, dully, to consider how he will pass the night.

Night descends like a sharpened blade. Leaving the graves for the first time since afternoon, Nathan waits near the cluster of farm buildings. Early autumn brings a chill to the evening, and Nathan's thin shirt retains sparse heat. But the sensation of cold reaches him as if from far away. The facts of dusk surround him. Lights burn in the kitchens of his house and of Roy's. Roy's father ambles idly in the driveway, under western ranges of rose stained clouds. Roy's mother hovers in the square of light over the kitchen sink, dismantling the remains of the family supper. The rolls of fat over her elbows shiver back and forth.

Later, Roy lopes out of the house and drives away in the truck. A baseball cap obscures his face.

Mom appears on Nathan's porch, wringing her hands anxiously in a dishtowel. She scans the distant fields. She is afraid to call for Nathan, because of Dad. But Nathan's supper is cooling minute by minute, and soon she opens the screen door and leans out. The plaintive sound flies across the farm. Nathan relents.

When he enters the kitchen, she moves without speaking to serve him food. Even the backs of her hands seem pale and drawn. She is cautious to meet his eye. Dad reads the Bible in the living room. His rhythmic mumbling cannot be mistaken. Now and then the sound stops, the page turns. Once, while Nathan eats, Dad steps into the doorway. The tug of his watching pulls fiercely, and Nathan shivers. Mother stands between the two, uncertain.

"Nathan is home," Dad says. "I'm glad." Then he returns to the living room with his back bowed. His mumbling ecstasy resumes. Remember therefore how thou hast received and heard, and holdfast, and repent. If therefore thou shalt not watch, I will come on thee as a thief, and thou shalt not know what hour I will come upon thee.

Nathan eats, hardly tasting. Mother turns her back.

After supper, Nathan steps onto the porch, studying the darkness that has settled over the world. The wind sharpens. Cold stars wheel in the sky. Nathan advances to the screen door, tests the air. The cold change of wind soaks him. He had thought about sleeping outside, but the chill of the wind decides the issue for him. He will face the house for the night.

In the kitchen he finds a ball of twine in his mother's drawer of odds and ends. Climbing softly upstairs, he takes a deep breath, bouncing the twine in his hand.

He ties one cord across the doorway, using the hinge and a low nail in the wall. He ties another cord from the bedpost to the same nail. About the height of a man's midcult. It is as if he has already prepared the plan. But even with the trip cord set, he will not dare the bed, which has been a trap in the past. He makes himself a pallet in the darkest corner of the room and sleeps there.

He adjusts to the hardness of the floor beneath the quilt. The odd perspective of the room requires study. The floor under the bed needs sweeping. Cobwebs under his desk catch light. He fluffs his pillow, closes his eyes.

It is difficult to keep his eyes closed. Like in the graveyard that afternoon, every sound jerks him awake again. Every creaking of the house is a footstep, every murmur of wood a voice. But he hardly slept the night before, and soon the need for rest overtakes him, even on the hard floor, even keeping watch.

At first, deep sleep. Then a new sense, a presence. At first the presence seems dreamy, unreal, and then there is a change. The surface of the dream becomes the room in which he sleeps. Nathan needs to take a deep breath but there is a weight on his chest. A sound, a door that creaks when it opens. He wakens to a crash as Dad, at some wee hour of morning, falls face forward into the room, feet bundled in twine. Dad cries in fear and rage. The sudden image reverberates, the shadow of the father falling, the loud slamming of his body onto floorboards, followed by harsh groans of surprise and pain. The image replays again and again as Nathan flees through the door, slipping down the stairs and nearly slamming into the white gowned figure of Mother, emerging from her bedroom.

She asks something, but Nathan hurls himself through the house without answering. Did he touch you?

He bursts through the screen door into the wet grass. Burning stars herald the stranger part of morning. He runs along the hedge in the shadow. He sees the light in his own bedroom window. By the time the images clarify in his mind, he has passed the bam and runs, out of sight of both houses, toward the lake and the familiar path to the cemetery.