"Well maybe he'll learn if I throw him in right now."

"Don't bother him, Burke. I mean it."

"I ain't bothering him. Am I, Nathan? Huh? Say something."

He shakes Nathan violently. The hands on Nathan's shoulders burn as Burke lifts Nathan from the trestle and suspends him over the water. Nathan fights panic, holds perfectly still in Burke's grip. Strong fingers gouge his arms. From the center of the trestle Randy stops moving and watches. Burke grins and shakes Nathan again, more gently. "Are you man enough to jump from here? Or do you want me to throw you?"

"I don't want you to throw me."

"Then you going to jump?"

Nathan holds perfectly still and looks Burke directly in the eye. The act of assertion calms him. He is strangely peaceful and feels no fear, even at the prospect of the fall. Something meets between them. He focuses on Burke's arms and shivering chest. Burke is big for his age, and his stomach is ridged and hairy. A feeling of harsh strength pours out of him, different from Roy Nathan looks into this, into Burke's face, and says, "I want you to put me down."

Burke laughs and seems perplexed. Roy stands on the riverbank, watching. Burke releases Nathan. He backs away, leaving Nathan at the edge of the trestle. Nathan hovers unsteadily, glimpsing, below, his own face slipping beneath the dark water. As if the moment has divided, as if he has both fallen and not fallen. Shivering, he steps back to the center of the trestle.

Far toward the trees in the darkness Roy climbs up the riverbank to the neat line of cross ties. Everything dissolves into nightfall. Starlings are singing, and frogs on trees are smelling the dusk and croaking in choirs. Roy trots down the railroad track, stepping from tie to tie.

Burke meets him face to face. "I didn't throw him in the river. I should have."

"You better be glad you didn't."

"Oh hell, I'd have gone down and got him before he drownded."

Roy studies Nathan over Burke's shoulder. Nathan shakes his head emphatically.

Burke says, "That was a pretty nice dive, buddy" "Yes, it was," Randy agrees. "You was pumping them legs."

"What did you think?" Roy asks Nathan.

"It looked like something was chasing you all the way down."

Roy laughs a little and Randy joins him.

The sun hangs low, soon to be swallowed by the line of trees at the horizon. Randy and Burke dive from the trestle again, the low part, and Roy and Nathan sit on the rail and watch them swim. A peaceful charge crosses the space between them, and they are aware of each other with special sight. Below, Burke is pretending to drown Randy, who pushes back with fury. The game goes too far and Randy nearly fights with Burke as they leave the river. But even this commotion fails to alter the stillness between Nathan and Roy. Roy says, "I like this place."

"I do too."

A soft splash echoes from someplace down river. The gray of dusk swarms. "I wish I could swim."

"I'll teach you. In the pond at home. It's easy"

Nathan accepts the proposition and secretly cherishes it. He says nothing more since Burke is running toward them, lumbering along the rail, surefooted.

"I got some beer," Burke says, "you want to drink one?"

"I got some too." Roy reaches for his jeans. "It's in the truck." Burke gestures. "You reckon we ought to go back?"

"I'm ready. I've had all the swimming I need."

Randy halts some distance from the center of the bridge. "I'm right thirsty too."

"You going to drink a beer?" Burke asks Nathan.

"He don't need to" Roy says.

"I know he don't need to. But I might ought to pour one down his throat just to see how he would act." Laughing with an edge of meanness.

They leave the bridge and find their way along the tracks as the sun eases behind the trees. Nathan feels as if he has been away from home forever already. Every moment echoes of Roy. They walk side by side up the tracks, steady presence, as Burke and Randy weave in and out.

Burke has beer in a bucket of ice in the back of his truck. He hands one to each of the others, also offering a can to Nathan, who shakes his head no, but with respect. They drink. Glimpses of the beer and hints of the acrid smell remind Nathan. When his father swallows liquor, his throat moves in the same snakelike motion, the undulating of long, smooth muscles. Nathan shakes his head, focuses on the moon in the fender of the truck, the sound of a river, the shadowy trestle, and the closeness of the three boys. The four. He can include himself. He stands near Roy as Roy swallows, his smile a little softened by the beer, and the curl of last evening light in the sky.

Burke has draped a flannel shirt loose over his shoulders. He is lacing heavy work boots over his ankles. He sips from the beer can like a suckling. Shadows obscure his eyes.

Randy dresses watching Burke's back. In Randy's eyes is a round blankness.

Roy drinks. "What are you boys up to the rest of the evening?"

"Riding." Randy buckles his belt and adjusts the silver buckle to get it properly centered. "We'll probably run around in Hoon Holler a little while."

"See if we can't get us some." Burke aims his voice into the grass. "You going out with Evelyn?"

Roy shifts uncomfortably. Nathan stares into space behind Burke's head. "No. We ain't going out tonight."

"She running around on you?"

"Hell no. We ain't going out tonight, that's all." His tone is meant to warn Burke off the subject.

Burke watches Nathan with cool deliberation. "She's a hell of a good girl. Evelyn."

This falls into silence. Nathan finds himself unable to look at Roy.

Finally Roy says, "We ought to go camping before it gets too cold."

"You reckon?" Randy inspects his countenance in the side mirror of Burke's truck. "Where you want to go?"

"Up toward Handle. You know where I mean? Past the Indian mound, up Old Poke's Road."

"My dad used to take me hunting toward Handle," Burke says. "It gets wild around in there."

"We ought to go," Roy says. Lightly touching Nathan on the shoulder, casual but inclusive. "That's where the haunted house is. Remember I told you?"

 They sip beer and consider the proposition.

"You and Nathan ought to come up to Hoon Holler with us tonight." Burke is watching Nathan again, a direct inspection, almost a challenge.

"We might. We're going to ride around a little while too. We might see you around there later."

"All right."

The easy conversation continues through another beer. Randy and Roy talk about the deer hunting season and baseball. They agree that baseball is a better game than football. Burke would be playing football except the team is mostly black and his dad won't let him play with blacks. The night rises full of sound, cities of crickets in one long ululation. Nathan watches the beer changes in Roy's face, the slow relaxation of facial muscles, the heaviness of eyelids. Randy tells a story about a girl from Hoon Holler who is supposed to be pretty much of a whore, who will do it with anybody. Might as well stick your hand in a cow pussy as that, Burke says. And Roy agrees and they all laugh.

But the conversation excludes Nathan. What is curious is that the fact seems implicit in the circumstances, as if they all understand that Nathan will not participate, that Nathan has nothing to do with talk about a girl of easy virtue in Hoon Holler. He has only to add the smallest of laughs at the appropriate moment. He comes from another world than the one in which these boys live. He sometimes inhabits the same world as Roy, but right now it's hard to tell. There follows a round of talking about girls in mechanical ways, about how to slide your hands into a brassiere, or how many fingers a girl will let you put inside her thing. There is the round of talking about cars. Randy asks if Roy's dad still has that same John Deere tractor, and Roy says he bought a new Allis Chalmers.

So finally they all agree they might see each other later at the Holler. Burke cranks the truck and Randy climbs to the passenger side. Roy and Nathan watch them disappear down the road. Roy crushes his beer can in his hand, meticulously, till the flat ends are joined in a thin disk. He tosses the weight a long way into the woods.

"That was all right." Peering at Nathan. 'Wished I had another one."

"I thought you had some more."

"Naw. I'm out." Roy leans on the car. Mumbling the words of some song, across the top of the car to Nathan. "I like to swim in that river. You'll like it too, when I teach you how."

"Is your girlfriend named Evelyn?"

Have the crickets ever sung so loud before? Roy seems to be asking this with his sudden astonished look of listening. Opening the car door, swinging it outward slowly, he says, "Yeah. I told you that."

The assertion dies in the air between them. Nathan eases himself into the passenger seat. Roy's weight settles into place behind the steering wheel.

"I was only asking."

"It's okay." Roy starts the car, looking straight ahead. The car rolls forward.

They follow the course of the river along the road, tall pines looming over them. Darkness drinks the headlights. Nathan finds it hard to talk, for the first time. Roy asks, "Are you okay?"

"I'm fine."

"You're not talking much."

"I'm just quiet. That's all."

"Are you having a good time?"

"Yes."

"You want to go somewhere now? You want to go to a movie? I don't mind."

But Roy drives instead, down Island Creek Road to Catfish Lake, then back to the millpond and along the quiet streets of Potter's Lake, then along another road behind Riggs town. Roy parks the car at the end of a dead-end fork. Abrupt silence when the motor dies. Trees press close on all sides. Roy sits tensely, gripping the steering wheel as if the car still moves. Nathan waits. Roy's knuckles whiten. He faces Nathan as if with much effort. "You mind?"