Jim Grimsley - Dream Boy

"What?"

"Coming out here."

Nathan slides across the car. He can smell Roy's sweetish breath. Their faces are close and their bodies aware of each other again.

"No, I don't mind."

"We can go to a movie sometime too." Where words were easy before, they suddenly come hard. Roy blushes and seems terribly confused. Nathan wonders if he is remembering the conversation about Evelyn. "I ain't trying to hurt anybody," Roy says.

"You don't hurt anybody"

Roy is searching for something now, and Nathan waits. Finally, in a jerky motion, Roy leans forward and kisses Nathan on the mouth. The kiss is wet and cool. A sweetness fills Nathan. Roy waits. Their cheeks are almost brushing. "Touch me," Roy says.

Nathan slides his hands around Roy's neck. Their hearts are pounding now, they can feel the acceleration. The choruses of night insects rise around the car, high pitched, almost frantic.

Suddenly Nathan feels older than Roy, and from within him comes some force in answer to Roy's fear. He moves with surety, kissing Roy's face, reaching for Roy's shirt, making each motion easy and gentle, what he understands will answer Roy's need. Nathan leads Roy quietly in the car. The passenger cabin offers the most protection they have ever had.

It is a gamble. Nathan must never reach for too much, he has learned better. The trick is to gain access to the knowledge he has stored inside, without remembering how it got there. To move in a way he knows will please Roy without revealing the knowledge, which has a source. The motion of their bodies becomes a balancing act. They have abandoned most of their clothes and Roy is lost in the sensation of Nathan. Nathan has been kissing Roy's cock with his mouth but then rises over it and presses it against his buttocks. Roy groans in surprise as Nathan guides him inside and they finish in violence, straining and sour. They lie quietly on the seat and Nathan feels the difference. Then Roy's confusion, his anger. Nathan comes back into his body. Roy watches him with a kind of horror and suspicion.

There is a deadly pause.

"Who taught you how to screw like that?"

Nathan tries to draw away, but Roy grips his arms. "Where did you learn? Answer me. Who have you been screwing like that?"

Nathan remains too stunned to answer and shakes his head. Roy takes deep breaths, a savage look in his eyes. His grip on Nathan's arm tightens. "Nobody taught me," Nathan says.

"You're lying."

"No, I'm not."

Roy raises his hand and Nathan flinches, cowers suddenly. Roy sees the hand and the recoil. He studies Nathan as if for the first time. As if he has never known Nathan before.

They dress in silence. Roy starts the car again, and they head for home. Nathan studies the stars through the window. The broken place inside him aches now. Roy will not speak to him because Roy thinks he is nasty. There can be no question of Roy's judgment. Amidst so much turmoil the other memories are hard to contain but Nathan manages well enough, until he remembers his mother's voice from the afternoon, Stay out of your dad's way tonight. A little fear seizes him and he reaches for Roy again, in his mind at least Roy who feels, even now, like protection.

Near the farms again Nathan says, "Roy."

Roy shakes his head, refuses to speak.

"Roy. Please."

He parks the car in its usual place under the walnut tree. In the protection afforded by the tree shade they watch each other.

Something unexpected. Roy is crying.

From Nathan's house come sounds. A light on the back porch. The screen swings open, and a dark broad shadow waits there.

A silence like winter cools Nathan's gut.

Whether Roy is watching now hardly matters. Whether he understands, or ever will. Nathan says good night and gets out of the car. He heads across the dark yard toward the porch light and the shadow of his father, waiting.

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.

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.