He tells the story of the Devil's Stamping Ground, a place in the woods where the Devil comes to dance, you can see his hoof prints baked into the ground, and if you sleep too close to the circle, you're never seen again.

Then he told the story about the time a driver stopped to pick up a hitchhiker near Goldsboro, and she told him who she was and said she was on her way back home from a dance when her boyfriend had car trouble. And her name was Sweet Sue and she seemed a little dazed, like something had happened to her, like maybe her date really dumped her on the side of the road, and so the driver took her home, to this address she gave him in Goldsboro. And when the driver parked the car and went around to help her out, she wasn't there. So he went and knocked on the door of the house, and he told the story of what had happened to this old woman who came to the door, wrapped up in her housecoat. And she told him that she once had a daughter named Sue, and she died in a car accident twenty years ago, on the night of her high school prom. And now and then somebody like the driver would stop at their door and tell the story of how Sue was still trying to get somebody to bring her home, after all that time. "And I know that's a true story for a fact, because my Uncle Heben lived next door to them people, and he was there sometimes when people would try to bring their daughter home."

In the end, Randy listens like the others, and they pass the bottle back and forth while Roy tells every ghost story he knows. Till the wind redoubles, and Nathan glimpses the movement beyond the highest branches, the roiling of cloud bottoms across heaven.

"Listen to that," Randy says.

"Storm coming up." Roy points to the south. "Wind changed right after supper. Did you feel it?"

"You mean it's going to rain?" Randy asks.

"Yep."

Burke says, "Fuck."

"My tent is dry, and I got it on high ground for the night. I don't know about you."

Burke glares at Roy for a moment. Then, silent, he lurches up from the ground and slouches off to check.

A moment later his deep voice booms for Randy, and they move their tent to a better vantage. Roy and Nathan follow to help.

The coursing air is a continual singing now, and the hollow sound sends a chill through Nathan. They move the tent quickly and Nathan soon finds himself at the creek again, staring into the darkness and listening. The keen fresh scent of the storm sweeps over the forest, over the boys and their small tents. The tattered fire is blowing in the rocks, bravely sustaining.

From behind, Roy says, "I hope you see something in that creek, you stare at it enough." His tone is joking, but there is a serious shade.

"I was listening to the storm come up, I wasn't really looking at anything."

Momentary nearness allows the heat of his shoulder to cross to Nathan's. They watch each other sidewise, they inhale. Wind drowns out thought and speech at once. A crashing. "Listen to that. Wild."

"It sounds like somebody's voice," Nathan says. "I can almost hear words."      

They watch each other. Roy smiles. He almost reaches, almost embraces. But at the last moment his face clouds and the smile softens.

A drop of rain crashes against Nathan's forehead, another on his shoulder, and around them leaves are shuddering with the impact. Roy is watching Nathan fervently. "You aren't scared out here, are you?"

"No."

But Roy goes on watching, and Nathan blushes.

Voices summon them from the campfire. Burke and Randy are waiting, Roy and Nathan return, as the fall of rain builds to steady percussion. "Listen to that wind," Burke says. "It sounds like some girl crying her eyes out."

"It sounds like your girlfriend crying because she has to stay home tonight," Randy says.

The phrase pleases Burke visibly. "Hey Roy, what's Evelyn doing tonight? Is she sitting home? Or did she find somebody else to take her out?"

Roy studies his hands, attempting to control his expression. "She's home with her parents where she belongs."

"You sure about that?"

"Ain't none of your business what I'm sure about." Brow darkening, he watches Burke with a warning expression. Scattering rain has begun to flatten his dark curls.

Burke grins and gives Nathan a wink. "I guess I heard that."

"This rain sucks," Randy says, eyeing the upper tiers of forest, where the air is filling with a gray wash. His voice disperses the sudden tension. "I sure wanted to sit around this fire for a while."

"Well you can sit around some wet rocks if you want to, but that ain't going to be a fire but another minute or two." Roy eyes the hissing of water drops in the bright embers. "I'm about ready to crawl in that tent. I'll see you guys in the morning."

Signaling Nathan with a glance, Roy heads to his tent. Randy has turned to do the same, leaving Burke alone in the clearing, rain plastering his shirt to his skin; he watches the fire with strange ferocity. Nathan follows Roy but turns at the last moment, as if summoned to do so. Burke is staring at Roy, his outline blurred by rain. From a pocket Burke pulls the narrow bottle a last time, uncaps it, drinks, licks his lips and pockets the bottle again. Still watching Roy. Nathan hurries forward.

Roy waits at the edge of the thicket, with rain scattering on the low underbrush and draining through the carpet of pine needles. Vague light encases him in a kind of cloud. He welcomes Nathan onto the high ground, into the trees; the rain swells in the air and both boys are wet when they crawl into the tent. Nathan can feel Roy breathing. They kneel, side by side, in the canvas darkness, with the mansion of dusk and rain collapsing around them.

They dry themselves with towels. Roy lies along his sleeping blanket, resting his head in the crook of his arm. Nathan hovers, they wait. Roy reaches for Nathan, pulls him down.

The scattering of rain becomes a rhythm, and their breathings merge with the easy syncopated sound. Nathan closes his eyes, pretends the tent is a cave, pretends they are in a time a thousand years ago, or farther, they have traveled into prehistory, they are alone in the world. Roy's face is like a light in the darkness, luminous from within like flowers at dusk, and when he exhales he voices the slightest note of music. His moist breath runs down the nape of Nathan's neck, curling along the delicate spine. Peace runs through Nathan like currents of water, his body throbs with safety, and they seem so joined in that moment that Nathan can feel the pulse of happiness in Roy as well.

When Roy finally stirs, it is to release a fuller sound, a long, easy, expanding sigh.

"Thank you for bringing me out here," Nathan says.

He is uneasy and silent for a moment, as the rain throbs along the canvas and the wind continues its strong insistence, its pleading through the leaves. "I used to go camping with my dad when I was little. We don't do much stuff like that anymore."

"My dad and I never did stuff like this." The sentence breaks a little. Roy draws him closer.

"I don't like your dad much." In the tent Roy's face is hard to read. But there is a stillness to his voice. "He came out to the barn yesterday. To talk to me." Shy suddenly. From distance. "He talked about you, some. He said he noticed we were getting to be good friends. He said he was glad you were getting out of the house these days. He said you were too quiet, you stay alone too much, you live in your head. He said you make up things that never happened." Silence, rain. "I think he figured out I knew where you were sleeping."

Roy is searching, that is clear. There is a question he wants to ask. Nathan becomes very still, his gaze fixed on a point of the tent. Shivering. The moment, the question, fade. Roy draws him closer. After a while, Nathan says, "I don't want to go back."

Rain. The fact of rain. In his mind Nathan can see the swollen creek rushing by in darkness. He and Roy He still. Nathan unbuttons Roy's shirt to find his body. Roy breathes from deep inside. At first he simply allows the touch, holding Nathan as if he is fragile. But Nathan touches insistently, and the need in him wells up through his hands.

It is awkward, even funny, to undress him and make love to him in the tent. Roy's body has become a customary object, even the tastes are familiar. In the tent, in the dark, Nathan makes him laugh and cry out loud, a power of nighttime, and the look on Roy's face at the end is like food, Nathan hovers over him.

The rain washes, the white sound cleanses, the woodland expands.

Later Roy asks, "Do you mind when I don't do the same thing back to you?"

"No, I don't mind." But at that moment he begins to wonder if he does.

The earth makes a softer bed than Nathan expected. They lie against each other, loosely threaded together, and soon Roy's breath changes, deepens. Nathan lies awake a little longer, his body's rhythm gradually slowing to match Roy's. A dark heaviness overtakes him at last, and his thinking washes away in the sound of rain. In his dreams he and Roy are buying horses, beautiful dark-coated animals, and riding across gardens of goldenrod, yarrow, chicory, and ironweed, with a view of mountains blue-veiled in the distance.

Chapter Ten

When he wakens, a soft darkness fills the interior of the tent, different from the hard shadow of night. Somewhere there is an eastern sky and it has begun to lighten. Roy's face is nested in Nathan's hair, the slackness of his mouth wetting Nathan's throat. The smell of his breath, of his skin, pervades Nathan; odd, how sweet it is, to smell this boy from so close. They are bound together by the weight of Roy's leg across Nathan's thighs, by Roy's arm across Nathan's chest. They are, they have been, all night, one flesh. Joining them further is the heaviness of Roy's erection in his white shorts, which he presses against Nathan's thigh. Its presence has become almost another kind of protection.