Roy lets Nathan solve a word problem himself, leaning close to watch and explain. Again with his nearness comes that field of magnetism that possesses Nathan. Roy watches calmly from his side of the equal sign. He has moved close now, his breath touches Nathan along the soft of the throat. No logic can explain such warmth. Roy sets down his pencil and Nathan touches the veins on the back of Roy's hand. The contact shocks them both. Roy is quiet Shy, like Nathan. But neither hand moves.

Roy leans close till his forehead brushes Nathan's, dark hair tickling, his eyes downcast. The rhythms of their separate breathings merge into one river. No other sound intrudes as they lean against each other, skull to skull. Nathan feels the unknown rising in them both, its message plainer than either can fathom. Roy cups his warm hand against Nathan's neck. Roy's breathing deepens, reaches inside. Now both his hands are trembling.

Roy is starved for closeness. Nathan leans against him, since it seems it is warmth that he craves. But the effect is out of proportion; it is as if he has cracked Roy's shell. Roy makes a sound as if he is taking his first breath.

He pulls Nathan down to the mattress, unmindful of textbook and papers beneath. His weight is delicious and full. Their breathing changes together, and they press against each other, warmth exchanged for warmth, as Roy sighs into Nathan's hair.

In the quiet wake of the moment, the sounds of the house clarify and isolate themselves. Mom washes dishes in the subterranean kitchen. Dad dozes through the weekly Hawaiian detective series in the living room. Out in the world the wind is blowing leaf against leaf, an insistent whispering with a scent of storm. "Does this make you feel funny?" Roy asks.

"No."

"It makes me feel funny."

"Well, maybe it makes me feel a little funny too. But I don't care."

"I don't care either. I just wonder why." He lies on the bed watching the ceiling. "Do you like me?"

"Yes." Nathan can hardly lift his eyes from the soft chenille.

"Do you like me a lot?" There is something frightened in the question. Roy's body has become rigid. It is as if he is denying the words as they emerge.

Nathan speaks suddenly, with violence, against Roy's shoulder. "I like you a whole lot. I really do. And I want you to like me the same way."

"I do," he says. Saying so much has apparently surprised him; he stands from the bed adjusting his pants, asking if Nathan wants to walk outside away from the houses. In the dark. Nathan spares no breath for an answer but falls in beside him down the corridor, descending the back stairway to the kitchen, pausing while the shadow of Mom retreats into the dining room, the unknowable rooms beyond. At the back door Roy's hand hovers over Nathan's. Fresh air from the night spills over Nathan. Roy steps into the inky quiet and Nathan orbits him.

Mom's dim voice calls out, "Where are you going, Nathan? Nathan?"

"Outside." By then the night surrounds him.

Roy runs and Nathan follows, into the waist high weeds behind the barn, into the flood of moonlight that pools within the pokeweed and broom straw. Roy is laughing from deep inside his chest, and he runs ahead into the white, glowing world. Nathan follows at his slower pace. The twinned houses dwindle behind, and the shadow pines rise up toward the stars. Nearing the pond, they descend the slight embankment leading to the watery Up. Roy pauses at the edge, touching his sneaker to the waterline. He checks to make sure Nathan is following, then kneels with a sycamore branch, drawing a line in the pale muddy pond bottom. The moonlight records the motion perfectly, they can see everything. Clouds of mud rise in the water from the tip of the stick.

"I like this place at night."

Nathan stops near Roy's elbow. "It's quiet."

"There's a cemetery over yonder." Roy points with the stick. To a thickening of shadow.

He shivers. "A real one?"

"Yeah. With great big tombstones. There's a lot of them, with angels and statues. They look pretty spooky at night."

"Can we go there?"

"You sure you want to? Your mom might get mad if we stay out too long." "I want to."

Willows, arrow arum, and cattails grow to the edge of the pond, and royal fern and honeysuckle overhang the glimmering water. Branches crack underfoot, pine needles protesting. Roy's passage is quieter than Nathan's, his feet somehow lighter. He lifts aside limber branches with an easy hand, holding them over Nathan's head. The path through the darkening trees is washed with light, and the substance of Roy moves through it dense and shadowed. Nathan hurries behind Roy, drawing audible breath after audible breath. The pond spreads a hush, the trees lift their branches, the stars and moon bum. Between is a blackness the eye fails to fathom.

The cemetery gate and iron fence form out of nothing, within a circle of trees at the top of a rise of land. Roy opens the iron gate and shows Nathan the rust stains on his palms. The two are silent as they move into the enclosure, overgrown with weeds. Tombstones, some toppled, and the leavings of wreaths impede their passage. The ground gives off a clotted, dank smell. Roy is breathless. He passes his hand along eroded marble in which letters are carved. Nathan studies the words but fails to read them, so Roy leans close and whispers, "This one says, Sarah Jane Kennicutt, Her Father's Favorite Daughter. The Kennicutts used to own all this land, that's what people say. There were two Kennicutt plantations, one right around here that burned down, and another one off in the woods."

"Then why is it Poke's Road?"

Roy shrugs. "Poke's Road goes for a long ways. It must have been some Pokes on it, once upon a time." He is leaning against Nathan. "I'll take you to the end of that road one of these days. Way off in the woods where it's overgrown and nobody can use it."

Nathan nods, but is rendered speechless by touch. Roy grips Nathan's arm and leads him to another grave over which looms a guardian obelisk. The shadow of the granite shaft passes across Roy's face, and his expression is inscrutable. Something in Roy's stance lays a field of silence around them both.

Now both Roy's hands touch both Nathan's arms. He watches Nathan with a new quiet. It is hard for Nathan to be conscious of anything but the touch of those hands on his arms, the texture of tough skin and strong fingers. Nathan makes one sound, throaty and startled, like an animal giving a single warning. Roy exerts the slightest pressure.

His body is full of curves beneath the clothes. Nathan leans against him, as Roy slightly smiles. He kneels in the grass and brings Nathan down with him. The two are trembling and huddle together in the dark of the grave.

The sweetness of the moment lingers. The salty smell of Roy's body rises out of the shirt that he unbuttons and slides over his shoulders. Moonlight glitters on the slight sweat of his chest. A calm deliberateness engulfs him. Nathan eases the worn jeans down Roy's thighs. Air pours against Nathan's skin as Roy strips away his cotton tee shirt. Nathan shivers with the chill.

Roy embraces the slighter boy and their warmth multiplies, their bodies shuddering and yet clinging each to the other, dressed only in white underwear in the shadow of the granite marker. The warmth makes chromosomes sing. Roy says, "Now we're buddies," with a tone of deep relief in his voice, and Nathan mouths the words soundlessly, watching the North Star over the pond. He wonders what a buddy is and whether he is the only one Roy has. He is farther from home than he has ever been. Roy cradles him as if he will never let go. "Bats fly around here sometimes. You can hear them making that squeak noise."

"Do you hear any now?"

"No. I don't hear anything except you. But this is the place for bats, ain't it?" Roy surveys the surrounding tombstones as if they are his estate. He talks about them quietly as Nathan rests against him. "This thing is called an obelisk," he explains, and Nathan pretends to learn this as a new fact. "It's something people in the old times would Put on a grave. This grave belongs to Frederick Kennicutt. He was kin to my greatgrandaddy.

Nathan knows nothing about his own greatgrandaddy. He simply watches Roy mouth the words. "Come on."

They uncoil and creep quietly through the tombstones in their undershorts. Along a rise of land they climb, to a place where the black pond is visible below. Up there is a statue of a plump baby wearing a robe, with stubby marble wings sprouting from its shoulders. Roy stands large and shapely beside the angel baby, Roy more radiant than the stone in the same fall of thin moon and starlight. The sight of Roy encumbers Nathan so that even his gaze feels heavy; Roy is like an immense gravity and he is pulling Nathan toward him without any effort. Again Roy yields to Nathan's hands, gives way to touch. Nathan bends his knees and Roy rests on the ground beside him, above him. Nathan is breathing into the hollow of Roy's collarbone and Roy is laughing softly, reasonless.

Roy brushes his mouth against Nathan's and Nathan is surprised. Roy's taste is sweetish, life rising out of his throat, hot as if from deep furnaces. He holds Nathan's delicate skull in his hand. Nathan resists nothing. He lies down on their clothes in the weeds beneath the marble child, and Roy lies down along him. Roy is content to be still like that for a long time, sometimes watching Nathan and sometimes not, his open hand on Nathan's face. Their legs tangle in the weeds. Nathan can see the distended fabric of Roy's shorts, but he does not touch the place directly and Roy abstains from asking. They lie together, heat fields enfolded, kissing awkwardly now and then.