"Because it's okay as long as it's just you and me." Roy's face is suddenly very sad. Nathan reaches for the face, pulls Roy close. Roy settles, sighing, against Nathan's smaller shoulder. "I never did this much before. Not even with a girl."

Nathan holds him as if he has diminished. Nathan becomes the shelter, the protection. He touches Roy's chest with the tip of his tongue and Roy shudders; inside, his heart is regularly bursting. Stillness settles over the bus. Roy sighs and loops an arm around Nathan, keeping close to him through the aftermath, as the sinking sun caresses them through the windows.

When they can move again, Roy leads Nathan to the front of the bus, drives home down the twisting road with the shadows of the trees passing across his shoulders. He parks the bus in the usual spot in the yard and turns in the seat. "Don't go in yet."

"All right. I won't."

Roy studies his own hands, gripping the steel frame of his seat, smooth nail against smooth rivet. "I can't come to see you tonight. We have prayer meeting."

"At church?"

He nods. "Every Wednesday." He will not look up.

"Do you like to go?"

"Yes."

"I have a lot of homework to do anyway. I have a test. I told you."

But Roy has heard only his own thoughts. Lips parted, as if words are close, Roy glances toward his house. He leans to Nathan, kisses him quickly. Pulling on his shirt, he says he will see Nathan later and hurries away without a backward glance.

The night is long and Roy moves restlessly in Nathan's thoughts. Nathan studies mathematics slowly, solving his tedious, non-algebraic problems with an indolent air. Later he walks to the pond, though not as far as the abandoned cemetery. He can see the distant outline of the tombstones against the black backdrop of trees.

He has gone to bed when Roy finally arrives at home again, driving his parents' car into the yard, letting it idle a moment. Nathan leaps out of the blankets. He stands back from the window to make sure Roy cannot see him. Roy steps out of the car, illuminated by the yard light atop its creosote pole. His figure is handsome in white shirt and tie, his face in shadow. Judging from his stance, he might be watching Nathan's window. But still Nathan hangs back, listening to the muted creakings of the house around him, the syncopated drip of water in the downstairs bathroom. Wind rattles the upstairs windows in their frames. Roy presently heads into the deeper gloom beneath trees, walking with his mother, who moves slowly due to her size. Nathan hovers in the dark over them both.

Soon a dim light burns in the bedroom above the hedge. As before, Roy's shadow slides across the visible wall. Tonight he avoids the window, and Nathan watches his shadow undress.

When that room goes dark, Nathan stands dumbly before his own window, reluctant to turn. When he returns to bed, a small fear seizes him. He replays in his head every moment of Roy's arrival, his stepping out of the car, his standing in the shadow, his undressing out of sight of the window. Nathan lies in bed and examines each of these images over and over. Something in the sequence of events frightens him.

Yet the following day proves to be all Nathan could have wished. In the morning he sits in the seat behind Roy again, and on the way to school Roy talks to him in an almost intimate way. At lunch Roy sits with Nathan and afterward takes Nathan to the smoking patio. No friend takes precedence over Nathan, and no girl excites his attention.

Only once, when Nathan asks about prayer meeting, does the little fear return. Roy says the meeting was fine but refuses to look at him. All further questions about Roy's church stick in Nathan's throat.

That afternoon, when Roy parks the bus under the pecan trees, he tells Nathan to hurry inside and change clothes, he wants them to go for a hike in the woods while there's still light. To an Indian mound, he says, beyond the pond and the cemetery. He grins and lets the bus motor die. The door hardly swings open before Nathan dashes for his house.

In the kitchen his mother stands at the sink washing a cake pan and icing bowl. The room shimmers with afternoon light, filtered through red checked curtains, adding color to her face and hands. "I'm making a coconut cake. Do you want a little piece of layer?"

"No, ma'am. I'm not hungry"

"It's still warm out of the oven, it would be good."

"I'm not hungry for cake right now."

This disappoints her a little, but she goes on smiling warmly. "Well, did you have a good day at school?"

"Yes, ma'am."

"Well, sit down and talk to me about it. What are you in such a hurry for?"

"Roy wants me to change clothes and come out to the woods with him."

She studies her dishes and frowns. Her glistening hands move deliberately. "What does he want you to go in the woods for?"

"To see this Indian mound."

"What do you want with an Indian mound?"

"I never saw one before."

She looks out the window. "There he is, too, waiting on you."

"Can I go? Is it all right?"

She goes on watching Roy, her face filling with worry. "I guess you can. But I don't want you to go too far." "Yes, ma'am, I won't."

"Remember, he's bigger than you are. You don't have to do everything he does." "Yes, ma'am, I know."

 She dries her hands and kisses Nathan's forehead without looking at him. "Put on your everyday clothes. I'll tell him you're coming."

Nathan rushes upstairs, furiously erasing his mother's sadness from his mind. 'When, school clothes exchanged for everyday, he returns to the porch, she is fussing with her plants, pinching a dead leaf off the ivory, wiping the leaves of a snake plant with a cloth. She says to be careful in the woods, don't stay gone too long. Nathan answers, yes ma'am, yes ma'am, and bursts into the yard. Roy awaits beyond the hedge. The two boys run side by side through the apple orchard.

The rhythm of running carries them a long way, beyond the meadow. They crash through underbrush but make no other sound. Leaves strike the skin of Nathan's arms, stinging and caressing. Roy leads him west of the pond and cemetery; he lopes deeper into the woods, glancing back to make sure Nathan is keeping up. Roy laughs at the glory of motion, a bright, incomprehensible sound that echoes through the woodland. He leaps across a narrow stream where drooping ferns make elegant green arches, and Nathan follows, light, running as if he will never tire.

The forest is something other than a neighbor now, it becomes a new world. As the density of growth increases, the pace of their running slows. Soon it is easier to walk than to run, and Nathan draws abreast of Roy. Roy gives a look that instructs, that says he is pleased. The Indian mound is pretty close once they cross the creek, he says.

The land is rising. Nathan climbs past bent saplings and red leafed dogwood; Roy has run up the hill a little faster than Nathan and pauses, breathless.

The forest thins and light spills into the lower tiers of growth. Beyond a glade of trees, on a flat of land, a long mound rises. Only green grass grows on the mound, as if all other kinds of plants have been magically forbidden. Golden sunlight tumbles along the gentle slope.

Roy hangs his shirt from his belt loops. When Nathan does not follow suit of his own volition, Roy reaches for his shirt buttons.

The air, Roy's hands, light spilling down. Roy offers Nathan the shirt, tenderness in his expression, then runs down the long slope. Nathan threads the sleeves through the belt loops of his pants and follows. Roy vanishes momentarily, but Nathan, heart pounding from the run, finds him. Roy is a strong silhouette against the bright mound, walking toward it. Nathan overtakes him halfway up the mound.

Nathan draws near shyly and Roy refuses to turn. Roy's back muscles shift in a rhythm that seems strong and good. The warm brown skin invites Nathan's hands, but he refuses to reach. They are still climbing. A curious fact, Roy's breath labors more than Nathan's. When on the crest of the mound Roy turns, his ribs are beating open and closed like wings.

Nathan lays his hand against the pounding in the cleft of Roy's chest.

Roy watches his hand, watches Nathan.

Their two fleshes are bright together, the two boys, warm like the colors of the late sky. The sun still has some descending to do, and they watch it and the clouds for a while. Roy settles along the ground, spreading out his shirt, and Nathan does the same. Soon they are layered against each other. Roy says the movement of the treetops is like the ocean. Nathan knows nothing about the ocean; he listens to the murmuring of Roy's insides, the ferocious heartbeat that shakes through them both. Roy is murmuring in Nathan's ear, a hymn from church, "There is a place of quiet rest, near to the heart of God." Nathan sings too, kissing Roy's soft throat, his collarbones, the underside of his chin. He can smell Roy's body, he can taste it with the tip of his tongue. Roy grips the back of Nathan's head as if afraid he will escape. He need not worry. Nathan knows the nakedness Roy wants, and soon achieves it. Roy arches with his body toward Nathan, a curve of yearning. He lies bare in the grass with a look on his face as if Nathan is making him sing through every cell.

They lie still while the sun settles into the green bath of leaves. Roy says nothing but Nathan can feel how his spirit darkens. The banded sky begins to drain of color as they dress. Roy stands with his hands in his pockets. He calls, "Nathan," in a strangled voice and Nathan walks close; he brings Nathan's ear to his mouth and says, "Please don't say anything about this to anybody. Okay? Please."