"You make sure you behave like you ought to. Your daddy is real nervous lately. You know how he is. I can't get him to lay down, he don't rest at night. He don't need any trouble from you."
This is her way of talking, as if Dad were a being of delicate sensibility, to be treasured and protected. But something else in her tone, some edge, awakens memory in Nathan. It is as if she is issuing a warning. But he tries to refuse the fear, he clings to his happiness, stubbornly, because he will spend the Friday night with Roy, the hours entirely their own. Mom looks at Nathan with the air of blindness returning. Roy stuffs his hands in his pockets as if suddenly shy. "Thanks, ma'am. We won't be out too late. I'll bring him back by eleven o'clock." Giving Nathan a secret within the look they traded. "Get ready and let's go. All right?"
"Yeah."
The screen door opens and wind rushes out. Suddenly Roy has vanished and Nathan waits to catch his breath in the kitchen.
"He sure seems like a nice boy" Mom adjusts her glasses and opens her book. "He's got a good way of acting. Don't you think so?"
"Yes, ma'am."
"You need any money?" "I got five dollars."
"Well, that's good." She is white eyed again, facing the window. "I like this house. I hope we don't have to move."
"Me too." Feeling suddenly fearful. "Are we?"
"Oh no. Oh no. We ought to be able to live here a long time. Your daddy likes his job. He likes Allis Chalmers, you know he always talked about working for them. I don't think he liked John Deere as much." She presses a curved fingernail into the jacket of the Emily Loring volume. "But he goes through cycles. You know. And he's real nervous, like, lately. You know. Because he's not making the sales."
Nathan knows. He is suddenly afraid. "He's not going to bother me, is he?"
But she is away. She is wherever she goes. "He's just got some problems on his mind. Don't worry"
He finds himself watching the loosening flesh at her throat, the place where the tendons stand out. A vein beats against the skin. She smiles without any comprehension. That is all. The sense of warning has almost vanished. Except, before she submerges into the yellowed pages, she murmurs, "Stay out of his way tonight." A chill touches Nathan along the spine. He watches his mother and her lost, empty face. He goes upstairs. She hardly notices he has gone.
He stands at the window until he sees Roy's shadow. Then a little calm nests in his stomach, and he can move.
Downstairs he says goodbye in a whirl of air and runs through the grass to the car, where Roy already waits.
But he is still strangled by the last moments with his mother, and he cannot explain to Roy why, for the first few moments, he has no voice at all. The car whips a train of dust along the drive, Roy steering with his arm propped in the open doorway. He glances at Nathan, who remains frozen in the sound of his mother's voice. "What's wrong?"
Nathan shakes his head.
"Tell me." The voice more emphatic, the arm no longer relaxed in the open frame.
Small voiced. "I'm okay"
"You glad we're going out, aren't you?"
Nathan laughs, brushes the back of his hand against his eyes. He laughs again, watching Roy. Who shoves him roughly away, a gesture of play "You're crazy," Roy says, and drives.
At the end of the dirt road, Roy turns in the unaccustomed direction, the highway toward Somersville. "Where are we going?"
"To meet Burke and Randy at the railroad trestle." He relaxes against the open car window, driving one handed.
Nathan faces him in the seat. Delight fills him, leaving no room for any other feeling. Here is Roy, they are together in a car, it is a Friday night. This is like people do.
No mention of her, the unseen. No mention of where she is tonight.
The drive lengthens and they talk, as freshly as if for the first time, more animated than ever. The confinement of the car encourages them in freedom with one another; and at the same time the privacy shelters them as neither forest nor graveyard ever has. They are alone in a protected place.
Roy talks about his father, about the farm, about his mom and her sicknesses, her problems with her heart, her sugar, the circulation in her feet. He describes his father's worry about her, and his worry about money to run the farm, and his silence about everything. He describes a life of cleanness, a father who wanted more sons, a mother who could bear only the one. He has aunts and uncles spread over the whole county and beyond, he has more cousins than he can name. He has lived on the farm all his life, and he thinks he could live there forever. He could be a farmer, he could drive the tractor and plow the fields till he's old and gray. Except he's pretty good at baseball and he might want to do that instead, play baseball in the minor leagues. He has no illusions about the major leagues, but the minors would be okay. When he talks about those things his voice rings pure as a bell, his eyes shining. He has a future, he can see it.
