Later, Roy lopes out of the house and drives away in the truck. A baseball cap obscures his face.
Mom appears on Nathan's porch, wringing her hands anxiously in a dishtowel. She scans the distant fields. She is afraid to call for Nathan, because of Dad. But Nathan's supper is cooling minute by minute, and soon she opens the screen door and leans out. The plaintive sound flies across the farm. Nathan relents.
When he enters the kitchen, she moves without speaking to serve him food. Even the backs of her hands seem pale and drawn. She is cautious to meet his eye. Dad reads the Bible in the living room. His rhythmic mumbling cannot be mistaken. Now and then the sound stops, the page turns. Once, while Nathan eats, Dad steps into the doorway. The tug of his watching pulls fiercely, and Nathan shivers. Mother stands between the two, uncertain.
"Nathan is home," Dad says. "I'm glad." Then he returns to the living room with his back bowed. His mumbling ecstasy resumes. Remember therefore how thou hast received and heard, and holdfast, and repent. If therefore thou shalt not watch, I will come on thee as a thief, and thou shalt not know what hour I will come upon thee.
Nathan eats, hardly tasting. Mother turns her back.
After supper, Nathan steps onto the porch, studying the darkness that has settled over the world. The wind sharpens. Cold stars wheel in the sky. Nathan advances to the screen door, tests the air. The cold change of wind soaks him. He had thought about sleeping outside, but the chill of the wind decides the issue for him. He will face the house for the night.
In the kitchen he finds a ball of twine in his mother's drawer of odds and ends. Climbing softly upstairs, he takes a deep breath, bouncing the twine in his hand.
He ties one cord across the doorway, using the hinge and a low nail in the wall. He ties another cord from the bedpost to the same nail. About the height of a man's midcult. It is as if he has already prepared the plan. But even with the trip cord set, he will not dare the bed, which has been a trap in the past. He makes himself a pallet in the darkest corner of the room and sleeps there.
He adjusts to the hardness of the floor beneath the quilt. The odd perspective of the room requires study. The floor under the bed needs sweeping. Cobwebs under his desk catch light. He fluffs his pillow, closes his eyes.
It is difficult to keep his eyes closed. Like in the graveyard that afternoon, every sound jerks him awake again. Every creaking of the house is a footstep, every murmur of wood a voice. But he hardly slept the night before, and soon the need for rest overtakes him, even on the hard floor, even keeping watch.
At first, deep sleep. Then a new sense, a presence. At first the presence seems dreamy, unreal, and then there is a change. The surface of the dream becomes the room in which he sleeps. Nathan needs to take a deep breath but there is a weight on his chest. A sound, a door that creaks when it opens. He wakens to a crash as Dad, at some wee hour of morning, falls face forward into the room, feet bundled in twine. Dad cries in fear and rage. The sudden image reverberates, the shadow of the father falling, the loud slamming of his body onto floorboards, followed by harsh groans of surprise and pain. The image replays again and again as Nathan flees through the door, slipping down the stairs and nearly slamming into the white gowned figure of Mother, emerging from her bedroom.
She asks something, but Nathan hurls himself through the house without answering. Did he touch you?
He bursts through the screen door into the wet grass. Burning stars herald the stranger part of morning. He runs along the hedge in the shadow. He sees the light in his own bedroom window. By the time the images clarify in his mind, he has passed the bam and runs, out of sight of both houses, toward the lake and the familiar path to the cemetery.
He finds his blanket and sits against the trunk of the water oak. He is shivering, his teeth chattering, he cannot get warm. He huddles with the quilt drawn up to his nose and his knees tucked under his chin, in the shadow of the tree with the view of the whole pond. For a while he thinks his father is searching for him but Nathan, patient, remains perfectly motionless. He can see the stars over the trees and notes the changes as the hours pass. Soon, whatever search was undertaken is abandoned. Nathan is alone, waiting.
At dawn he rouses with no awareness of having rested. Light rainbows along the horizon. Along the shore of the pond, heavy feet are walking. Distant, Dad clears his throat. The sound strikes Nathan with a cold hand. He remains motionless, partially sheltered by a tombstone. Feet are treading on dry leaves, in tangled grass. Across the pond Dad's dark figure flows along the water, walking with a bewildered slope to his shoulders.
