Wind sends a shower of maple leaves around them. The sharp chill of approaching dusk wakens Nathan to his freedom. Randy asks where they're going, and Roy answers, with an air of mystery that restores his swagger, that it's a secret place his uncle showed him, a good long walk into the woods, pretty far from everything. Up toward Handle, a direction the others seem to know. Burke and Randy ask more questions but Roy refuses answers. They will have to wait and see.
So Roy sets out walking east and everyone follows. The sun hangs high enough that the forest is full of light; and the peaceful afternoon expands. For Nathan it is as if he has walked out of Friday into some ceaseless stillness, a timelessness of superior quality. The shadow of Dad vanishes. They march through bright colored splendors, high leafy vaults, waves of vine and frond. The red and silver maples have turned colors, but the oaks and pines are still retaining their green. The images of the other boys shimmer against the fervid backdrop. Burke's bronze arms slide among the leaves, his dense body careens through the dusk, heavier than its surroundings; Randy's rounder figure follows in Burke's wake, his golden hair sometimes disappearing behind Burke's back. Nathan occasionally turns back to study the two, but mostly watches Roy's smooth gait, the movement of his shoulders beneath the backpack, the gloss of dusk in his jet hair. Nathan trails him like a lesser moon.
It is a kind of church, requiring reverence. This revelation comes to Nathan as he is gazing from side to side, guarding the delight and freedom of the moment as if they must be protected carefully in order to preserve them. He refuses to allow happiness to show in his expression, cultivating the careful indifference of Roy, the swagger of his hips, the practiced ease through and under branches. They are swimming through golden light, traveling through a green and gold leafed choir.
Down a drastic slope of hillside strewn with uprooted trees flows a creek through a dark cut of land, the creek swathed in Joey and cinnamon fern, overhung with shreds of Spanish moss. Along the flow of creek Roy leads them, where the moss is lush and the ground soft for walking. Nathan is careful of his silence here, where fallen branches threaten to break with a snap, where dry leaves crackle like bones. He has lost any sense of time, they might have walked for leagues. Only birdcalls and the caucusing of insects can be heard. Sunset threatens before they halt for the night, and Roy has really pushed them too far, as if to put distance between them and the farm. They scramble to set up camp before dark.
Roy builds a cook fire, digging a shallow pit and ringing it with stones. The fire bums like a golden shrub. A thin thread of smoke wraps round and round itself and climbs. Warmth creeps up Nathan's arm. Roy grins. "You look happy"
Nathan nods in a small motion. "I like the fire."
"Me too."
Burke and Randy have set their own tent near a shower of red maple, a splayed branch like an overhanging mist; they move awkwardly with bent elbows, scowling as they unpack for the evening. The dark creek flows past, and blood colored leaves corkscrew slowly toward the sea.
The woods are nearly dark but for the circle of the fire. When preparations for supper bring Randy within the perimeter, in the dregs of daylight Nathan searches out a path to the creek and stands at the edge, his reflection shimmering in the glassy surface. The songs of night birds have begun, added to the throb of crickets, the pulsing of tree frogs, the nearly human sobbing of a wildcat. Soon smells of frying bacon travel from the campfire, where Randy and Roy have begun cooking, a scene like alchemy, the two figures lost in swirling smoke and spark showers. As if he feels Nathan's watching like a touch, Roy raises his head directly to Nathan across the glade. Their shared smile is a secret only they can see. The space between them has grown strong, suddenly. A room in which they are always walking.
