Roy waits at the edge of the thicket, with rain scattering on the low underbrush and draining through the carpet of pine needles. Vague light encases him in a kind of cloud. He welcomes Nathan onto the high ground, into the trees; the rain swells in the air and both boys are wet when they crawl into the tent. Nathan can feel Roy breathing. They kneel, side by side, in the canvas darkness, with the mansion of dusk and rain collapsing around them.
They dry themselves with towels. Roy lies along his sleeping blanket, resting his head in the crook of his arm. Nathan hovers, they wait. Roy reaches for Nathan, pulls him down.
The scattering of rain becomes a rhythm, and their breathings merge with the easy syncopated sound. Nathan closes his eyes, pretends the tent is a cave, pretends they are in a time a thousand years ago, or farther, they have traveled into prehistory, they are alone in the world. Roy's face is like a light in the darkness, luminous from within like flowers at dusk, and when he exhales he voices the slightest note of music. His moist breath runs down the nape of Nathan's neck, curling along the delicate spine. Peace runs through Nathan like currents of water, his body throbs with safety, and they seem so joined in that moment that Nathan can feel the pulse of happiness in Roy as well.
When Roy finally stirs, it is to release a fuller sound, a long, easy, expanding sigh.
"Thank you for bringing me out here," Nathan says.
He is uneasy and silent for a moment, as the rain throbs along the canvas and the wind continues its strong insistence, its pleading through the leaves. "I used to go camping with my dad when I was little. We don't do much stuff like that anymore."
"My dad and I never did stuff like this." The sentence breaks a little. Roy draws him closer.
"I don't like your dad much." In the tent Roy's face is hard to read. But there is a stillness to his voice. "He came out to the barn yesterday. To talk to me." Shy suddenly. From distance. "He talked about you, some. He said he noticed we were getting to be good friends. He said he was glad you were getting out of the house these days. He said you were too quiet, you stay alone too much, you live in your head. He said you make up things that never happened." Silence, rain. "I think he figured out I knew where you were sleeping."
Roy is searching, that is clear. There is a question he wants to ask. Nathan becomes very still, his gaze fixed on a point of the tent. Shivering. The moment, the question, fade. Roy draws him closer. After a while, Nathan says, "I don't want to go back."
Rain. The fact of rain. In his mind Nathan can see the swollen creek rushing by in darkness. He and Roy He still. Nathan unbuttons Roy's shirt to find his body. Roy breathes from deep inside. At first he simply allows the touch, holding Nathan as if he is fragile. But Nathan touches insistently, and the need in him wells up through his hands.
It is awkward, even funny, to undress him and make love to him in the tent. Roy's body has become a customary object, even the tastes are familiar. In the tent, in the dark, Nathan makes him laugh and cry out loud, a power of nighttime, and the look on Roy's face at the end is like food, Nathan hovers over him.
The rain washes, the white sound cleanses, the woodland expands.
Later Roy asks, "Do you mind when I don't do the same thing back to you?"
"No, I don't mind." But at that moment he begins to wonder if he does.
The earth makes a softer bed than Nathan expected. They lie against each other, loosely threaded together, and soon Roy's breath changes, deepens. Nathan lies awake a little longer, his body's rhythm gradually slowing to match Roy's. A dark heaviness overtakes him at last, and his thinking washes away in the sound of rain. In his dreams he and Roy are buying horses, beautiful dark coated animals, and riding across gardens of goldenrod, yartow chicory, and ironweed, with a view of mountains blue veiled in the distance.
When he wakens, a soft darkness fills the interior of the tent, different from the hard shadow of night. Somewhere there is an eastern sky and it has begun to lighten. Roy's face is nested in Nathan's hair, the slackness of his mouth wetting Nathan's throat. The smell of his breath, of his skin, pervades Nathan; odd, how sweet it is, to smell this boy from so close. They are bound together by the weight of Roy's leg across Nathan's thighs, by Roy's arm across Nathan's chest. They are, they have been, all night, one flesh. Joining them further is the heaviness of Roy's erection in his white shorts, which he presses against Nathan's thigh. Its presence has become almost another kind of protection.
