"No. I don't hear anything except you. But this is the place for bats, ain't it?" Roy surveys the surrounding tombstones as if they are his estate. He talks about them quietly as Nathan rests against him. "This thing is called an obelisk," he explains, and Nathan pretends to learn this as a new fact. "It's something people in the old times would Put on a grave. This grave belongs to Frederick Kennicutt. He was kin to my greatgrandaddy.
Nathan knows nothing about his own greatgrandaddy. He simply watches Roy mouth the words. "Come on."
They uncoil and creep quietly through the tombstones in their undershorts. Along a rise of land they climb, to a place where the black pond is visible below. Up there is a statue of a plump baby wearing a robe, with stubby marble wings sprouting from its shoulders. Roy stands large and shapely beside the angel baby, Roy more radiant than the stone in the same fall of thin moon and starlight. The sight of Roy encumbers Nathan so that even his gaze feels heavy; Roy is like an immense gravity and he is pulling Nathan toward him without any effort. Again Roy yields to Nathan's hands, gives way to touch. Nathan bends his knees and Roy rests on the ground beside him, above him. Nathan is breathing into the hollow of Roy's collarbone and Roy is laughing softly, reasonless.
Roy brushes his mouth against Nathan's and Nathan is surprised. Roy's taste is sweetish, life rising out of his throat, hot as if from deep furnaces. He holds Nathan's delicate skull in his hand. Nathan resists nothing. He lies down on their clothes in the weeds beneath the marble child, and Roy lies down along him. Roy is content to be still like that for a long time, sometimes watching Nathan and sometimes not, his open hand on Nathan's face. Their legs tangle in the weeds. Nathan can see the distended fabric of Roy's shorts, but he does not touch the place directly and Roy abstains from asking. They lie together, heat fields enfolded, kissing awkwardly now and then.
Roy says, "When we do this, you can't tell your parents.
"I won't."
"You can't tell your friends either. This is a secret."
"I know." Nathan feels some desperation he cannot name, like a slow sob.
"I'm not your boyfriend." Roy rests against Nathan as before, but they have each become still. "I have a girlfriend. And I don't need to do this if I don't want to."
Nathan receives the words all the way to the center of his bones. He watches Roy's face, trying to see through to his mind. It is like the silence on the bus, this moment. It is like Roy squaring his shoulders to the front of the bus. They lie together for a long time. Nathan watches the pond with Roy's shivering belly under his hand. Roy's large thigh stirs in the grass. The crickets drone. Finally Roy says, in a tenderer tone, "We better get back."
Nathan stands and finds his clothes. Roy dresses close to him. The night has filled with sounds. From the shadows overhead come calls of night birds, and from the distant darkness echoes the yowling of a faraway cat, the singing of frogs, the murmuring of wind in branches. One shrill thin cry shivers along Nathan's spine, sounding almost human. A bobcat, Roy says.
In the backyard, in the shadow of the barn, Roy braces Nathan, holding tight. "Bring my books in the morning. I’m going on home." No more parting than that %'s shadow vanishes.
In the kitchen, Nathan drinks sweet tea standing by e sink. The house is quiet except for the drone of the Revision.
Then Dad is in the room. "Is that you son?"
Nathan sets the glass carefully, quietly, onto the sink. "Yes sir."
The sweetish smell of his Old Spice clouds the kitchen. He has come from the living room. He is standing in shadow. "You been out for a walk."
"Yes sir."
"Where did you go?"
"Out to the pond. There's a graveyard out there." "Who did you go with?" "Roy. Next door." Very softly. "He's a nice boy" Dad says.
He comes forward into the light and Nathan backs away. He considers Nathan from beside the refrigerator. Dad is wearing his white boxer shorts with the stained front, his white tee shirt with the torn sleeve and cigarette burns. The whiteness of his flesh, the softness, make Nathan look away. "There's a Western on the TV You ought to come watch it with your dad."
"No sir."
Dad ponders this. He opens the door of the refrigerator. "All right. Then go on to bed."
Nathan has been holding his breath. Released, he slips quietly upstairs, without turning on the light. He waits at the window until he is calm. He listens to make sure Dad goes back to the living room.
Across the yard Roy's window is dark. So it remains.
In the morning, a heavy mist has settled onto the yard, and Nathan can hardly see the bus as he heads into the cloud zipping his jacket. His own books and Roy's are crooked in his arm. The idling motor guides him to the haze of the yellow bus. Roy straddles the driver's seat gazing out the window at the dismal morning. He says nothing, closes the door and turns on the headlights.
