by Jim Grimsley
She looks out the window. “There he is, too, waiting on you.”
“Can I go? Is it all right?”
She goes on watching Roy, her face filling with worry. “I guess you can. But I don’t want you to go too far.”
“Yes, ma’am, I won’t.”
“Remember, he’s bigger than you are. You don’t have to do everything he does.”
“Yes, ma’am, I know.”
She dries her hands and kisses Nathan’s forehead without looking at him. “Put on your everyday clothes. I’ll tell him you’re coming.”
Nathan rushes upstairs, furiously erasing his mother’s sadness from his mind. When, school clothes exchanged for everyday, he returns to the porch, she is fussing with her plants, pinching a dead leaf off the ivory, wiping the leaves of a snake plant with a cloth. She says to be careful in the woods, don’t stay gone too long. Nathan answers, yes ma’am, yes ma’am, and bursts into the yard. Roy awaits beyond the hedge. The two boys run side by side through the apple orchard.
The rhythm of running carries them a long way, beyond the meadow. They crash through underbrush but make no other sound. Leaves strike the skin of Nathan’s arms, stinging and caressing. Roy leads him west of the pond and cemetery; he lopes deeper into the woods, glancing back to make sure Nathan is keeping up. Roy laughs at the glory of motion, a bright, incomprehensible sound that echoes through the woodland. He leaps across a narrow stream where drooping ferns make elegant green arches, and Nathan follows, light, running as if he will never tire.
The forest is something other than a neighbor now; it becomes a new world. As the density of growth increases, the pace of their running slows. Soon it is easier to walk than to run, and Nathan draws abreast of Roy. Roy gives a look that instructs, that says he is pleased. The Indian mound is pretty close once they cross the creek, he says. The land is rising. Nathan climbs past bent saplings and red-leafed dogwood; Roy has run up the hill a little faster than Nathan and pauses, breathless.
The forest thins and light spills into the lower tiers of growth. Beyond a glade of trees, on a flat of land, a long mound rises. Only green grass grows on the mound, as if all other kinds of plants have been magically forbidden. Golden sunlight tumbles along the gentle slope.
Roy hangs his shirt from his beltloops. When Nathan does not follow suit of his own volition, Roy reaches for his shirt buttons.
The air, Roy’s hands, light spilling down.
Roy offers Nathan the shirt, tenderness in his expression, then runs down the long slope. Nathan threads the sleeves through the belt loops of his pants and follows. Roy vanishes momentarily, but Nathan, heart pounding from the run, finds him. Roy is a strong silhouette against the bright mound, walking toward it. Nathan overtakes him halfway up the mound.
Nathan draws near shyly and Roy refuses to turn. Roy’s back muscles shift in a rhythm that seems strong and good. The warm brown skin invites Nathan’s hands, but he refuses to reach. They are still climbing. A curious fact, Roy’s breath labors more than Nathan’s. When on the crest of the mound Roy turns, his ribs are beating open and closed like wings.
Nathan lays his hand against the pounding in the cleft of Roy’s chest.
Roy watches his hand, watches Nathan.
Their two fleshes are bright together, the two boys, warm like the colors of the late sky. The sun still has some descending to do, and they watch it and the clouds for a while. Roy settles along the ground, spreading out his shirt, and Nathan does the same. Soon they are layered against each other. Roy says the movement of the treetops is like the ocean. Nathan knows nothing about the ocean; he listens to the murmuring of Roy’s insides, the ferocious heartbeat that shakes through them both. Roy is murmuring in Nathan’s ear, a hymn from church, “There is a place of quiet rest, near to the heart of God.” Nathan sings too, kissing Roy’s soft throat, his collarbones, the underside of his chin. He can smell Roy’s body, he can taste it with the tip of his tongue. Roy grips the back of Nathan’s head as if afraid he will escape. He need not worry. Nathan knows the nakedness Roy wants, and soon achieves it. Roy arches with his body toward Nathan, a curve of yearning. He lies bare in the grass with a look on his face as if Nathan is making him sing through every cell.
They lie still while the sun settles into the green bath of leaves. Roy says nothing but Nathan can feel how his spirit darkens. The banded sky begins to drain of color as they dress. Roy stands with his hands in his pockets. He calls, “Nathan,” in a strangled voice and Nathan walks close; he brings Nathan’s ear to his mouth and says, “Please don’t say anything about this to anybody. Okay? Please.”
“I won’t.” For a moment, just a little, Nathan is afraid.
Roy has frozen with one leg in his pants, the other not.
“Is something wrong?”
“You just can’t say anything about it. That’s all.” A bitter whiteness sheathing his expression. “It’s near dark. We better get home.”
But even then they linger in the forest. At first Roy holds Nathan’s hand but later is ashamed or shy. Yet he refuses to hurry, walking slowly, never straying far. He brags that he knows all the land around his father’s farm, he could find his way home in the pitch dark if he had to. Soon Nathan glimpses the cemetery through the trees, and then the pond, and they are walking along the tangled shore within sight of the backs of both houses. They slow their walking even more, and each reaches for ways to manage nearness to the other without seeming responsible for it. In back of the barn, Roy takes Nathan next to him, again furiously, as if the act makes him angry. “You can’t do this with anybody but me. Do you hear what I’m telling you?”
Nathan’s heart suddenly batters at them both. “I don’t want to do it with anybody else.”
“Just remember.” Red-faced, Roy is already rushing toward his house.
Nathan wanders toward his own kitchen, hearing the sounds that indicate supper heading to the table. Already he is calculating the turns of the cycle, that tonight he will not see Roy, that tomorrow Roy will not say much on the bus. None of that makes him afraid, exactly. Nathan has no words for what does make him afraid. But he feels the chill of it as he descends into the house, where his mother has prepared a meal carefully but will hardly look him in the eye, where his father brings the Bible and a tumbler of whiskey to the dinner table, mumbling verses under his breath as he takes his seat. In the submersion of home, Nathan returns again and again to the image of Roy’s body on the Indian mound, lost and bewildered under the power of Nathan’s mouth.
Chapter Four
Their guest for supper is Saint Paul, and the text is Romans, chapter one. Dad reads neither aloud nor silently, he chants softly as if he is alone, the words a stream of sound that barely rises above the gold-edged pages of God’s holy word. Because that, when they knew God, they glorified him not as God, neither were thankful; but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened.
The whiskey sits at his right hand, the knife and fork at the left. Today it is real whiskey bought from the local package store, not the clear moonshine of weekends and holidays.
Mom, restless, gives the appearance of hovering slightly above the seat of her chair. Neither listening nor speaking, she chews her food in a mechanical motion. As always at mealtime, she wears a frightened expression, glancing from Dad to Nathan, then fixing her attention on her plate.
Dad reads: Professing themselves wise, they became fools, and changed the glory of the uncorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man, and to birds, and to four-footed beasts, and creeping things.
Nathan eats though he can hardly taste. When he sits at the supper table with Mom and Dad, the twisting of his gut is unrelenting, and every soft-spoken word from the King James Bible reverberates.
They are a family during certain mealtimes and during church. Each night, each Sunday, they eat together, because they always have. The repetition echoes darkly through the country of Nathan’s memory, through all the dangerous
territories in which his thought may no longer move freely. Through all that he has forgotten and locked away.
Once there was a younger Dad, of firm flesh and clear skin, a Dad who could look Nathan in the eye when they talked, who could drink his whiskey on the weekends and stay sober through the week, who could play ball with Nathan in the yard. Once there was a Dad without a soft belly hanging over his belt, without the slackness of this one’s jaw or the broken veins in his cheeks and nose, a Dad whose eyes were not yellow-ringed-with-red. Once there was a man who could kiss Mom on the cheek with a clear heart, who could pick up Nathan in strong arms and toss him toward the ceiling like a toy. That other Dad remains, somewhere; but not here inside this pale body huddled over its gilt-edged Bible. The spider veins tracing Dad’s cheeks and the yellow skin of Dad’s hands are frightening to Nathan. There is even the smell of rot that underlies his father’s sweet aftershave.
Being filled with all unrighteousness, fornication, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness; full of envy, murder, debate, deceit, malignity; whisperers, backbiters, haters of God, despiteful, proud, boasters, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents, without understanding, covenantbreakers, without natural affection, implacable, unmerciful: who knowing the judgment of God, that they which commit such things are worthy of death, not only do the same, but have pleasure in them that do them.
Nathan can be safe if he keeps his eyes lowered, if he focuses on the plate of food that he can never taste. He lets the holy utterances fall over him like the lightness of a quiet rain, bows his head as if in reverence and listens, without hearing. In his mind he is far away, in the woods with Roy, stepping through golden sunlight.
Soon the meal will end and Dad will retreat into the living room, where the television will drone deep into the night. No one will expect Nathan to go there. He holds his breath and waits, watching Mom’s knotted hands as they whiten on the handle of her fork. She closes her eyes, and for a moment it is clear that she too feels pain from this last scrap of their togetherness.
If Dad feels anything, he gives no evidence in voice or demeanor. He reads as if the words will take him back to the Dad of yesterday or the heaven of tomorrow. He eats. He sips whiskey. The daze of evening descends on him. When, one moment, he glances up at Nathan, he hardly seems to see anything at all.
He reads: Wherefore God also gave them up to uncleanness through the lusts of their own hearts, to dishonor their own bodies between themselves; who changed the truth of God into a lie, and worshipped and served the creature more than the Creator, who is blessed forever. Amen.
The meal will end. Meals always do. Nathan will climb silently to his room again, to the peace and safety that has so far remained intact in this new house.
Chapter Five
In the morning Nathan wakens with apprehension, dressing with self-conscious care and eating breakfast slowly, almost as if he hopes Roy will leave without him. He is afraid the wrong Roy will appear today, afraid he will find the silent, cold one. But when he walks to the bus, Roy waits calmly. He says good morning before Nathan reaches the door, speaking with an openness that puts Nathan on guard. Nathan ascends while maintaining an invisible wall, longing to reach through it and touch Roy but taking his seat with a circumspect air. He studies the dewy yard beyond the bus window, the edge of the Kennicutt Woods.
As Roy closes the door and wrestles with the gearshift, he partially turns in the seat. “I almost came to see you last night.”
“I wish you had.” Nearly too low to hear.
“Me and my folks had to go to a business meeting at church.”
“You go to church a lot, don’t you?”
“My parents got a lot of religion.” He has steered the bus onto the road, entering the stretch of forest. Once the houses have vanished, he stops the bus and stands. “Come here.”
To hold him and be held by him is enough for Nathan. Roy says, “You better eat lunch with me today if you know what’s good for you.”
“I will.” Into the cup of shoulder and neck. Lingering. Roy pulls him close, sighs.
“We have to go, I guess.”
After that, the day is a fog, except for lunch when Nathan can find Roy and set himself into his orbit. As before, Nathan finds a table alone and, when Roy joins him, they talk before Randy and Burke arrive. Roy tells about his church, the Bethel Church of God in Congregation, which meets in a pretty white building on a nearby loop road. The preacher is a fat man with a bald spot on top of his head and hair all around it, and he preaches sermons filled with the hell of sinners and the damnation of souls. Pretty much everything you can do is wrong, Roy says, especially if it’s fun. The description of the preacher, whose name is Rutherford Paschal, enlivens Roy as he gives it, and Nathan shares the vision, remarking innocently that he would like to see this fat bald preacher one Sunday. At this Roy’s face closes shut, and Nathan understands that he has said a wrong thing. Roy remains silent until he leads Nathan to the smoking patio, where the sunlight, the calm of a cigarette and the voices of friends restore him. Nathan relaxes, but studies Roy nevertheless. Wondering about Roy’s church, about all the life of Roy that Nathan has yet to fathom. About the girlfriend, mentioned once and never forgotten.
Days pass and they are together often. Roy’s chores suddenly require Nathan’s presence, and Roy’s homework begs Nathan’s help. Some evenings they work at Nathan’s house and some at Roy’s. In this way, one night, Nathan meets Roy’s parents, who are much older than Nathan’s. The Connellys took a long time to have children, Roy being the only one of four to live past birth. Sometimes he visits his brothers and sisters in the cemetery near their church, he says. To Nathan, who is also an only child, it is curious to think of Roy visiting siblings in a cemetery. Roy’s large, soft mother takes shots to control her blood sugar and nerve pills to help her sleep. The boys do their homework in Roy’s bedroom, surrounded by Roy’s baseball and hunting gear. But one night they work at the kitchen table as Roy’s mother slices apples in the adjacent living room. Roy’s father passes through on his way from the barn to the desk where he keeps the farm’s accounts. There is a feeling of ill health about the mother and a taciturn, tough shell that protects the father, and they talk little. But there is also a feeling of peace and safety.
At the end of her apple peeling, Mrs. Connelly brings her white glass bowl into the kitchen and washes the apples again. She asks the boys if they have studied good, and they answer that they have. She asks Roy what he is learning in school and he tells her about advanced algebra and auto mechanics. She listens to the description of dismantled carburetors, fuel pumps, and polynomial equations, shaking her head at the complexity. “His daddy knows all about motors too, but I don’t.” She offers Nathan a fresh slice of apple. “And I never could do numbers. I don’t think women have the minds for some things. I know a lot of people think that’s old-fashioned, but I think that’s the way God intended it.”
“My mom doesn’t know anything about motors either,” Nathan offers.
“See there.” She nods her head at the profundity of it all. “What about you, Nathan, what do you like in school?”
“I like to read science fiction books.”
“You mean about space travel and all like that. Lord, I don’t think I would like to have all that stuff in my head. I don’t read too much, except the prayer magazine we get. Guideposts. I like that magazine. It’s really a Baptist magazine, but I like it anyway. We’re not Baptists, we’re Holiness.”
“We go to the Baptist church.”
“With Preacher Roberts? I like him. I think he’s handsome.”
“You ought not to be talking about handsome men,” Roy says, “you know Dad don’t like it.”
“Your daddy ain’t studying who I talk about. And I do think he’s handsome. Did you always go to the Baptist church, Nathan?”
“No, ma’am. My mom used to take me to the Holiness Church too. But my daddy didn’t like it because they play electric guitar
s.”
“No. You don’t mean it.”
Even Roy is interested in that. “Electric guitars in the church?”
“One time they had drums, too. You know, like in a band.”
“Lord help me,” says Mrs. Connelly. “I don’t know about that. We don’t do that in our church, we just have a piano.”
“We’ve been Baptist since my daddy started going.”
“Now I know you all moved here from somewhere.”
“Smithfield.”
“That’s right. Your daddy told me. You lived in Smithfield.”
“We didn’t live there long. We lived in Goldsboro before that. And Tims Creek.”
“I think Tims Creek is a nice little town.”
“Don’t you get tired of moving so much?” Roy asks.
Mrs. Connelly is watching. Nathan has the feeling they have talked about this before, and is therefore more guarded. “Sometimes. It’s not so bad though. We lived in Rose Hill for a long time, when I was little.”
Mother and son look at each other. Nathan becomes afraid they’ve heard something, a story about the reason Nathan’s family moves from one place to the other. Something about why they left Rose Hill. Dad likes to move, all right, but never quite far enough.
The conversation ends when Roy’s father comes from his office looking for a glass of tea. He waits pleasantly while Mrs. Connelly stirs her large body to put ice in a glass. They talk about the fall weather, the clover Roy and he are planting in the field next to the house, the abundance of fish in the pond. The ease with which the Connellys keep company with each other almost makes Nathan feel at home himself.
Later, they carry their books to Roy’s room, which is smaller than it seems from the other side of the hedges, a narrow, angled space, mostly occupied by a bed and Roy’s desk. High on the wall are shelves for his baseball trophies, a sturdy collection. Nathan examines each trophy scrupulously but makes no comment. Nathan studies everything with the same attention to detail, including the view to his own window. Roy leans beside him, then smiles. Finger to the lips, be quiet.
