by Jim Grimsley
Roy drives away earlier than usual, then coasts slowly down the dirt road toward Potter’s Lake. Once free of sight of the houses, Nathan breathes easily. He eats the bread and melted, now rubbery, cheese. The sense of peace fills him, as much for Roy’s presence as for the food. As long as they are silent, Roy and he will be fine.
Still, he is a little let down when Roy stops the bus and someone climbs aboard. But the noise and commotion are like steps descending into the day. He sits with his books in his lap, watching the back of Roy’s head.
At the high school, Nathan hurries off the bus with the mass of kids, barely daring to nod good-bye. Roy concurrently makes a show of stacking his books.
For lunch, Nathan seeks out a new corner and keeps his back to the general congregation. He hardly dares wish that Roy would come, but, curiously, feels no surprise when he looks up and Roy is there. Roy ambles uncertainly with his tray before taking the facing seat. He glares at his plate like the first day. The wordless hinterland rises between them.
But he has come, whether they speak or not. The ritual of the cigarette also remains true to the past, the indolence of lounging on the patio beneath the swirls of smoke, Burke and Randy each handing Roy a free filter tip. They talk about swimming at the railroad trestle Friday afternoon, they relive the fantastic leaps of Burke and Roy. The memory of the day seems far away to Nathan. The wind over the cornfield, over the flat countryside, washing the patio, consumes him. The wind pours across the ground in rising waves. The flare of an acrid match in cupped palms sends smoke along Roy’s cheeks. Cigarettes bravely burn.
After school, at the end of the ride home, Roy parks the orange bus in the yard, under the sycamore, and Nathan feels the heaviness of home.
They have been silent, the two boys, the whole afternoon ride. Safety can be found in spaces without words, where they are close together. Nathan is acute to some new change in Roy, some edge beyond his anger. The awareness has been building through the day and returns in force. Roy slides his books under his arms. He is delaying his departure. He affects to scan the floor with a critical eye. “I don’t think I need to sweep.”
Nathan dares no answer.
“There’s some paper. But I can pick that up.”
The distilled thread of television reaches them from one or the other of the houses. At the moment Roy and Nathan each seem alien to those clusters of rooms. But still there is some mistrust in Roy, some hidden resistance. They glance about. Nathan begins a step past the older boy. He can already feel the ground beneath his feet.
“Maybe you ought to come to my house tonight,” Roy says.
Nathan hesitates, a split second. Too long to pretend he did not hear. “I don’t think I can.”
Because Roy is watching, Nathan has no choice but to head into the kitchen. He can feel Roy’s eyes on his back the whole walk across the yard.
Mom freezes at the sink. Nathan softly closes the door. He says hello. After a moment she answers.
There is stillness. There is the monotone buzz of the Frigidaire. There is Mom’s narrow back, the neat bow of her apron. There is the smell, antiseptic, of a freshly cleaned house. There is the neat kitchen, which lays itself out neatly in perpendiculars, squares, rectangles, diamonds. There is her voice, hardly audible, saying his supper will be ready soon. There is, pervasive, her fear, and its orbital chill permeates Nathan. There is also, suddenly, a past surrounding them both, resonant with the memories Nathan normally resists, the white spaces of time in which his Dad falls on him like snow. While Mother, adjacent, allows.
Now they cannot face each other, the mother and son. The rupture between them blossoms. Nathan heads upstairs, changes his clothes for the night. He is trembling for no reason.
He sits down to early supper in the kitchen, long before Dad comes home. She sets a plate before him, leaves the room. Her soft weight settles into a chair in the living room, followed by the whisper of Bible pages sliding across one another.
After supper he carries his plate to the sink. The sound alerts her to the end of his meal, but she remains out of sight, in that room where Nathan rarely ventures. For a moment, he wishes she would come and offer him something. Vague but comforting. He wishes she would come but she remains there. He eases out the back door into the night.
The house recedes. One by one his connections are falling away.
Tonight he does not even think about staying indoors. He carries his quilts out the back door brazenly. He wanders along the pond and by sunset he arrives in the Kennicutt graveyard with his coat and blankets. He sits at the base of the obelisk, the place where Roy first brought him, in sight of the stone angel with its chubby thighs. Listening to the wind, he warms himself under the quilts.
Tonight seems a little warmer than before. He sits quietly, the quilts heavy around his shoulders. He is more tired than he realizes and dozes suddenly, a burst of unconsciousness almost like an enchantment; and when he wakens, footsteps are crashing through the leaves and a shadow crosses his face.
In a panic, thinking Dad has found him, he rises, clutching the quilts. But the hands that take his shoulders are Roy’s. Roy emerges out of darkness, they are facing each other. Uncomprehending, Roy. Looking Nathan up and down, astonished and then afraid. “How long have you been sitting out here?”
The decision to answer requires a moment of focus. “Since after supper.”
Tree frogs are singing. The tenor of the birds has changed a little, the cries seem harsher tonight. The occasional cricket resounds. A mild October has yet to finish summer off. The two boys stand together in the sound of night. Warmth spreads through Nathan, and he can feel Roy’s body yielding toward him.
They sit close on the blanket, without speaking. Their quiet draws them closer.
“You were out here last night too, weren’t you?”
The memory is distant. “I got on the bus after a while.”
They each reflect on the landscape. Roy asks no more questions. For a long time he cannot bring himself to look at Nathan at all, but Nathan waits.
Dad has been home a long time now. Nathan spots the dark shape of his car at its usual mooring. The cloud of his presence hangs over the house. But the fact of Roy makes the fact of Dad less fearsome, suddenly; Nathan contemplates the change with grave curiosity. He leans against Roy, who allows him closer.
They sit quietly for a long time. Finally Roy moves his mouth close to Nathan’s ear. “I got to go inside pretty soon. My parents will be wondering where I am.”
“It’s okay. I’ll be fine.”
“You can’t stay out here.”
“Yes, I can.”
Hesitation. Roy considers one question, refuses it, something helpless in his expression. “You should come to my house.”
Nathan shakes his head. “Your parents will send me home.”
Silence. Roy is wondering whether to ask what’s wrong, Nathan can tell. But he rejects the notion, he is afraid to know. They stick to the practical.
“You can sleep in the barn tonight, I’ll show you a place.”
The voices of everything, of crickets and frogs and birds, collide with the rasp of wind through dry leaves in the trees overhead. Nathan trusts, and therefore neglects to argue. Roy pulls him close, like a brother.
They touch each other gently, without intent. Only once, when Nathan brushes his lips against Roy’s throat, is there something else. Roy takes a sudden breath and grips Nathan’s head with his hand. A moment of possession. And Nathan sees, in a fleeting way, the irony that what pleases him with Roy terrifies him with his father. He glimpses this, he has no words for the thought. The moment of dread soon passes.
Roy takes him to the barn through the back and shows him the mattress in the corner behind bales of hay. They cover it with yellowed newspaper and Nathan curls up in the quilts. Roy lingers a little while, till Nathan’s eyes adjust to the light in the drafty structure. Light from the yard pours through chinks in the outer wall. An owl is hooting somewhe
re overhead. Roy leans over Nathan on the mattress, hesitant. The moment begins intimately but ends awkwardly, Roy decides against any touch, stands and wipes the back of his jeans. “You’ll be safe in here. Okay? I have to go.”
“Thanks.” Studying the play of shadow on Roy’s face. “Are you still mad at me?”
The question surprises Roy. For a moment he seems overwhelmed, though the question is very simple. “No, I’m not mad.”
“I had fun the other night.”
“So did I.”
Nathan busies himself spreading the quilts.
When Roy heads to his house, the open door floods the barn with light. He waits in the rectangle a moment, his long shadow bisecting the stream of light. But whatever weighs on his mind, he asks nothing.
The door swings closed and Nathan is alone. The barn seems larger now that it is all dark again. The quiet and stillness are welcome. Nathan lies back along the mattress, newspaper rustling. He inhales the aroma of old straw, the dusky undertones of dried manure, a whiff of rotted apple, other odors he cannot identify. Around him, shadow-shapes are forming in the dim light that spills through the cracks in the walls; the stored farm equipment, the tractor and covered plows, protective, like sleeping giants. He studies the unfamiliar space and tries to make himself comfortable on the mattress, grateful that he is inside for the night. Tired after two nights of fitful rest, he sleeps more soundly than he would have thought possible.
In the morning, he wakens to the sight of Roy, who sits on the edge of the mattress. Nathan did not even hear the door open. “Good morning. Did you sleep?”
Nathan rubs his eyes. “Yes.”
“Your mom is awake. The light’s on in your kitchen.”
Nathan stretches, sits up. “What time is it?”
“Early.” Roy thumps his shoulder affectionately. Indicating the quilts, he says, “I’ll hide these. You go get ready for school. Okay?”
When Nathan rises, Roy brushes close to him, kisses his cheek. Then Roy busies himself getting feed for the chickens. Nathan hurries to his house, leaving the barn by the back.
A cold, clear morning greets him. Nothing much has changed inside the rooms; his mother hardly speaks to him, his father lurks out of sight. His room lies exactly as he left it. He rushes to spend as little time as possible there, washing off at the sink, throwing on clothes, gathering schoolbooks.
So his life settles into a kind of twisted routine, and for the rest of the week he hides in the graveyard and sleeps in the barn, with Roy’s sanction. After school he does his homework as quickly as he can, sometimes daring to work at his desk, in his room, or sometimes studying outside in the last of daylight, in the graveyard by the pond. Mom readies his supper early, before Dad comes home, and when she calls, he enters and eats quickly. The food is set out on the table as if by chance, Mom never stays. As soon as he has eaten, he retreats outside again, to spend the early evening hours in the grave-yard or near the pond. Roy keeps him company then, if his own chores are finished, if they are not going to church, and if he can get away from his parents.
Nathan becomes a visitor to his former life, moving like a stranger in his own house, gliding through the kitchen, slipping quickly through doorways and along stairs. At his appearance, Mom retreats into other rooms. It is as if, as long as she does not see him, she can pretend that everything is fine, that he is still living in the house, that he is simply out of sight. The whispered sounds of her various habits, needlepoint and Bible reading, are the only signs of her presence.
Even when he sees her, early in the morning when he slides into the kitchen, she remains somewhere out of reach. Across her face drift strange, sudden expressions: fury, heartache, confusion, fury again, then quiet despair. Her whispered good mornings fade by Wednesday to the merest nod of the head. Nathan moves cautiously when he is near her, as if they have become animals circling each other.
She never asks where he shelters himself at night. She never asks how he stays warm, where he sleeps. She pretends. Never once, during the whole week, does she neaten his bedroom, make the bed or fold the blankets in the corner. They lie as he left them, the night Dad tripped over the cord and Nathan fled. Time stopped. The room has become a haunted place.
On Thursday, when he has dressed for school and is headed out of the kitchen for the school bus, into the kitchen Dad suddenly lumbers, terrifying and large. He shambles toward the refrigerator in white underwear, his blue-pocked belly overhanging the elastic, his craggy chest shivered with goose flesh. Nathan stops breathing, caught in the doorway. Dad smiles. The kitchen echoes with his cough. He ogles Nathan up and down and his eyes, red-rimmed, fill with longing. He steps toward Nathan with out warning and Nathan backs up, a corner catches him and all at once there is no world, there is only Dad’s white belly shivering with blood and Dad’s breath blowing down from above, the shadow falling over Nathan’s face. Nathan’s heart batters his ribs. A sound falters. Mom’s voice emerges from the other room and her footsteps cause Dad to turn. “Who’s in the kitchen, Nathan?”
She stands in the doorway to see. Her flesh has gone gray. She is staring at her husband as if he has stepped onto the linoleum from another world.
Nathan slips free of the corner and hurtles out of the house; breathless, he reaches the bus at a dead run. Pushing open the cold metal door, he huddles in the chilled interior till Roy finds him.
“Is anything wrong?” Roy asks, seeing his stricken face. But there are no words, no words will come. Roy, so close to his own parents and his own real life, does not even dare embrace him. He studies the light in Nathan’s kitchen, a long time, before settling into the driver’s seat.
Puzzled, mostly silent, Roy has remained a steady guardian. Each morning he has come to the barn early, to wake Nathan when he starts his chores. He warms the bus ahead of schedule and watches the back door of Nathan’s house. He acts as if this is the most natural change of habit in the world, and they drive away. During school they keep to their usual pattern, eating lunch together, then hanging out on the smoking patio with Burke and Randy. At night they wander in the woods, along the edge of the pond and among the slanted shadows of tombstones. They never discuss what has happened. Roy never asks, and Nathan never volunteers.
They talk with their bodies. Roy says he is sorry again and again and never makes a sound. In the woods, in the shadow of the tombstone of Sarah Jane Kennicutt, on the path to the Indian mound; never in the barn, for fear someone will hear. Never near the houses. They hold each other on the borders of the farm, at the edge of wild country, they speak with their hands.
Sometimes when Roy watches, a question can be read in his eyes. Who is Nathan, why is Roy with him? Nathan can almost hear the words. Who is Nathan?
Roy goes away with his family to Wednesday night prayer meeting. Evelyn will be there. Nathan pictures her as blond and tall, with a sweet face, plump, round breasts and full, wide hips. She is waiting for Roy at the door to the sanctuary. She is holding a bouquet of flowers in her hand.
The late nights are the hardest times, after Roy says good-bye and closes the barn door. The smells, the unfamiliar shadows and sounds, trouble Nathan’s sleep. The dirtiness of the mattress and the dust of the straw beside it make him cough, and at times he becomes afraid Dad will hear him. He wonders, when he will allow himself to think of it, how long he can go on hiding.
On Friday, while they are lounging on the smoking patio, Roy lets Nathan taste his bitter cigarette. He inhales sharply, the hot smoke searing his lungs. The choking and coughing that follow bring general laughter, and Burke and Randy clap Nathan on the back. There follows a moment of such sheer friendliness that Nathan loses his fear of Randy and even of Burke. When Nathan catches his breath they are talking about camping, about the trip to Handle they discussed when they were diving off the railroad trestle, Roy, Burke, and Randy. Roy is including Nathan in the plans for the trip, and Nathan realizes with relief that this could solve the problem of how to get through the wee
kend.
Near the end of the day, Nathan finds Roy waiting outside Advanced Math. The surprise of his appearance helps Nathan to see him fresh and vivid once again, tall and strongly made in his jeans and denim jacket, the high bones of his face darkened with a trace of beard, his lips cut in a lopsided smile. Fierce eyes shock from beneath dark thick brows. Roy falls in silently beside Nathan and they head under the canopy to another class. “You think it’s a good idea to go camping this weekend? If you’re worried about your mom, I can ask her for you.”
Nathan remembers the sliding shadow in her house-coat, the deepening dark circles under her eyes. “It’ll be okay. She’ll let me go.”
They have arrived at Nathan’s final class. Roy has led the way, and at the last moment lays his hand on Nathan’s shoulder. The almost hidden gesture passes unnoticed in the general commotion of classes changing, but for Nathan the brief nervous flare sears him. “I’ll see you after school.”
Roy hurries to his own class. Nathan takes his seat in Biology, opening his text to the chapter on cell mitochondria.
The bus ride home is intimate in a way Nathan can hardly credit, as if, out of all the noisy creatures on the bus, only he and Roy truly exist. Even when Nathan looks out the window at the tattered autumn fields, Roy watches from the overhead mirror, eyes hanging in the air.
He stops the bus on the dirt road, when all the others have gone. He calls Nathan to the front of the bus. The press of his body is familiar and heady. He traps Nathan’s head against his chest. They hold still against each other, breathless through silence, till the distant drone of a truck motor warns them of itself. Roy releases Nathan unhurriedly. “We won’t have to worry about this kind of shit in the woods.”
Still without hurry, he reclaims the driver’s seat and they finish the drive home, sliding into the parking place beneath laced branches.
