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again, driving his parents' car
into the yard, letting it idle a moment. Nathan leaps out of the blankets. He
stands back from the window to make sure Roy cannot see him. Roy steps out of
the car, illuminated by the yard light atop its creosote pole. His figure is
handsome in white shirt and tie, his face in shadow. Judging from his stance,
he might be watching Nathan's window. But still Nathan hangs back, listening to
the muted creakings of the house around him, the syncopated drip of water in
the downstairs bathroom. Wind rattles the upstairs windows in their frames. Roy
presently heads into the deeper gloom beneath trees, walking with his mother,
who moves slowly due to her size. Nathan hovers in the dark over them both.
    Soon a
dim light burns in the bedroom above the hedge. As before, Roy's shadow slides
across the visible wall. Tonight he avoids the window, and Nathan watches his
shadow undress.
    When
that room goes dark, Nathan stands dumbly before his own window, reluctant to
turn. When he returns to bed, a small fear seizes him. He replays in his head
every moment of Roy's arrival, his stepping out of the car, his standing in the
shadow, his undressing out of sight of the window. Nathan lies in bed and
examines each of these images over and over. Something in the sequence of
events frightens him.
    Yet the
following day proves to be all Nathan could have wished. In the morning he sits
in the seat behind Roy again, and on the way to school Roy talks to him in an
almost intimate way. At lunch Roy sits with Nathan and afterward takes Nathan
to the smoking patio. No friend takes precedence over Nathan, and no girl
excites his attention.
    Only
once, when Nathan asks about prayer meeting, does the little fear return. Roy
says the meeting was fine but refuses to look at him. All further questions
about Roy's church stick in Nathan's throat.
    That
afternoon, when Roy parks the bus under the pecan trees, he tells Nathan to
hurry inside and change clothes, he wants them to go for a hike in the woods
while there's still light. To an Indian mound, he says, beyond the pond and the
cemetery. He grins and lets the bus motor die. The door hardly swings open
before Nathan dashes for his house.
    In the
kitchen his mother stands at the sink washing a cake pan and icing bowl. The
room shimmers with afternoon light, filtered through red checked curtains,
adding color to her face and hands. “I'm making a coconut cake. Do you
want a little piece of layer?”
    “No,
ma'am. I'm not hungry”
    “It's
still warm out of the oven, it would be good.”
    “I'm
not hungry for cake right now.”
    This
disappoints her a little, but she goes on smiling warmly. “Well, did you
have a good day at school?”
    “Yes,
ma'am.”
    “Well,
sit down and talk to me about it. What are you in such a hurry for?”
    “Roy
wants me to change clothes and come out to the woods with him.”
    She
studies her dishes and frowns. Her glistening hands move deliberately.
“What does he want you to go in the woods for?”
    “To
see this Indian mound.”
    “What
do you want with an Indian mound?”
    “I
never saw one before.”
    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