Now uncompanioned, he visited some of the old places, as nearly as he could judge them to have been, with the creek gradually changing its geography as time brought, alternately, flood and drought. Giving himself up to nostalgia, he picked a melon on his way and continued into the woods to the creek where he and Floyd had fished and swum. The underwater cypress roots between which he fixed his melon to cool might have been exactly those Floyd and he had used for the same purpose when they were boys. He took off his clothes and left them on the gray, dry nubs of branches of a tree that had been struck by lightning and died.

After swimming he stretched himself on the bank of the creek, which was hard-packed sand and ground moss that was almost like grass. Lying on his back, he looked up through the branches of trees to blue sky, and then hearing the buzz of summer swamp, familiar all his life, turned face sideways, and saw butterflies that looked like the same butterflies he had seen and forgotten seventeen summers ago.

Across the creek, crouched low, sitting on a log, Roman watched. He had watched for the last several days as Leon followed the same general pattern of activity and indolence.

Today he had come here before Leon. Eventually, Leon came strolling along. Roman watched him put the melon on the ground, and when it rolled and Leon said, “Whoa!” and set a twig to secure it on the bank, Roman shared the minor suspense and smiled as the man smiled. Having balanced the melon, Leon immediately took it up and found the holding nest for it in the watered cypress roots.

He took a stick and trailed it in the water, then seemed to be writing with it on the surface, finally dropping it into the creek and watching it float downstream. From the rise and fall of Leon’s shoulders, Roman surmised a sigh.

Leon walked along the bank a few yards, and Roman wondered if he would be forced to get up from his sheltered watching post and follow along on his side of the creek to keep the man in sight, a desire that had become necessity during the last minutes. But Leon stopped, tilted back his head and belched hugely. The homely sound was shocking on the quiet woodland air.

Leon squatted on the bankside and stared into the water as if he saw a turtle or a fish moving just below the surface in the gray-brown shallows. Leaning forward, he began to lose his balance. To correct it, he reared back so abruptly that he fell on his behind and sat laughing at himself, as Rachel had done on the picnic in the grove.