Roman followed every move the man made with attention so total he was unaware of it himself. Leon drew his knees up, leaned folded arms on them, bent head to arms. Sitting on the low log across the creek, Roman did the same thing. Presently, Leon pressed his face into his arms so that it was hidden from the boy. Was he crying? Roman speculated with alarm and hope. No. He raised his head and yawned. Roman relaxed, disappointed. He wanted his idol to be despondent this day.

Minutes later, Leon stood and began to undress himself, evidently thinking so little of what he was doing that his gestures were clumsy, fingers fumbling buttons, hands pulling too weakly or too vigorously at shirt sleeve or trouser leg.

Roman watched with increasing involvement. The man was his father. Roman’s flesh was Leon’s. That is me is what he felt, knowing both that it was, and was not, true. Leon’s body was sparsely haired, none visible on his chest, that on his arms and legs hardly visible; and that around his genitals darker than the red gold of his head hair, as a man’s mustache and beard may sometimes be.

He scratched his thigh. He slapped both hands on his bare chest, and then with no warning hint or gesture he dived shallowly into the creek, surfaced like a leaping fish, flinging water from his hair and head, and yelled like a happy child, “Wa-hoo!”

He submerged slowly, perpendicularly, and emerged the same way, breathing water out of his mouth and nose voluptuously. Then he swam. He swam in a large circle. He lay on his back and thrashed his arms and legs, shouting now like a wild Indian. Roman watched with total commitment and total admiration. Had a man ever been as beautiful as his father?

Even when Leon tired of swimming and walked out of the water, his movements slow and awkward because of the unevenness of the bottom and the draw of the current, Roman found every motion he made a matter of wonder.

Discovery is basic to first love; everything Leon did was a revelation of beauty for Roman. What he did was right, had always been right, just as all that his mother did and had done had been wrong. Roman’s body was in a fever of love for the man there, and he knew what he must do. He would go a little downstream where the creek narrowed, and a fallen tree spanned it from bank to bank.

Leon lay on his back. He was not sleeping, but he had dreamed, half awake, when he heard a stir he knew instantly was human, not creature made. He raised his head from the ground and saw Roman who had just emerged from the woods, letting a tree branch he had turned aside for easier passage slap back to its natural place: that sound had wakened Leon’s attention.