He made his way down one side of the cabin, which was really just a trailer with fake log siding. As he got halfway along, he saw, propped in the crook of a stunted tree, Magnus’s pipe and a padlock. Quickly, he glanced around. He noticed the hinged entrance to the skirted crawl space right in front of him. This was where the padlock had been. The latch was open. As quietly as he could, he raised the flap and looked under the cabin. The soles of a pair of shoes caught his eyes first. It was Magnus, lying on an old quilt, an upended flashlight beside him. As Frank crawled under, Magnus stared at him like a treed coon, holding one hand out to urge him back and pressing a finger to his lips. As Frank’s eyes got used to the dim light, he could see what looked like a steel duct coming out of the cabin floor between a series of pipes. Making a fierce gesture for Magnus to get out, he took his place on the quilt as Magnus crawled past him. The duct was one of those simple periscopes made to look over the top of trenches. There was batting around the edges, so you could press your eyes to it, which he did. He could see the latticework of a vent and clearly, through that, the bedroom. There they were. They didn’t kiss. Like one of those shells used to milk bulls, his mom labored to coax the impassive Bennet into arousal. She worked on him exactly like she worked to refinish the oak banister, in her lazy indifferent way, just trying to get him good enough, then presenting herself. She failed a couple of times and had to go back to work—so strange, the same in this as in everything, her laziness ending up making more work than was necessary. Finally she got him through, Bennet’s bored, truculent, and ever-disappointed expression never changing. It was sickening. Not like porno but absolutely real. When he was done, Bennet went immediately into the bathroom as his mom snatched up a bunch of tissues, jamming them between her legs so she wouldn’t stain the sheets. Right above him then, he heard Bennet urinating: obscene, a horselike thundering. The toilet flushed, draining loudly through the pipes around him. His mom then, she too urinating, small spatters, a gush, small spatters, and then a longer gush. Frank pressed his face into the quilt, his body shaking, the images rioting in his head. After a little while, he heard the Bel Air pull out. What now? Perhaps Bennet drove her to Baxter, where she would either see her friend or just catch the train home.

He crawled out.

Magnus was waiting behind the cabin. “You shouldn’t have seen that.”

Frank kept walking through the woods, Magnus hovering at his shoulder.

“Are you going to tell anyone?”