When they sauntered past the house, oh christ, both of them noisy as sunfevered demons in this afternoon August heat, they were forcing him to watch. Not so young, the pair of them. Fourteen? Fifteen? Not so young. The random noisiness of teenagers. Rude laughter, pointless whooping, one of them yelling "fuckin’ asshole" at a passing car just to hear himself cuss.

Country road, not much traffic, the boys kicking at gravel along the shoulder as they sauntered past on their way to the bridge. Fourteen, fifteen years old, might as well have been twins in their white T-shirts long as tunics and their baggy denim shorts, only a few inches of pale bare leg between those baggy shorts and their hightop sneakers. Short hair probably crewcut beneath baseball caps pulled low above their eyes. One of them glanced left and the man cringed in his upstairs window as if ducking a drive-by shooter.

Just a glimpse of his face, that boy, when he turned. Pug-nosed and red-cheeked and sweaty. Who was he? Who was his friend? They were already past the house, crunch crunch of gravel beneath their Nikes or Reeboks or whatever as they headed for the bridge just beyond. Looking from his bedroom window, the man could see the creek and the bridge and the two boys scrambling down the weedy hill where boys have always gone. Shady and cool beneath the bridge. Concrete slabs at the foundation slanted steeply but not too steeply for someone to sit, feet pointed at the brown water just below, dim and damp as a cave there in the bridge’s concrete underbelly. Graffiti like Paleolithic cryptograms on every accessible surface. A shower of powdery fine dust each time a car passed overhead.

No way to see these details from his window, but the man knew them. Memory was where he lived. A thousand summer days spent beneath that bridge and beneath an even older bridge now forty years gone. A fishing pole, a can of worms, afternoons like drowsy eternities. Blond-haired boy alone, learning the habits of solitude. Wooden bridge now forty years gone, no one but the man to remember it, his first of many hideaways and maybe the best. Wooden bridge, concrete bridge, boys then and boys now seeking sanctuary from the same enemies.

The man spoke these thoughts to himself. Aloud, at the window, he spoke these incantatory thoughts. Boys then, boys now. Afternoons like drowsy eternities. With a pair of binoculars he could watch the boys lazily killing time at the water’s edge. Tossing rocks. Smoking cigarettes. Not even sure, at this distance, which of them had startled him earlier by glancing at the house, so cunningly identical these male teenagers in their baggy uniforms. Like refugees from some joyless and beaten army. One of them visible, then both, then again only one and then only his legs and shoes as he sat on the outer edge of the concrete slab beside his friend. His friend farther in below the bridge, impossible to see except in eager imagination.

Smoke drifted from them in sporadic puffs, as if they meant to send the man these primitive signals from their distant lair. Smoking cigarettes. Probably Marlboros. And what else? What else was happening that he couldn’t see? How were these boys spending their secluded moments together beneath that country bridge? Free of parents and girls and all sensible restraints, what did they do? What did they become?

The man watched, a patient observer, for any movement or activity that might betray them. He watched that one boy’s legs, a simple bending of his knees enough to make the man wonder. Imagining the boy’s shorts suddenly pushed down. Shorts and underpants around his ankles. The revealed randiness of his body. The body of his friend. Pale skin and sweaty pubic hair. Were they seeing each other naked for the first time? Each other’s erections? Were they jerking off right now in this refuge where no one could witness or intrude?

Finally they roused themselves like indolent tomcats in this summer heat, first one then the other reemerging into sunlight after their interlude beneath the bridge. Up the weedy hill. Back to the road. The man didn’t need binoculars now to see them scuffling along the shoulder, kicking at the gravel. That same one, yes him, cast another lingering glance at the house as he passed. Red-cheeked and pug-nosed boy. Dark hair beneath his Cubs baseball cap. Why did he keep looking? The man decided that his name should be Jason. Or Chris. Where did he live? And his friend? Why had they never strolled this way before?

That one boy (Jason? Chris?) lifted his T-shirt from the bottom and used it to wipe the sweat from his face. The man saw the smoothness of his belly and ribcage exposed, shorts way down on his hips, loose enough to fall off, the top half of his underpants showing white above the saggy blue denim. Another minute, no more, and he was gone. Both of them were gone.

The man grabbed a pair of shoes and put them on and hurried outside where the heat, even now, surprised him. A short hike through the yard and then down the hill, wading through waist-high thistles and burdock, brought him to the boys’ shoeprints in the muddy bank of the creek. He searched for anything they might have left behind. The shoeprints. Cigarette butts. All the stray evidence telling a story. Head down, eyes on the ground, he moved under the bridge and into the welcome shade, the damp coolness, crawfishy smell of creek water and mud.

He crouched and steadied himself with one hand against the slanted concrete. A dark stain near the bottom, at the water’s edge, where one or both of the boys must have taken a piss. And here, here where they’d been sitting, five or six small wet spots that quickened the man’s pulse. He needed to know what they were, these spots, so he leaned closer and touched one with cautious fingertips. The slightest residue of foam at the center of each spot, no stickiness when he touched it, watery instead, a disappointment. He smelled his fingers. Reeky odor of tobacco. Boyspit. The two of them had been sitting here and smoking and spitting. Nothing more. Smoking, spitting, peeing. Tom and Huck on a sweltery August afternoon.

The man dabbed at each of the foamy spots of saliva, sniffing his fingers, reluctant to accept anything so ordinary, so dismally mundane. Graffiti everywhere around him. He searched for messages somehow significant in the garish slapdash of obscenities and drawings. Spray-painted tits, vaginas, hard-ons, balls. SUCK MY COCK. EAT ME. SANDBURG HIGH RULES. BC LOVES JH. Most of them splotchy with dirt and bits of moss, months old, years old, nothing to help the man bring an end to this day’s tale.

He left the bridge and climbed back to the heat-shimmery road and walked past his own house where the boys had recently strolled. Gravel freshly scuffed where they had kicked. He came to the little road that branched off left into an area of quiet woods and small old homes. A dog woofing in the distance. A shout—young male voice—from an even farther remoteness. Like a lonesome call unanswered. Then nothing but the afternoon reverie of birdsong from the trees all around.

Back the way he’d come, the man just now noticed a roadkill possum beginning to rot, beginning to stink. How could he not have seen it before? Smelled it before? Like some infernal thing suddenly conjured. He wrinkled his nose at it and passed on and came once again to his own house, pausing there in front. A flash of light catching his eye. Downstairs window. At this time of day, at this angle, the sunlight was hitting the window glass and reflecting back. The window itself like a bright mirror just level with the road, easy for the man to see himself as he stood there staring.

He realized now why that pug-nosed boy had twice glanced at the house. He’d seen himself in the window. In the bright glass. Of course. His own reflection. The boy had been watching himself come, and then go.