The slender arm Christian held before him hardly appeared to be his own, for his wrist, and halfway to his elbow, blushed and oozed from a rash, and the other arm suffered the same, not to mention his ankles. Even wearing work gloves, long socks, and blue jeans that nearly dragged the ground, couldn't prevent this allergic reaction to common lawn grass, yet here he sat, clippers in hand, trimming the edges of the county court house lawn. His father had arranged this summer job for him, and he would need the money in order to attend college, although that would be another year off. Christian still had his senior year of high school to get through. He looked forward to college, had already been accepted at all four schools he applied early to, but he did not look forward to another year at high school.

Christian had paused from his work to look at his arm, because he felt a sneeze coming on, and, although it took it's time, the sneeze arrived. He removed the wristwatch from his pocket to check the time. Strapping the watch on his puss pocked wrist would have been uncomfortable and messy. There were still fifteen minutes before he was supposed to take another allergy pill, and that would be quitting time. The pills don't last as long as they're purported to, especially if one rolls in the very thing that makes one sick. This was the best job he could get, though, because it paid so well. Not only would he save over five hundred dollars that summer, but he also had money with which to buy records. Like the new Beatles record, "Revolver." Actually, Christian liked an older Beatles song better than anything on the new one. The song from the album "Help!" called "You've Got to Hide Your Love Away" was his favorite right now, because it almost seemed to mirror his own feelings. He knew he was a "sissy" since he was seven years old, sitting in the attic of the house they moved away from later that year, and resolving not to let his hands ever limply hang from his wrists, lest someone should figure out that he, indeed was one of them. Slowly Christian came to understand more and more of what it meant to be one of them, and gradually, it had taken on new names, "sissy, queer, fag," and now "homosexual," and Christian knew how to hide it, even if he wasn't always convincing. Those beautiful feelings of his hidden love could be released to the air as he hummed or sang along with an appropriate song, and he only had to change one "she" to a "he" to feel quite in touch with "You've Got to Hide Your Love Away." Many a night, tears in his eyes, he rolled over in his bed and turned his face to the wall.

Out of the corner of his eye, Christian saw Joe Vucic coming out the side door of the courthouse, and he quickly picked up the clippers in his left hand and resumed trimming by the fence. Joe was the janitor there, and Christian's supervisor.

"If you didn't goof off so much, you'd be done by now!"

"I'm not goofing off," Christian lied.

"How come you got the clippers in your left hand then, ain't you right handed?"

"No, I'm ambidextrous," Christian answered.

"Don't use no dirty talk to me!" With that Joe half turned, as if to fend off the shame of such talk. Christian, however, began to giggle to himself at the misunderstanding.

"No, that means I'm not right handed, or left handed, it's the word for someone who can use both hands the same," Christian explained. Joe just waved his hand suddenly, as if he could shake off knowledge like flies.

"Well it's quitting time anyway, you can start here tomorrow." Joe turned and led Christian back into the side door, and Christian found the water cooler there, and took his next allergy pill. They put all the tools away, and Christian left the courthouse by the front, walking past the marble columns and down the marble steps to the walk. He went up the street to the County Clerk's office, and waited by a car belonging to the neighbor who would shortly arrive to drive him home.

Christian announced himself at home with a sneeze, as he walked in the kitchen door.

"Hi, honey, we're in here," his mother called from the living room, adding, "did you take your pill?" She sat, along with his sister, on the floor amongst several open cartons, whose contents were strewn about the floor and the couch.

"Yes. What's all this?" Christian asked, looking past all the confusion to watch a group of teenaged boys go by the front of their house, in the park, on their way, no doubt, to the local soda fountain.

"Your grandmother sent a truckload of things she doesn't want anymore." She referred, of course, to the belongings of his recently deceased grandfather, who had died that past spring in Florida. Christian had overheard his grandmother promising his mother, after the funeral, not to dispose of anything she or the grandchildren might want. Christian's grandmother apparently wanted to be rid of a lot. "Your grandmother said that Grandpa wanted you to have his books. He knew how much you liked to read. They're out in that wooden chest in the garage." When his mother said this, Christian's sister turned and looked at him with the most peculiar expression, as though she might be jealous over him inheriting something specific, just for him. He immediately turned and went back through the kitchen, to the garage. There on the floor sat the wooden chest, a rich, deep and shiny hue. Not quite red enough to be mahogany, it must be walnut, Christian thought. He remembered seeing it at the apartment in the Bronx, locked against the curious dirty fingers of little children like himself and his sister, he had supposed back then, when they were both under nine years old. He knelt and touched the deeply stained and oiled wood, remembering the few overnight visits to the apartment in the Bronx, that both he and his sister took separately, after they were old enough to have stopped wetting the bed, and before he was ten, when his grandparents had moved to Florida. On his own visits, while his grandmother would wash the dinner dishes, he would snuggle next to his grandfather, and they would read. Christian always could remember the aroma of his grandfather, a mixture of some mild cologne and his personal self, that was sweet, but not feminine, masculine, but gentle, just as he was himself. Christian remembered his soft smile and easy patience as he taught his grandson the game of chess.

"Can't ya open it?" Betsy asked. Christian had grown further from his sister of late, and she from he. She could be rather annoying now, at fifteen, and insensitive. She had her own world of friends, and he was not part of it, either.

He pulled on the top, but it would not budge. "No, it's locked," he said.

"Always was."

"Maybe Mom's got the key with all that other stuff." He turned toward Betsy, standing in the doorway between kitchen and garage. "Let's go see."

"Mom, he can't get it open, it's locked," Betsy announced, marching into the living room.

"Always was," their mother replied, turning around to the left and to the right, adding, "it must be here somewhere."

"How do you know they're books, if no one's ever seen it opened?" Christian asked.

"Well, Mother said... your grandmother said that the chest contained his books, and that Dad wanted you to have them." She lifted up and looked under various items, like a derby hat. "Wait, I know. That small box he kept on his dresser, it was made out of the same wood." She lifted a sweater on the couch, and there it was. "Here we go." She turned the walnut box in her hands, examining it, then released the brass clasp on the front. Opening the box, she reached in and held up various objects for them all to see. A mother of pearl handled straight razor. A pair of gold cuff links, round with the initials G.v.K. Their mother's father, Gustav von Klee. A gold tie tack that matched the cuff links. And finally, a small gold ring, a child's ring. "A baptismal ring," their mother said, turning it around in her fingers. "That's funny," she added, "the initials are L.C.B. I wonder who that was."

"No key?" Betsy demanded.

"Yeah, where's the key?" Christian asked.

"Well, there's a pearl that seems to be glued to the bottom of the box," their mother said shaking the box. Something rattled. She turned it over. "There's a legend burned into the wood," she said, putting her glasses on. "It says, handmade by Léos Bender," she shook the box again, it rattled.

"Mom," Christian pleaded, "pull the pearl up, maybe there's a secret compartment."

"Oh, I can't honey, I'll break a nail. You try." She handed him the box. He grasped the pearl, and it did come up, the bottom with it.

"It is!" exclaimed Christian, as the real box bottom revealed a small chiseled out chamber, just big enough for "the key!" which he grabbed from the box, and ran out to the garage, sister Betsy in pursuit. He fit it in the keyhole and turned. Click! The box top lifted up and back, while the front folded down, like a writing desk. There were two levels, each high enough for a row of books, with a wood shelf between them; and from the top shelf, Christian could see that each shelf held two rows deep of books.

"Any secret compartments?" Betsy asked.

"No, not really," Christian answered.

"No hidden treasures?"

"Just books," he replied, reading their spines. What at first looked like an encyclopedia, was in fact two different multi-volume sets. Betsy still waited. "The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde, edited by Robert Ross, the authorized edition," he read the spines out loud, "several volumes of that, and what's this one? Tales of the Arabian Nights, by Sir Richard Burton. Just books, Betsy." There were three or four other single volumes, and Christian picked up the dullest looking of the lot, a drab grey cloth covered volume, as Betsy ran off to the living room to tell her mother. Christian could just make out what they said.

"But isn't Richard Burton married to Elizabeth Taylor? How could he write all those books?"

"I'm sure I don't know, Betsy," their mother replied.

Christian regarded the grey book he held in his hand. He read the spine, for there was nothing written on the front. "The Ethics of Sexual Acts," by René Guyon. He opened the book. Inside the cover, there was a bookplate, an Art Nouveau border ran from the bottom up both sides, ending in lilies. Within this border were the words "ex libris" and a stylized naked boy whose face arched toward the rays of a sun, and whose arm languidly pointed to a line below upon which Christian's grandfather had signed his name: Gustav von Klee. The first few pages were blank, the fifth and seventh pages had the title, the seventh pointing out that the book was translated from the French, and the eighth page had the original French title in small print. The original title was easy for Christian to translate: "The Legitimacy of Sexual Acts." He leafed through the author's preface, where he came upon mention of the World League for Sexual Reform, founded in Berlin by Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld. Mr. Guyon set much store by this group, but Christian knew that their building and all their books and manuscripts had been burned by the Nazis. He trembled with excitement, to be holding a book banned and burned by the Nazis. He checked the dates to be sure, yes the book was published in France in 1930, in America in 1934. He could hardly wait to read it. He closed the chest and locked it again, leaving out this book. He would take it up to his room, tuck it under his pillow, turn on the air conditioner, and take his shower before dinner.

"What's that?" his mother asked, as he passed through the living room.

"One of Grandpa's books; I figure I'll check it out tonight, before I go to sleep."

"Which one?" his mother asked the one question he didn't want to answer.

"Some French book, I don't know, a translation." He hoped that would be enough, his mother didn't like French anyway. He bounded up the stairs when she didn't say any more.

"Put some calamine lotion on that rash!" she called after him.

After dinner and all the dishes were done, Mrs. Howard and her children, Betsy and Christian, went through the last box her mother had sent. Her father had worn a derby, a collapsible top hat, a bowler, a Homburg, and a Stetson, and they were all here. There were sweaters and trousers that perhaps her husband would like, but probably not. Most likely, they would all go to the Good Will. She would ask her husband when he came home this weekend, from his sales tour. Betsy picked up a small crystal decanter like bottle with a silver screw on cap.

"Mom, what's this?" she asked Mrs. Howard.

"Must be one of Mom's perfumes... Grandma's," her mother replied.

"Why would she send you her perfume?"

"I don't know, Betsy, open it and smell it. Maybe she doesn't like it anymore."

"It's stuck." Betsy struggled against the long closed cap.

"Let me try," Christian offered, and she handed it to him. It was almost embarrassingly difficult, but he finally got it. He sniffed the familiar odor, soft and gentle, and tears began to well up in his eyes.

"What?" Betsy inquired, "let me smell it." He handed it back to her, and she sniffed it, too. "Oh, Mom, smell it," she said, sadness in her voice. Their mother smelled it, too.

"Daddy," was all she could say, and her children both hugged her, and she them, all three hugged, until their tears could go back inside, and they swallowed their sadness.

"Mom," Betsy asked, "can we keep it on the mantle?"

"Yes," she quickly answered.

"Yes," Christian added, too. Someone would have to explain it to Mr. Howard, or he might throw it away in cleaning the house, for he was ruthless that way. Betsy placed it in it's position of permanence, and the cut lines in the crystal caught the light just so. It was a beautiful little bottle anyhow.

Christian was glad that there were no interesting programs on the TV that night, because he could not wait to read at least the good parts of that book, before he went to sleep. He hoped there was an index, he hadn't noticed that afternoon, when he first held the book, but an index usually helped you find the parts you were most interested in, like homosexuality, sex between teenagers, and sex between people of differing ages. He realized now that he could be, and often was attracted to boys, from his own age, to much less than his age. Some boys coming out of the showers after gym class were hard to look away from, while some little ones were easy to watch at the pool in summer. This summer, though, he worked so much, and his rash looked so ugly, that Christian didn't go much to the pool. He especially missed one little ten year old, named Stewart, who had once sat on his lap, and rested his head on Christian's shoulder, but he never saw the boy anymore.

His sister Betsy had gone out to the soda fountain with a group of her friends. It closed at ten, so she would be home soon. Christian was particularly enamored of one of those friends of Betsy's, a Negro boy named Gerald, who was so slender, yet athletic, and with such smooth looking skin, such a ready smile, and soulful eyes. Those eyes and that sweet smile told Christian that Gerald knew something of the hurting inside, but Christian could pass, Gerald could not. Christian questioned, though, whether Gerald's hair might feel like sandpaper, or if that idea was just some inborn prejudice he retained. He would surely like to find out, but at his school, a boy who would hang out with,or befriend, a boy a year younger was taunted as soft, and weak. Euphemisms for fag. Gerald, like Christian's sister, was two years younger than he, and such liberties were surrendered to Christian's effort to pass through life undiscovered. How could he know the way to be safe, the way to meet someone, the way to be happy? He must be out there somewhere. Maybe the book would tell him.

"There's nothing on," he said to his mother, sitting on the couch, "I think I'll get in bed and read awhile before I go to sleep." He stood to go upstairs, to his room, and to his grandpa's book.

"Well, don't read too long, you have work in the morning," his mother reminded him, adding with a smile, "good-night."

"Good-night," he grinned, and then bounded up the stairs as lightly and noisily as the lanky seventeen year old he was. His long straight hair flopped and swayed in response to motion and inertia, and all the laws of physics. He urinated in the bathroom, and then set up his room, turning on the light by his bed, closing the door to his room, re-adjusting the air conditioner to low cool, stripping naked, and hopping under the top sheet, before withdrawing the book from under his pillow. He opened to the table of contents, where he saw strange words, words, however, that he knew from his other readings. Words like onanism, which meant masturbation. He also knew fellatio, which meant blow-job, but that wasn't in the table of contents. Perhaps it would be in the index, which he turned to, but he was distracted by something glued into the back cover, just as the bookplate had been glued into the front cover. It was thicker, how had he missed it before? It was a pocket, like a library card is inserted into, only much larger, for it held a photograph, a studio portrait mounted in a cardstock cover, of a boy the same age as Christian, his face and bare shoulders. The boy had no shirt on, and inscribed over the left shoulder, in brown ink, were these words: "to my best friend Gustav von Klee, Love Léos." This was not a picture of Christian's grandfather, since he was a blond in other photographs, and this boy had dark hair. This must be the Léos Bender that built the little box that held the key. Perhaps he even built the book chest. Why did his grandfather have this picture, and why in this book? One corner of the photo curled away from the cardstock, and Christian could see a slip of paper between the two, folded in half. Christian pulled it out and unfolded it. The brown ink and handwriting was the same as the inscription on the photo, but the lettering was very small. He held it closer to the light. It was dated nineteen thirty five, the year Christian's mother was ten years old. This is what it said:

"July 1, 1935. / My dearest Gustav, / With deep regret, I accept your decision. I do not believe your wife loves you as much as I, nor do I believe you love her as you love me. Do you caress her body as you caress mine? Do you kiss her lips as you kiss me? For your daughter, it is true, as you say, and I must. But I will always love you, for the time. Goodbye. / Love, / Léos C. Bender"

Christian's thoughts burned in his mind and his heart. He could not put them into words, for the moment, so he fanned through the rest of the book. All throughout the book were pencil underlinings and margin notes, like "so true," and "very important," and "excellent!" It was as if he intended someone to read his notes, along with the book, like a tutor, and Christian wondered who the student was. Was it Léos C. Bender, or himself, Christian Howard? Or was it both? Had he guessed about Christian, or had he only hoped Christian would understand? Shouldn't Christian feel more sorry for Léos, wasn't Christian more like him, than like his grandfather? All Christian could think of was this tall, slender, masculine man, of great elegance and reserve, who had let an eight year old boy snuggle next to him as they read "Homer Price" together, always smiling.

The thoughts in his mind confused Christian, and not being able, just then, to resolve all of it, he put the book down, and, with the light still on, the exertions of mowing and trimming lawns all day in the summer sun conspired with the effects of the allergy pills, pulling Christian into deep sleep. He awoke in the middle of the night to the annoyance of the light still on, and with a tremendous thirst and dryness in his mouth. He arose, put on his robe, turned out the light, and felt his way through the darkness downstairs, to the kitchen, where he poured himself some RC cola. Suddenly, he remembered the child's gold ring, and took a flashlight from the kitchen counter to search for it. He found it on the dining room table. Yes, those initials, L.C.B., that must have been Léos C. Bender. He wondered what the C. stood for. He ran out to the garage and withdrew the key from the locked chest, and brought it in to place it back in it's niche under the pearl handled false bottom, and replaced the ring, razor, tie tack, and cuff links inside the walnut box. He returned the flashlight to the kitchen, and barely able to see from the bright moonlight, carefully moved towards the stairs, to return to bed, box in hand. He paused at the mantle, however, as tears began to well up in his eyes, inexplicably. He opened the crystal bottle, and poured a tiny bit of the cologne into his palm, and mixed it with the tears that had spilled onto his cheek. He inhaled deeply, and curiously, his tears stopped. The bottle could remain on the mantle for all, but the box and chest were to be his, he would insist. Later he would buy a gold chain, and wear the key and the ring around his neck always. At last, with his grandfather and Léos, he had a family he belonged to, his side of the family. Christian would keep his grandfather's secret, for strangely enough, he felt it would help him to open himself to life, and someday, his own secret love would be secret no more. He would shout it from the highest hill, and even tell a golden daffodil. No more would he have to hide his love away.