and stood behind Aunt Zoe's chair. He laid his hands on the back of her chair, looked down at the top of her head. He stood over her as if she were a fire.
“I'm going to take the boys out in the boat,” he said in Aunt Zoe's direction, over her head. “It's a great day for a sail.”
“You don't think it's too windy?” Ben's mother asked.
His grandfather looked up at Ben. His grandfather was tanned and white-haired, the center of everything. Ben thought of what his grandfather saw: the planks of the terrace, Ben himself, the broad slope of dune grass that made an unsteady line across the ocean. Ben tried to be part of that, part of the terrace and the ocean and the sky, all the things that gave his grandfather pleasure.
“What do you think, Ben?” his grandfather called. “Too windy for you?”
“No,” Ben answered, and he saw himself on his grandfather's face, what his courage did to it.
“Let's go, then,” his grandfather said.
“Yeah. Let's go.”
“Where's Jamal?” Uncle Will asked.
“Right,” said Ben's grandfather. “Where's Jamal?”
“I'll find him,” Ben said.
He jumped over the terrace railing, happy with his own demonstration of grace. He knew where Jamal would be. At their grand-father's, Jamal always found his way down to the miniature forest at the farthest corner, the little stand of pine trees that had been stunted and deformed by the winds that blew in off the ocean. It was where he and Ben had been going together for the past year, huddling down among the scrub to share their quick secret as pine needles whisked over their heads and their parents drank beer on the terrace. Ben was flattered by the fact that Jamal went there alone, for solitude, when the perfection of their grandfather's house overwhelmed him. As he crossed the dune grass, conscious of being watched from the terrace, he was filled with pride and a rinsing, agreeable sense of penitence. He would tell Jamal that they had to stop. They had to take responsibility; they had to think of other people. It would be difficult and gratifying, telling him that. It would be a clean kind of death. Ben would claim his own righteousness. He thought Jamal would understand. Afterward he and Jamal and their grandfather would go sailing. Maybe he'd teach Jamal what Connie hadn't been able to last summer. They'd work the tiller like brothers. As Ben descended the slope that led to the trees he was taken by happiness, a sense of rejoicing he hadn't felt in a year or longer. The ocean spread before him, dazzling, flecked here and there with foam. Behind him stood the shadowed rectitude of the house and the eyes of his family.
His exaltation withered when he reached the little forest and found it empty. He'd been so sure of finding Jamal there, sitting alone, dreamily, on the ground, weighing a pinecone in his hands with his back propped against one of the scaly brown trunks. Everything had turned on the idea of standing beside Jamal in that position, speaking tenderly but firmly into his upturned, lonely face. Ben was overcome by a sudden and wrenching solitude, a desolation, as if by entering the place Jamal was supposed to occupy he'd stepped accidentally into feelings that more rightfully belonged to Jamal. He thought of finding Jamal and dragging him back to the trees, throwing him to the ground and saying—what? Demanding an explanation. Some kind of explanation.
He went to the far edge of the trees, the ocean side. He looked angrily out at the ocean and was thinking of running back to the house, telling everyone that Jamal had disappeared again and that he and his grandfather would have to go out in the boat without him. Then he saw Jamal down on the beach. Jamal stood at the edge of the water, letting the waves splash over his ankles, picking up stones and throwing them in. He picked them up and threw them, over and over, methodically, as if he'd been hired to rid the beach of stones. Ben ran onto the beach. He did not call Jamal's name. He did not put it into the air like that.
Jamal didn't hear Ben approaching, and Ben had to stop himself from grabbing Jamal's baggy yellow shirt and turning him forcibly around. He stood several paces behind Jamal. He said loudly, “Hey.”
Jamal turned, and everything changed again. There was his face, frightened in ways only Ben knew. There were