The Heat of the Sun

there can be a war. Not in France.’
    ‘Ever heard of Agincourt? Ever heard of Waterloo? Nothing lasts, Sharpless. Things get made. Then they fall apart.’
    ‘You’ve been reading Mr Adams again,’ I said.
    ‘Mr Adams, Mr Wells.’ Le Vol patted a pocket and drew forth a book: The World Set Free . He leafed through the pages. ‘Don’t rely on anything, that’s the
lesson of our lives. Maybe one day there’ll be a world government, bringing peace to all. More likely, there’ll be bombs that kill everything, raining down from the air. The end of the
world as we know it. Ever wonder what you’ll do when they let you out of here, Sharpless?’
    ‘When I’m grown up? Why, what will you be?’
    ‘I’m going to travel. See the world. While it’s still there.’
    ‘That’s a thing to do, not to be,’ I said.
    ‘You could come with me – hoboes, how about it? See America, boxcar by boxcar!’ I thought he was mocking me, but I made no protest. ‘Last year in St Paul, when I had
rheumatic fever, I used to lie in a window seat in the afternoons. I was so bored I wanted to die. Horses went by, and trolley cars and automobiles, and I thought: Take me with you. If only
they’d take me wherever they were going. I don’t want to be sick. I don’t want to be weak. And I won’t be. Nor should you. One day you’ll throw away that walking
stick.’
    The pipe passed between us, back and forth. Blue-grey smoke swirled around us in the shadowy, chill space, and I wondered if Le Vol could really like me. I had never been friends with another
boy. Cold seeped through my flannels and I thought of the body in the tomb beneath me; of course, it would be nothing now but a cage of bones.
    Le Vol let down his drawn-up knees, kicking his heels against mossy stone. He yawned and stretched, knitting together his fingers; his jacket hung open and his bony ribs strained beneath the
tautened whiteness of his shirt. Time thickened and slowed. I looked away: at the rusted, hanging door of the vault; at the leaf-scattered floor; at Le Vol again, his face curiously blank, his lips
a little parted.
    I had known this would happen. What moved me was not desire, but inevitability. I stood between the tombs; Le Vol shifted his hips. Lightly, I touched his shoulders, his chest, and felt for a
moment a welling power, as if I could have all the things I wanted, as if all I wished would come to pass. We were about to do what other fellows did. Would we speak of it when it was over? I let
my hand descend, feeling the hardness beneath his grey flannels. I tugged at his fly buttons. Again, closer, came the barking of the dog, and I wondered if Le Vol had heard it too.
    There was a sound of running, of raised, excited voices. Le Vol pushed me away.
    Somebody screamed.
    ‘Get him! Get him!’ We knew the voices.
    ‘Pussy in the well! Pussy in the well!’ Tramplings came from the graveyard: hard, insistent. A scuffle, blows.
    ‘Damn, he bit me!’ (Who bit? Hunter? No, not Hunter.)
    ‘Quick, the rope, you idiot!’
    How close they were! Hunter was frantic.
    The scream again: a terrified wail.
    ‘No... don’t!’ When I grabbed Le Vol’s shoulder he had not yet moved; now, hunching low, he blundered back through vegetable darkness. Standing, swaying, alone in the
stony cell, I could hear all that happened, picture it too: Le Vol erupting, dishevelled, from the vines; Scranway turning, eyes gleaming, as his henchmen, Quibble and Kane, readied the victim for
the sacrifice.
    ‘Leave him. What’s he done?’ – This from Le Vol.
    ‘Why,’ demanded Quibble, ‘are you lurking, Le Vol?’
    ‘Lurker Le Vol... Lurker Le Vol!’ What a fool was Kane!
    Quibble cursed. ‘Keep hold of him. Stop squirming, Billy Billicay!’
    Billicay: I knew the name – a skinny fellow with porcupine hair and little round spectacles. I had seen him often, looking lost, and wondered how such a boy could survive at Blaze.
    ‘Leave him, I said!’ – Le Vol again.
    A crunch, a crack. Hunter barked.
    Too late, I knew what I must do. Knuckles whitening on my ashplant, I lowered myself to my knees and painfully left Nirvana, digging my way through stalky dark obstructions. Burrs pricked me,
leaves slapped my face; then came a pain that seared my right leg, in all the six places where it had shattered. I sank down, gripping my shin as if to hold it together. From outside came no sounds
of struggle any more, only a whimpering, then laughter.
    I had