fat, warm woman on an autumn night in a feather bed, with cold rain falling on a tin roof overhead. I would have taught him that Walt Whitman could instill in him a true, clear love of America, with its trees and rocks and sweating, honest men. I would have taught him these, but he was incapable of learning. He was young.

If the world knew of us it would condem me for teaching him the power of his own body-for letting him explore mine, learning everything about the male. The world would punish me for teaching him always to be proud of himself and his masculinity, never letting anyone tell him that he was inferior and less deserving of walking this earth with the rest of men.

On long summer nights we have laid beside our fishing poles at the river's edge and talked of things that enter a boy's mind. I have talked to him about women-about the joy he will know when he falls in love. (While all the time I was burning with a tender, aching love for him that he never suspected and was incapable of imagining.)

I have talked to him about people; about their cruelty and compassiontelling him that he must always be kind. I have taken Adrian, a heterosexual boy, and taught him the excitement of sex, loving him and knowing all the while that I will someday lose him. But perhaps after I lose him and he is an adult he will one day see a boy on a city street-a boy wearing mascara and skin-tight trousers; a boy filled with fright and insecurity and a bottomless despair and he will not hate him or fear him. I hope this will happen. That hope helps relieve my sense of loss.

"Do not judge your brother until after you have walked a mile in his moccasins."

The white cranes fly back over, heading upstream this time, their long necks straightened before them, snapping at insects in the air. The sun is making a wide red arc behind the purple western mountains across the river. Fat distant clouds are turning gold and orange and scarlet. Adrian is standing on the sand bar in the middle of the river, facing me and waving his arm, smiling. He has already forgotten what he said to me.

"C'm on in," he calls. "Ya 'fraid of the water?"

God in heaven. I love him so very much.

I dive, hitting the cold water cleanly and sharply. I surface and start swimming toward him.

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