Things began to get mighty lonely after Buck left for college. He was always the smartest boy in our class, and he never stumbled on words when he read out loud like the lot of us did. Even I could barely read it seemed most the time. Unlike the rest of us, he preferred to study and do his homework instead of riding his truck through the mud pit down at Old Man Johnson’s piece of land. Old Man Johnson was usually too drunk to give a rat’s tail about us tearin’ up his land, so me and some buddies would go at least three times a week. Buck though, that boy never came out and had fun. He was bound and determined to be a college boy, which meant that he got ‘rassed a lot at school for his smarts. Everybody was just jealous though, they didn’t really mean nothin’ by it.

His family wasn’t worth a whistle, which is why I reckon he wanted to get out of Waxhaw. His Pap was either drunk on whiskey on bruisin’ up on his Ma, who was too busy with her other young’uns to pay him any attention. I don’t know where Buck got his horse sense from, ‘cause it certainly warn’t from Ma and Pap. He always said he got it from his great-grandaddy on his Ma’s side who was a big judge or somethin’ in Washington, D.C., but I think that was just somethin’ his Ma made up so that she could put on airs whenever the neighbors came knockin’ for a visit.

I grew up on a farm neighboring Buck’s. Corn was our trade. Ours always did a little better than Buck’s family’s, but we all just barely made it by the threads. You can’t imagine how sick you get of corn pone after eatin’ it for nineteen years! We didn’t have no relation, but we grew up together side by side like brothers. I could always tell that there was somethin’ more to our friendship, but we didn’t never act on it.

We was raised to be men, and we acted like men most of the time. One time we found some of my diddy’s dirty magazines when we was boys, and we played with ourselves while lookin’ at the pictures. We didn’t touch each other, but I wanted us to. I pretended to be lookin’ at the girls, but my eyes wandered down and stared at the men’s pricks. I also stole some looks at Buck’s rock hard pecker, which was purty big for our age. It would always make me start cummin’. I suspected Buck looked at mine too, but I didn’t never bring it up ‘cause you’re funny when you do that sort of thing. I didn’t really mind that I was kinda funny, but I held back how I felt for Buck’s sake, and for our friendship. I didn’t wanna ruin it because I liked boys, and mostly him.

We did that a few times over one long hot summer. We was even closer friends after that. I always thought about Buck whenever I strangled my own snake, back then and even now. I really missed him when he went away to Birmingham, ‘specially since I was stuck here in Waxhaw hoein’ fields and harvestin’ the corn. I got right-down lonesome only spendin’ time