They both heard it, but they didn't look at the sound. When Douglas moved his wrist the sound ticked in another part of the haystack. When he brought his arm around on his lap the sound ticked in his lap. He let his eyes fall in a brief flicker. The watch said three o'clock.
Douglas moved his right hand stealthily to the ticking, pulled out the watch stem. He set the hands back.
Now they had all the time they would ever need to look long and close at the world, feel the sun move like a fiery wind over the sky.
But at last John must have felt the bodiless weight of their shadows shift and lean, and he spoke.
"Doug, what time is it?"
"Two-thirty."
John looked at the sky.
Don't! thought Douglas.
"Looks more like three-thirty, four," said John. "Boy Scout. You learn them things."
Douglas sighed and slowly turned the watch ahead.
John watched him do this, silently. Douglas looked up. John punched him, not hard at all, in the arm.
With a swift stroke, a plunge, a train came and went so quickly the boys all leaped aside, yelling, shaking their fists after it, Douglas and John with them. The train roared down the track, two hundred people in it, gone. The dust followed it a little way toward the south, then settled in the golden silence among the blue rails.
The boys were walking home.
"I'm going to Cincinnati when I'm seventeen and be a railroad fireman," said Charlie Woodman.
"I got an uncle in New York," said Jim. "I'll go there and be a printer."
Doug did not ask the others. Already the trains were chanting and he saw their faces drifting off on back observation platforms, or pressed to windows. One by one they slid away. And then the empty track and the summer sky and himself on another train run in another direction.
Douglas felt the earth move under his feet and saw their shadows move off the grass and color the air.
He swallowed hard, then gave a screaming yell, pulled back his fist, shot the indoor ball whistling in the sky. "Last one home's a rhino's behind!"
They pounded down the tracks, laughing, flailing the air. There went John Huff, not touching the ground at all. And here came Douglas, touching it all the time.
It was seven o'clock, supper over, and the boys gathering one by one from the sound of their house doors slammed and their parents crying to them not to slam the doors. Douglas and Tom and Charlie and John stood among half a dozen others and it was time for hide-and-seek and Statues.
"Just one game," said John. "Then I got to go home. The train leaves at nine. Who's going to be 'it'?"
"Me," said Douglas.
"That the first time I ever heard of anybody volunteering to be 'it,'" said Tom.
Douglas looked at John for a long moment. "Start running," he cried.
The boys scattered, yelling. John backed away, then turned and began to lope. Douglas counted slowly. He let them run far, spread out, separate each to his own small world. When they had got their momentum up and were almost out of sight he took a deep breath.
"Statues!"
Everyone froze.
Very quietly Douglas moved across the lawn to where John Huff stood like an iron deer in the twilight.
Far away, the other boys stood hands up, faces grimaced, eyes bright as stuffed squirrels.
But here was John, alone and motionless and no one rushing or making a great outcry to spoil this moment.