from BUG JUICE

She came into Sonny's life like wind, like a storm that blew in one night and was gone the next, leaving him with a yearning that would take years to fill. At first Sonny thought he was still caught in the depths of his dream, but then a stronger force pulled him back to a moon-soaked room, and into the lingering laughter that filtered through the cracks in his bedroom door and sounded like stars. Sonny knew the sounds of night surrounded by the softness of Moss Woods. For nine years he'd slept in that room, with the worn mahogany bureau, the paneled wardrobe, and the cedar chest, listening to his younger brother's and parents' breathing against the monotonous drone of insects and frogs spirited under the cover of darkness.

Sonny swung his legs over the side of the bed. He had gone to sleep in nothing but his underwear. And as he stood up, stretching his slight frame, a hint of the muscles that would pull him into manhood seemed somehow clearer in the moon's light. He picked his way to the door, opened it a crack, and slid through, pulling it quickly behind him as he went to stand at the top of the stairs. The glow from the kitchen cast the stairway into shadows, so Sonny had to hold on to the banister as he made his way to the bottom step. He could make out the voices of his mother and father and of another man whose voice he did not know. He poked his head around the corner, blinking his watery eyes against the kitchen's sudden brightness.

His father sat at the head of the table, his mother at the other end, her back to Sonny. A man sitting to the right of his mother poured himself a glass of beer from the paper bag he held in his hand. The man was around his parents' age, Sonny c...