It was just a rutted gravel roadway leading up into the woods, but it led to the unknown and that was the attraction. Highway 29 which lay behind them was four lanes wide and carried most of the traffic in and out of town, but things were very quiet out there this morning. Pat stood just beyond the curb line and wondered how far they would have to walk.

"You think they got mail?" Barry asked, looking at the mailbox.

"It's a federal crime to tamper with the mail," Pat said.

"Oh ... you think the FBI is watching us? Doesn't matter ... either he's home or he isn't," Barry said.

"This old guy lives alone?"

"From what I heard."

"Oh great, that doesn't tell us much. Rich guys usually have a maid or a housekeeper. If he's really old there might be a full time nurse."

Barry laughed. "So you're an expert on rich folks?"

"No, it just seems weird that Parsons would live alone."

"It does, doesn't it? At least we can walk up there and look around."

"Okay, you go first," Pat said with a smile, knowing how nervous Barry was feeling.

The lane was flanked by tall pines which had blanketed the ground and the road with a huge load of needles. Barry's footsteps were muffled in the debris as they walked up the slope. Beyond the tall pines the woods looked dense with new growth and the sounds of the highway became muted.

In the surrounding silence Pat could hear the chatter of birds and the rustle of squirrels foraging among the trees. It seemed as if they were miles away from the neighborhood instead of just across the highway. He watched Barry gaze at a very familiar red and white sign posted beside the road: No Trespassing ... but they walked right on by.

Spring had arrived and Pat had almost forgotten about their planned excursion to the lake. But then Barry had spent the night at his house and suggested that early Sunday might be a good time to go look at the Parsons' place. It was just after seven o'clock when they left the McGinty household asleep behind them.

After the early spring rains had brought new leaves to the trees Pat had wandered off into the woods behind the house. The view from his bedroom window was now a reality as he stepped past the old pile of lawn clippings and onto a worn pathway leading into the trees. He could just barely see the stream below as he made his way down the slope and found the ground slippery with dead leaves and mud.

The stream wasn't very impressive, just a bit of runoff that snaked into a large culvert pipe that ran under the highway. He jumped across the water and climbed the bank on the far side, and there he discovered the old road. It wasn't much, just ruts in the grassy soil with patchy remnants of crushed rock here and there.

The trees on the other side of this derelict roadway were planted on a berm of soil that looked too steep to climb, so Pat followed the ruts. Perhaps this was the old highway, a wagon track from back in the day. But the roadway curved and he knew it would soon be cut off by the highway.

Pat stood in the grass on the verge of the highway and stared across the lanes to the far side, realizing he had been wrong. This wasn't some old wagon track he was standing on. Directly across the four lanes of asphalt he could see the driveway leading up to the Parsons property.

The two had once been joined together so this must have been the road into the property Parsons sold for the Woodlake neighborhood. Pat stared at the distant lane which seemed to disappear into the darkness under trees and he tried to imagine what this had all looked like a hundred or so years ago.

The woods he had just traversed held trees that were older than that, so they must have been here when the road was in use. He would have to come back with his sketch book and draw that image across the way. That gloomy tunnel was too alluring to pass up and perhaps Barry would understand how positively spooky it looked.

Pat had been drawing since he was little, but only in the past few years had he begun to get serious about it. If Parsons had an old mill he wanted to sketch out the details and then complete the drawing at home. It wouldn't be his first mill since he had spent some time reproducing the image of the one in Millersville.

But that had been in a park setting and the building had been refurbished as the major historical landmark for the town. Somehow once the city planners got their hands on something it seemed to lose all its charm. Sterile, that was the word which came to mind when he thought of the Millersville site. That building had been wiped clean of any sense of time and now it seemed worthless.

Pat had never shown his drawings to anyone other than his parents. The art classes he attended allowed him to use different media, but painting bowls of fruit seemed boring. Now he had several sketchpads filled with drawings of unique houses and buildings. Things that encouraged his parents to think he might have a future as an architect.

"Not much further," Barry said. He was panting and Pat didn't think it was from the exertion of their walk.

They had hiked almost a quarter of a mile and up ahead Pat could see the trees starting to thin out into what looked like a meadow basking in the pale morning sunshine.

"The house is over on the right, but if Parsons is home we ought to see a car parked out front," Barry said.

"Should we just walk on out there and look or is that a foolish move?" Pat asked.

"I think if we see the car we ought to just turn around and leave. We'd have to walk through some pretty dense woods to circle around the house and see the lake."

"What did you do last time you were up here?" Pat asked.

"There was no car but I stayed close to the trees and went around behind the house to look at the lake. Then we heard a noise coming from the barn on the other side of the house and we ran back through the woods until we came to the highway. Arthur was pretty spooked by it all."

"You came up here with them? Neither of those boys impresses me as the outdoors type," Pat laughed.

Barry shrugged. "I talked them into it, but maybe I embellished the haunted part of the story."

"You would. So there's a barn too?"

"I saw a bunch of buildings, but I was pretty sure that larger one was a barn. There must have been some kind of farm here at one time or another. Out past the barn you can see the trees are gone, but I didn't see much beyond that."

"You were too busy running," Pat suggested.

"I was, but I have big bad McGinty here with me now ... I'm not running this time."

The meadow turned out to be the Parsons' front yard and it just needed a good mowing. The dead dry grasses from the previous year were filled with green shoots of new growth and a variety of wild plants. Pat waded into the grass and then abruptly halted when he saw the house.

Mill buildings always appeared so tall because they had various levels for the milling equipment and height was part of the process. The brick and stone structure Pat could see seemed to tower at least four stories high, but some of that was because of the roofline. He knew from experience that there would be at least one basement level with heavy support pillars.

But Parsons had created a marvel of architecture in converting the mill into a home, and he had done it by keeping the style of the building intact. The first floor had a series of windows that pierced the thick walls and looked out at the wide porch which had been added to give the home some charm.

The second floor was a series of brick arches which looked like they served a structural need to support the upper floor which would have been filled with the heavy equipment. But Parsons had mimicked those arches in the woodwork on the porch, a flair that made the new addition flow into the old.

The third floor walls were pierced with tall thin windows, a whole row of them that seemed to wrap around the building and gave a light airy feel to the space below the roof. And what a roof, it was made completely of copper with standing seams joining the sheets together. The metal had aged well, taking on a shade of sienna because of the oxidation. It may have been there for a hundred years, but it would never leak.

The whole building had that eternal look about it even as the brick looked worn, and perhaps the mortar should be pointed up again to keep out the moisture. The only thing missing were towers on the corners. If it had them then it would start to look much like a castle.

Pat was in awe of the building and knew he would have to draw it. Not today, but sometime soon when he could come back alone.

"No car," Barry said.

Pat looked back down the roadway and realized something. The grass where they were standing had not been disturbed. "Parsons doesn't use this road to the highway, there must be another way onto the property," He said.

Barry looked shocked. "You mean he might be around?"

Pat looked towards the far side of the yard at the large barn structure and the smaller buildings beyond. The crushed stone driveway inscribed a large circle in front of the house, but there was a lane leading away down beside the barn. He pointed that out to Barry.

"That's how they come in and out now," Pat said.

As Barry had mentioned, the trees in that direction were gone. Maybe they were still growing something out there. It was too far away to see the crop but something appeared to be planted in rows.

"Let's follow the tree line back to the lake," Barry said. "We can duck into the woods if someone comes."

Pat followed Barry and shook his head. Anyone with the least intelligence would know they had been here from the way the grass was tramped down, but perhaps that was why it had not been mowed.

The trees were pretty dense on the edge of the yard, but there were signs that someone had kept back the new growth. Pat didn't think an elderly man like Parsons would be out chopping down trees and there was no fallen wood in the yard. There had to be a work crew around, especially if this was a working farm.

Pat's first glimpse of the lake was of water trickling over the dam and the broad reach of wet acreage surrounding the far shore. It was early enough that a mist hung in the air and there was the sound of water dropping what amounted to a dozen feet into the pool at the head of the stream.

The dam was only about thirty feet across, but it held back enough water to create a large lake that filled in the low land beyond the house. The mill building sat a good deal higher than the waterline which meant the drive shaft for the water wheel would have gone into the basement. Pat had seen such machinery before and knew the shaft would have been attached to a large gear box that changed the horizontal drive into a vertical one.

The water wheel was long gone, but the chute where it once rotated was still there and was used to run off the excess water from the lake into the lower stream bed. This was the source of most of the noise created by the moving water and not the dam. Pat was sorry to see the wheel had not survived the renovation, but it would have left a noisy reminder of the buildings former purpose.

Across the back of the mill building was another porch, this one screened well enough to keep the bugs off the water from reaching the residents. But from a door in that screened wall there was a long set of steps which led down to a muddy yard and the wooden pier that thrust out some thirty feet into the lake. Pat saw the signs tacked to the bollard: Danger, No Swimming. No Trespassing.

They were now standing beside the stone wall that delineated the water chute and could see the vast lake spreading out towards the distant farmland. Pat could distinctly see the crop now and marveled at the rows of vines ... Parsons had a vineyard and was growing grapes.

"I guess it happened about there," Barry said, pointing at the water beyond the pier.

"What happened? Oh, the drowning," Pat said.

"Are you paying attention? What are you looking at?"

"Everything," Pat said. "Parsons grows grapes out there. I wonder if he makes wine?"

"A vineyard? I never figured Maryland was wine country," Barry said.

"It must be, look how many acres of vines he has, and those are only the ones we can see from here. It must be a huge operation and that takes people to do the work ... " And then they both heard a door slam.

Without a word Barry turned and plunged down the slope with Pat right on his heels. It took about thirty seconds to reach the trees and Barry kept on running.

"Slow down ... no one is following us," Pat yelled, and Barry stopped to look back towards the house which was now hidden by the trees.

"Someone was there all along," Barry said.

"I don't think the car is a very good way to tell if anyone is home," Pat said.

"Yeah ... well, at least you got to see the place."

"I did, thank you," Pat said.

And I'll be back, Pat told himself. Only this time he would come alone with a sketchbook. The mill was a fantastic building and that gave him a great desire to capture the image of it. But that wouldn't be easy, there was so much detail ... and the challenge made him smile as they made their way back through the trees.

The stream below the dam meandered through the woods and was eventually captured in a huge culvert running beside the highway for almost a mile before plunging into the White Oak River above the bridge. It was a vast area of natural beauty and it was to become Pat's playground over the coming months.

Spring turned to summer and school ended. Perhaps not as soon as most kids would have preferred but they had a week of snow days to make up. The freedom of summer meant Pat could plan his own activities for the next few months, and then celebrate all that with his birthday in August.

Like most boys, he saw sixteen as a seminal moment because it meant that much admired milestone of teenage life: the driver's license. But Barry would be gone for a few weeks to visit relatives up north and Pat wasn't sure spending time alone would exactly be the high point of his vacation. He definitely needed more friends.

He liked Arthur and Trent well enough, and like Barry, he understood why the two of them had paired up. There was nothing overt about the relationship except they were extremely aware of one another and in that Pat saw their expressions of love. Now there was an emotional feeling Pat knew almost nothing about ... what did it mean to love?

Love in a family unit was understandable, that was without question. But what did it take to love a perfect stranger or allow someone to get that close before sharing the feeling? It didn't take a rocket scientist to imagine the kind of physical love that Arthur and Trent shared. Did it matter who was doing what to whom when they both needed love and had found it?

Pat didn't think of himself as gay, so far he wasn't anything. The image he had of gay people didn't suit him at all. Other than his two geeky friends the only gay people he'd seen were on television, and on certain internet sites. That certainly wasn't what he wanted to be.

There were boys in school who acted a bit too much like the girls in their crowd. But Pat thought the bisexual image was just a fad like the emo scene, here today and gone tomorrow. He would never wear girl's pants or makeup just to seem different. No, that was definitely not for him.

The gay porn sites showed men in tight leather and most of them had huge equipment, a real freak show. Pat knew his equipment was above average in size, even Barry had joked about it. But jerking off was far different from allowing something huge to be shoved up his rear. There sure was a lot of that in the videos.

The image of pierced nipples and cocks made Pat cringe. He wasn't into poking holes in his body, and definitely not down there. But the sex videos were stimulating to say the least so he copied down the website addresses in his own personal code before clearing the history on his computer.

He had looked at girls and guys in almost equal proportion over the years, but he had never completed the final equation in his mind. Pat still had no clue which he would rather take to bed and all the personal sexual exploration in the world would not give him that answer.

The desire to find a simple truth was there as summer unfolded and so Pat packed a bag lunch, his small digital camera and slid a few small sketchbooks into a backpack before taking off to explore the woods down by the river. The journey was as real as it was symbolic. He was out to find something or someone who could tell him where his life was headed.

The highway bridge over the river was the obvious starting point, and then it was only a matter of deciding upstream or down. He'd tried to follow the river on a road map that had been liberated from his father's truck, but it was too incomplete. All he discovered was that the river headed southeast and that it would eventually flow into the Potomac miles and miles away.

If he headed upstream then he would find himself in the next county and the map had shown a regional park that way. That fulfilled his curiosity, but he really wasn't going all that far away from home. Pat walked to the bridge and headed downstream.

After an hour of walking he discovered there was an upper trail big enough for bicycles and a lower one that wound in and out of the rocks bordering the water. There were similar paths on the other side, but there was nowhere to cross and he wasn't going back to the bridge.

A jumble of rocks caught his eye and he thought the rush of water seemed louder so he went to investigate. He climbed the boulders and looked down to see that the channel had narrowed and the water was cascading over the rocks beneath. It looked like a good scene so he sat to observe.

Up through the trees on the far side he could see the outlines of several houses perched on the hillside. The sound of voices reached him and shortly thereafter three young boys came into view. Pat felt exposed sitting out in the open so he scooted back until he was surrounded by bushes, and was glad he had. One of the three was Berger and in his hand he carried a rifle.

They had not seen him, and there was the width of the river to keep them apart, but Pat didn't want another confrontation with Berger. The boy put the rife to his shoulder and Pat heard the pop that told him it was a BB gun. Still, the boy was fool enough to shoot at him and even a small round shot would hurt or put an eye out.

The other two boys seemed to defer to Berger in that they stood waiting as he took several shots at rocks in the river. Between shots Berger had to pump the rifle pressure up so Pat knew it was pneumatic which gave more power to the BB's flight.

The boys looked all around and even across the way at where Pat was sitting, but they didn't see him concealed amidst the foliage. There was just as heavy a screen of bushes and trees behind the boy's position so they felt alone. Berger finally got bored of shooting at rocks and sat down where he was.

If Pat listened carefully he could hear their voices carry across the background of rushing water, but it was their actions that almost made him laugh.

"This looks like a cool spot, don't you think, Perry?" Berger said.

"I suppose," Perry replied. "What's Neil supposed to do?"

"He can watch, he might learn something," Berger said.

The boy Neil was smaller than the other two and as Pat noticed he was probably a few years younger, maybe twelve or thirteen. What was he supposed to watch?

"You want to go first?" Perry asked.

"Sure, whatever," Berger said, and then he pushed down his shorts.

Oh this was too much, Pat thought, and reached in his pack for the camera. Perry dropped his shorts and sat beside Berger. Their cocks were much the same size and they began to play while Neil watched. The younger boy looked old enough to indulge in self-play, but perhaps he was just too embarrassed to take part in the jerk off session. Pat raised the camera and began to take photos.

Pat didn't know Perry, but the boy obviously knew Berger pretty well. They continued stroking until Berger leaned over and punched Neil's arm. Click ... click ... click. Pat was grinning and couldn't wait until Barry saw these pictures.

"Come on, Neil ... drop your shorts and show us what you got," Berger said.

Neil shook his head and the two older boys jumped on him. It was a silly looking scene but Pat snapped a few pictures. Perry and Berger were half naked as they held Neil down and tugged off his shorts. The boy resisted but he was laughing as Berger finally stripped the shorts away.

"Aw see, you got hairs," Berger said. "You ought to join the party."

"No way," Neil said, and then Berger grabbed the boy's cock and gave it a few yanks.

Neil looked so surprised ... Click ... and then they all laughed. Now they were all at it and the jerking continued until one by one they achieved results. Pat had more than a dozen photos, most of them focused on Berger. Once done they pulled up their shorts and scrambled off the rocks back onto the path, disappearing up the hill into the trees.

Holy Crap, Pat thought, and looked down at his camera. The images were pure gold and Berger was a dead man if these ever got out. A little photoshop work and Pat could crop Perry and Neil right out of the pictures leaving Berger in a solo performance. Barry was going to shit bricks when he saw this.

Pat decided he wasn't going to stick around, especially since Berger had that rifle. He put the camera away and headed back down the trail towards the bridge. It was still early so there was time to head upstream and see what he could find.

The river was wider upstream and shallower too. Pat stayed on the upper trail which wound through the trees, but he could not see the water from here. He was just about to head downhill when they jumped him.

Five young boys, all of them around ten or eleven, sprang from behind the trees and surrounded Pat. They were dressed in Army gear, camouflage shirts and pants and one of them even had a helmet. They were each armed with rifles, but Pat quickly determined that the weapons were plastic toys.

"Got ya now," One of them said.

"You sure do," Pat said. "Okay, I surrender."

"Aw, you mean you won't fight?"

"I'm outnumbered," Pat said. "So how many hikers have you captured today?"

"You're the first," The boy replied. "Some asshole shot at us with a BB gun but we ran away."

"Berger," Pat said.

"Berger ... who is that?"

"Let's sit down and I'll tell you," Pat said. "Do you have a headquarters?"

The boy smiled. "Sure do, right this way."

His name was Steve, and since he was their leader he'd done all the talking. Now as they picked their way between the trees he introduced the others as Billy, Tim, Tom and Richard. Pat was bound to forget the names, but Steve was in charge. The walk through the trees would take them onto Parsons land if they didn't stop soon.

"Do you know Mr. Parsons?" Pat asked.

"The vineyard guy? Sure the gate to his farm is at the end of my street, they're nice people," Steve said. "And there's our HQ."

The boy was pointing but Pat couldn't see a damn thing, and then they stepped closer. What he had assumed to be a fallen tree was actually the support for the slanted roof. The boys had done a wonderful job of camouflage since the small shelter blended right into the woods.

"Awesome," Pat said, and Steve swelled with pride.

This was no little hole in the ground. The building was eight foot square and constructed of shipping pallets and plywood. It probably would leak in a heavy rain, but then that wouldn't damage anything. The boys had cleared away the debris on the forest floor and built a fire pit surrounded with stones. It was cramped inside with five of them, but Steve had left Tim on guard duty outside.

"Berger is the kid with the BB gun who shot at you," Pat said. "But he'll be going to White Oak High this fall ... and I have him by the balls."

"Berger ... we'll have to keep an eye out for him," Steve said.

"Just don't get yourself shot, it isn't worth it."

"So, what did he do to you?" Steve asked.

Pat proceeded to tell them about Barry and the enmity between his friend and Berger. But then he smiled and pulled out his camera.

"You have to swear to keep this a secret or I won't show you why Berger is going to be kissing my ass," Pat said.

The boys all laughed but then swore themselves to secrecy. Pat turned on the camera and played back the first few pictures. He stopped with the image of Berger and turned off the camera. The boy Neil was young enough to be in sixth grade, and Pat didn't want Steve or the others to see his face and then recognize him in school.

The pictures had surprised the boys and grossed out more than a few of them.

"That Berger is a fag," Steve said. "My father thinks all fags ought to die."

"Whoa, that's wrong," Pat said. "You leave them alone and they'll leave you alone."

"Some fag at the mall said he wanted to suck my cock," Steve said.

"Wow ... you have a cock?" Pat asked, and the boys cracked up laughing, but Steve didn't think it was funny.

"He could have raped me or killed me," Steve said. "I was just sitting in the McDonalds and he leaned over and asked if he could suck my cock."

"Did you run away or yell for help?" Pat asked.

"No, of course not ... I was embarrassed."

"How old was this man?"

"High school boy, I don't know how old. But he was a fag."

"He was probably just messing with you ... I'm gay," Pat said just to see how the boys would react.

Steve laughed. "No you're not ... why would you want to be gay?"

"Isn't a want, it just is," Pat said. "So you don't believe me?"

"No ... but I won't ask you to prove it."

It was Pat's turn to laugh. "One of these days you'll call the wrong guy a fag and he'll take your head off. But you aren't even old enough to understand what sex is so I'll forgive you."

Steve was silent after that and Pat got up to leave. He walked away through the woods, only now he was headed towards the Parsons' house. Steve was just a confused little boy and could not be held accountable for the hate his parents taught him. Hopefully he would grow up and understand that everyone was not the same and that you had to tolerate the difference.

It felt good to say he was gay, even though Pat wasn't sure that was the whole truth. What he had seen Berger doing with the others was sex, but sex without definition. At their age masturbation was the only real choice. Steve would discover that soon enough.

Just how Berger and Perry had decided to jerk off right out there in the open was anyone's guess. Perhaps they did it just to shock Neil and get him involved. Berger was mean-spirited, but Pat had seen that the minute he laid eyes on the boy. That chip on his shoulder would only lead to worse trouble.

Pat didn't want Berger to be gay, not if he decided that's where he was headed. But in his camera was the means to find out. Once Berger saw the pictures he would be scared to death and give Pat whatever he wanted. The boy would do anything to keep the pictures from spreading around, but Pat was going to leave that judgment up to Barry.

He had a rough idea of where the lake was, but it was big enough that he couldn't miss finding some part of it. And then he saw the trees thinning out up ahead and knew he had reached the water. Unfortunately this side of the lake was wet marshland, but it did have a great view of the vineyard.

Row after row of vines seemed to march off into the distance, and somewhere over those sloping hills was the real entrance to the property. Pat sat down on a fallen tree trunk and fished in his pack for the map. He should have discovered this before as he unfolded the map and looked for Highway 29.

The driveway they had traversed up to the house wasn't shown and neither was the man- made lake. But the wooded area in green on the map ran south from the river and appeared to be a large jigsaw puzzle shaped piece of land. The far western edge of the shape was embedded in the Sherwood Forest subdivision and bordered University Boulevard.

It seemed Parsons had hundreds of acres between the vineyards, the lake, the woods and the house. There was no way Pat was going to walk all of that, besides, it was the old mill building that held his fascination. He folded the map and began to skirt the lake.

Pat could finally see the mill building across the water and the barn with assorted sheds surrounding it. The noise of the chute carried across the water and he groaned. What an ass, he was on the wrong side of the stream running down from the dam. Damn.

He was still back in the trees when he reached the dam and worked his way down the slope towards the stream. The rough tumble of water from the chute was on the far side, but it still roiled the water at the base of the dam. It had not rained all week and Pat could only see a trickle of water on the face of the stone structure.

The only other dams he'd seen were huge concrete structures so this stone dam was something new. It was made out of cut blocks which were now covered in a dark green growth of moss. It was only thirty feet across and Pat thought someone might climb across that face, but then the chute of water on the far side negated that maneuver.

He walked along the stream's edge, looking back at the dam and the dark pool of water at the base. Too deep to wade, he would probably have to walk all the way down to the culvert and cross. By then he would probably be too tired and just go home. It was summer, there would always be tomorrow to come back and ... what was that?

Between the trees he glimpsed a cable running from one side of the stream to the other. It wasn't one cable but a series of ropes stretched across the water to the far side. It looked like one of those Boy Scout rope bridges. Pat wondered how old it was and whether or not it would hold his weight.

He could probably stand in the water below that contraption, but if he fell off it would leave him wet and undignified. What the hell, it was worth an attempt. Pat reached the side of the lower rope and saw it was fairly new, that was encouraging. He reached up and pulled himself upright, feeling the rope sway a bit. Okay, it was now or never.

The side ropes were supposed to be like railings, but they moved as well and Pat discovered it was better to use them for balance without really leaning on them. The one thing he had to do was focus on placing his feet firmly and not worry about anything else.

His balancing act would have been laughable to any observer, but Pat was alone, and before he knew it the stream was traversed and he was on the other side. He jumped down and looked back at the ropes wondering who had placed them here.

He looked back upstream and could see the water frothing in the chute. The last time he was here with Barry they must have run right past this rope bridge without realizing it. But he could see the mill looming up beyond the trees and wondered what he was doing back here.

The real beauty of the place was that view out front and so Pat made his way through the trees towards the front yard. Once again there was no car sitting in the driveway, but he knew that didn't mean anything, someone could still be in the house. He made his way along the tree line back towards the unused driveway.

This had been where he first viewed the building and the blend of shapes that made it so appealing. Pat looked back at the house and moved another twenty feet. Here, this is the view he wanted. He set the backpack down and dug out his camera. Click ... click. He took two photos, something he could refer to later when he was trying to finish the drawing.

The sun was behind him above the trees and so Pat sat down in the grass and pulled out a sketchbook and a slim box of pencils. A good artist never tries to draw the whole object without studying the details first. Pat began to sketch the porch across the front of the house to capture the details in the woodwork.

The corbels in the angles where the upright posts met the roof over the porch looked handmade. Perhaps he would work up enough nerve to get a closer look, but for now he had the trees to his back and it felt secure this far away. The lines on his page spread to include the railing along the front steps. He spent ten minutes adding detail to the drawing, the rest he could get from the photos. Now he moved on to the brick arches on the second floor. He didn't hear the footsteps until the man was only ten feet away.

"What are you doing?" A voice said, and Pat jumped.

He couldn't run since his stuff was spread out all over the place. Oh he might run, but then he would lose the camera, his pack and the sketchbooks. He looked up at the man and realized the guy had walked up the driveway because he had a handful of mail.

This couldn't be old man Parsons since he wasn't any older than Pat's father. But he was tall and muscular, a big man. He was dressed in work clothing and appeared to have a deep tan on his face, neck and arms. Perhaps he was one of the farm workers.

"Don't you read signs? You had to walk right past that No Trespassing sign," The man said.

He didn't appear threatening, although his size alone was intimidating. Now he looked just slightly angry that Pat had ignored the sign.

"I'm sorry ... I came through the woods after I crossed the stream," Pat said. It might serve to be truthful.

"You crossed the rope bridge?" The man asked, and Pat nodded.

Now the man smiled. "Damn thing, I fell off it right after they put it up. Embarrassing, wet, but no damage done. My nephews strung it up last fall, something they learned in Boy Scouts. You know you're not supposed to be up here ... what are you drawing?"

Pat looked up as the man walked over and squatted down to see what he had drawn. The guy studied the page for a moment and then nodded.

"You have a good eye for detail. I'm John Parsons ... my great-grandfather built that house out of the old mill. Different, isn't it. What's your name?"

"Pat McGinty ... I live over in Woodlake."

"Ah, the forfeiture property," Parsons said.

"Forfeiture?"

Parsons smiled. "A piece of history from long ago in our family. So what am I going to do with you for trespassing?"

Pat smiled. "Let me finish the drawing?"

Parsons nodded and stood up. "I suppose I ought to do that." He looked up towards the house. "My father is up there on the third floor, but he's been in a hospital bed for the past year. You go on and finish your drawing. I'll give you permission to walk around and take a closer look if you want. Just stay away from the rear of the house. My father will be able to see you back there and that will upset him."

"Thank you," Pat said, but Parsons had already turned to walk off.

Pat watched him walk towards the barn and disappear out of sight. He looked back up at the house and those third floor windows. So the old man was up there in bed ... for a year, his son had said ... and then it hit Pat like a ton of bricks. Jenny Hudson had drowned about that time.


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