In the distance, boys sweep across sharp, neatly cut grass. The ball predicts their turns; sweat spreads like moss on their shirts. Eventually they will stop and come up the hill, their smiles brilliant, exhausted. One pushes another. The group receives him, this act of love.

It’s he Amos studies, the boy pushed, whose brown eyes accept the campus like something owned, whose legs toss his feet forward in loping, comfortable steps. He hasn’t spoken much, but his silence doesn’t diminish him. His presence seems, to the rest, so inevitable it needn’t be noted.

As they ate, bent like soldiers over their trays, someone had thrown him an apple. Ford, they called out. The boy plucked it from the air, took a clean, violent bite, and, with a pat, set it down. Others laughed. The meat glistened like bone.

On the field he’d moved with the lazy grace of a prodigy, natural and untended. Amos was better, and at the time had been glad. But walking beside him now, he feels ashamed of his effort. The summer hours spent sweating grow needful and unsightly.

Around them, the college lies stilled by August sun. Empty paths vein its lawns. Only athletes have returned; they move in small clusters, their voices distant and soft.

“This is me,” the boy says.

The rest nod and walk on. Then Amos remembers it’s his dorm as well. He turns, jogging back.

“You live here?” the boy asks.

“Aye.” Amos squints like an old man surveying his farm.

“Ever since this morning.”

The boy laughs gently. He offers a warm hand, tanned as a glove.