(Author's Note: The following story is written from the point of view of another character in James Joyce's short story "An Encounter," part of the collection known as Dubliners.)

The nights when I was a little boy were best, when from time to time my mother read me poems from great books she kept locked in a chest by her bed. I found comfort under the weight of her arm about my shoulders, the thrumming of her voice vibrating through her body into mine, and the glancing strokes of her soft hands over my skin. It was by the light of a candle on her nightstand, the wax running white down its sides, that I heard and felt the words of Thomas Moore and Sir Walter Scott. My legs, my arms, and my body tingled with a passion I could hardly understand but knew. I knew it from the beating in my chest and the tenseness in my muscles, stirred by the words, the touch and the supple yet coarse blankets on my naked skin. I remember those nights were best; I love the words and this very day I read them all. The great books were like leathery secrets of slipping paper and musty smells from deep inside the chest. Our secret, my mother said, our secret nights and poems just for you and me and me and you. Father doesn’t like it, father doesn’t understand. Our secret, my perfect little boy. We stayed like that into the nights until the candlestick went down and the darkness made everything only feeling and no more seeing.

My mother died and now the nights are always darkness and feeling by myself, long years spent with Thomas Moore and Sir Walter Scott, and even Lord Lytton now, but not my mother. Sometimes I will light a candlestick and lay awake and read aloud as I am naked in my bed, but it is not the same, and I find myself wishing I were a little boy. Now I am gray and I’ve let these pesky hairs on my face grow into a moustache. I like to walk afield and wander over the hills, finding a comfort in the way the breeze ripples the grasses and my clothes. Sometimes the city-folk see me and sneer and throw bottles at me by the road:

—Look’it the bogger! He’s drunk, he is. I say, some kind of dirty thing that ol’ man is, one said from his carriage. He didn’t know, though; they can’t because they forgot and won’t remember until they’re older. The little ones know, but he had no little ones so I let him and his friends ride off, and then I threw the bottle back. It broke in the road, and I shouted and shook my stick at them. I could see them making faces and scoffing at me, and I felt a certain boyish glee.

The next day I was in the fields again, thinking on my boyhood nights and working my stick aimlessly, hacking here and there without a purpose. I came upon a pair of little boys perched atop a bank, and I wondered at them being there but let it pass momentarily. Little boys should be in school, I thought, turning back and still handling my stick as I went toward them. I bade them good-day and sat down when they had the manners to respond. I sat near the one who struck me as the quieter of the two, and he watched me carefully; so I was careful, too, and set them at ease with a comment about the weather before talking of other things.

—When I was a boy, just a little boy like you, I wanted to be in school. My schoolboy days were my best days, but nights with my mother were best even more than the days, except I didn’t tell them this. Our secret, my mother said. Long gone, I said to them, those days are gone and I would give anything to be young again. What I would give to be feeling young again, a little boy in school and coming home to my mother. Do you go to your mother? All little boys should be with their mothers, I thought and told them so. I told them about my favorite poets anyway, since that wasn’t telling the secret really, and found the quiet one knew my mind. What a precious thing!

—Ah, I can see you are a bookworm like myself. Now, I said, pointing to the other one, who looked dirtier and had his hair about his forehead and eyes like a young rascal, he is different; he goes in for games. Not us, my lad, no not you and I. I have read all of Sir Walter Scott and all of Lord Lytton, I said with a note of pride, the great books kept in a chest at my home. I keep them by my bed. It’s not far from here, my home, just a short walk. Not far really. I read my poetry in bed, you should hear it, my mother said I have an excellent reading voice—except, you could not hear all of Lord Lytton, no, some of it boys can’t read. Not for little boys, I said gently to the quiet one. Why not, asked the other one, and I smiled at the question, one that I had asked my mother once. She said, they are for grown ups, and little boys should only have sweethearts and nothing else, just little pretty girls with radiant hair and playing after school. I said, you’re my sweetheart, mother, and she said, of course I am, I’m your very first, my adorable little boy.

I asked the two boys, which of you has the most sweethearts? I’ve got three totties, said the dirty one, and I knew him to be one for that sort, but the quiet one did not answer so I pressed him a little. He said he had none: Now, now, I don’t believe you. I remembered that when I was a little boy I had a sweetheart here and there, and I liked to go walking in the fields with them, just the two of us away from our homes. Those days were best, after school in the fields with my sweethearts. But I didn’t want to bring them home to my mother, I remembered. She was my sweetheart first, and even though she said she wanted me to have little sweethearts, I’m sure she would have been jealous. Yet my father didn’t want me to have any sweethearts, especially in the fields where I could have them alone as the breeze rippled the grasses and my clothes. Many was the time he brought his cane down on me long and painful, hard on my backside so that my bottom was barred and I couldn’t sit comfortably for days. No sweethearts for you…but my mother said I could, and I listened to her because father didn’t understand.

—Tell us, said the rascal, he was a bold boy: how many have you yourself? I smiled and wished I could be a little boy again with my sweethearts. I had lots of sweethearts over the years, but my mother always came first. Every boy, I said, has a little sweetheart.

Oh yes, I looked at the quiet boy, thinking how my sweethearts were. They are soft and radiant, I said to them, yes. Very soft and shining hair in the sunlight and by candle light. And their hands are soft, so soft, I used to love their hands very much. Oh how I love their hands very much, soft like their hair but different. They liked to keep their little soft hands folded on their little soft laps over their skirts and dresses, little soft not-women. Soft hands right down to the finger tips, placed over each other covering their laps, but they are not so good as they seem to be, that is if you know it. Oh, they are most certainly not. But they’re all soft and radiant with silky hair that I could stroke on schoolday afternoons in the fields. I watched the way their hands played over their coats and dresses, squeezing the fabric and reaching in the grasses. They are not so good as they seem to be, those little soft girls. Sometimes their hair got in the way but never really, because I loved their hair and it could never actually get in the way, nothing quite could, everyone knows that. I love their soft hair and their little hands, their fingers, their dresses. Pretty little things, with their little white hands, not so white as they think they are—my goodness!

I was halted in my speech at that point and looked across the field, my mind and body ablaze like the way the sun lit the fields on early autumn evenings. Oh my, little sweethearts with their soft white hands, what bliss and boyish glee. I told the boys I had to leave them presently but I’d be back in a minute or so, a few minutes. That would be enough, I thought, as I stood and walked down the slope heading for the near end of the field. I brought my stick and poked with it, a little more purpose now as I reached the end of the field. Yes, soft white hands and soft pretty hair. My little sweethearts! All of them, there they were, beautiful fingertips shaking and grabbing in the grasses, legs squirming and making rushing and hushing sounds in the field. Rushing and squirming, their soft white hands. What bliss, oh to be a little boy again, those soft white hands, that soft supple hair, the bliss and boyish glee that I feel—I feel—I feel—

Father Michael caught me once when I was thinking of my sweetheart behind the church on a Sunday. He saw me and I remember the color red was everything: my hand was red, my cheeks felt red, his whole face turned red, his eyes looked red, and then the redness of his slap that I couldn’t see but knew was there, and another slap and again, until I sobbed and he stopped. I wiped my mouth and the back of my hand had dark red blood running down the sides, burning me like white hot wax. Little boys should not be doing…that! You little, wicked sinner, I ought to whip wicked, rough sorts of boys…like you! He said all little boys like me should be whipped, and he shook his cross at me and I imagined it was my father’s cane. He was red and the whole world was red, as if the eternal hellfire were consuming me already. And when my father was spoken to, I was whipped, and whipped good.

I came to the boys again but the rascal one ran off to chase a little mangy cat that was probably diseased and festering. Perhaps it would scratch him and bite, then he would be bloodied and run back to his mother. I was alone with the quiet one for now, and I asked him if the rascal were whipped at school. Is he? I asked. Do they whip him? Some boys ought to be whipped, especially the rough sort for nothing else will do them any good. A nice, hard whipping, that’s what boys need when they go in for games and the bad kinds of things. Some boys need the whip, most boys need it! Nothing will do them better! Filthy, wicked little boys. A slap on the hand or a box on the ear is no good: what a boy is in want of is getting a nice warm whipping. Warm and hard on his back and bottom, whipped ‘til he’s red and sore, that will teach the filthy boy.

He looked at me and I thought I could see it in his eyes; yes, it was there! This boy was a precious thing, he knew it as did I! No sweethearts for him, good, good little boy. In fact, I continued, those wicked little boys, if ever I find a boy talking to girls or having a girl for a sweetheart, why I’ll whip him and whip him. That will teach him not to be talking to girls. Then I looked hard at the quiet boy: but if a boy had a girl for a sweetheart and told lies about it then I would give him such a whipping as no boy ever got in this world. There is nothing in this world I would like so well as that. It would be slow at first, but always a hard whip. Then a loud crack, and again and again, a whip for every sinful thought. A whip for every word the boy spoke to the little girl. A whip for each time he had lied to me, for each time he denied! And the whip would crack and he would cry, and I would hold the whip in my hand and squeeze the end hard as I brought it down, again and again. He would be whipped; he would be whipped good. Because he would be wicked and filthy and sinful, you know this. He would need it, you know, like rough boys of that sort. The whipping would set him straight again, and again and again.

The quiet boy stood abruptly, and I looked quickly at my stick lying blunt and heavy on the slope beside me. I watched him closely as he bent over; he fixed his shoe a little. But he told me he had to go, the silent little boy did, and there was something in his eyes I didn’t like anymore. Murphy! he shouted to the dirty boy, who was even filthier now in the late afternoon sun. He shouted again and the boy came running. They left and didn’t look back at me, but I knew their sort. I knew they were sneering and laughing at the old bogger. Wicked little boys. I never went for that when my mother was alive. I was her precious thing, and she was my only sweetheart. Those were the best nights, long gone.