Peter Gordon’s discovery of Phil Burbank’s secret bathing place breaks into a refuge Phil had kept apart from the rest of the world. The encounter turns a hidden landscape of childhood and solitude into a point of private knowledge shared by two people otherwise divided by hostility.

The Hidden Grove

As boys, Phil Burbank and George Burbank built a small, secret shack from stolen lumber and planted willows around it. They used it to get away from the adults, swim in the creek, and read magazines they knew the Old Lady would disapprove of. George lost interest after the first year; Phil continued to return alone.

Over time, the willows grew through and around the rotting shack until its structure was difficult to distinguish from the plants that had overtaken it. The concealed remnant became, for Phil, a proof of childhood and a private shrine. The creek opening was his place to bathe, approached through a single narrow passage in the willows that required a visitor to stoop and crawl. Phil treated the spot as his alone, and leaving it gave him a sense of innocence and ease.

The Encounter

One summer, while Phil was preparing to bathe, he heard movement and turned to find Peter, known as Miss Nancy, at the creek. Peter immediately fled into the surrounding brush. Phil covered himself and called after him to leave. The interruption transformed the grove from a sanctuary into a place where Phil had been seen by someone from outside the private world he had made there.

Aftermath and Significance

Peter later remembered the encounter clearly but said nothing about it to his mother. He suspected Phil had not mentioned it either. Peter understood their shared silence as a kind of bond, even if it was a bond formed through hatred, and considered that such a connection could still be useful. The discovery therefore does not reconcile them; it gives their antagonism a concealed point of contact. For Phil, the violation is the loss of exclusive privacy. For Peter, the unspoken incident becomes knowledge he can hold without making it public.