“We didn’t hide,” said Brooke. “We waited and watched.”
“Were those men after you ?” said the boy.
“No,” said Sugar. “They were after something else. But now they know we’re out here.”
“And they’ve got our deer,” said Brooke.
“Will you not be able to let this go ?” said Sugar.
“I don’t think so,” said Brooke. “I’d like to eat. I’d like to avenge our blankets.”
“Then we’ll return to the site and follow their trail until we overtake them,” said Sugar.
The smell of the fire was still thick in the air. Its source, easy to locate. The ashes were wet — drowned hastily with water or urine — but still smoldering beneath a cool layer. Dew spattered the trampled grass. A bent streak of grass, mud, and blood led out into the woods.
“They’re very long gone if they’re any kind of travelers,” said Sugar.
“We’re traveling light,” said Brooke, “compared.”
They poked into the ashes with a branch each and upturned nothing of use.
The boy was shivering, wet with sweat and dew.
Sugar handed him a pinch of tobacco from his sock and the boy put it in his mouth.
“You smoke it,” said Sugar, a thin sticky paper pinched between his thumb and pointer finger.
The boy spat out the threads and scraped at his tongue with his fingernails. Sugar put away the paper.
Brooke followed the edge of where a body had fallen and then been dragged into the woods. The streak wound its way through the trees for as far as his eyes could see. Sugar followed close behind, and then the boy, still scraping at his tongue with his dirty nails.
They heard the four men before they saw them. The boy clung involuntarily to Sugar. The men had taken no precaution to go unseen. They were all laughter and campfire in a clearing. It was barely dusk, nearly nighttime. Brooke and Sugar did not speak, but separated to trace a half circle, several feet from the men and their fire. The boy clung to Sugar for several feet before Sugar paused, gripped the boy’s two hands, and pulled them from his own shirt, detaching him. He kept one small hand cupped in each of his own. He led the boy by those two small hands to a tall, wide tree and sat him on its opposite side. Sugar raised a finger to his lips then released his grip, abandoning the boy to watch the woods opening out and away from what was about to happen. As Sugar retreated to his post, the boy watched the open wood for only a moment before shifting to the tree’s edge and following Sugar’s movements with his gaze.
The boy could not tell for sure, but the four men seemed suddenly hesitant, maybe even alarmed. They quieted. They glanced about themselves. One held a knife in his left hand. It had a thin curving blade. Suddenly Brooke and Sugar were upon them, and Brooke had sunk his thumbs into the eyes of the one with the blade. He collected the blade and stepped away from the flailing body. Sugar was sawing through the rigid meat of another man’s gut with a tool the boy could not make out from where he sat. Brooke took the curving blade then and applied it to the neck of yet another man, opening him up like a coin purse and spilling his contents onto the blankets and bundles before him. The fourth man rose and made for Sugar, who turned to receive the first blow. He was knocked into the coals of the fire and Brooke came up behind the fourth man and set at slicing him in the lower ribs and back with the curving blade, over and again. The man had something horrible about him that did not moan or stutter at the cuts. Instead he turned to greet the knife with his open palm, to accept it as if it were an offering. The blade remained in his palm as he drew it from Brooke’s grip. He held the pierced palm up over his crooked face, and unsheathed the blade from the net of bone and flesh.
Sugar had batted the coals and ash from his body and was collected then, lunging toward the man holding the knife and approaching Brooke. The man swung around and greeted Sugar’s advance. Back and forth he swung to counter the movements of Brooke and Sugar, who were slowly gaining inches on him. The man then threw the curving knife with enough force to puncture Brooke’s advancing thigh, and as Sugar leapt toward him from behind, he dodged the advance and moved forward to recollect the knife from Brooke’s leg. Brooke howled for only a moment, then watched as the man moved away to make a safe distance between the three of them. There was blood at his mouth. Even more at his ear. He was staggering now, soaked in blood down the back of his shirt and pants. He appeared light and trembling. Brooke and Sugar watched him like a wounded deer. He was nearly set to bleed out and they would have him. They waited and the boy watched and the fourth man glanced around the campsite to confirm that he had lost each and every one of his men. There were bloody piles and bundles gathered by the bedding. A low fire. The woods were quiet until the man dropped to his knees. He held the knife out with both hands now, a bit of slobber at his chin.
“There will only be more men like us,” he said. He coughed and spat. “You will only kill and kill until you are overcome.”
Brooke stepped forward as if to offer himself up to the man.
“Would you like to stick me one last time before we finish you ?” he said. He set his good leg out before their kill. He leaned back to smile at Sugar, who shook his head and plucked tobacco from his sock.
“Don’t be grotesque,” said Sugar, as the man plunged the curving knife into the bones of Brooke’s foot.
The boy came finally from behind the tree as they were gathering up the four men’s belongings and placing them in the center of the clearing. They had leaned the bodies against the surrounding trees and the men sat slumped as if napping, their chins to their chests, their palms at their sides, opening skyward.
“Meat,” said Brooke, cinching then letting fall one of the bundles.
“Probably their man’s,” said Sugar.
“Probably our deer’s,” said Brooke. He plucked a separate bundle from the stack and held it to his nose. “Or neither,” he said. “This one isn’t fresh.”
“Who… who were they ?” said the boy.
Brooke slid the curving knife out of his belt and held it out.
“Take their teeth,” he said. He held out a small bag. “Place them in here.”
“Why ?” said the boy.
“So we can bury them with their ghosts,” said Brooke.
“I don’t know how.”
The boy would not take the bag or knife. He clasped his hands behind his back and watched Brooke’s face as he explained there was no particular way to do it, just saw into the gums until the teeth came loose in your hand.
“There will be blood, but not more than you can handle. And remember,” he explained, “they can’t feel it.”
“Deer,” said Sugar, holding up a pair of dark bundles. “This is the deer, I think.”
“Or the man,” said Brooke.
“More meat than man,” said Sugar, raising the bundles to shoulder height.
Brooke nodded and held out the knife to the boy. He held it by its blade, leveling the handle with the boy’s belly and bouncing it up and down.
“It’s a good thing,” said Brooke, “to let a man be buried properly as possible. You’re doing them a service.” He jiggled the knife’s blade, trembling the handle. “You’ll be doing us a favor too, and we’ll all be safer for it.”
Finally, the boy accepted the knife.
“Just the teeth ?” he said.
“No time for the skeletons,” said Brooke. “And besides, we couldn’t carry all of this, even if we wanted to.”
Sugar dug a small hole with his fingers and slid in the gory bundle. The boy was wiping his hands in the grass, on his shirt, on the bark of the trees around them. He had vomited, but finished the job. Brooke was separating the fresher bundles from the rotten ones. They were all but set to go.
Sugar placed dirt over the bundled teeth, and then grass. The bodies leaning against the trees seemed to watch it all.
“Rest,” said Sugar.
“Are there going to be more men ?” said the boy.
<
br /> “There will always be more of someone or something,” said Brooke.
Sugar was silent and watching the hole.
“I don’t want to do that again,” said the boy.
“You probably won’t have to,” said Brooke. “But you might have to.”
“Can we eat ?” said the boy.
“Not here,” said Brooke.
“Can we go somewhere and eat ?” said the boy.
“You’ve got an appetite after all that ?” said Brooke.
The boy nodded, ran his hands across his shirt once more. They had not eaten for some time and the hunger was beyond thinking about.
Sugar unclasped his hands and set his eyes in the direction of the treetops.
“What’s he looking at ?” said the boy.
“Everything and nothing in particular,” said Brooke. He hoisted two of the fresh bundles onto his back and kicked through the blankets once more, looking for the freshest one.
“What are you looking at ?” said the boy.
Sugar lowered his eyes to the boy and said he was looking at nothing but whatever it was the trees were doing.
“Is that where the ghosts went ?” said the boy.
Sugar shook his head. “They’re right there,” he said, pointing at the bodies, and then at the small, fresh hole near his feet.
That night, the sun did not set. Sugar placed a strip of fabric over his eyes. Brooke slept on his stomach, his face buried in his elbow. The boy sat awake and watched the trees bend and heard them creak and imagined he heard men approaching from all directions. He heard laughter. Then a twig as it broke. He listened for more, for the hiss of those sounds fading out to confirm them, but heard nothing. It was as if the enormous quiet of the woods around him consumed any possible sounds, growing stronger, more present, more oppressive and huge. He nudged a rock with his toe to provoke a faint scraping, the mild tremble of a rock turning against the earth. As quickly as it rose the sounds were gone. Brooke shifted, rocked his hips. The boy was not afraid of anything in particular, but he was impatient to know what was coming. What was after them and when would it get there ? What were they after and would they achieve it ?
A black bird curved into view overhead and tilted toward a tall branch. Settling, it picked between its toes and squawked at nothing in particular. It lifted just as suddenly and curved toward the boy and Brooke and Sugar. It landed near their bundles and hopped. The boy watched it hop and tilt and examine the bundle. It pecked a small tear in the corner of the bundle, where the darkest blood had gathered. It pulled something from the bundle and tapped it a moment with its beak before going back in again with another quick peck. The boy toed the rock near his foot again, this time hooking it with his toe and drawing up his leg to bring the small rock to his hand. The bird hopped back and tilted its head. It stepped to the left and turned, as if examining the woods around them. Finally, it turned back toward the bag and pecked again and the boy loosed the rock. It struck the ground and the bird rose only to land again a foot or so away from the very same bundle. The boy drew another rock to his hand with his other foot. The bird seemed to watch him, its head tilted, its eyes blinking and fixed. It pecked at the bag and tapped its beak. It pecked again and the boy slung the rock, harder this time, with an audible exhalation. It struck the now extended wing of the rising bird.
The bird struggled in the dirt for a moment before trying to lift again and collapsing from the pain or the insufficient strength in its wounded wing. The boy rose and was on the creature before it could regather. Brooke rocked and Sugar did not stir.
The boy took the small head of the bird between his thumb and forefinger and held its body in the crook of his opposite arm. He angled the neck of the bird in an attempt to snap it but instead the bones seemed to slip and the pressure between his fingers cracked something in the skull of the creature instead, which sent it twitching and spinning back to the dirt. Brooke stirred then, kicking one boot out and reaching his palm to his face. The boy did not want help but wanted instead to know if he could eat on his own, if he had learned something and what he had in him and what he did not. He felt embarrassed to have dropped the bird and to have it struggling so pathetically there before him. Its wing wounded, its skull partially caved in or cracked like the shell of an egg, it seemed to be trying to gather itself up and again make an attempt at flight. After a few quiet steps he was back on the crippled creature and gripping its body and struggling wings with one hand while pinching the base of its skull between his thumb and forefinger, once again. But the neck was soft ; it only bent and slipped when he angled to break it.
“Stop torturing it,” said Sugar. He was on his knees and rolling one of the stained blankets he’d gained from yesterday’s piles.
“I’m not,” said the boy. The bird’s visible eye was wide and still, calm-seeming. Matter-of-factly, it watched the boy, the woods, the dirt, as the creature writhed and pumped its body toward escape. The boy applied his palm and full grip to the bird’s head, shutting out the light. He wrenched the handful in a small circle away from his own body. The neck did not snap, but grated and ground like dirt in a blanket before the bird set to convulsing and the boy lost its body again. It pumped against the dirt and sent up rings of dust into the sunlight angling at their camp. The boy set himself before it and wiped the sweat from his brow and was nearly set to cry before Sugar approached and cut the neck of the bird in a circle until the head fell back into the dust and stained where it came to rest. He tossed the body into the woods and went back to his blanket and the bundles he would tie it to.
“You had a knife,” said the boy. “I didn’t have a knife.”
“I told you to stop torturing it,” said Sugar.
“But I didn’t have a knife,” said the boy. “You did and that’s what made it easy.”
“Why were you pitted against a bird ?” said Sugar.
The boy had moved toward the woods now, in the direction of the bird’s abandoned body.
“It was after our meat,” said the boy.
“It couldn’t have taken much,” said Sugar.
He was watching the boy now, who was circling the base of tree after tree for the bird’s body and coming up with nothing.
“You won’t find it like that,” said Sugar, but the boy did not let up.
“Imagine my throw,” said Sugar. “Trace the line extending from me exactly as you imagine it. Don’t bother yourself with where it might have gone. Picture exactly where it went and start there.”
“I can’t remember your throw,” said the boy, without looking up, moving in circles around the base of each tree, one after the other.
“Don’t remember it, just picture it. Just picture it in your head and follow that picture exactly.”
Finally, the boy stopped and walked back to stand near Sugar, who was still and watching the boy with his hands at his sides.
“Is this where we were ?”
Sugar did not respond.
The boy stood a moment then walked a hard line toward the woods.
“It’s here,” he said, lifting the headless carcass of a small black bird.
“See ?” said Sugar.
“There’s really no meat on it,” said the boy.
“I know,” said Sugar.
The boy let the bird fall.
“You don’t want it ?” said Sugar.
“I just wanted to get it and have that be easy,” said the boy.
“You didn’t have to try hard to find it,” said Sugar.
“You told me where it was,” said the boy.
Sugar shook his head.
Brooke was up then and packed in no time at all. He paused at the bird’s head and rolled it with the toe of his boot. Sugar was smoking against a tree with his bundle and blanket at his feet and the boy was squatted nearby, drawing in the dirt with a fingertip.
“Whatever it was that got you, got you good,” said Brooke. “You’re more horse than boy.”
The boy looked at
his waist, his smooth hands.
“What do you mean ?”
“Nothing bad,” said Brooke. “I loved my horse.”
“Where’s your horse now ?” said the boy.
Brooke shrugged. “Died,” he said.
“I’m sorry,” said the boy.
Sugar stubbed his cigarette.
“I think I’d like to learn more about you,” said Brooke.
“I told you,” said the boy, “I don’t know any more than you.” He itched the back of his skull, ran the length of a finger along the lobe of his ear.
“Yes, you did,” said Brooke. “But if we were to know someone who might know something, you wouldn’t be opposed to us asking around about you, right ?”
“Who do you know ?” said the boy.
“Just someone who knows things,” said Brooke. He pulled an edge of meat from one of the bundles and cut its corner loose with the tip of the curving knife.
The boy nodded and Brooke cut him a piece too.
“We’re killing time anyway,” said Brooke, “and trying to keep ourselves moving. We might as well head toward him, and see what he might be able to bring to bear on the situation.”
Sugar was bent at the waist, a hand on either knee, gulping air and holding his eyelids shut while Brooke went on.
“And maybe he knows something about the way the boy looks or where he might have come from, something to help us along. It seems as good a plan as any.”
The convulsions took Sugar again and he loosed another smatter of acid and mucous onto the slick dirt before him.
“I don’t care,” Sugar managed. “Just leave me.”
“We’re going,” said Brooke, standing at the boy who was still crouched and fingering the dirt. “We’re going to our friend and he’ll tell us all about you.”
“Okay,” said the boy. Then, “What’s wrong with him ?” gesturing at Sugar.
“Stomach,” said Brooke. “I don’t know. Maybe the meat. Or it’s just early and he’s unsettled.”
The sun was nearly raised and the woods were coming to bloom around them. A handful of birds in the trees just above were mocking the boy or mourning their dead or crying out for something, there was no knowing what. The boy threw a small rock to scatter them, but only one lifted before settling back as it had been.
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