Skillful Death

by Ike Hamill

  “No.”

  “Then you can’t expect him to still inhabit these tattered rags.” Pemba waved at the mess of flesh the vultures pulled at.

  “No.”

  The two young men sat in silence and watched the birds tear and fight. They seemed to chase each other as much as they worked on the flesh. Dom glanced around and saw the many rocks stained with vulture dung and thought about all the people who must have shed their bodies here to feed the flock.

  “Who were the people in the robes?” Dom asked.

  “I’m the one who was sent to witness your task.”

  “But who were the others who stood with you? The others who followed me up here and watched me hack apart the corpse?”

  Pemba looked perplexed. “Dom, there was only me. You were here to work, I was here to witness.”

  “I saw others,” Dom said.

  Pemba didn’t reply for a long time, and then finally had a question. “These others: where did they go?”

  “I don’t know,” Dom said, shaking his head and pressing his hands to his face. “They disappeared while I wept. I thought they went back down the mountain.”

  Pemba nodded and looked over his shoulder, down the slope.

  “Are you ready to leave?” Pemba asked.

  “I suppose we should. I’d like to spend a night in my own bed for once,” Dom said.

  “Word was sent to Denpa’s oldest son. He’ll dispose of his father’s property. I don’t think you’ll have a place to stay there for long.”

  “Denpa had a son?”

  “Two. You didn’t know that?”

  “No. I always figured he was childless. Why did they move away?”

  “I don’t know. I suppose they moved away after their mother died.”

  Dom rose and walked forward to retrieve the maul. The vultures weren’t disturbed from their work. When he turned to walk back down the mountain, he half-expected that Pemba would be gone, disappeared like the other robed figures, but his friend still stood. Side by side, they descended the mountain.

  23 SCHOOL

  BREAKFAST SHOCKED CONSTANTINE. SASHA led him inside the house, where the boys walked across a proper wooden floor and scrubbed their hands with soap and warm water in a room with plaster walls and an enameled basin. Constantine sat in a chair and scratched his face as he swung his legs under a kitchen table draped with a decorative cloth. He’d seen these things through windows and behind curtains. He wasn’t prepared for how warm the fire felt at his side, how comforting the baking bread smelled, or how pretty Sasha’s mother would look in her lavender apron.

  Sasha’s mother put a plate in front of Constantine and then pulled his hood back from his head. This suit had a gray fur hood with floppy rabbit’s ears at the sides.

  “We don’t wear hats or hoods indoors,” Sasha’s mom whispered in Constantine’s ear, brushing his hair back with her hand. He blushed and smiled up at her as he sat on his hands and then returned his eyes to the food.

  They ate biscuits, and beans, and fried eggs, and crispy portions of pork. Constantine thought his stomach would burst as he mimicked Sasha and raised a cup of milk to his lips. He marveled at how much better milk tasted when it was cool.

  “You get moving, boy, or you’ll be late for school,” Sasha’s father said, as he banged through the door. Sweat dripped from his forehead and stained the armpits of his shirt. He pressed his mouth to his wife’s neck as he passed and took a seat at the table. No sooner had he sat then his wife put a plate of steaming food in front of him. He attacked his eggs with a biscuit and scooped the carnage into his mouth.

  Sasha finished fast and pushed back from the table.

  “Come on,” Sasha said, waving to Constantine.

  “Nonsense,” the father said. “He doesn’t go to school. His work is here. Now get moving.”

  “Yes, father,” Sasha said. He hung his head as he trotted to the hall for his book. Sasha passed through the kitchen again as he ran to, and then banged through, the door to the yard. Constantine watched him through the window as he ran to the road and caught up with a group of boys walking past.

  “Your room is unlocked, Connie,” Sasha’s father said. “Back to work.”

  Constantine pushed away from the table and nodded to Sasha’s mother, trying to remember a word to give thanks or show appreciation. His lips couldn’t find the word, so he backed out silently and walked to the barn. His stomach gurgled, protesting the unaccustomed meal.

  He found the room unlocked as promised, and sighed as he lifted the heavy skin into his lap. The treated edges of skin were even sturdier than the night before and he worked the hide with nimble fingers that knew their purpose. He watched out the window as his fingers wove and knotted. The old horses sometimes ambled across their paddock, but mostly stood head to tail so they could swish the flies away from each other’s face. One squirrel collected small sticks from the ground and carried them up to a nest high in the cedars. The old tomcat swished his tail and watched the squirrel. He was apparently too lazy to hunt something that wasn’t already trapped.

  The sun had risen halfway towards its peak before Constantine saw Sasha’s sister in the yard. She carried a bucket across the yard and then returned with it full of something a few moments later. Constantine watched her swirl her long skirt as she walked. He wondered why she wasn’t at school, like the other children. The girl paused at the kitchen door, and glanced towards Constantine’s window before she went inside.

  Constantine rose and set his snakeskin aside so he could dig through the furs stacked in the cedar chest. They were perfectly kept, supple and clean, but they weren’t the type of fur Constantine wanted for the shoulders of his new suit. In the chest he found bear, and stag, and mink, and some black and white fur. They were beautiful, but in his mind he imagined using gopher, or cat, or squirrel, or perhaps horse. Constantine gripped the flint knife in his fist and thought about the horses out in the yard. They would be simple to kill. They were so trusting that they walked right up. For that matter, he could probably get hold of the tomcat if he lured it close with some food. These people, Sasha’s people, kept these animals around. Would they be angry if Constantine killed one of them? Were they keeping them around for something special? The big horse, Baron, worked pulling the cart or carrying Sasha’s father, but what did the other animals do? Constantine decided to broach the subject with Sasha before he skinned one of the animals.

  He made good progress on his suit that day. The job captured his entire concentration, and he was surprised to find a tray of food sitting atop the anvil. Flies swarmed on the meat, but Constantine waved them away and crammed the food in his mouth as soon as he spotted it. A pack of boys wandered into the yard just as Constantine returned to his work. Sasha led the pack, walking with his chin high and pointing towards the barn. Sensing their approach, Constantine tucked his work away in the cedar chest and sat on top of it with his hand on his flint knife.

  The door swung open and four boys stood in the doorway. Sasha stood in front, and the small, black-haired boy with the broken eye—the one who’d been hit by Constantine’s rock—stood behind him. The last Constantine had seen of the boy was when he’d said, “I can’t. My eye will fall out.” He still wore a white bandage wrapped around his black hair, covering his eye.

  “He has to do all my chores, all the time,” Sasha said. “I even have him helping me make my suits.”

  “If I told my dad what he did, then he would be in jail,” the boy with the black hair said.

  “Shut up,” Sasha said. “Don’t talk about that.”

  “What did he do?” one of the taller boys from the back asked.

  “Nothing,” Sasha said. “But now he belongs to us, and he has to do all my chores, and he has to live out here in the barn.”

  “What’s his name?” the oldest boy asked.

  “He doesn’t have a name,” Sasha said. “He’s just a Forestling. He’s wild because he was raised by animals. He barely even ta
lks. I can make him do anything I want to because we own him. Say something, Forestling.”

  Constantine kept quiet, but only because he wasn’t sure what he was supposed to do.

  ♣ ♢ ♡ ♠

  Malcolm: I can’t believe you let him say those things to you. You never back down from a fight. You never let anyone disrespect you. Was the food and shelter that alluring?

  Constantine: The food and shelter meant nothing. I never had an issue feeding myself. I could have walked out of that barn and been fat from the land.

  Malcolm: Then if you were so self-sufficient, why would you let him say those things?

  Constantine: You misunderstand. I wasn’t ignoring the statements because I didn’t want to lose what I had. I was ignoring the statements because they didn’t mean anything to me. What’s pride? What’s self-worth? What’s ownership? These concepts held no meaning for me. There was only being. This boy was not attacking me, and regardless of his words, I could tell from their disposition that these boys were not going to attack me. If they had tried to take away my fur, or my knife, or my snakeskin, then I would have been angry. But angry about words? It would be years before I would understand why one would be angry about words. To this day, it seems like nothing but a liability to become angry about words and concepts. When I don’t let someone disrespect me, it’s not that I’m angry, it’s that I’m positioning myself to win.

  ♣ ♢ ♡ ♠

  “I said, say something, Forestling,” Sasha said.

  Constantine scanned the eyes of the four boys and finally understood that they wanted to hear him speak. “Eye fall out,” he said, pointing to the black-haired boy.

  The boy’s hand went protectively up to his bandaged eye and he glared at Sasha, but he didn’t say anything.

  “You stay here while I go play with my friends. You have more chores to do later, so you can stay here in the barn until then,” Sasha said. He closed the door and the boys reappeared out in the yard. They pulled branches from a cedar tree and turned the sticks into makeshift swords, so they could fight in the dooryard.

  Constantine retrieved his skin and worked the hide as he watched out the window. Sasha’s father returned and shooed the boys away, sending Sasha inside with a pointed finger.

  Constantine’s fingers hardened with his work. His eyes grew tired of focusing on the scales and the tiny fibers he would hold up in front of his face. He worked methodically from the head of the garment, down to the cuffs around the ankles. He constructed integrated boots with folded fasteners that would keep out moisture and thwart climbing ticks. Once a week, Sasha’s mother would demand he strip out of his fur suit so she could clean it while he washed up in the big metal tub in the house. Constantine scrubbed his body with a soft cloth and then submitted to a mandatory inspection, the result of which was invariably an order to return to the tub and wash a forgotten area.

  He also grew accustomed to his schedule of chores and rose automatically from his work when it was time to clean, or feed, or bundle hay to stack in the loft. He ate breakfast in the house with Sasha, but an afternoon and evening meal were delivered to him in the farrier’s room. Once a day, usually mid-morning, he would catch sight of Sasha’s sister and wonder why she was always sequestered in the house.

  The day he finished his suit, Sasha’s father seemed to know the moment it was done. He opened the door to the farrier’s room and set his pitchfork by the door.

  “Let me see your work, little Connie,” he said. He took the suit from the boy’s hands. Constantine didn’t want to let it go, but he relented under the powerful gaze of the tall man.

  “This is a fine suit. You should make the next one a little bigger, so a boy has a chance to grow into it. Sasha’s suit has shown no sign of wearing out, so we’ll have to find a smaller boy to take his old suit now that you’ve finished this one.”

  Constantine watched as Sasha’s father held the suit up to the window to see the near-seamless construction of the garment. The snakeskin flashed in the sunlight. The scales stretched horizontally across the chest and were integrated with red fox fur that blended into mink. Thick, tufted bear hide crowned the shoulders and swept gracefully into a hood capped with round bear ears. He’d used hides with thinner fur down the legs. He preferred less hair down the legs so that he wouldn’t pick up burrs and brambles. Brown deerskin leggings transitioned to soft leather boots.

  “This is the best one yet,” Sasha’s father said. “Are you sure it’s big enough for my son? He grows wider by the day.”

  Constantine had already started to figure out that Sasha’s father meant to take this suit from him, but this last question sealed his understanding. He flexed his fingers and willed his hand to stay in his lap. Grabbing for this suit would do no good. The man was easily stronger than him. Nor could he simply steal it from Sasha; he had no doubt that Sasha’s father could track him down and take back anything Constantine stole. What he immediately determined was that the only way he could keep a suit was to make the next one secretly. If they didn’t know about it, they wouldn’t know to take it from him. He wasn’t disappointed or deflated by this turn of events. He was glad. As he watched Sasha’s father fold the suit over his arm, he thought about all the mistakes he’d made when constructing it. He thought of all the things he would do differently on the next one, the one he’d be able to keep. His greedy mind turned to the best part of the snakeskin that he still possessed. He’d used it sparingly on the first suit.

  “Four more,” Sasha’s dad said, holding up his fingers to Constantine as he exited the farrier’s room.

  Constantine’s idea of budget had never been so taxed. When it came to food, he knew how to save enough for the evening so he wouldn’t have to hunt again until morning. When it came to fur, he used what he wanted, always knowing he could find more. But the snakeskin was of limited supply. His brain struggled to comprehend the remaining snakeskin divided amongst four suits. He stared at the folded skin and tried the puzzle it out.

  Math was a series of shapes. Four meant a square, or two pairs of sticks. Five looked like a square where someone had pulled the top into a point on the roof. It was the number of fingers on his hand. It was a person with their limbs spread and the head sticking out the top. Six were the sides of a honeycomb. Seven and eight were fuzzy ideas. Now he had to turn this remaining snakeskin into two pairs of sticks, or a square, so he could fashion four more suits. His brain swam with the problem.

  Once he spread the skin out on the floor, the solution became apparent. He could take the skin, fold it in half, and then in half again, and he would have four versions of his snake. With that picture locked in his head, he folded the snake into fourths, and then back flat again until he was convinced. Constantine smiled. The solution was only seconds old when the bottom of his logic fell out. He didn’t need four pieces of snake. If he wanted to make his own secret suit, he’d need five more pieces. Constantine clasped his hands to either side of his head, trying to rein in his panic. He set his jaw and decided to attack this new problem in a different way. He would take the best parts of the remaining skin and set those aside for his suit. Whatever was left, he would divide for the four suits to be delivered. With this issue solved, Constantine’s understanding of mathematics had begun.

  24 MOVED ON

  DOM ATTEMPTED TO STAY in his room built onto the back of Denpa’s house, even after Denpa’s son came to take over the property. Dom never met him. The man, old enough to be Dom’s father, didn’t address Dom or ask about his relationship with Denpa. One day, Dom returned home to find his blankets and meager possessions in a small pile on the street. Dom collected the artifacts and walked them across town to Pemba’s apartment. The landlady didn’t have any other rooms to rent, but she pointed Dom across the street to another house with an empty room. It took all of Dom’s money to secure two weeks of lodging and water.

  Dom stopped looking for plumbing work, and went to work with Pemba in the mine. He enjoyed the hard labor, and
dim light, and close walls, and regular pay. Pemba complained every second he was underground.

  They dug under the direction of a foreman who received instructions from the surface. Up there, well-dressed men claimed to know which direction to dig to find deposits of metal. Dom wondered at this process as he dug. He tried to imagine their techniques. The machines around him held no mystery. When he saw a machine, he always understood how it worked just from inspection. In contrast, the process of guessing after veins of metal seemed like magic.

  As the weather grew hotter, Dom spent much of his free time up at the lake, practicing his swimming. Each time, he would swim out to where the bottom dropped away and he would sink. He reached for the lake bottom with his feet and watched the world disappear into a circle of light. He was practicing for the dream, which he re-lived every night. The beginning of the dream was always the same. He walked across the water towards Tara. Then, regardless of how carefully he stepped, he plunged under the surface. But, as he got better at swimming, his dream-self got closer to reaching the surface before he woke.

  Dom never tried to strike up a conversation with his co-workers. Underground, amidst the hammering, loading, and hauling, conversation was impossible. People pointed and grunted instruction, or sometimes sang monotone songs which you could barely hear beneath the constant rumble of work.

  On the surface, during breaks or midday meals, the men shouted about their wives, or children, or girlfriends, or mistresses, if they were so lucky. Women were not allowed to work in the mines. Perhaps that’s why they were the frequent topic of conversation. Perhaps these men just used any excuse to talk about women. They shouted because after working in the mines, most of the men had significant hearing loss, and couldn’t read each other’s lips while they ate.