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“No, fat. He was fat, Sugar.”

  “Okay. And he was in the tiny man’s employ. So he’s keeping the town slim and fattening up his men. An army of giants to protect a child.”

  “I miss Henry.”

  “We’ll find a new Henry.”

  “Henry was special.”

  “Henry was a horse.”

  “He was a special horse, Sugar.”

  “You’re the only one who lost a horse ?”

  “I miss Buck too.”

  “Well, I miss Buck and Henry too.”

  They were silent then. Sugar tilted his body as if to suggest he was listening for the broke-nosed thug. Brooke opened his eyes and stared into the brilliant dark. He pressed his fingers into the dirt on either side of him and felt the stones and teeth buried there.

  “How old are we, Brooke ?”

  “Why would I know that ?”

  “You seem to know so much about our life and how we should live it. I thought you could answer one honest question.”

  “We’ll get two new horses. They will be stronger and livelier than the old ones.”

  “Henry and Buck.”

  “Than Henry and Buck, yes, and they’ll serve us well and we’ll love them as we loved Henry and Buck, and then they’ll die and we’ll get more horses. And on and on, Sugar. Now sleep.”

  Brooke’s hand was occupied by a foreign object. He felt it before opening his eyes to greet the day, which had rose up around them like a warm fog. Here they were, back in the woods again and holding one another as they had always done on cold nights. But Sugar felt different to him that morning. Smaller, thinner. Cleaner. Brooke felt a bone protruding, sharper than those he knew to be Sugar’s. He spoke a few casual sounds and received no answer and opened his eyes to reveal a young boy, hardly a hair on his body, sleeping between Brooke and his brother as heavily as a dead horse.

  “Sugar.”

  His brother did not stir.

  “Sugar, there’s a boy here.”

  Sugar rolled slightly but did not rise.

  “Sugar,” said Brooke, and this time the boy was rocked casually in place before opening his eyes to discover the two men at his flank.

  “Who are you ?” said the boy.

  “I’d like to ask the same question, and add a ‘How did you get here and between us ?’” said Brooke. He rose and dusted himself, examined the woods around them for a set of eyes or ears or a broken nose. The woods were silent but for the small birds plunging into the pine needles gathered at the base of each enormous tree. They were utterly alone, the two brothers and their stranger.

  “I don’t know,” said the boy. He said it plainly and without fright. He seemed as comfortable as the leaves around them.

  “You don’t know which ?” said Brooke. He kicked Sugar, finally, to wake him.

  “It’s horse shit,” said Sugar, unsteadily, his eyes still shut.

  “It’s an escape,” said Brooke. “You’re hiding out ?”

  Again, the boy said, “I don’t know.”

  “Well,” said Sugar, “who are you ?” He was up finally, watching the boy, puzzling out how slow he might actually be, or how capable a liar.

  “Who are you ?” said the boy. He put his hands to his face, rubbed, coughed. He brought his hands down and examined the two men. “You’re going to hurt me ?”

  “Let’s assume no one is going to hurt anyone,” said Brooke. “I’m Brooke. This is my brother Sugar. We’re killers by trade and we’re hiding in the woods after a rout of sorts.”

  “You’re…”

  “Killers,” said Sugar, “hiding out.” He was waking up, pacing again and looking between the trees.

  The boy seemed weak, a little slow. Incapable of harm, or at least uninterested.

  “Who… who did you kill ?”

  “Which time ?” said Sugar.

  “Stop it, Sugar.” Brooke poured something black from a leather pouch into a tin cup. He handed it to the boy, “My brother is trying to scare you.”

  “Why ?” asked the boy.

  “Because you’re wrong not to be frightened of two men sleeping in the woods,” said Sugar. “Especially these two men.”

  “When you say you don’t know where you came from or who you are,” said Brooke, “what exactly do you mean ? Where were you yesterday ? Where were you an hour ago ?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Everyone comes from somewhere,” said Sugar. “Where are your clothes ? What have you got in your pockets ?”

  “I don’t have anything,” said the boy. He was nude and empty-handed. There was nothing in the piles about them that did not belong to Sugar and Brooke, that they had not bedded down with the night before. The boy had nothing to him but his person.

  “There’s meat on your bones,” said Sugar. He cracked the bones in his fingers, one by one, then his neck and back. He rose and stood before the boy. “You’ve eaten recently enough. You don’t look ill or wounded.”

  The boy nodded slowly. “I don’t feel ill or wounded.”

  “Hm,” said Sugar. He leaned forward slightly and set his hand to his waist. He turned and walked into the woods around them and after a few moments his figure disappeared into the mist. They could hear him crushing leaves and cracking twigs with his boots. They could hear faintly the sound of his breathing.

  “What’s he doing ?” said the boy. “Where’s he gone ?”

  “Don’t mind it,” said Brooke.

  “Are you going to hurt me ?”

  “I don’t think so,” said Brooke. “If you tell us why you’re here. If you can tell us why we shouldn’t. You can tell the truth, boy. Are you a scout ? A young gunslinger trying an impoverished angle ? Did you grow up on a perfectly normal farm with perfectly simple parents who were very casual people and did not bother much with towns or neighbors ? Were you looking to get out and see the world ? Or did your people torture you and send you running into the night ?”

  “I haven’t done anything,” said the boy. He was crying without whimpering or whining, letting the tears roll from the corners of his eyes in crooked lines down to his mouth. “What’s he doing ?”

  “Don’t worry about him,” said Brooke.

  “Where’s he gone ?”

  “He’s ill,” said Brooke. “We’re not doctors. We don’t like them. It will stop eventually.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Neither do I. He’s my brother. It’s always been this way.”

  “What’s your name ?”

  “Brooke. Now yours.”

  The boy examined his palms.

  “I don’t know,” said the boy. “I don’t know anything.”

  “Where were you before ?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “What do you remember ?”

  “What do you mean ?”

  “What do you remember about where you were before ? What do you picture in your head when you think about elsewhere ?”

  “I picture you and… Sugar ?”

  “Sugar.”

  “You and Sugar. That’s all I know. And some voices.”

  “What are they saying ?”

  “I can’t tell. It’s just sounds. From a distance.”

  “You don’t remember anything else ?”

  The boy shook his head.

  “Your mother ? Your father ? What you had for breakfast yesterday ?”

  The boy was silent a moment. He examined his palms.

  “Can I… can I see your hands ?” said the boy.

  “Where are these words coming from then ? What you’re saying ? Who taught you to speak and speak like us ?”

  The boy shrugged. He was crying again.

  Brooke put out his palms. They were caked in dirt, a little blood in the deeper wrinkles, which had run from a small crack in the skin between his knuckles. The boy slid his hands under his legs, palms down and pressing into the dirt.

  Sugar approached.

  “What’d you get ?” said Brooke.

>   “What business is it of yours ?”

  “Are you sick ?” said the boy.

  “No,” said Sugar.

  “Are you hurt ?”

  “You’re a curious little egg, aren’t you ? We’re done with this. You need to get along anyhow. Back to nowhere.”

  “Sugar,” said Brooke.

  “And if someone comes looking for us tonight, tomorrow, or any day after this, for that matter,” Sugar leaned in, “we’re going to know where he came from. Whether or not you actually said something, we’ve got to act on what we know, pursue reason and statistical likelihood above all else — so we’re going to find you and the people who matter most to you. Did we explain what it is we do for a living, son ? Did we make it clear enough ? We’ll go right to work on you, and anyone who knows your name.”

  “Sugar,” said Brooke.

  “We’ll erase you. Any trace of you.”

  “Sugar,” said Brooke.

  The boy was crying openly, his palms still buried beneath his thighs. He was flexing his fingers and digging into the leaves beneath him, loosing small rocks and the end of a buried twig.

  “I’m telling the truth,” said Sugar.

  “You’ve scared him, Sugar. Now leave him alone,” said Brooke.

  Finally the boy brought his hands to his face, tried to turn away from them. Sugar snapped him up by the wrists and held out his arms as if the boy were pleading. The boy stared up at him but said nothing.

  “Sugar, let him go,” said Brooke, and Sugar held out the boy’s palms to Brooke and pointed with his chin. The palms were blank, staring back at them. Smooth as stones.

  “Have you ever caught anything before ?” said Brooke.

  The boy was on his belly at Brooke’s side and they were watching two deer hoof their way crosswise up a steep and sudden incline only a mile or so from where the men had been camped that morning.

  “I don’t know,” said the boy.

  “Let’s say you haven’t,” said Brooke. “You’re going to feel a certain kind of pride, a sense of accomplishment. But you’re also going to feel uneasy with that, as if there’s something wrong with it. There isn’t. It’s as natural as breathing. That guilt is all fear, anyway. Fear that one day you’re going to be on the receiving end of a blow, and the sudden wish that no one had to do that kind of thing ever. You can rid yourself of all that if you just accept what’s coming to you in the general sense, and work to prevent it in the immediate sense. No matter what you let live you’re going to die and it’s just as likely it will be of a rock falling on your head or getting a bad cough as it is that someone will decide they want you gone. So accept it now and move on.”

  “Okay,” said the boy.

  “Are you ready ?” said Brooke.

  “I think so,” said the boy.

  “We’ll wait then,” said Brooke.

  The deer worked their way up the steep incline without struggle. As they neared the top, the boy said, “I don’t think your brother likes me.”

  “He doesn’t trust you,” said Brooke.

  “Why ?”

  “He’s no reason to.”

  “Okay,” said the boy.

  Brooke watched him a moment. Then the boy said, “I’m ready,” and they rose up and loosed their stones from their slings.

  The boy missed entirely, but Brooke’s stone made contact with the larger of the two and when the creature stumbled, stunned, a few feet down the incline, Brooke took off. He collapsed onto the stunned animal, gripped its jaw, its shoulder, twisted and snapped some hidden, necessary part. Everything about the deer went still, then it kicked, shuttered, and went still again.

  “We’ll eat,” said Brooke.

  “I won’t eat it,” said the boy.

  Brooke was sawing the skin from the kill, its legs spread and tied to two separate trees. Brooke shrugged and placed the knife beneath a long length of flesh.

  “Then you’ll die,” said Brooke.

  That night they heard men on the road. Voices in the dark. The boy woke first. He trembled and rubbed his body beneath the shirt Brooke had given him, which the boy hadn’t put on, but chose instead to lay over himself as a blanket.

  He heard laughter from several men and a single struggling voice. Grunting and squealing just a little, breathing in spurts.

  “I think someone’s found us,” said the boy.

  Brooke and Sugar did not stir.

  “Brooke,” said the boy. “Sugar. I think someone’s — ”

  And Brooke was up. He was quiet, moving, sifting through his bag. His hand withdrew clutching a piece of metal that shone silver in the moonlight. Brooke disappeared then, into the trees. Sugar, the boy suddenly noticed, had vanished too.

  As the voices approached, the boy scrambled toward a large dark tree and crouched down on the side opposite their apparent approach.

  A limping body scrambled into their campsite, knocking their empty cans with its feet and tripping into the bundles of their supplies. It struggled to lift itself with two skinny arms but four men were suddenly upon it. They dragged it from amongst the supplies and blankets, out to an open spot of grass, faintly lit from the light above. There, they proceeded to kick and strike at the body without a word between them. One stepped back to grab a slick bundle of deer meat from the food pile and bring it down upon the struggling body with something like a laugh, cough, or wheeze. The bundle burst and the boy could hear the meat spilling out and into the grass, then their kicking and stepping on it as they moved about.

  “It’s meat,” said a voice.

  “Did we kill him ?” said another.

  “It’s animal meat,” said a third.

  “Is he dead then ?”

  The body was no longer struggling, but the boy could make out the chest’s movement from several feet away. It breathed like a man asleep, long, deep breaths punctuated by only a moment of stillness.

  “He’s not dead.”

  “It’s a campsite.”

  “Who’s here ?”

  “No one.”

  “The blankets are warm.”

  One man held Sugar’s blanket to his face, smelling and then rubbing it against his cheeks.

  “It’s a woman,” he said.

  “Let me,” said another voice, grabbing the blanket and pressing it to his face.

  “Where is she ?”

  “Got to be near.”

  The beaten man began to rise again, lifting himself on two skinny arms then pushing off from the dirt and setting out to run while bent at the waist, clutching his gut as the loose bits of deer fell from him and back into the grass.

  “He’s up,” said a voice, and pursued him.

  The one holding the blanket wrapped it around his waist and tied a knot.

  “It’s mine,” said a voice.

  “Get after him,” said the one with the blanket, and within moments, they set upon their pursued.

  They had him down again, pressed against the earth. This time, a knife was drawn. One of the shadows set to sawing at the howling body, and it writhed for a moment before settling back into the ground like a dark, dull piece of landscape.

  The boy was shivering, watching them remove pieces of their kill and set them in what must have been pockets or pouches he could not see. They disassembled their kill, much like Brooke had disassembled the deer — hungrily, without hesitation, but with pride.

  “Gather what food they have and whatever else is useful,” said a voice. “Count the blankets.”

  The three other men set upon the camp while their apparent commander continued to saw at the body before him.

  “Two blankets,” said a voice, “and tamped down earth evidencing a third body somewhere.”

  “Warm ?”

  “All warm.”

  “Women ?”

  “One woman and something small.”

  “A child.”

  “A family.”

  “They’re hiding then. Still here somewhere.”

  “Are you
still here ?” The voice was yelling, turning its way through the darkness.

  Something within the boy wanted to cry out. He curled his lips inward and held them together with his teeth. Something was working its way up and out of him. He felt out of control and desperate, as if he were about to die. If he made a sound, they would be upon him. If they stepped any more in his direction, they would feel his presence and be upon him. If they discovered him, no one would save him.

  “Hey,” yelled the voice. “You.”

  “Set their things into a pile and burn them. If they’re on the run, whatever it is they’re running from will appreciate the help.”

  The three men gathered Brooke and Sugar’s belongings into a pile. Onto the pile they poured something that occupied the boy’s nostrils and brought water to his eyes. The pile took flame and two of the men grabbed the carcass of their mutilated catch and dragged it behind the two other men, who were now making haste before them.

  Brooke and Sugar’s few belongings burned, and the boy released into a small pile at the base of the tree behind which he had been hiding. He breathed and breathed and breathed again, imagining the four men appearing suddenly again and gripping him by the hair and dragging him out, out into the darkness where he would vanish completely and be no more.

  Brooke and Sugar appeared then at his side and Sugar lifted him. They moved from the rough fire spilling out onto the grass and crackling throughout the woods. They walked and the boy shook. Soon the woods were blue with the oncoming sun and they were in a landscape that looked no different than what had come before, other than its absence of fire, its relative quiet and the new light born from between the branches of the trees.

  “They took our food,” said Brooke.

  “They were locusts,” said Sugar.

  “Are they coming back ?” said the boy.

  “Not on purpose, I imagine,” said Sugar.

  “I’d like to kill them,” said Brooke. “I’d like our things back.”

  “Our things are gone,” said Sugar. “We’ll acquire new things.”

  “Not our deer,” said Brooke.

  “Our deer is gone,” said Sugar.

  “They’ve got our bundles,” said Brooke.

  “Why did you hide ?” said the boy.

  “Why did you ?” said Sugar.