Haints Stay (4 page)

“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.

“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.

“Don’t,” said Sugar. “It’s annoying.”

He wiped his mouth with his sleeve and kicked some of the dust at his
feet onto the mucous and stomach acid he’d abandoned there.

“You insist you have no name ?” said Sugar.

The boy shrugged, shook his head.

“Then we’ll call you Bird,” said Sugar.

“I don’t like it,” said the boy.

“It suits him,” said Brooke, nodding to Sugar.

“But I don’t like it,” said the boy.

“Bird for now,” said Brooke.

“Bird until we find out something different,” said Sugar.

“So we’re going ?” said Brooke.

“We’ll go,” said Sugar.

They left.

They had little to carry, the bundles of decaying meat and a few stained
blankets. They moved quickly and quietly and saw little else throughout the day,
other than birds and a few salaman
ders. Bird could swear the birds
were following them, but Sugar assured him it was only his conscience, his
self-involvement.

“You’re imagining what’s happening out there’s got anything to do with
you,” said Sugar. “It doesn’t.”

“But if someone hurt Brooke you’d chase them down,” said Bird.
“Because.”

“I would,” said Sugar.

“So what’s to say the birds aren’t doing that ?”

“Even if they are, it’s still got nothing to do with you really. It’s out
of your hands, and they’re no risk to you.”

“But I know why they’re doing it, and it’s me is why they’re doing
it.”