Moonlight bathed the ground like fine silk, casting itself over the boy, illuminating him as an apparition in the dark. The boy stood on the edge of a plateau gazing below. His campfire cut through the darkness as a knife through flesh exposing no more secrets than boulders and shrubs scattered buckshot. The tip of his cigarette burned hot and cast a deep orange upon his face, leaving glints of red reflecting in his iris. He flicked ash from his cigarette with a dirt stained forefinger and it floated to the ground where he descended upon it with his bootheel, grinding it into ancient dirt. He could see the path before him no more than the fire light would allow. He would leave as soon as the first colors touched the sky to the east and not stop until those same colors faded to the west and took with it warmth and brought the dark and out came the creatures of the night hunched, low to the ground, scurrying and casting glances over shoulders and to the sky.
The boy sat down and spread his legs out, spit into the fire where it sizzled and sent sparks like fireflies escaping into the night. To his right lay a poncho which he clawed at and draped around his shoulders, its frayed ends so aged and weathered no remnants of its former colors remained. It, nor the fire did much to stop the bite of cold getting through like frozen fingers exploring his torso. The tip of his cigarette was darkened and he crushed it in his hand and threw the rest into the fire which consumed it quickly and left nothing. The boy put another branch on the fire, gathered a few more, piled them haphazardly next to his bedroll and lay down.
The fire cast its light and shadows spread around. The dark between the totem of sticks danced and moved like hot oil spilled on the ground. He watched the shadow’s hypnotic movements and then rolled over and looked at the sky where he saw new totems that were ancient and amorphous and meaningless. A million pinpricks of white light etched upon a black canvas, so many of which have passed and now all that remain are the ghosts of lights, fighting and pushing forward through the void until seen again. The boy closed his eyes and behind closed lids saw afterimages like fireflies which formed ghosts and he thought of them and then slept.
A branch cracked and the boy opened his eyes. A black hole sat six inches from his nose and behind it an old man stood looking down at him. Long white hair spilled from his skull and his face wrinkled and etched upon like the grooves in the ground worn away by running water after so much time. The two stared at each other, neither speaking nor moving. The boy propped himself up on an elbow and grunted, the man scooted backwards until his boots touched a stump by the blackened and burnt wood and grey ash of the fire and there he sat. The barrel of the rifle never faltered.
The boy now sat with his legs crossed under him, his small shoulders slowly rising and falling with each breath like the ebbing and flowing of the tide. He asked the man if he could roll a cigarette. The man nodded slightly, his white hair flowing forwards and back. The boy reached towards his bag and the man tucked the rifle to his shoulder. Inside the cracked and ancient leather the boy searched. A small bag of dark leaf and white papers sat next to a knife overcome with rust and blood, each dried and intermingled with one another so one could not tell the stains apart. The boy pulled out the tobacco and tossed his bag aside to the dirt.
Carefully he pinched the tobacco between his dirty fingers and dropped it into the paper and rolled and licked the side and struck a match on the heel of his boot and touched it to the end of the cigarette and it burned bright. The deep orange illuminating his face from below in maniacal and haunted ways. The man sat silently with the pure white light of the moon shining in his eyes and sending rays of light off his gun as he shifted on the stump. The man’s eyes glowed a bright blue in the moonlight and the brown of the boys looked black like a rat while it feeds on trash.
Finally the man spoke. His voice quiet and deep, his throat dry from days crossing the desert with little water and less food.
“You ready?” The boy stared back at the man and a thin smile stretched upon his face but never reaching his eyes.
“Suppose so.” Neither moved. The boy smoked his tobacco down to the tips of his fingers before tossing the burning ember forward into the dead fire. Quickly he slapped the palms of his hands against the ground, thick dust flew and the boy was on his feet with the dust around him like dark smoke. The man started and stood and pointed his gun and told him to stop.
“I ain’t gonna do nothing. Legs got sore is all sitting like that.” He pointed a finger at the man. “It appears you got me at a disadvantage.” The boy shrugged and leaned to the left and spat into the dirt. He turned around, leaving deep cuts in the ground from his bootheels and slowly walked to the edge of the plateau where he stood and looked out into the vast and dark land below. The man followed behind with the gun following the boys every move like a magnet drawn north.
“You suppose I should be afraid?”
“I suppose you be what you be.”
“And what is that?”
“You tell me.” The boy sat silent for a moment, his hand resting carefully under his chin as if contemplating a serious question.
“I dunno, I never knew.”
“Well.” The old man’s eyes blazed bright blue like the ocean and behind those eyes swam said ocean but never spilled and never wavered.
“If you don’t know what I am and I don’t know what I am then why are you standing there and me here?”
“I never said that.”
“Said what?”
“That I didn’t know, I never said that.”
“So you know?”
“I gots ideas as to what you is.” The boy turned and stared at him unblinkingly, his eyes wide and probing. He tilted his head back and looked up into the sky, the moonlight casting ghostly shadows beneath him and illuminating a phantom above ground.
“Enlighten me.” The boy tells the man.
“I’m on the right end of the gun and you on the wrong. That should be enlightenment enough.”
“You think it as simple as who stands on which end of the gun?” The boy spat into the dirt before the man, an abstract wet mark among the ash and dirt. “You’re a damn fool if you think that.”
“I know what kind of man I am and I know what kind of…” The man grew silent. The world around them grew silent as if it took a deep breath and was holding it, waiting for something to release. A mouse scurried by, weaving through camp and the boy reached for it instinctively and withdrew his hand empty and tucked it in his front pocket. “…I know what you is is all I’ll say.”
“Well I don’t feel enlightened.”
“I don’t reckon you is Christian now, but if you is…” The boy shrugs. “Well if you is then God is where you’ll find your enlightenment from and not me.”
“You reckon God will take me?”
“I reckon he’ll hear your case when you see him.” The smile formed again on the boy’s face and pulled his skin tight and the moonlight shone bright and the boy looked no more than a skeleton held together by paper thin skin.
“Yeah.”
“You got anything else need be said? Get right with God if you must.” The boy stood silent for a few moments before shaking his head. The man raised his rifle and the click of the hammer pulled back drifted across the land and sent the nocturnal creatures skittering and hiding before fading and then all that was left was silence once more. The boy held up a finger before himself and the man waited.
“I can shows you where I put her.” The gun lowered slightly as if grown too heavy for the man to carry any longer, the ocean behind his blue eyes swam once again and the boy had black eyes and smiled. He held his arms outward and palms up and let them fall to his side and said nothing.
“You lying?”
“I’m a lot of things but I ain’t no liar.”
“I’ve known a man to extend his time with tales before he swings. They end up swinging anyways. You understand?”
“Yeah.”
“Where she at?” The boy turned slightly and faced west and jutted his chin forward in the direction. The man held the gun firmly but low and looked west. “How far?”
“Ain’t far. Could reach it by morning. If’n we leave now that is.” The moon stood inches above the mountains and soon the sun would make itself known and the light will eat the dark and the shadows will run from it and the animals of the night will hide and God’s creatures will walk on the earth for their time. The man gestures with his gun.
“Go on then, walk.”
“Can I get my bag?”
“You won’t need it.”
“Yeah.”
They set off walking toe to heel. The glint of moon off the gun a small light in the vast dark. The boy’s boots fell silently in the dirt and behind him heavy boots fell and enveloped the small prints made ahead. Small scattering of exoskeletal creatures fled and hid under rocks and brush and deadfalls. A small snake slithered in front of the boy, stopping and raising its head and looking and its black eyes met the boy’s black eyes and for a moment they stood still and looked at one another and finally the man bumped the rifle into the back of the boy and they walked again. The snake twisted away and the glint of the moon caught it before it disappeared under a rock blackened by the night. Glowing eyes watched the two walking, invading a space not meant for them.
The moon grew closer to the earth and the first hints of color touched the sky to the east. They approached a small man made path leading off the edge of the hill they’d been traversing and the boy took it. The man followed. Slowly they descended. Halfway down the trail they came to a rockfall obstructing the path and the man pointed with his gun upward and the boy scrambled up and stood at the top of the boulders.
“You go on and stand back now. I still got this here gun and you try nothing funny and I’ll put a hole in you, no two ways about it.” The boy moved to the other side of the boulder while the man climbed. He slung the gun around his shoulder, the strap cutting into his back as he struggled up the rocks. Rough hands gripped rough rocks and tore small pieces of skin off as he grunted upward. His eyes always looking up and seeing nothing but the slowly brightening sky. The man mantled to the top, his gun unslinging and hitting the rock beneath and making a strange hollow sound in the silence. He grabbed the gun and stood and re~aimed it. The boy stood and stared at the man with dark inquisitive eyes the way a wolf watched a small rabbit from the shadows. The man felt cold.
“Go on. When you get down head forward thirty paces and wait.” The boy descended the other side and walked forward and turned and stood and waited. He watched the man struggle down the boulders, him always casting wide eyes towards the boy and the boy never moving. The man sucked in air, coughed, spit into the dirt and headed forward.
“How much further?”
“Not far.”
The pale blue of the sky bled further west like spilt paint and the night retreated and still the two walked. The boy pursed his lips and started to whistle and the man felt cold again.
“Cut that noise out.” The boy continued to whistle. “I said stop. Now.”
“Just a song I member my ma use to sing to me when I was no older than five. Ain’t hurting no one.”
“Shut up I ain’t gonna tell ye again.”
“What’s the bother?” The man stopped walking and the boy stopped momentarily later at the sudden silence of footfall. The boy turned and faced the man and the ocean in the man’s eyes swirled deep.
“Don’t you hum that song no more.”
“Why’s that?”
“You know why.” The boy smiled and the man raised the gun.
“But I like that song. Reminds me of my ma.”
“You don’t need no reminder of your ma.” The man’s voice deep and hollow.
“Sometimes it’s good to remember.” The boy pursed his lips and whistled a few notes and stopped and smiled once more, his smile never touching his eyes.
“I knew’d you was rotten from the moment you was birthed.”
“How?”
“How what?’
“How’d you know?”
“There ain’t nothing behind them eyes now and there weren’t nothing behind them then neither.” The boy’s smile fell from his face and what remained was a clay mask of a human, a death mask and the man felt cold once more. The man’s breath shuddered. “Ye had no cause to hurt her.”
“Not any cause you’d agree with.”
“It ain’t about agreeing or disagreeing it’s about what cause you had to hurt her and you had none.”
“None you agree with.”
“Then shine a light on it.”
“Enlighten you?”
“Yes.” The boy was quiet for a long time. The deep red of the sun cast its morning light over the land and spread like wildfires. A small breeze blew and the black and white hair whipped on their heads and dust covered their pants and boots and still the sun rose and the eyes that once watched them late into the night now hid and slept and what once hid and slept now awake and hungry ventured out into the world.
“You asked me ‘bout God. If I was Christian or if’n I wasn’t. You know I think I have lots in common with God. He kills and lets us kill. Ain’t nothing scarier than a religious man on the shooting end of the gun. I see the lie in you, that’s all. Why can he kill but I can’t? There ain’t no morality in his book or his words, none of it’s real. I put myself in his shoes, to see how it was to be God.” They stood silently, the man watching the boy as a man would watch a bug crawling along the ground.
“I suppose a bad answer is better than no answer.”
“Bad ‘cording to you.”
“How much further now.” The boy inhaled deeply and looked down at his boots. He shuffled his feet and in the silence the sound dug its way deep into the man and he hated it. Finally the boy looked up and his black eyes gleamed and his hollow face shone bright and his smile touched every part of him.
“I lied.”
“What?”
“I lied I said.”
“About what?”
“She ain’t this way. She ain’t nowheres near here. I lied.” The boy let out a small laugh that sounded of hyenas cackling in the dark and the man raised the gun once more and the boy closed his eyes.
The rifle shot echoed through the land and a group of vultures took flight and started to circle overhead. The ocean behind the man’s eyes spilled over and ran freely down his weathered cheeks and cut through the dust like rain across a dirty window. He leaned over and gripped the boy under both his arm pits and drug him to the boulders and propped him up, running his thumbs over the boy’s eyelids and closing them. Tears fell and wetted the boy’s shirt.
The boy sat slumped, his head tilted forward like he was fast asleep under a tree on a hot day, a river of red flowed from his forehead and down his face and onto his chest. The man looked at him for a moment, wiped his eyes with the backs of his hands, and re~slung the rifle over his shoulder. A black snake slithered out from under a rock and made its way onto the legs of the boy and coiled itself up in the boy’s lap which now grew sticky with blood. An oily black serpent resting in the boy’s lap. It glided up the boy’s left arm and curled its ropy body around his face and jaw and there it rested, like a noose around his neck. The snake lifted its head and pointed black and soulless eyes towards the man. Its forked tongue searched the air and retreated back into its fanged mouth. They watched each other in the silence as the vultures circled overhead and then the man turned around and walked into the desert.
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