Haints Stay (6 page)

“Are you my brother ?”

Sugar cocked his head, examined Brooke, then nodded.

“In order to work with you I need to know everything you’re working
with,” said Brooke. “In order to be at your side I need to know what you are
thinking and reacting to. Otherwise…”

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

“There was nothing to tell ?” said Brooke.

“Nothing. And the boy seemed frightened.”

“I imagine it would be a frightening thing to hear. That’s all that was
said ?”

“I asked if he had people.”

“And ?”

“And I was told he does now.”

“Well,” said Brooke, “he did anyway.”

The horses had left them with nothing. They had borne down upon
them like a plague. The boy was gut stuck, bleeding out somewhere in the dark. The
two brothers would continue on through the woods and stop at the next town. Whatever
they could find. They would acquire horses and cooked food. They would find work and
get two beds in exchange. They would build from the ground. They would be spotted.
If anyone was looking for them, they would be found and approached within a few
days’ time, as they figured it.

The boy was being dragged in the dark and everything
was wet. His arms hurt, and his shoulders and elbows. He opened his eyes and the
stars above him stretched across the sky like lightning. His arms were above his
head and his legs were held up off the ground by something dark, only a few feet in
front of him. He could hear the croak of a wooden gear and a man’s cough.

“Brooke ?” said the boy, and everything stopped. The stars snapped back
into place. A hand came down upon his mouth and a stranger’s face materialized.
Black dirt articulated the cracks at its eyes.

“It’s awake,” said the face. “Is it hungry and cold ?”

The boy was cold but could not detect hunger, though he was uncertain of
when he last ate.

“No,” said the boy. He tried to sit up but his gut would not allow it. He
was overwhelmed with pain then. He clutched his stomach and found blood there and a
sensitivity to touch that made him squirm against the earth and fight the instinct
to bend back up and double over.

“It’s wounded,” said the face. “It’s bleeding.”

“Who are you ?” said the boy. “Are you the man from before ?”

“I have a voice,” said the face. “I have a body and a mind and a face.”
It smiled at the boy. The eyes were yellow. The teeth were few. The lips were
scabbed and bloody.

“Are you going to help me ?”

“It depends,” said the face. “Is it sick ?”

“I don’t think so,” said the boy. “I’m hurt.”

“When was it hurt ?” said the face, a few steps back now, circling to the
boy’s right side.

“I don’t know,” said the boy. “Not long ago.”

“How was it hurt ?” said the face.

“I don’t know,” said the boy.

“It was stabbed !” said the face.

“That’s right,” said the boy.

“In the gut,” said the face.

“It feels like that,” said the boy.

“So it could be foul and sick to eat,” said the face.

“What could ?” said the boy.

“Its gut,” said the face.

“Please don’t eat my gut,” said the boy.

“Won’t help,
please
. If I cook it long enough, will it still be
foul and sick to eat ?”

“If you cook me, they’ll come for me. They’ll see your fire.”

“They ?” said the face, unflinching, crowding the boy’s right ear with
its breath.

“The killers I ride with.”

“It rides nothing with no one,” said the face, “but bleeds in the dirt
until I find it and bring it home.”

The boy realized then that he could not lift his legs or lower them. They
were fastened to whatever dark object was before him. A cart or a wheelbarrow, he
couldn’t make it out in the dark. He tried again to sit up, but the pain pressed him
back down like a stone to the chest.

“It has nothing and no one and nowhere to go,” said the face. “It is like
a little mouse in the leaves.”

“I’m a bird,” said the boy.

“A little bird, yes, maybe, and I am a snake or a fish, and I am a lucky
one.”

The face vanished and the wood croaked once again and the boy was
dragging through the leaves as before. A rock passed under him, pulling his shirt up
and scratching a painful line from his hip to the center of his back.

The trees grew dense until the stars were gone and there
was nothing around him except the sounds of the cart and of his being dragged.

They were headed downhill ; the boy could feel the pull of gravity, their
slight increase in speed, and the ache in his gut as his weight pressed down upon
it.

“We’re home,” said the face, and a stone was slid open to reveal a kind
of darkness that has never seen light. It was textured, thick, and pulsing. The boy
lifted his arms to swing out at any approaching sounds, but nothing came. He
attempted to curl up again but the pain was more than he could bear. He curled his
hands into fists and imagined two stones. He pictured a rock breaking into the face,
and then the face and its body collapsing there and still forever. He pictured his
own body rising up and carrying itself back out into the night.

It was days before they found a town. Uneventful days, filled with
bitterness and loaded silence between them. The town was standard. Sugar and Brooke
found a bar and found it empty of patrons.

“We’re not heavy drinkers,” explained the bartender.

“What do you do ?” asked Sugar.

“We’re religious,” said the bartender, “mostly. And we like games. Or
most of us do. Every town has a few folks who keep to themselves.”

“What’s that mean, you like games ?”

“It’s just something most of us can agree on.”

“What kind of games ?”

“Can we have two house wines ?” said Brooke.

The glasses were set before them and filled. Then the
bartender explained, “Stick and ball games, some. Cards. We’re active.” He held
out his forearm to display his vascular build, as well as the scarring that ran from
elbow to wrist. “I’m a slider,” he said. “I know it’s not good for me, but I get
excited. I can’t help myself.” He drew a stool from behind the bar and set his foot
upon it. He cuffed his trousers to mid-calf and displayed the swollen ankle of his
right leg. It was purple and white, like a drowned man’s.

“That was a misstep that I fell into,” he explained. “Hard.”

“A committed player,” said Brooke. He raised his glass, first to the
bartender and then to his brother. Sugar did not raise his glass, but turned back to
the bartender and asked the name of the particular game that had cost him his
ankle.

“I’ll be back in fighting shape soon enough,” said the bartender.

Brooke drank, elbowed his brother, but Sugar kept his eyes on the
bartender.

“Do you rent rooms ?”

The bartender shook his head and pointed across the road.

“That’s there,” he said.

A building opposite the bar held roughly the same shape, though the porch
sagged slightly and the windows were dirty beyond being able to see into.

“How’s a place like yours stay open if no one in your town drinks ?” said
Brooke.

“Travelers, mainly,” he said. “And it’s not no one, but most.”

Brooke finished his drink and Sugar slid his full glass toward the
opposite edge of the bar.

“Won’t be needing it,” said Sugar.

“You’re sure ?” said the bartender.

Sugar nodded. “Consider us one of yours,” he said. “We’ll
be here a bit and I’d like to try on the life of an insider.”

The bartender chuffed, took up the wine glass, and tilted its edge toward
Brooke. Brooke waved his hand and rose from the stool beneath him.

“Excuse him,” he said, patting Sugar on the shoulder. “Without a proper
bed, he gets strange and over-serious. Why don’t you hold onto that drink. We’ll
head across the way and secure a room, then settle up once we’ve finished our first
round.”

“Of course,” said the bartender.

In the street, Brooke stopped Sugar with a slug to the gut. Bent over,
Sugar looked plaintively to his brother and shocked Brooke with the sudden
desperation in his eye. He collapsed to his knees, then onto his side in the dirt.
Brooke hovered over him.

“What’s got into you ?” said Brooke. “And where’s my brother ?”

Sugar watched the townsfolk leave their porches and enter their homes.
They could smell a fight, and the two strangers were more than likely armed.

“What aren’t you telling me ?” said Brooke. He loosed a kick into the
middle of Sugar’s back, which was curved and exposed from his position. Sugar bent
backward and set one hand to protect his spine while the other stayed at his gut,
holding it dearly.

“We can keep going on like this,” said Brooke, “in front of the clouds
and everyone. I can pound you all day and you know it. You’ve never set against me
in two lifetimes and come out on top and that’s just the facts of the situation.
Either you tell me what’s gotten into you or I break you open a bit and see if it
doesn’t come sliding out.”

“I’m carrying something,” said Sugar.

“Go on.” Brooke tapped his heel in the dirt to loose a clump of wet
grass, the last bit of the woods still clinging to them.

“I was told I’ve got something inside me,” said Sugar.

Brooke nodded.

“We can get it out,” he said.

“I was told not to get it out,” said Sugar. “I was told explicitly not
to.” He was not looking at his brother. He was staring down the lane to where the
rowed storefronts and home fronts angled toward one another and vanished into the
light. “It felt like a warning.”

“We’ll get it out,” said Brooke. “Everything will be as it always has
been. Now get up.”

Slowly, Sugar lifted himself, his eyes still locked on the horizon.

Brooke bent to help Sugar and Sugar leaned into the hands that found
purchase at the moist pits of each arm.

“You’ll be okay,” said Brooke. “I’ve got you.”

Bird woke when his wing broke. It had been a steady fall, a
straight for the canyons dive, and only some faint part of him knew that it wasn’t
real, that he would wake and be free of the panic that was riding him, rushing his
breath and heartbeat and making him sweat. But then the pain in his wing shot
through him and he was in complete darkness again. The daylight and the vast
horizons and the deep canyons carved by a steady stream of blue water and all the
lush trees, it all vanished and he could see nothing. Only darkness. He could only
hear the soft sound of something tearing, and could feel on some basic level that it
was the skin of his right forearm. Something sharp was drawing
a
shallow cut and working the skin loose, and he was tied and broken and without
recourse.

He screamed. Nothing about the situation changed. He pleaded into the
darkness and the same held true. He swung his left arm and struggled with his right,
which seemed pinned or fastened in place and would not budge. His flailing left arm
found no company.

What was happening to him continued to happen until he was out of tears
and collapsing back into a dream of sawdust and pine needles and wolves gathering at
the trunks of each and every tree.

The keeper of the inn was an old maid of the tobacco chewing kind.
She spit what she could into a brass pot near the ledger, and the rest hung at her
chin between a stray hair and a scar, thick and marbled like lard.

“I’m Brooke,” said Brooke, “and this is Sugar.”

“Twice the fee for two,” she said.

“Same as two rooms ?” said Brooke.

“Same,” she said.

“That doesn’t seem exactly fair,” said Brooke.

“Maybe it isn’t,” she said. She was even in pitch and unmoving, perched
on a stool behind the counter and shifting only to bring the brass pot a few inches
from her lip and let loose what was filling the basin of her mouth.

“I’ll be straight with you,” said Brooke, “and tell you that we were
hoping we might be able to owe you some work or a favor of some kind, in exchange
for a room. We’ve been in the woods for weeks now.”

“Months,” said Sugar.

“Months,” said Brooke. “We’re hard workers and we can
commit ourselves to just about any task.”

“That your wife ?” said the keeper of the inn.

“My brother,” said Brooke.

Sugar removed their only weapon — a small blade he’d sheathed in the
front leather of his half-inch-thick belt. He placed it on the counter and let his
hands fall to his side.

“How about a challenge ?” said Brooke, “if a favor won’t suit you.”

The old woman stared back at him, unflinching, circling her jaw.

“From behind the counter, which of the two of you can get closer to my
body without piercing me from across the room.” Brooke took several steps to place
himself against the far wall.

“You strike me, you lose,” he said. “You get closer than my brother
without doing so, and we’ll come back when we’ve got some money.”