Well I reckon they’ve been trying to clean up the mess I’ve made about poor old Monica. It’s making these fellers ask questions that are hard to answer. There’s some stuff I’m just not too excited to talk about. Personal things. I don’t know why I got to share it with everybody.

But the way things are looking now, I ain’t got much personal left. Some of the fellers who talk at me say I ain’t going to get out for a while, probably not never. I may have to live the rest of my life in this place, and I ain’t got nothing personal no more. I got nothing to hold on to.

I guess I got memories and stuff. I got stuff I been keeping in my head, but I got a feeling the more I share them things the worse it’s going to get for me.

I got a letter from Monica’s Dad. He seemed like a real nice feller. He wasn’t mean or nothing. I would have thought he’d be pretty mean, but he wasn’t.

He just said, “I want to know–you got to tell me Theo–,” well, it says in the piece of paper right here:

“I know you aren’t right in the head and that you are sick and you don’t know what you are doing. As a Christian I should forgive you and I hope that someday I can. I’m not writing right now this letter to tell you I forgive you, or to tell you that you are in God’s hands, although I think you are. I am writing to ask you to let my daughter go. Please, please tell me where the rest of her is. Please.

“Regards,

“Jonathan Harrison, Monica’s Daddy”

Well, there ain’t been a lot of people who have been polite to me in my life, I reckon. The ones that do I always try to do them a good turn, even when I started off doing bad ones. I figure you were a lot more civil to me than I ever been to you if you’d have fed my daughter to your dog.

There was this time in Matthew where a feller tells Jesus he’s got to bury his dead dad, and Jesus says to him, “Go let the dead bury the dead. You stick around with me.” Seemed pretty mean to me on Jesus’ part. I ain’t going to be like Jesus. You ought to go and bury your kin.

Before I tell you though, and before some psychiatrist steals this tape recorder and scribbles it all out and then sends the message off to Jonathan Harrison, I ought to tell my side of it. I got a feeling nobody is going to want to hear my side after it all comes out.

I mentioned a while ago a lady named Charlotte. She was the one Uncle Theo used to go to for pokeys. I wanted to hate her, but I didn’t. She was a nice lady, and she never did me no harm. I figure my family did a lot more harm to her than she did to me.

I’ve known her for a long time–I can’t remember how far back. She was always coming in and out of life, depending on where Uncle Theo had dragged him and me and where she happened to be living. She wasn’t my mom or nothing, so don’t get no ideas about that.

Ain’t never known my parents. I’m just sick of them fellers always asking about it. But I ain’t going to talk to them fellers. This is for Monica’s Dad, because he was nice to me when he ain’t got no reason to be.

Charlotte was kind of weird and twitchy, but Uncle Theo has a way of making people weird and twitchy. She sometimes came over to our trailer, but a lot of times I’d tag along with Uncle Theo when he went to Charlotte’s house for a pokey. I didn’t want to, but Uncle Theo said he didn’t want to pay for heat in the trailer when he wasn’t there, and if I wanted to stay warm I could sit there in the cold under a blanket or I could go and watch the Simpsons over at her house while he was doing things with her in her room.

I don’t know what it is about Uncle Theo. I seen a lot of critters going about making other critters, but I never heard none of them….well, I guess I’ve seen ducks do it. You get a stupid fat old male boy, mallard duck who figures he’s got himself a nice fat hen he wants to jump on. He ain’t all gentle-like, like folks are in the movies most of the time. Except when a bad guy comes along–maybe he’s not so gentle, but most times they’re pretty gentle. People always talk about how great nature is and how we all got to get back to nature. But I tell you what, you watch a mean drake mallard tear into a hen who is trying to get away and maybe you’d think different about nature. He’ll jump on her back and rip all the feathers off her neck, stabbing at her with his bill until it’s covered in scabs and open sores. Shove her head underwater by jumping on her back, then chew her neck raw with the little spiny points on their bills. It don’t hurt much when they peck at your finger, but I tell you what, I seen some hen ducks that are just about the most miserable critters in the world. That’s kind of the way Uncle Theo had his pokey. Not in the water of course, but mean like that.

Charlotte would come out afterwards from her little bedroom. She’d never scream or cry, but you could hear her sobbing sometimes. She’d come out tired and bleary eyed, and she’d look at me and give me a smile. I’d sit there on this chest she kept in her kitchenette, and I wouldn’t make no eye contact because I was ashamed. I’d sit and watch Itchy and Scratchy and pretend that there wasn’t any real scratchy.

Sometimes she’d sit in there while Uncle Theo slept and smoke a cigarette next to me. She’d stare at me and say, “You ain’t really like him, is you.” I guess she meant Uncle Theo.

I’d reply, “He ain’t my daddy, you know. We just got the same name.”

She’d smile and nod and look a little sad. “I hope not.”

I don’t know why she kept hanging around with him. I don’t know why I didn’t run off neither. The thing is that you never ask yourself that question at the time, do you? You just go through your day thinking Uncle Theo is normal, the hurting and yelling is normal, the cold is normal. Those ducks stick together in their flocks, come hell or high water, and probably don’t think much about it, so maybe that’s just the way things are.

Anyway, one of these times we were sitting there and she was smoking a cigarette. I was sucking down a Pixie Stick while she was smoking, because I figured I wanted to do something while she smoked that made me look a little more grownup.

We were both tugging away on our Pixy Sticks, only mine didn’t smoke, and she said, “You know what you sitting on there, boy?”

“I figure it’s just some old box or something.”

“Theo, what you got there is something my Mama gave to me.”

“Really?”

“Yes it is.”

“What is it?”

“My Hope Chest.”

“Hope Chest? You got to have a chest to keep your hopes in?”

“Nah, that ain’t it. That’s not what a Hope Chest is. It’s something where you take all the pretty things in your life and you get them together in one place. Then you go and get yourself the man of your dreams. All them pretty things keep stored in there and once you got all them things saved up, you get yourself married and you can go ahead and use them and make your life all happy. It makes it so you’re all ready for things when your life turns around.”

“That sounds right fine, Ma’am,” I said, and I meant it. I never thought about planning things before then, but something about the idea struck me, and it still does. “You got a lot of stuff in your Hope Chest, Charlotte?”

She said, “Well, I used to. I had blankets and a quilt I made, and this afghan that I got when my parents took me to the Oregon Coast when I was a kid. I had glasses and silverware that wasn’t just the cheap stuff from a yard sale but nice ones from the Bon Marche down in Boise. Still in the boxes I bought them in with my baby sitting money. I had a silver picture frame just waiting for a nice picture, and a dozen Christmas ornaments that I painted by hand that I got from a regular customer when I was a waitress in Lewiston. (He kind of liked me, but I thought he was too old for me then.) You wouldn’t believe what you could cram in that little Hope Chest.” She stared off at one of the fake wood vinyl walls as she remembered them all, and she looked peaceful.

“Well let’s take a look at them,” I blundered in, wrecking her little memory. I hate talking because I’m always doing that.

“I don’t got them anymore,” she shrugged.

“Why not?”

“Well, there’s hoping and then there’s eating. Last fall they closed down the log mill in Cascade. They had to let me go from Granny’s Diner. I tried every place in town and got a part time job at the gas station, but I still ran thin on money. I thought about stealing from the gas station when nobody was around, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. So I had to sell it all off.”

“You could still buy it back now, couldn’t you?” I tried, not quite willing to give up.

She glanced at me for a second. “Honey, Cascade is a tourist town, and the little shop I sold them to gets folks from all over Idaho. Most of those things probably aren’t even in this valley anymore.”

I stared at the spot on the wall too. Funny how when one person does that, it becomes easy for other people to do it too. I guess that’s half the reason campfires and TV sets exist. “I think that a Hope Chest is a mighty fine idea. You ought to get started on another one. I could whittle you some new ornaments and we could always make a trip down to Boise, maybe just you and me and leave Uncle Theo here, and we could get you some new dishes. You could get some nice fabric for practically nothing with your job at Ridley’s and make a nice new quilt. We could get this thing filled back up in no time at all.”

She set her cigarette down and leaned in toward me, still staring at the wall. She shook her head, and let the Basic cigarette smoke ease out of the side of her mouth. I could smell the smoke on her breath and the Prell in her hair as she whispered, “It don’t matter anyway. I ain’t never going to need it.”

Around back of the house I lived in with Sam you’ll find a little potting shed, Mr. Monica’s Dad. I ain’t never seen nobody ever pot in it, but that’s what they all call it down here. Back of that shed there’s a little space between the shed and the cedar fence. Ain’t more than a little place for cats to scramble on through. There’s a pile of boards on top of it, but they’ve always been there. I was always careful to re-stack the boards so that that they still look all weathered, like they ain’t been moved in years. Just push them straight up so they lean in the corner. You don’t have to keep them in order like I always done. Once you get the boards out of the way, it’s a lot bigger space than it first looks.

Dig about a foot and you’ll find there’s a sheet of plywood laying there. Pull that off and you’ll see the Hope Chest that I got from Charlotte. I didn’t steal it, and you can ask her. She said I could have it. 

 I really liked Monica and I always thought she was pretty. You’re wondering where the rest of her is, and I can’t blame you for that. I’d appreciate it if you could just look in that chest and just take what you need and leave the rest there. But I reckon you probably won’t. Probably can’t. You probably won’t ever even see it. I suppose the cops will be the ones who dig it up.

Anyway, I didn’t have it in my heart to feed old Monica’s head to Roger. Wasn’t much meat on it anyway, and I just couldn’t bear to see Roger bite into her eyes, chew threw her cheeks to get at her tongue, and gnaw on her ears like a chew toy. She was too pretty for that.

I kept her hid in there most of the time. Sometimes at night I’d sneak out and I’d pull her out and we’d talk. Sometimes we’d just sit there all quiet and think about our walks. We never kissed, though, because that’d be gross.

You can have her back I guess. I ain’t going to need it.

You’ll probably find some other stuff in there, some stuff I ain’t talked about yet. Like I said, I reckon you got to deal with it all. Could you do me one favor though, even if I know I ain’t got no right to ask to do it for me?

I didn’t make dog food out of everything, and I was hoping you could kind of do the same for me. You see, after he died I knew they were going to grind up old Jethro for Purina, so I used my pocket knife to saw off an ear. I stuffed it in the chest. I’d appreciate it if you could bury that ear somewhere. It don’t have to be anywhere real nice, but I’d like just a little bit of him to be buried proper. If you can find a nice field where they don’t have any fences, especially barbed wire ones, I think he would have liked that.

My mouth piece says they wanted to cut off all contact between me and you, Mr. Monica’s Dad. They say it ain’t so good for you, and my lawyer says it sure as heck ain’t so good for me. But I just stopped talking for about two or three weeks until I got my way. It always makes them nervous when I stop talking for long into this recorder, because the truth is that I ain’t said a dozen sentences since I got out of the hospital. I only talk to this recorder, and if folks want to try and keep me from hearing from you or you hearing from me, well, then they just ain’t going to hear about the rest of the things I done.

And they can just ask that Mormon foster family back in Idaho. They probably did. If I don’t want to talk, I can go a long, long time. I dare them to test. I just dare them.

It’s not like they can do much. I’m already in jail, and I’ll die here either in a month from a death penalty, or in sixty year as an old man. Don’t matter. They got my dog. They got my Hope Chest. I ain’t got nothing to lose. Ain’t nothing more fierce than me when I got nothing to lose.

Anyway, I want to thank you for your nice letter about Jesus and things like that. I know a lot of people who talk all kinds of things about Jesus, but to tell you the truth most of the time they don’t make much sense. I’ve got a fair amount of experience with Jesus myself, so it’s funny we got more in common than just Monica.

What you was saying about Jesus always providing for folks like he done with the fish and the loaves reminds me of something I used to do. I’d go out on Singer’s Pond and I’d fish all day with a spinner. Some days I’d do just fine, just like Uncle Theo had his days where he’d come home in a fine mood from getting a little money or a pokey or something else you probably don’t want to hear about. Anyway, some days I’d do just fine with that rod and land me a nice mess a fish.

But I done some things with them fish that wasn’t so nice.

I’d take two of them, sometimes while they were still alive, and I’d make them talk to each other.

“You are looking mighty peculiar today, Ralphy,” one would say.

Then Ralphy would smile back and say, “Stuart, you look like a fish out of water yourself.” Then I’d fall over on the rocks, holding my sides because I was laughing so hard. Sometimes folks would walk by on the trail, and I’d try not to laugh because I always try to keep from getting peoples’ attention. I don’t like it when I make people get all excited.

Sometimes I’d play Pin the Tail on the Fish, or I’d cut them open while their hearts were still beating and stare at it until it stopped.

I don’t think that last game’s so funny anymore.

Anyway, none of them stories is like Jesus, is it? He didn’t laugh none, and he always seemed to want to help fellers out. So he probably didn’t play with fish much, except when he went and multiplied them like you said he did to help folks out. People always say he didn’t like killing, so I suppose he handed out all them fish while their hearts was still pumping. He probably had to stick them in the loaves of bread to keep them from squirming out.

I wonder how John and Peter and all them folks felt about eating a bunch of raw, live, squirming fish wrapped up in some slimy bread. They sure liked Jesus.

Well, like I was saying, sometimes I’d have a grand old time reeling in fish. I’d catch them and play with them, or sometimes I’d mash their heads with rocks, and the eyeballs would pop out, barely hooked onto the head with a little red bit of tiny meat.

Other times I wasn’t so lucky, and the trout just weren’t there. I’d land maybe one fish after hours of sitting there. But if I did get that one fish, he’d be especially sorry. I’d reel that fish in, then quick as I could I’d throw him back out into the pond so I could reel him in again. I’d do it over and over and over, until I was just reeling in a hunk of meat. I’d keep on doing it, though.

Sometimes I’d force the hook down her throat so I’d know for sure she couldn’t spit it up. Force it down real good and hard. You don’t want to cast it out there and have her just slip off the line. Then you got nothing and you’re stuck on the bank staring at the water and it can get cold out there just sitting and staring.

I feel kind of bad now about some a them fish I treated like that. They did their job by getting reeled in. I probably should’ve been grateful to just have a fish to look at and hold and wiggle in the shallow water with my hand after it was dead.

Sometimes you just do things over and over and you don’t really think it through, and only after a long spell do you realize how much you did and how you made things worse.

Jesus and I were both fishers of men, weren’t we? He always worried about the fish, but couldn’t keep himself alive. I was the opposite. 

It’s funny that I can talk about fish now without getting all excited. It wasn’t always like that, and I suppose the police know that now. There’s something about fish.

The only feller who’s ever asked me at any time in my life about fish was my psychiatrist. He had a way of asking things all the time. I guess it was his job, but you’d think a feller paid to talk to folks would come up with some interesting conversation of his own.

All he ever talked about came in questions. “How old are you, Theo?” “Why do you feel that way, Theo?” “Why are you always lying, Theo?”

Well, I’ll tell you what. I was always lying to that feller because I ain’t used to talking. You seem like a normal guy, and you should be grateful. See, a normal guy can meet some feller off the street and have him ask a question and he’ll tell the truth. I know you probably never lie, Mr. Monica’s Dad, because you ain’t the type. It’s easy to just talk and tell folks what you think.

I ain’t that way. I ain’t never talked to nobody in my entire life like I talk to this recorder. Not even Roger, and he’s my best friend.

Put me in the hot seat and ask me what I think about this or that, and I’ll die a little inside. I don’t want to. Who wants to die? I just sit there and feel the maggots squirm around in me, making me feel wrong and not like a person. It’s maybe the most horrible feeling in the world.

How can you know what that’s like?

Imagine the most embarrassing thing you ever said. I don’t care what it was. Maybe you once told your teacher you wanted to mash Speckles the Hamster into a piece a hamburger. Maybe you thought of something worse.

Remember how it feels to have your teacher look at you? All wondering if you were someone that she could talk to? Even be in the same room with? Remember what it’s like to wonder if you could just grab a pencil and jab it through your wind pipe and never be heard from again? Just die, and maybe everyone would somehow just forget you were ever born?

You ever felt like that? Really, really embarrassed?

Cause that’s what I feel like whenever I talk to near anyone.

It’s just painful.

I never told nobody that.

Who would I tell?

How could I tell them?

I couldn’t even tell Roger that, and he’s a dog. I just love him so much I couldn’t, couldn’t show him that. I couldn’t show anyone that.

So why am I showing you?

Why am I talking now into this recorder more than I probably talked for the last eight years of my life?

I don’t know.

There was this time that I drove a rusty nail through this feller’s throat. The blood came gushing out like a, like a thing you ain’t never going to stop. It covered my hands and my face and it went all over the floor and on this curtain and, man, it went everywhere.

I stuffed my thumb in it along with the nail, but it just kept on gushing out, even as the man’s eyes opened all wide and squirmed and then sort of just faded. I didn’t want it to come out, and I suppose neither did he. It just kept coming and coming, and it made me feel horrible.

That’s what it’s like with this little Sony recorder. I push this little red button that says “record” and all this stuff comes gushing out of me and I can’t stop it, and maybe I don’t want to stop it. This vein has been corked up so long, and I been waiting to just let it bleed.

 A little time after what happened to Uncle Theo, well, after what I did to Uncle Theo, I had to go and live in one of them foster homes with a family of Mormons. Big old family of mean Mormons. I don’t know that all Mormons are mean, but shucks these ones were. They wouldn’t even let me say words like “shucks,” and people always say I’m funny because I don’t swear.

It wasn’t just that, though. They didn’t drink or nothing, but they looked awful funny. Not goofy looking or nothing–they had straight teeth and good hair cuts. Not goofy looking like people say I, well, just not goofy looking. They’d just always look at me kind of funny. Maybe it’s because even up there in Idaho people think I talk a little strange at times. So it’s not just because I’m from Idaho. All these California folk don’t need to think that all the fellers up in Idaho sound like me because it ain’t true. Fact is that if you go down to Boise or McCall or Sun Valley you’ll see kids with their underwear showing and their “dudes” and their “for hizzles” and their “bling bling” and all that just like here. In Boise you might even see more than one black feller in a place, even one kissing a white girl. Maybe he wouldn’t kiss her so much in the middle of some of the small towns, though. 

Most Idahoans talk like normal people. I just ain’t one of them, I guess. More I talk, the more I think maybe I’m just not a normal person just in general.

Anyway, I was stuck in that Mormon family and there was a bunch of kids there because Mormons always have lots of kids. Jared, one of the kids, said it was so it gave their parents a better shot of becoming God some day. They also figure that wearing long underwear while throwing lots of money at your church helps too. You can drive through some of the poorest towns in Idaho and still spot a brand spanking new Mormon church. Huge, shiny, windowless fire hydrants, filled with folks wearing crazy underwear and talking about seer stones and the Angel Gabriel and how one day I was going to be in charge of my own planet. Somehow I was also supposed to get around to baptizing dead folks and learning a secret handshake that I could use when I met God.

I didn’t mind the idea of learning a God handshake, and I came up with a bunch of practice ones I used to try on myself. But I never much cared for the idea of being a god of my own planet after I died. I reckon I’d pretty much be like the god of this here planet, quiet and angry and vengeful, and everything would go bad. Even if the Mormons are right, I’d just as soon let one of them take on the planet I was supposed to get. Maybe they’d do a better job of it.

Truth is that it used to worry me fierce that if I stayed with them I could die and somebody would stick me in charge of a planet. I wouldn’t sleep most nights. I’d lie there staring at the ceiling, pinching myself every so often.

People can die in their sleep. For instance, there’s a vein that goes into your head that ain’t even as wide as an acorn, and when it gets clogged up you got yourself a stroke and you are done for and then it’s all your fault when nothing works right on your new planet. Your planet is full of people lying to each other and killing and there’s tsunamis and starvation and all them other horrible things you see on CNN, all happening on your planet, and it’s your fault. Just a small little spot in your neck the size of an acorn. So many tiny things in a body that can go wrong, it’s a wonder any of us ever wake up.

That family said I was a Mormon just like them, but I didn’t want to be. And now I’m not. I got a letter here in prison from the Mormon church. It’s on their stationery and it says here I’m excommunicated. The letter also says I lost the privilege of tithing, which means I can’t send them ten percent of all the money I earn. I shoved the letter in front of my lawyer and pointed at the word “excommunicated,” and he smiled at me. “Theo, that means you’ve been kicked out of the Ladder Day Saints.” He rolled his eyes and laughed more than I ever seen him laugh.

I thought that was nice of them to send that letter. What with all the other things going on, at least being in charge of another planet ain’t going to worry me no more. Unless of course they go and baptize me after I’m dead. I try not to think about that. I do sometimes wonder what happens on Ladder Day though. I don’t like heights. 

Well, getting back to my story, back then I was still a Mormon and it worried me so much that one night I just grabbed a few things and snuck out through a window. It was a couple days before Christmas and there was near two feet of snow out. I ran out to the highway where the snow was cleared and just ran along it for an hour or so. The road wasn’t too busy that late at night, and I could usually see car headlights from a mile away, which was plenty of time to dodge down the bank.

I jogged in the white moonlight, steam pumping out of my mouth and icicling in my nose hairs. Snow softened the valley all around me, and the pavement pounding on my feet made me glad to be sure I was alive. The night was clear and the Milky Way and a million stars and ten million planets shined down on me. Did the gods on those planets notice me and think I was dumb for running away? I don’t know. They shined so bright, maybe angry at me or maybe just jealous.

I wasn’t too far from where Uncle Theo and I had stayed two summers ago, and as I ran I remembered Mrs. Jeffries and how I used to pick flowers for her. She was a nice old lady who lived on the edge of Cascade in a run down trailer home. I’d use up a summer afternoon by picking a big bouquet of bright red Indian Paintbrush and other mountain flowers in a cow pasture nearby. Then I’d come knocking on her tin door, and before I’d pulled my knuckle away she’d already have the door flung open.

“Oh my goodness!” she’d shout in her old lady voice, like I hadn’t just done the exact same thing yesterday. “I’ve never seen such a grand bunch of flowers in my entire life. Thank you very, very much. You take this candy bar and God bless you.” It was always Snickers, which suited me just fine.

I turned off on the road that led down past her place. It’d been plowed a couple hours ago, so I could still make my way along it at a steady trot. It was just that weird time between dark and sunrise when I saw her home. That’s always been my favorite time of day because things are always the most interesting right at the point when they come together. River and lake, mountain and valley, life and death, night and morning. That point when one thing becomes another, but isn’t yet and so is its own third nameless thing. That thing you can’t explain to somebody or photograph or draw, but you know in your bones. The third thing is when magic happens.

The lights were off inside, but I figured she was probably just sleeping in. I stared around at the snow outside of her house. I couldn’t pick flowers for her this time, but I knew I couldn’t just walk up empty handed. So before I knocked on the door I started building a snowman in her yard. I thought maybe she’d like that. Maybe she’d think it was funny and I’d get on her good side and she wouldn’t take me back to the Mormons so quick.

One of my shoes had got a hole in it while I was running, and it was maybe minus five degrees out that dawn. Cold enough so that ice speared into your lungs when you took a hard breath. I shoved the icy snow together in a pile, and packed it down as hard as I could to make the bottom section, and then added the upper two sections quick as I could. I popped off a couple buttons from my shirt and stuck them into his face for eyes. The toes in my good shoe were horribly cold, but I couldn’t feel nothing in the bad shoe. I went around to the side yard where she had a willow, and I snapped off a couple of long branches for arms. The sound of the breaking branches must have woke her up, because I saw a light go on inside and then heard the front door screech open. “Who in hell is out here? I got me a God damned gun! Arnold, is that you?!”

I shouted from her side yard, “Don’t worry none, Mrs. Jeffries. It’s just me. Theo.” I came back around to the front with the snowman’s arms.

“Theo, what on earth are you doing, building a God damned snowman in front of my home in the middle of the God damned night?”

I looked all sheepish and said the same thing I always said in the summer when I was hoping to angle for a Snickers bar. I smiled and said, “I just kind of thought you’d like it.”

She smiled just like she smiles in the summer. She shook her head and looked at my handiwork as I stabbed him with arms. “Well, oh my goodness! I’ve never seen such a fine snowman. Now, it’s cold out here and your whole face is blue. You get inside this instant!”

I was glad she said that, because I was getting pretty worried about those toes that weren’t bothering me no more. Turns out I was right to worry, because the doctors cut the two smallest ones off when I went into the hospital two days later. Probably another reason Monica thought I was funny.

Anyway, she let me inside and gave me a hot cup of coffee. She didn’t have no cocoa, she said, because she wasn’t expecting no God damned kids. She had a few Christmas lights up in her small living room and a little tree that somebody had probably donated to her. It was leaning against a wall without a stand, not decorated. I hunched down on a broken little sofa, sipping the coffee and truly thankful for its heat.

I could tell she was worried about me, but she seemed worried about something else too. “You ok?” I asked between sips. She ain’t got any hearing, so I mouthed the words slow and careful.

Her wrinkly, lipless mouth tried to give me a little smile, but it trembled too hard to be much use to anybody. She gave up. “Theo, you got some God damned timing! Lord, all this time I sit in this God damned trailer by myself with nothing to do but sleep and watch the God damned TV, and now all this has got to happen at once?! God damned!”

She stared at me, angry and worried. But she didn’t want to kick me out. “Look! I know I ought to throw you out to wherever you came from, but you can’t go in this God damned cold! I ain’t got a car, and the phone’s disconnected! I got other problems right now, so you sit there and watch some TV until I can figure out what to do!”

She turned around and used her cane to go down the narrow hall to the bedroom. I heard the mattress springs creek, and then heard a soft, old lady sob. I sat and stared at the tiny black and white TV. Regis and Kelly were drinking coffee too. The sound was off. I figured somebody had turned down the volume once and she never noticed, or the poor tiny speaker in it had blown out after too many years of too much hard work. I sat there stupidly in the small trailer home, uselessly waiting for my feet and hands and face to thaw, and for the silent Regis to get replaced by a silent grey commercial for Cheerios.

 I finally got up and took the three steps needed to be in the kitchen to pour myself more coffee. Her sobs had stopped, but a new whine seemed to replace it. It came from the bathroom on the other side of the wall from the kitchen.

I finished pouring and poked my head into the bathroom. The light was off, but I could see a furry lump on the floor. Another low, sad whine. I flicked the light switch, but nothing came on.

I turned to the doorless opening to her bedroom. “Mrs. Jeffries?” She didn’t answer. I shook her foot. “MRS. JEFFRIES. MRS. JEFFRIES. WHAT IS GOING ON IN YOUR BATHROOM?”

“Just leave me be, God dammit. Leave it be.”

I couldn’t see any easy way to get light into the bathroom, so I walked into the living room and grabbed the Christmas lights. They were the white kind. I made them reach the bathroom without having to unplug them. The lights showed a fat old dog laying on the bathroom floor in front of the toilette. It was panting and whining. I got down on all fours and stroked its side. Too much fur came off in my hand.

“That’s Jess!” she shouted from right behind me. I just about jumped through the roof. “Jess is Arnold’s dog! She’s too old to be having God damned puppies now! Go get Arnold! Go get him and tell him to take care of his God damned dog! Got to step over him just to use the God damned toilette!”

I kept staring at the poor dog Jess. I’d never heard of Arnold before, but I wasn’t about to go back out wandering around. It was cold outside, and there were Mormons and gods and handshakes and planets. This place may have been hell, but it was small and warm and filled with things like me.

I climbed over the dog and squatted in the shower stall so I could get a better look at her face. “Atta girl, Jess. She’s a good girl. Yes she is.” Maybe it was the kind words, or maybe it was just that I wasn’t yelling, but her eyebrows lifted and her tired tail gave the broken linoleum floor a thump. “That’s a girl!” I said, really happy for just a moment. “We’ll get this all figured out.” She kept panting, and I stroked her face over and over. Hair didn’t come out as much around her face.

I finally looked up from her, and I swore for just a moment I thought I saw God. It made my heart clench up. It was Mrs. Jeffries though, and the white from the Christmas lights didn’t reach her face. But it reached the steak knife in her hand.

“Get out of there, Theo! I got to cut her open and let them puppies out, or they are all dead for sure!”

I shook my head no, setting my jaw out to tell her that we weren’t going to argue over it. Mrs. Jeffries shrugged, and then slowly lowered herself to the floor. It was like taking apart a folding table with a set of china still on it. Something seemed bound to go wrong as she slowly fell, but somehow it didn’t.

She leaned in over the dog on her knobby knees, and I leaned in to meet her right over Jess’s belly. We both stared at her gut for a second, and then she shouted, “I got to cut her open!” She lifted the steak knife over the dog’s belly, and it shook like a jackhammer. I put my hand over hers. She jerked her head up to look at me, but I didn’t bother to look into her frown. My fingers still stung from the cold. I stabbed the knife into Jess about an inch or two, then pushed it down across her belly toward her tail. Mrs. Jeffries didn’t stop me. Her spotted, dry hand seemed like part of the knife handle. 

A wave of bad smell took over the tiny bathroom. It stunk like dog poop and death. “GOD DAMN!” Mrs. Jeffries shouted, then pulled away. Blood and slime poured out on the floor, and Jess died. A small dead puppy leg hung out of her. I ignored it all and jammed my hand into her body. By now I was crying, hard. Nothing was moving in her. I gave up on trying to feel for life, and just started yanking dead puppies out of her. Two. Three. Four. Five six seven fell out all at once. I desperately felt around inside her for more, but that was all.

I glanced down under my arm between sobs, and then froze. Two of the puppies started kicking their legs. I looked up hopefully at Mrs. Jeffries, but she was hunched against the wall in the hallway, staring wide-eyed at the ring on her finger and moving her jaw without a sound. It looked like she was trying to say “Arnold.”

I picked up a puppy in each hand and cleared the muck from their faces by wiping them against my shirt. I held them close to my face and watched them kick at the air, eyes closed tight and mouths opening and shutting. Their tiny lives wriggled in my hands like aspen leaves shaking in the wind. A huge smile came across my face, and I felt like I could maybe take over a whole planet, I could love all things, I could be a good boy.

And then one of them died. Just like that. Just stopped wiggling and froze up like all the others. I poked him with my thumb to be sure, but he’d stopped shaking and his little heart just stopped beating. I set him down and stared so carefully at the last one. I squashed all hope, all love, every little good feeling in me as quick as I could. I made myself just like Jess, filled with dead things. I emptied myself of everything else, and I felt just then like I’ve felt every time I’ve murdered somebody. I cupped him in my hands, and I stopped crying and patiently waited for the last one to die.

I blacked out after a while, but when I woke up Mrs. Jeffries was poking me in the face with a broom handle. “God dammit! Wake up in there! An old lady has to use the God damned toilette!”

The puppy in my hands was gone, but the others were still dead on the floor beside their mother. I looked up for an answer. “God dammit! I said get out!”

I got up, stiff and sore from the running and freezing and the little shower stall, and climbed over the dog. I limped into the living room. The puppy was in a shoe box on the sofa and it was still alive. There was a Ziplock bag next to him half filled with milk. I sat down and set him on my lap, and milk leaked out of a little pinhole when I gave the bag a look. He was sleepy and his eyes were still closed tight, but he didn’t seem to mind when I dropped some milk over his face.

I eventually got up and found a big sheet of plywood around the side of the trailer and tied a rope to it. I carried all the dead dogs out of the bathroom and laid them on my makeshift sled. The ground was frozen solid and under too much snow. I was going to throw them in a dumpster some time on the way into town, somewhere where Mrs. Jeffries wouldn’t see.

I slept the rest of the day and most of the night, waking up to feed or play with the puppy. Me and Mrs. Jeffries never talked, although she did warm up a couple of frozen pot pies for me.

I was hoping we could keep on living like that, but in the morning as we both sat on the little sofa with the sleeping puppy, Mrs. Jeffries finally looked at me and frowned. “I ain’t having folks in Cascade talk about me shacking up with some kid! Get into town and have somebody look at your foot! And get your God damned act together!” After she said that she never stopped looking at the TV. Judge Judy was silently screaming at some poor feller who looked mighty sad. The puppy woke up at the yelling and yawned, it’s eyes still tight.

I looked at Mrs. Jeffries, and then down at the puppy I still didn’t love. “You can come back here and pick up this God damned dog if you can get your God damned act together.”

The Mormons took me back, and they seemed to like the idea of me being in charge of Roger. I guess they thought it’d tie me down better, but of course they were wrong. I didn’t really care about Roger most of that summer, but I liked the idea of caring for him. I ran the show, deciding when he’d eat, when he’d get a drink, when he’d get left in the closet for being a bad, bad doggie. Maybe the Mormons had it right about going out and being in charge of a bunch of kids. It takes your mind off planets. Maybe even makes you think that it wouldn’t be quite as bad running your own planet, provided you just didn’t get too attached. 

Jared and the rest of the real kids always wanted to crowd him, but Anne, the Mormon foster mom, kind of made them steer clear most of the time. I think she figured that the real kids had real brothers and real sisters and a real mom and real dad, so the least she could let me have was a mongrel bastard dog for myself.

Anne was actually ok. I probably shouldn’t have said all them Mormons was mean. Sometimes a person can seem mean just because it’s such a pain to try to get to know them. She was always pregnant though. Just kept popping them out like a Pez dispenser, she said. I was their stab at having a foster kid, and I guess I didn’t make much of an impression because to my knowledge they never tried it again. Maybe a kid like me hurt their chances of landing a good planet.

We had a hot spring that year, and the heat carried into summer like a tick in a dog’s ear, festering worse and worse so that it almost made you feel like your head was going to burst with sweat. The nights never got cold, and at 6000 feet that was a surprise to everybody. I did what I had to in order to keep everybody off my back, but I spent most of my free time hiking up the quiet forest out back of their house. There was probably a hundred square miles of mountains back there, and I got to know a few of them pretty well before I finally ran away for good.

I watched a TV show about being a mountain man. Men used to go into the back country of Idaho and hide for years without hardly anybody even knowing about them. Just grow their own crops, live off fishing and hunting, going into town only for salt and gun powder once a year. They mostly gave up by the 1940’s. They said it got too crowded, but it seems to me that if you don’t want to be seen by people you don’t necessarily have to.

I started working on my outfit, which was everything I needed to run away. I wanted the perfect knife, the best backpack, a good gun, lots of ammo, fishing gear, the works. It was slow going scratching all them things together because there wasn’t much work in Cascade, especially if you lived way out of town like we did and you couldn’t drive a car.

I was at Howdy’s, this big gas station in Cascade that’s got great fried burritos and more kinds of fishing tackle than cigarettes. I was eyeballing a pretty fair slingshot–the Wrist Rocket 8000. It was a big step down from the 30-06 Savage rifle I’d dreamed about, but them mountain men didn’t seem to need the real high power to keep themselves alive. Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad, I thought.

The feller who ran the place, Hank, wasn’t as busy because it was a Monday morning. He’d beaten off another weekend of folks from Boise who’d swamp the mountain valley looking to get out of the desert heat. He was helping himself to one of his Slim Jims and watching me close from behind the counter, figuring I’d take the old five finger discount if I got the chance. I’m usually pretty good at getting ignored, but when money’s involved ain’t nobody who slides easy under the gate.

I’d just decided to buy that Wrist Rocket when Sheriff Samuels came in. He and Hank were twin brothers, and they always gave each other hard times.

“Hey there, Opie. You look a little green. Forget yesterday was Mom’s birthday again?” Hank sort of chewed the words with the snack.

“Knock that shit off, Hank. Don’t call me that when I got the uniform on.”

Hank poked Sheriff Samuels in the chest with the stick of meat. “I can still kick your ass. Don’t forget that.”

“I said cut it out, Hank. Bad enough my clothes stink like dead lady. I don’t need your fucking food on it too.”

“Who died?”

“Old lady Jeffries.” The sheriff practically blurted the words out right over top of his brother.

“No shit. I didn’t know she was even still kicking.” Howdy’s was on the other end of Cascade.

“Yeah, but that ain’t even the half of it. I get this call from some niece in Kansas, saying she ain’t got a letter from her in six months. I asked her why she didn’t call her, and she says she didn’t know her number. I looked in the phone book for her, but she wasn’t listed. So anyway, she says in this real smooth, kind of sexy voice, ‘Would you do me a favor officer and go and check on her for me?’”

“Chicks love the cops, huh,” Hank butted in. “Hey, when you going to talk to somebody up in McCall about making me a cadet?”

“Shut up. I ain’t finished. So I drive over to her little dumpy shithole–it’s like one of them little metal camper trailers from the ‘50’s–and I knock on the door. She don’t answer, so I turn the knob and it’s open and I let myself in. Man, it must have been about 150° in there, but the fucking smell was worse than the heat. I puked right there on the fucking entrance, it was so bad, and if you tell anyone I’ll fucking kill you.”

The sheriff’s voice had gone quieter, so I moved down an aisle over by the fruit pies. Neither of them could see me.

“I mean I chundered everything. And just when I finish I hear something move down the little hallway at the back. I didn’t know what the fuck was back there. I’m thinking badger or coyote or some shit. And it was a pretty tight spot, so I pull out the Glock. Ain’t no way I was going to let no fucking animal rolling in that kind of smell jump on me.

“All the shades are drawn, and it’s really dark in there. I yell a couple times, and whatever it is doesn’t move any more or less. It just makes this kind of meaty, rolling sound.” Hank stops eating his Slim Jim. “I tie my handkerchief around my mouth and go in, with the flashlight in my hand and the gun ready. I walk down the little hall, and I come to this little bedroom. This is the really gross part. On the bed is this melted lady, dead for god knows how long.”

“Melted? What do you mean melted?”

“All the meat in her body turned into this goo that’s all dry around the edges, and her ribs are poke through it. But that ain’t the worst part. There’s a fucking ball of maggots the size of a fucking cantaloupe where her stomach should be. The noise I heard was the maggots squirming all over each other.”

“Fuck an A!”

“No shit! It was the most disgusting fucking thing I’d–“

“The maggots were smiling, weren’t they?” I asked from behind the aisle.

“Who the fuck?” The sheriff whirled around.

I stepped out. “Jesus Christ, Hank. You let me tell this fucking story and there’s a god damned kid standing behind me?”

“Man, I’m sorry Jeff. I just forgot he was there….”

“The maggots were smiling, weren’t they?” I asked again. I wasn’t angry or sad or happy. I just knew the truth.

The sheriff shouted at me, “What the hell are you doing listening in on an officer of the law? Get the hell out of here.”

I set the Wrist Rocket down and walked out, but I came back the next day and paid for it. Me and Roger were gone in a week.

I knew it wouldn’t be long before they started looking for me. I also figured they’d start by looking in the mountains behind the house. I made sure the day before I left to leave a fine trail of candy wrappers and my initials in trees to help them along with that thinking.

I made the same midnight run I done before to Mrs. Jeffries house, only this time it was summer and I had a dog and a backpack and a plan. Made it there in about an hour.

There was a piece of yellow police tape across the door to her trailer, but it wasn’t locked. It smelled exactly like when I left it, filled with mold and old lady creams and a little dead stomach. I took a quick look in the bedroom with my flashlight to see if she was still there, but her and the mattress she’d melted into had got thrown out.

I grabbed whatever food was sitting in the small cupboards–mostly saltine crackers and cans of Campbells tomato soup, and half a bag of dog food left over from Jess. A nice score I hadn’t counted on was Mrs. Jeffries’s .22 rifle and a box of rounds. Ever since I saw Platoon I call bullets “rounds.” I think it sounds better. I ain’t never been able to hit nothing at any range with even a simple rifle like a .22, but I figured it wouldn’t hurt to have. Looking back now, I would’ve been a lot better off without it.

Then I started looking for the car keys to the old 1970’s VW Bug she had stowed around back under a tarp. I found them in a little china bowl on top of the quiet TV.

Jared had given me a lesson or two on how to drive a stick shift a few weeks ago, and he even showed me how to jumpstart a stick if your battery was dead. I didn’t know how long it’d been since Mrs. Jeffries had started it, but I wasn’t too surprised when I pushed in the clutch and turned the key and nothing happened. Luckily she was on a little hill facing out over the valley, so after I loaded up everything and the dog I was able to get it running by coasting down it and throwing it into second gear.

Me and Roger took off north, taking a back road around McCall so as to avoid the main street. It was 3 am, and small towns in Idaho generally roll up the sidewalks around a quarter to ten, but in a still pond you can see a fingernail land.

We were heading up Warren Wagon Wheel Road into the heart of the Rocky Mountains, just about when it turns into a dirt road, when I hit the deer. It was a little mule deer fawn, which was lucky for me. Anything much bigger would have probably ruined my Bug. As it was, it was a little bigger than a Doberman, but plenty big enough to take out my left front headlight. The Bug spun all over the place, and I barely kept the car from hitting a tree. By the time we’d stopped moving, the Dog Chow had spilled down the back of my shirt, Roger was caught between the steering wheel and the windshield, and the butt of the .22 had spider webbed the passenger window.

I set Roger straight and then threw it into reverse, backing up until we were alongside the deer. It wasn’t moving and it looked dead. I noticed the smell then and looked over at Roger, who was peeing all over his seat. “Bad dog. Bad, dirty dog,” I yelled at him. I couldn’t bring myself to yell too hard, though. He was plenty scared as it was. He stared up at me with them sad puppy eyes and I let it go.

We both got out and peed some. And then Roger came over and sniffed at the muley. “Well boy. It looks to me like we got ourselves our first kill,” I said to him. I was maybe a little proud, in spite of all that had happened. Night was ending, we weren’t dead, we had hundreds of miles of mountains and forest around us, and nobody was telling us what to do. And we had meat. “Well, let’s load him up.”

I popped open the trunk in the rear and was kind of surprised to see an engine there. I guess they used to put the engines in the back in the old days or something. Figuring it had to have a trunk somewhere, I came around front and opened up the hood, and was glad to see all the space in there.

You probably ought to field dress a deer pretty quick, within about an hour. This road didn’t have much traffic, but I figured I was pushing my luck spending a lot of time gutting a deer on it. So I pulled right next to my kill and squeezed him in the small compartment, first the back half and then the front.

Roger and me get back in the car, get things a little organized, and are back on the road in no time. We make about five miles before the thumping starts.

At first I figure it’s just something bad going on with the car. I didn’t have no way to fix it, so I planned on driving it into the ground if I had to. Then I heard moaning, and I suddenly wondered if maybe Mrs. Jeffries had decided to haunt my car, or was it still her car at that point? I thought that bringing it back from the dead by jumpstarting it had made it mine, and if that hadn’t then making my mark on it by killing the deer had sealed the deal. (Roger was definitely at least part owner, being born within a few yards of the car and having made his own mark on the front seat.) But now I wasn’t so sure at all. It felt like I was stealing from her, robbing her of food and dog and car and trust.  I remember how she looked standing over my shoulder, the steak knife in her hand as she was getting set to slice Jess.

I turned the old AM radio up, even though the antenna was busted and all I could get was static up in those mountains. She liked it loud, I thought hopefully. Maybe it’d make her think things weren’t so bad. At least it’d drown out the bad noises. Scratching, thumping, low moaning.

I glanced down at Roger, who was staring at me with a wide-eyed frown and a little whimper dribbling out of his throat. We had one of those weird moments where we both gulped at the same time, and it was such a coincidence that it made me smile just for a moment.

Then we both jumped at a really loud THUMP, and a small dent about as round as a tennis ball popped up on the front hood. I let out a little sigh when I suddenly realized what was going on, and then quickly pulled off to a side road and got out. By then dawn had fully broke, and I could see the new dents well up on the hood without a flashlight. THUMP!…..THUMP THUMP…..THUMP! The deer was alive and kicking.

Roger whined and stared at me, then peed some more.

“It’s ok, boy. It ain’t no Mrs. Jeffries. It’s just a deer. He’s probably just scared, even more than you are. Probably thinks he’s in a coffin or something. Poor guy.”

I wasn’t ready to let my first kill just up and leave. It didn’t seem like something a Mountain Man ought to do, especially on his very first Mountain Man kill. Besides, the deer was probably already busted up and not likely to make it even if I did let it go from the trunk. And, truth be told, when a man gets the fear like I’d just had he also gets the urge to take a little action.

I picked up the .22 from out of the car and came back around front. I opened the bolt action to put a round in the chamber, then sat down next to the hood. After taking a few minutes to work up the guts, I carefully opened up the hood with one hand and stuffed the barrel in with the other. It’d stopped moving, noticing the crack of light I guess and freezing up like deer do. Without looking in, I turned off the safety and squeezed off one round, and all hell broke loose. That critter started kicking and squawking like a stuck pig, and I had to throw myself on top of the hood to keep him from kicking it open. I finally got the hood to latch. After a minute or two, he stopped squawking and I noticed this tinkling sound. At first I thought he’d peed himself too, but then I started smelling gasoline. I looked under the car and sure enough there was gas dripping out.

At this point I just panicked. I just figured out that for some dumb reason they decided to put the gas tank under the front hood back in the old days, and me shooting or the deer fighting had kicked a hole in it. I was losing gas, and also miles I could travel in that car, with every second I was wasting trying to figure out what to do about this stupid deer.

That’s when I looked down and saw to the right of the front tire a yellow rock about the size of a Nerf football. I was so worried I didn’t even really think things through. I just grabbed it, opened the hood again slightly, and stuck my hand in there with the rock. I felt something wet and maybe a tooth against the back of my hand, and I just forgot about any kind of caution and started slamming down as hard as I could with the rock, hammering and hammering, sometimes hitting the car but most of the time hitting meat. “Die you god damned animal! Die god damn you!” I screamed out in the forest. I got kicked a couple of times, but I remembered which side his head was on and focused my mashing on that end.

The deer lost its kick after four or five hard whacks, but I just kept slamming and screaming until my arm got too tired to move and my voice was too sore. My hand finally just dropped down into what felt like warm, hairy Sloppy Joe sauce. I left the rock in the sauce and I sat back in the dirt and let the hood close itself. I just sat there staring at my hand. It was covered in blood and pieces of brain and gasoline. There were a few pieces of small bone fragments jammed into the heel of my palm that I didn’t even feel. Roger was poking his head out from behind a tree twenty yards away, and I suppose he didn’t really recognize the hoarse, bloody monster sitting in front of the Bug. Maybe he thought the ghost was contagious.

I just started giggling. I don’t know why. It wasn’t really funny.

It took twenty minutes and a nice piece of bloody, raw venison to get Roger to finally get close to me.

That was really the only time he was squeamish at a kill. He got so he started expecting it of me over time, I think. We had this connection where he’d get back a few feet behind me and just stare at my head when he sensed it coming. He was that way when I did in Monica. And Sam. People never, ever saw it coming when I let myself get mean. That’s the secret to a good attack. But Roger seemed to know it was coming sometimes even before I did.

The VW made it down the dusty dirt road to Secech Meadows, but right before I got there I pulled off on an old logging road. I took several forks, and after about twenty minutes of poking along I veered off on a shoulder and drove cross country a hundred yards to a spot out of site of the road. I didn’t know if people would even notice her car being gone, but I didn’t want to take a chance that the police would come up here looking for it because somebody had seen me driving it up and down the main road in the meadow. I knew they’d send people to come look for me, but I figured in a few weeks it’d blow over. Even the Mormons probably wouldn’t put up too much of an effort. It wasn’t like I was really theirs. And the government probably got wind that I’d got out, so their checks were bound to be stopped.

We set up camp there, and I set about cleaning out the deer. I was able to stop up a little spring and make a pool, and I used it to cool off the meat. Even with a tarp over it, though, I knew it’d rot after a while in the heat. After I finished I slept the afternoon away, knowing that I really needed the dark to do my job without getting seen.

When I awoke it was just dusk. I figured the smoke couldn’t be seen so I started up a campfire and cooked up some venison. Because the deer was so young and the kill was so fresh, the meat was tender and not too gamey. I let the fire die down to coals and propped up the hide on sticks to dry it out. I took out one of Mrs. Jeffries’ old shirts and tore it into thin strips.

As Roger and I walked back across the shoulder to the road by moonlight, I was careful to tie off the strips to tree branches. The mountains in that country pretty much all look the same, and I didn’t want to lose my campsite.

We walked down to the main dirt road and then followed it to Secech Meadows, the seven mile long meadow with enough pine to keep most of the twenty or so vacation cabins separated. Uncle Theo had dragged me up there two summers before on a cabin building job, so I roughly knew my way around. But at the time I was too young to think in terms of finding a cabin to live in, so Roger and I had to go on a scouting expedition.

We spent two nights down in the meadow circling it and poking around, and I made a rough map by hand and marked the cabins that looked like they’d been used lately or were lived in right then. Finally I came along a small two story cabin, with a loft upstairs and kitchen downstairs, that was at the end of a three mile track that had five foot pine trees growing between the ruts. It was old and too far above the meadow on the side of a hill to seem like a typical vacation cabin. It was probably an old prospector’s cabin, and the creek had played out fifty years ago. It was near a creek and far enough away from anyone else, though, and looked like it had a few supplies inside.

The feller who owned the cabin wasn’t too bright, or maybe he didn’t care, or maybe he just never planned on going back up there, because leaning against the back door was a crowbar. It took me only about two minutes to bust off the padlocks on the front door, because I’m six foot one and pretty strong. Lot of folks are surprised at how strong I am.

It took a week for me and Roger to finally get settled in. I left the Bug where it was, figuring it was a good hiding spot and not wanting to be seen out in it. I had to carry all the supplies, plus my kill, the dozen miles or so to the cabin. I didn’t mind, though. I had meat and a new home and nobody on my back.

The deer meat rotted pretty quick. It got cold at nights, but during the day it was up around 80°. I knew I had less than a week to figure out a way to get more meat without having to run it over.

At first I tried sniping squirrels with the .22, but I ain’t never been much of a shot. It just takes too much patience and I always had shaky hands. After fifteen or twenty misses, sometimes at varmints only ten yards away, I just gave up.

Next I tried making all kinds of traps like they use in the action movies, like in Predator. I had logs flying down and ropes flying up and trap doors and all sorts of things. I couldn’t get none of them to ever work. I guess you have to be in a jungle.

One of the things I tried, though, was a tiger pit. That’s where you dig out a hole and you sharpen some spears, then cover the hole with leaves and things and when a varmint or something steps on it they fall down and get speared to death. My Tiger Pit was only a foot wide and about three feet deep. I wasn’t looking to kill a moose or nothing.

I came out one morning to my Tiger Pit and I found a ground squirrel stuck in it. He hadn’t got stuck with my spears–he’d knocked them all over–so he was in tip-top shape and plenty excited. I ran back to the cabin and grabbed a claw hammer. I hit at him with the hammer side. First couple of swipes with it I missed him entirely. On the fourth whack I hit him square on the foot and he started squealing and crying and spinning around in that pit like a tornado in a washing machine. Roger started barking at it and at that point I just lost it. I was laughing so hard as I slapped down with the hammer, and I started barking and howling right along with my dog. I settled down when I finally pegged him in the chest, and maybe hit him a few times too many after I had him down for the count. Anyway, I had me a tenderized squirrel steak in no time.

It took forever to pick out the meat with all the crushed bones, though. I made a little note to myself in my mind that I wouldn’t bash so much and just aim carefully for the head. As you probably guessed, there wasn’t much meat in squirrel brains anyway. Later on I figured out that if you speared down his tail with the shovel he wasn’t as likely to jump up your arm and claw right on over you.

While I was sitting there and Roger and I were chewing on our first squirrel, it occurred to me that maybe we ought to do like one of them fellers said on a talk show and just keep it simple. I gave up on the “tiger” part of my pits. Uncle Theo didn’t raise no stupid kid, so to bump up the odds of catching a critter, I dug twenty three squirrel pits around in the forest. In no time I was up to my armpits in critters to cook over the fire.

Roger didn’t need nothing but the varmint meat, but like they say, a feller can’t live on dead squirrel alone. It was late summer, and for a little while there was huckleberries and the odd coral wild mushroom, but it wasn’t enough. I used some of the old canned beans and chili, but I was careful to leave half. It was wrong to steal any of it, but it seemed like it would’ve been a lot worse to eat it all. For all I knew, some feller was really counting on having some food up there next spring or something. I felt mighty bad about it, but I busted into four or five of the other cabins that I’d scouted and nabbed some other things to eat. I always tried to take just enough to get by, because I knew I was stealing. I was careful to mark down which cabins I’d broken into on my map because I figured one day I’d be able to come back and make it up to them. I didn’t take no more than what I needed to keep me alive. I always only take just as much as it takes.

For three weeks I lived like that. In that time I had more peace and quiet than I’ve ever had in my life. I kept drinking water in a bucket from a spring on the hill. I scraped together dead logs for camp fires outside so I wouldn’t have to worry about splitting wood. (There was a lot of old split wood there already, but I figured I’d need to save it for winter for burning inside in the fireplace.)  I lived mighty fine all by my lonesome. I’d carved out for myself what they call on the talk shows “lone time.” At least until Jesus came.

See, after a feller gets certain things straightened out like food and water and heat and a roof, he starts thinking that maybe it’s high time he caught up on some things that folks are always talking over your head about. For me it was Jesus. See, I’m smart. I can read. Don’t you listen to what nobody says, because I can read just as good as anyone in this jail. I can read a book.

There was a dusty old Bible in that cabin. I’d always meant to really sit down and get to know the word of God, because you can’t trust what people got to say about Him. You need to go through and really read between the lines, the way I saw it. So when I wasn’t killing things or stealing food I started reading the Bible.

It really put me into this funny kind of spell, almost right from the get go. It started with me just glancing here and there, picking it up and setting it down. But after a while I couldn’t stop. I’d sit and read for twelve or fourteen hours a day, just trying to make sense of it.

In some ways it made me feel a lot better about the things I’d seen and done, because frankly there was a lot of stuff in there that was so crazy and mean that it didn’t seem so bad that I’d murdered three people by then, counting the Pony Tail Lady.

From what I could read, Lot had a pokey with his two daughters and his girls had children because of it. Maybe that wasn’t as bad as killing two people (three counting the Pony Tail Lady) but it seemed plenty bad to me. All the times God promised that people would get smote or have to eat each other’s father or brother still gives me the heebie jeebies.

I paid special attention to Jesus because he’s the one everybody always talks about the most. But the funny thing about the Bible is that in church they always spend a lot of time talking about Jesus, but he’s really not even in most of it. My Bible only had him talking in 117 pages. I counted. They got this big old nasty book talking about fellers living for 900 years and this feller begatting that feller, and God sending this plague to wipe out them folks and killing all the boy babies. And the church folk plucked out 117 pages of the best stuff to make all their sermons on? Seems like that’d be like saying my life was all about picking flowers for Mrs. Jeffries, just because that was maybe one of the high points.

About the time I started to figure this Jesus feller was pretty near the only one making the Good Book look good, I found the mouse. He’d crawled up and had fallen asleep up in one of the rafters in his little mouse nest. It sounds funny now, but that’s when I figured that he was probably Jesus. At least he was for me. I needed somebody to talk to about all this, and he seemed like he was willing to listen.

So I talked to him about some of the things that’d happened to me and about all the horrible things folks did in the Bible to each other. At first it was just one-way, kind of like with this recorder. But what happened next didn’t happen all at once. The words crept into my head a little at a time. First one I really noticed was “WHY.”

And then more words.

“VENGEANCE.”

“KINGDOM.”

“SMITE.”

And then whole sentences.

“LOVE YOUR NEIGHBOR AS YOURSELF.”

“WHAT DOES IT PROFIT A MAN, IF HE SHALL GAIN THE WHOLE WORLD BUT LOSE HIS OWN SOUL?”

“BEHOLD, I WILL CORRUPT YOUR SEED AND SPREAD DUNG UPON YOUR FACES.”

Jesus was starting to talk.

“BREAK THEIR TEETH, O GOD, IN THEIR MOUTH.”

“LOVE THE LORD YOUR GOD WITH ALL YOUR HEART AND WITH ALL YOUR SOUL AND WITH ALL YOUR MIND.”

“AND IT REPENTED THE LORD THAT HE HAD MADE MAN ON THE EARTH, AND IT GRIEVED HIM AT HIS HEART.”

I’m not saying he actually talked to me, because I ain’t no idiot and I know a mouse can’t move his lips. Well, he can when you make him. But that’s not what I’m talking about. Most of the words came from him without moving his lips.

Well, once or twice I tried to make his mouth open and close at the same time as the words, but Jesus just told me, “DO NOT TEST ME, BOY.” He sounded pretty serious about it, so I just let him be when he talked.

The first thing out of his mouth, well, it wasn’t out of his mouth, was it? The first thing he put in my head that seemed special just for me was, “WHY DO YOU CALL ME JESUS?”

“It’s plain as day, ain’t it? You don’t reap nor do you sew. You just kind of lay there all sleepy. Course you wouldn’t have to sew because of all the fur.”

“HOW DO YOU KNOW I DON’T REAP?”

I thought to myself that he might have a good point there, because I wasn’t sure what a reap was. I bluffed it, because I figured he was just a mouse and he wouldn’t know better. “Because you can’t reap with your eyes closed.”

Old Jesus wasn’t too bright, because he fell for it. “WELL, OK, YOU MIGHT HAVE SOMETHING THERE.”

Me and Jesus talked for hours and hours. He’d tell me I shouldn’t eat so much out of the cabins because ain’t none of it was mine. I tried to explain about how I planned on making it up, but he didn’t want to hear. He was right. He knew I could go a day or two living with Uncle Theo without eating. Not that I didn’t want to, but there just wasn’t anything to eat. So it wasn’t like missing some meals would kill me. I went back to being really skinny after I started talking to Jesus.

He talked to me about a lot of things. Sometimes I didn’t even have to say anything–he’d just pull my thoughts from out of my head. He told me a thing or two about Uncle Theo that I hadn’t really thought of before. “MAYBE UNCLE THEO IS A MEAN SUMBITCH, BUT MAYBE IT WASN’T SO GOOD ABOUT WHAT YOU’D DONE WITH THE SHOTGUN. YOU KNOW, HE THAT IS WOUNDED IN THE STONES, OR HATH HIS PRIVY MEMBER CUT OFF, SHALL NOT ENTER INTO THE CONGREGATION OF THE LORD.”

“You saying that Uncle Theo was going to heaven if I hadn’t done that to him? You know he broke into the Methodist church in Grangeville and stole fifteen bottles of your wine.”

“WELL, THAT’S BESIDE THE POINT.”

“And he–“

“YOU SHOULDN’T HAVE DONE THAT.” Jesus was starting to sound annoyed.

I gave it some thought and figured maybe he was right. After all, I killed a lot of critters, and probably wouldn’t mind killing a pheasant myself if I happened to run into one. Who was I to say Uncle Theo shouldn’t ought to have killed a pheasant?

But it still wasn’t right that he tatered Cocksucker the way he did.

I guess I still don’t know what to think about that.

Me and Roger and Jesus made it through the fall just fine, but things got tougher when the snow started falling. In that high mountain country the snow seemed to come all at once in feet, not inches. My deer and squirrel skin coat had some leaks in it, to be honest. I hadn’t done a real bang up job on it, and I’d run out of thread so I could only tie more squirrel skins by the tail.

More than the cold though, I was starting to worry about food and heat. A lot of the small critters I’d been living off had gone into hibernation. I’d found a pair of snow shoes in one of the cabins, so I was able to roam around and pick through them for supplies. But that would only last so long, and there was only so much wood I could steal.

And on top of everything else, moving around was a pain. I was getting tired of covering up my tracks in the snow every time I headed back to my place. Roger couldn’t move around much, and I had to leave him back at the cabin most of the time.

One night in early November, right around dusk, it all changed. I was starting to wonder if I was going to die up there when I first heard the snowmobile motor off in the distance. I could hear him getting closer, so I took Roger and we hid behind some trees in the back. It finally roared up to the cabin and pulled to a stop. The man driving wore an expensive tan helmet that matched his expensive tan outfit, which also matched his expensive tan sled.

He could see the smoke rising from the chimney and my footprints and all the marks Roger left in the snow. “Who the FUCK is Theo?!” he screamed, and I got scared that maybe he was psychic like Jesus and could see in people’s heads. What if he could see me hiding back there, acting like a scared little boy instead of a Mountain Man?

Then for a moment I really panicked because I remembered Jesus and God and Revelations. Maybe he was more than psychic. Maybe he was here to mess me up. I whispered to myself, “And behold, a pale horse, and he who sat on it, his name was Death. Hades followed with him. Authority over one fourth of the earth, to kill with the sword, with famine, with death, and by the wild animals of the earth was given to him.”

I kneeled down in the snow and pulled Jesus out of my pocket. “So this is how it ends, huh Jesus?”

He didn’t answer, not out loud or in my head. That was when I realized he was dead, and that maybe he’d been dead all this time.

For just one second I felt completely alone in the face of the end of the world. Just me and Death, mano a mano. And I was sure I didn’t stand a chance.

Then I remembered I’d spelled my name in the snow right in front of the cabin while I was peeing an hour ago. I’m actually pretty good at it.

“Who the hell is out here?” he yelled again.

“I am!” I yelled right back. Seeing as how he was just some feller who could read pee writing and not Death come on a pale horse to slaughter the wicked, it seemed pretty silly to keep hiding. Besides, this was my cabin, and he had no business charging up to it like he owned the place.

“I own this place, God dammit!” he shouted back at me.

I couldn’t think of anything else to say, so I yelled back, “So?”

There was a long pause because he was trying to, like my mouth piece says, digest this information. From the way he kept talking, I guess “So?” didn’t sit well in his stomach. “Well what the fuck do you think you’re doing up here?” 

He didn’t wait for me to answer and just came running up the hill at me. Roger started snarling at him, because Roger gets kind of funny when he doesn’t see a lot of people. Roger does.

“Listen here you little shit. See this gun?” He was close enough now that I could see the .44 magnum cannon in his hand. It was pointed at Roger. “I’m going to fucking shoot your fucking dog if he comes anywhere near me. You got that?”

“That’s Dirty Harry’s gun, ain’t it?” I asked. I never got so close to one before outside of the gun shop in McCall. The barrel was almost as long as my forearm.

“Never mind the god damn gun. You got that dog under control?”

I smiled. “Roger’s hardly more than a puppy. He ain’t going to hurt you. Are you Roger?” Roger gave this kind of crazy sounding moan, so I kicked him in the hindquarters and he whimpered some. Roger got my drift, though, and walked around this feller who wasn’t Death.

I’d tell you what the feller said next, but for the life of me I never heard a word of it. I think he was asking me things. When I started laughing he grabbed my arms and began shaking me. I tried not to laugh, but Roger was peeing on his snowmobile right behind his back and it sent me over the edge. It was just the one thing on top of everything else, and I laughed so hard I started crying.

He grabbed me around the armpits with his free hand and dragged me into the cabin. He dumped me on the wood chair. “Stay right fucking there,” he shouted, like I wouldn’t be able to hear him in the fourteen by sixteen foot downstairs. Roger seemed pretty relaxed after he’d marked his spot and made me laugh, so he came in and sat on my feet.

The feller came back with a Coleman lantern from the trailer attached to his snowmobile. It was the first time I’d seen the cabin lit up with anything other than sunlight or through the grill of the potbelly stove. It seemed to make the place less magic.

“What’s your name?” I asked, willing to overlook how rude he’d been to me. It’s downright inconsiderate in my book to point a gun at a feller’s dog.

“Travis. Your name Theo?”

“Maybe.”

“Got a last name, kid?” 

I shrugged.

“Are you out here all alone? Did you get lost or something?”

I shrugged again.

“Look, I’m sorry I yelled at you. I just saw you standing there in the dark wearing a pile of animals and I thought you were a lunatic or something.”

I shrugged again.

“You are crazy, aren’t you son?”

I shrugged.

But I don’t like being called crazy.

“How long you been up here?”

“Couple months.” I was a little more willing to talk than normal because it’d been so long since I’d heard a voice. Well, a voice not coming from a dead varmint.

“You put all these crosses up in here?”

I looked around. I forgot I’d made all them crosses out of sticks and grass a couple weeks before the snow fell. There were a couple hundred. Actually, exactly 964 of them. They covered the windows and walls and were tied to the rafters, all tied with the long mountain grass. I just sort of got used to seeing them everywhere and had forgot about them. They didn’t really mean nothing, I don’t think.

I gave him my easy smile. “Yeah, a feller has to keep himself busy.” When I saw all the crosses I knew that Travis was going to be dead soon, so I could let my guard down some. “What brought you up to this place?”

“I was just trying out my new sled. It’s a top of the line Skidoo. Just bought it. I’m having, I was going to have some drinking buddies up here next weekend. Figured I’d get the cabin ready–look, you have any parents or something? What the hell is a kid like you out here by yourself for?”

“I don’t got any parents. I’m just out here catching up on my lone time.”

He smiled and nodded, but he looked worried. “So why are there squirrel hides strung up on some of them?”

“I ran out of squirrels so I couldn’t do the rest of the crosses. I probably killed every one of them in a mile from here. You should see me. I’m really good at it.”

“No. I mean, why did you, why are there….Jesus. Never mind. Listen, can you help me bring in the rest of the things?”  He set the gun on the table and walked out. I mean, how stupid was that?

“How many days are you up here for?” I asked while his back was turned to me. He was un-cinching the cover for his trailer.

“Three days. Can you help me with this?”

I walked behind him and while he was bending over to pull something out of the trailer I put the muzzle to his head and whispered, “Make my day.” The kick from the gun threw me into the snow.

It started snowing that night pretty hard. By morning it’d dumped a foot. After I had breakfast–it was the first non-varmint meat I’d had since the deer I’d hit with Mrs. Jeffries’ car–I set fire to the cabin and dumped out most of the stuff in the trailer. I left Travis where he died, figuring that somebody would probably find his body in the spring. I took the $274 in his wallet, but I left the gun. It made my wrist hurt, and guns are mostly more hassle than they’re worth. 

It only took an hour to figure out how to drive the snowmobile. Like I said, I’m a pretty smart kid. Roger sat in the trailer. We made pretty good time getting back to McCall, maybe even better than we did on the way up in the VW. I left the sled at the edge of town in a creek bottom and walked the rest of the way. I left my Mountain Man coat there too. Wasn’t no sense in raising red flags.

Roger and I were hungry, so we went down to The Pancake House and I had a tall stack and pocketed the sausages for Roger, who had to wait outside. After I finished and paid, I went out and saw a big SUV pulling away towing a camper trailer. The door wasn’t locked, so I hopped in and got Roger to make the jump at the last second.

We stopped in Winnemucca, Nevada, for gas, and when she came around and opened the door to get inside and grab some potato chips, it was the only time I ever heard Sam scream.

I could tell they were decent folks. At least Sam was. She had a real worried look on her face. Kind of like Charlotte did sometimes. But also like Charlotte she didn’t press too much.

“What’s your dog’s name?” Sam’s husband asked me.

I shrugged.

“You got enough ketchup there?”

I shrugged again. He was the one who paid for the burger and coke, and he even let me keep Roger in the trailer while we ate at Denny’s. (Roger had stopped being entirely house broke while we were up in the mountains, but I didn’t feel like mentioning it.) Maybe he was ok, even if he asked too many questions.

“Christ, Sam, we’re halfway to California already. Do we just turn around and drive back three hundred miles?”

“Let’s not rush into anything yet. Let’s just sit here a minute and talk to him. Let the kid eat a meal. He’s skin and bones.”

She got out of her side of the booth and sat next to me. She didn’t try to touch me, which was a good thing. Them Mormons were always trying to hug and touch me. At first she just sat and looked at the table just like I did. I could feel right away we were going to be all right together, even if Tom sometimes screwed things up by talking too much.

“Ain’t from Idaho,” I said. “Me and Roger were just passing through. Ain’t got a family. Just passing though.”

“Well, then where are you–“ and he stopped because Sam had reached across the table and put her hand on his while shaking her head. “Well, what then? Do we just leave him here? Shouldn’t we try to call the cops or something?”

I could feel her warm eyes scan over my oily hair, my eager hands stuffing in French fries, my neck. I guess I probably smelled a lot like dead varmint. I suddenly remembered the long tear on the back of the neck of my shirt, and how anyone looking there could see part of the Tic-Tac-Toe scar Uncle Theo gave me with cigarette butts. I sat upright so she couldn’t see it, but I think she did anyway.

“He’s coming with us, Tom. We’ll make it work.” 

And she did. She really did.

For a while.

I never really trusted that Mormon family. It’s not that they lied to me or called me names or made me eat cat food, it’s just that you got the feeling there was some big joke that they were all in on, and the joke was all meant to make you look like an idiot. “That’s a really nice Christmas ornament you are whittling,” Jared would say. And you’d wait for him to grab it and break it in half, and he never would. Maybe Ronnie and Jordan and Kay Lynn were just wimps. Little fags who didn’t have what it took. But Anne and Jared, their mom and dad, were like that too. And you just know it was a big game for those two.

“You know, I’d really like to get to know you better,” Jared told me once. “You want to maybe go fishing up by the reservoir–just the two of us?” I’d give him the easy smile and shake my head, and then walk out of the room even if I was in the middle of the X Files, which was my favorite show. Over and over he’d come up to me and say stuff like that, trying to act like we’d be friends. I heard once that people only take in foster kids because the state pays them to, so it wasn’t like he was really trying to do anything special. For all I know maybe he had to have a microphone somewhere in the house recording him saying that, so the government knew he was doing his best to make it seem like he was my dad.

I never told anybody, but I used to spend hours and hours in that house, when nobody else was there, looking for the microphones. I took apart electric sockets, light fixtures, computers, VCR’s, everything looking for them. I even tried taking apart Jared’s cell phone once, but when I broke it I had to bury it in the back yard. I paid careful attention while watching the X Files when there was an episode where Mulder or Scully was bugged, because I was sure they’d give me a hint on what I was missing. Then I figured that the government would never let them show all the new ways they’ve got for bugging people. Besides, even if they did, they stopped making the show in 2000. Who knows what kind of bugs they could’ve built since then?

Anyway, I never let Jared or none of them sucker me in. I’d smile and nod or smile and shake my head, or do whatever it took to get left alone. They sent me to a child shrink up in McCall, and then another one down in Boise. They even flew me off to Salt Lake City once. But I beat them all. I said enough to make them think I wasn’t crazy, but not enough to let them know I was on to them.

People look at the scars all over my body and they wonder how I could’ve lived with Uncle Theo, like it was the worst thing in the world. I guess some of them are pretty bad. In the middle of my back, for instance, there’s a square of cigarette butt scars that look a lot worse than they were. Uncle Theo once knocked me out and tried to play Tic-Tac-Toe on my back. He tried leaving a really light mark for circles and then a deeper mark for exes. He got so drunk, though, that after the game was over he went back over it and made the circles real circles and the exes real exes. The game was a draw, which happens most times, doesn’t it? At least he didn’t have to draw the winning line. It was lucky for me that the school had ran out of money for PE that year. It would’ve been hard to hide the mess while taking showers.

People see those scars and they think that Uncle Theo wasn’t good for anything and that I hated him. But you can’t look at my back and see all the times we sat by the river in Riggins fishing for salmon. The time he hugged me when I reeled in the biggest small mouth bass I ever caught (although he said he’d seen plenty bigger). The way his bristly cheeks rubbed against my arms when he piggy backed me across Logger’s Creek to get at our favorite trout hole.

Fact is that you knew where you stood with Uncle Theo. He didn’t have no dirty tricks like spying on you or trying to catch you in a lie. In fact he was happier than anyone that I didn’t talk much. The deepest, darkest secret he ever tried to get at in my inner mind was whether I knew if there was any Pabst in the fridge, and if there was why wouldn’t I get off my lazy ass and get one for him god dammit.

He was fierce and he was mean as hell, but he wasn’t really scary. Scars stop hurting and bruises heal up. Fractures take a little longer. But ain’t nothing really scary about any of that once you get used to it. When you come to expect something, even something really bad, it ain’t something you really get afraid of.

The scariest, most terrible thing in the world is when somebody tricks you into thinking the wrong thing. Scary is when things don’t make sense. Not because you don’t understand them, but because someone else has got in your head and makes you think wrong. Scary is being deceived.

All the shrinks I’ve ever talked to and that Mormon family, especially Jared, are the ones who are really dangerous. They want to bend your brain into thinking something that ain’t true. They pull tricks and they laugh at you when your back is turned. They want to be your friend and pretend like they know you and really care, when all they really want to know is all the evil things you done and how stupid you really are.

Well, them fellers in the white outfits say they ain’t much interested in what happened with that Mormon family and why they was so shifty. I didn’t kill none of them.

One of them, the feller with the really big eyes, he said, “Theo, you come up with the nastiest, most horrible thing you’ve ever done.” He looked at me like he figured that’d be a challenge, or maybe like he was afraid to hear the answer.

But I ain’t afraid to hear it, and I’m not afraid to say it. I think about it just about every day. Every hour sometimes. That’s the truth.

I guess it was four or five years ago or so. I was living with Uncle Theo out in the country. Sometimes I’d come walking home from school and I’d see old Jethro. He wasn’t really old. He was a horse of about, oh, maybe five years old. Pretty young and wily.

Mr. Sanders kept Jethro in this small pasture. Mr. Sanders was real particular. He didn’t like nobody messing with his pets, and he didn’t like messes or droopy things. He kept everything tight and organized.

His fence was as tight as a hung noose, six lines of wire across, metal posts at only twenty feet apart, a stay halfway between each post. To top it off he used four-barb-wire, which is more expensive but more likely to poke you if you brush against it. I heard that once a year he came around with a come-along and ratcheted up the tension so hard the veins stuck out of his neck. You walked up to his barbed wire fence and you knew you weren’t going to bend it an inch to climb under. You’d likely slice your hand open trying, or at least get your clothes torn and maybe a whupping later because clothes ain’t free, you know. 

I always managed to sneak a carrot or an apple wedge out of the lunch room, or I’d grab a couple apples off somebody’s tree, for Jethro. I’d come out and give him a bite or two because Mr. Sanders didn’t keep much grass in that small field. Sometimes Jethro would have bloody scabs on his lips from scraping at the short grass–trying to get the little nubs because he’d eaten everything else. I always felt sorry for him.

One day I stopped by and he seemed to be in a fine mood. He came running across the field to see me, his legs kicking out like he was a tap dancer looking to put on a show. I had four or five carrots in my backpack, which maybe he smelled, but I think he mostly just was happy to see me. I can tell when somebody wants something and when somebody is just glad to be around you.

I stood on the log I always use to jump over the fence. I kept one on the other side too. Mr. Sanders had the barbed wire gate so tightly strung that there was no way I could open it, even with the two by four tied to it that you can use for leverage. To open a gate like that you have to be big enough to shove against the gate hard and lift the wire loop over the top of the gate post, and I was probably a good fifty pounds shy of being able to pull that off. Mr. Sanders had no problem with it himself–his lips never got scabby because he had to look hard for food.

I shooed Jethro away so he wouldn’t get hit, and then I put a hand on top of the wood corner post and leapt over. My legs had only gotten long enough to pull off the jump that year, and it was one of my favorite things to do back then. Some days, when Jethro was too buys eating or sleeping, I’d jump over that fence twenty or thirty times, pretending I was being chased by spies or Indians. Sometimes I’d do that jump and be a hurdler like in the Olympics; only they never dared to do it over a barbed wire fence. Sometimes I’d pretend I was flying.

He put me in a good mood, so right at the top of my jump I kicked my heels together like the leprechaun from the Lucky Charms commercial. I landed in a mess, but that never worried me none. You can’t always just go by how things end.

Jethro nibbled the back of my neck with his thick lips, and it made me get up right quick. I wasn’t going to have no part of being grass stubble, and I told him so before he got any more wrong ideas. He shook his head and stared at me, waiting for me to tell him what I wanted to do that day.

 I pulled out the orange Frisbee from my back pack. Jethro gave it a sniff because it smelled like the carrots I still had stashed in there for him. I leaned against his neck and he blew snot on my elbow, like horses do when they want something.

He’d get his carrots, but I wanted to tell him about my teacher Mr. Wallace first.  I threw my arm over his shoulder and whispered to him about that funny black man. Mr. Wallace was the only black feller I met until then. Uncle Theo always called him coon teacher, and told me I shouldn’t listen to him no more than the government made me.

But the truth is I really liked Mr. Wallace. He was a huge feller, probably weighed twice what I did and was the tallest teacher in the school. I think he kind of scared a lot of folks because he was just so big and black. He didn’t scare me none, though. I’ve never been scared of big people. I’ve seen a small gelding let loose in a pasture full of all kinds of big mustangs, and within a week be running the show. Success in a fight don’t have nothing to do with size. It ain’t the horse in the fight, but the fight in the horse. I knew right off the bat that, like near everyone, he wasn’t scary because he just couldn’t get as mean as I could. When you know that about somebody, you don’t get scared around them. Doesn’t make it any easier to talk, though.

He ran a pretty good class, and nobody smarted off much. He called on me like all the teachers did at first, but just like the rest he pretty much gave up when I’d just keep on giving a little smile, not saying nothing. I always got good enough grades and I never caused nobody no trouble, in class at least, so teachers mostly went after other kids. And if a kid messed with me in class I would never do nothing until school was out and I could fix things with that kid on my own. Kids never messed with me for very long.

Mr. Wallace was with grownups like I was with kids, a feller who everyone got along with but who everyone was scared to death of. I don’t know why he lived in Idaho where there weren’t no more of his kind, but like everybody I guess he had his reasons. He always ate his lunch at his desk and not in the Teacher’s Lounge, so I guess it wasn’t because he liked the folks he worked with.

One day when the bell rang for lunch, I just stayed and sat at my desk when all the other kids got up to leave. I don’t know why–I guess I was bored of walking around the edge of the field by myself. He was pulling his sack lunch out of his desk when he looked up to see me. He smiled and asked, “What’s wrong with you, son? You want something?”

I gave him my easy smile and shrugged just a little, then put my head down on my folded arms on the desk. I just gazed out the window, because I didn’t want him to think I was just staring at him.

“Are you just going to sit there? You know, you’re not supposed to be in here during lunch unless you did something wrong.”

I looked back and shrugged again. He shrugged back–I think he meant it to be funny–and pulled out his Walkman. I could hear the tinny music from where I was sitting, and I carefully watched him out of the corner of my eye as he pulled out an apple. He looked up at me again and said (a little too loud, because of the headphones), “You want my apple?”

I smiled a little and didn’t say anything. He turned down his headphones and walked to me with the apple in his huge dark hand. He sat on the desk next to me, and his giant body just covered the desk like a big quilt. He set the apple on my desk as he looked at me. “Here. My wife always packs me two of them. She says that if she keeps giving me lots of apples she can be teacher’s pet. She thinks that’s funny.”

I stared at the big bright red and yellow apple on my desk. I hadn’t eaten since the oatmeal I had yesterday. I didn’t want him to think I was just trying to bum some food, but I was pretty hungry. I decided I’d eat half of it and then give the rest to Jethro along with the carrots I had. That way I wasn’t really begging.

“You’re a funny kid, aren’t you? I been teaching a long time, and I’ve seen some quiet kids. But you might be the best I’ve ever seen at keeping your mouth shut.”

I don’t let my guard down much, but I couldn’t help showing how proud I was to hear him say that. I gave a little honest smile.

“I KNEW it. I just knew that wasn’t your real smile. Don’t worry–I won’t tell anybody. Your secret’s safe with me.” I didn’t let on that I was worried, and I put the other smile on as quick as I could, but I was pretty bothered. You start showing one real thing and pretty soon people get an idea of what you’re about. Then you’re in for trouble.

 He seemed to let it go, which made me plenty relieved. “You like music? You ever hear of Bob Marley? I guess not, you little cracker.” He smiled some, like he just told his own little joke. I didn’t get it, but sometimes you don’t have to in order to enjoy it. “Here, put these on and tell me what you think. Or don’t tell me, which you probably won’t.” He leaned over me and his giant blackness ate up all of everything. When he pulled away the headphones were on my head.

It was the most beautiful sounding voice I’d ever heard. A lot of the words didn’t make sense because he talked so funny, like he was from Venus, but two lines jumped out at me. “Everything’s going to be all right” and “No woman no cry.” He said them over and over, and when the song finished I hit the button to repeat it. It was the happiest and saddest song you ever heard, all at the same time.

After I heard the song a third time, I opened my eyes and Mr. Wallace was back at his desk and eating lunch. He was reading a paperback. I listened to that song until lunch was almost over, and then I slid it onto the corner of his desk and sat down before any kids came in. As I walked away I heard him laugh a little and say “Little cracker” again. I liked the way he said it.

I whispered all this to Jethro. Then I picked up a stick off the ground and propped up the Frisbee to my neck. It probably sounds dumb, but I started dancing around old Jethro, dragging that stick across the Frisbee like a violin. I hummed real loud a tune I made up that seemed to fit-cheery but a little sad too, and full of summer days and Bob Marley-and I played and played for him, dancing and humming.

He looked at me funny at first, but he knew me and trusted me and he surprised me by getting into it himself. He danced around the field too, kicking out his hind legs and snorting at the ground, his long black tail swishing hard as he ran and ran. His big white head raised up real high, then he’d throw it down and his Appaloosa rump would fly into the air. 

He teeter totter danced so hard that I just forgot to keep playing and I fell in a heap in the middle of the pasture, laughing and rolling around on the dusty ground so I could keep watching Jethro. He was as strong as an elephant and happy as a bumblebee. He was stupid and fast and not careful and not embarrassed and he made me laugh so hard that my sides hurt and my eyes watered. I ain’t laughed so hard since then, I think. I’ll never forget how happy he looked, no matter what happened after that.

I like to think I’m a pretty smart feller, but even smart folks can do something that’s kind of stupid. I think I, well, there ain’t no doubt about it, I was pretty stupid that day. I got it in my head that it didn’t make sense that Jethro had to be wearing out his lips on that small pasture when he could be even happier and all loose and free. But I knew I couldn’t open up that gate myself to let him out and get some grass.

So I thought to myself, “He’s all jumping and dancing and happy. Maybe I could get him to jump that fence.”

I went running around in circles in the pasture, and he followed me here and there. When he got right behind me I ran right up to the fence and stopped and he just stopped too. He didn’t want to hit the fence. It didn’t work right.

I got a better idea. I pulled out the carrot from my back pack and started clicking my tongue at him. He trotted behind me to the opposite end of the field from where I first jumped over, and I let him eat the carrot. When he got halfway done, I pulled the half apple I had left from lunch out of my pack and I started clicking my tongue a lot louder, waiving it in front of his nose. At first he just slowly wandered after me, but after I ran halfway across the field he kicked in and started galloping after me.

I sprinted right at the fence, and we both forgot about the apple and violins and dancing and stubby fields. We ran at that fence, running for freedom. I could hear his blowing pants and his beating hooves right behind me, and when I reached my jumping log I didn’t look back.  It felt like I’d climbed right into his head. We both knew he was going to make it. We were both going to be free, at least for a little bit.

I planted one foot squarely on that log, grabbed the wood post and hurled myself over the fence. I did it just right. I could hear him just behind me, stomping after me, and as I hit the ground hard I was already rolling to get out of his way.

I lay there for just a half second, face down in the dirt, before I heard the most horrible metal screeching I’ve ever heard. It sounded like a dozen women screaming into a mail box. After that came wheezing and stomping, and then metal winding around itself like a giant Slinky dropped from a ladder. Then it got quiet, and then the wheezing and grunting came again. Finally there came a slow, steady drum beat. I lay there face down in the dirt, too scared to look.

In front of me an ant crawled over a blade of grass and then down a dark hole. The drum kept slowly, softly beating.

I finally looked over my shoulder, somehow thinking that if I didn’t turn my whole body maybe it would only be half as bad. It didn’t make a difference, though.

Jethro had made it most of the way over the fence, but he hadn’t got his back legs through. They were tangled up in the wire where his ankles had got stuck between the second and bottom rung. Bone was popping out of the skin of one of them.

The top line of the fence had snapped, but the second line had stayed tight. It had sawed about halfway into his belly before Jethro had stopped moving. Some of his gut hung out a little, but mostly it just oozed blood.

The worst part was his head, though. With his hind quarters hung up on the fence and one of his front legs plainly also broke, he kept trying to lift himself up by the head. He’d heave it up off the dirt for a second, keep it hanging in the air a foot off the ground, then give up and let it plop to the ground. Thump…………thump………thump.

His tongue hung out of his mouth the whole time like a bloody pot roast waiting to cook. Bits of half-chewed carrot floated in the blood. His eyes were wide open and quickly searched every way for an answer, whether his head was up or down.

I crawled across the ground and sat next to him. I put my hand on top of his head and pressed down, and after a couple of half-hearted tries he just let it sit there in the long grass.

That god damned Mr. Sanders. He could put together a mean barbed wire fence.

Jethro’s eyes kept rolling around to see if he could just get back to where he was. There was blood dripping off the barbed wire and staining his white flanks. I ran my hands through his coarse main, and just stared at his rolling bloodshot eye.

It was my fault. There wasn’t no one I could really blame. I get mad at Mr. Sanders at times about it, but he was just being the way he was. Keeping things tight and tidy. I was just being the way I was. Screwing things up.

My head began to unfreeze and I started to think for a bit. I couldn’t just leave him there. I stroked him gently on the neck, trying to keep him relaxed as best I could. I thought, “Well, I could go and get Uncle Theo. Get him to go and shoot this horse.” But Uncle Theo is drunk and mean, and he’d whup me. And it wasn’t his problem. He’d made enough problems on his own that he didn’t fix. It wasn’t very likely that he was going to be excited about fixing one of mine.

I could have told Mr. Sanders, but that man was just evil. Besides, I didn’t think I could look him in the eye.

Finally I fished out my Swiss Army knife. It was pretty dull because I never sharpened it and I was always cutting into stuff that it wasn’t meant for. Kids always find stuff to cut into. I cut into tin cans, dirt, aluminum cans, tires-just stuff.

I stroked that beautiful horse and I quietly sung to him. “Everything’s going to be all right. Everything’s going to be all right. No woman no cry.” It didn’t really matter, but it made it easier for me. I took the apple that was still in my hand and put it on the ground in front of his nose so he could smell it. Apple has kind of a nice smell. His nostrils opened and closed at the apple, maybe out of habit or maybe because it was taking his mind away.

I took the dull blade of that knife, and really quickly jabbed the point of it right behind his windpipe. His neck tensed up under my arms, but before he could squirm much I tore it forward and broke through his windpipe and the big vein there.

His good front leg kicked at the ground and his good back leg twisted in the barbed wire, but I set my whole body on top of his head to keep him from fighting anymore. Blood came gushing over my elbow, but I just ignored it. His skin shook hard, and every muscle seemed to jerk in a different direction than where it should. The shaking was bad for what seemed like forever. I been in an earthquake down here, and it was a little like that. Out of control and not natural, lifting and jerking me on top of him and jarring my teeth. Not meant to be done. For just a second his head lifted me off the ground.

Finally I could feel the fight leave him, so I sat back and looked into his eye. We stared at each other for a long time, and he shared with me a secret about dying, a secret he was just learning himself.

I laid my head on his neck and I didn’t move until the next morning.

Why did Monica really have to die? I don’t know. I do know that she meant everything to me.

I’d really been in love only one other time in my life. She wasn’t a real girl, just someone I made up. That girl used to walk with me to school every day, kicking rocks and cans with me, and staring at the big trees I’d made my pets. She was just as perfect as Monica, well, maybe a little more if I tell the truth. But it was easier for her to do that because she was all just in my head. It’s easier to do lots of things if you just do it in your head.

Except maybe killing. The problem with killing is that it never leaves your head. It just festers in there like the maggots, squirming around and coming up in places where you thought you didn’t have to worry about it. You can stamp on maggots all you want, and I have. The problem is they don’t all get stamped on, and the ones that make it usually come back something fierce.

That first girl is exactly what I mean. I mean, we used to have all kinds of fun like I was saying. She didn’t care none if I said something stupid at some stupid kid’s birthday party. She knew what I meant. Like when Jason the boy showed me his computer game Half Life. See, you get to pretend you’re this feller who goes around killing all sorts of aliens and stuff, but the best part of all is that you can use the internet to go out and play against people from all over the place. I watched him kill fellers from New York and Des Moines and China.

I snuck out of the big room where the cake was and all the people who stared at me and I came back to play the game some on my own. We never got a computer of our own and it wasn’t like I was ever coming back to this kid’s house, so I had to see it while I could.

I played with it some and I suppose I wasn’t very good because most of the time I got killed real quick like.

But I somehow hit a button that changed my life. It made it so that I couldn’t fight or kill none. I just rode around on somebody else’s guy, watching what that feller did. His name was “OneShotStopping,” and I don’t know if he was from around these parts or somewhere over in China, but he was pretty good. I just watched him play the game, shooting and sneaking and killing and none of it was my fault. Nobody could say I’d done none of it. He didn’t even know I was there.

Jason came into the room with some of his friends and said, “Theo, what are you doing on my computer. I didn’t say you could come in here?”

I didn’t know what to say, so like an idiot I just went and blubbered the truth. “It’s just so beautiful.”

He looked over my shoulder and laughed. “The dork is just watching in ‘Observer Mode.’ He’s not even really playing. Bet you got killed so fast that this was the only way you could even play the game.”

He was right, but he was also wrong. Just like I always am. Like lots of people are. Yeah, it was the only way I could play the game. But it wasn’t what was beautiful.

I couldn’t fight or kill none and none of it was my fault. I was just watching stuff happen to other people. Like a bug on the wall, living but not hurting.

When you get down to it, I’m pretty good at not getting dead, at least in the real world, which is the only one that matters. I bet Jason would’ve been got dead a long time ago if all the things happened to me happened to him. Nope, I’m not dead, but it’s so tiring keeping it that way. It’s nice to be in Observer Mode for a spell.

The Pretend Girl was always in Observer Mode, I suppose. She always got a free ride on me. The Pretend Girl knew exactly what I meant, and that’s probably the one thing that made her more perfect than Monica. Monica didn’t know what I was talking about at all when I told her about Observer Mode. But by then Monica was dead, so she didn’t know much of anything. I talked to her head a lot, Mr. Monica’s Dad. I talked to her almost like she was this here recorder.

I know it may sound funny to you, but I took good care of her, I want you to know. At least the head part of her. Yeah, maybe I did feed most of her to Roger, and maybe it wasn’t so good that I did that. But I gave her head the best spot in my .

See, it’s probably all messed up now, but I had it all sorted out perfect in there. At the bottom is stuff like the pony tail and the plastic pen, and further up is the star from on top of Mrs. Jeffries’ Christmas tree and some other nicer things like that. And at the very top is Monica’s head.

Well, there’s also Jethro’s ear stuck in her mouth. But I had to put it somewhere, and it kept falling off when I just laid it on her forehead. Jethro’s ear poked up like the top stone of a pyramid.

Pyramids are funny. When you see it, you can’t help but look at the top, because that’s where it all leads to. But I built one once with some Legos, and it taught me something about pyramids. They’re mostly a lie. You’re supposed to look at the top, but you actually use most of the blocks up on the bottom, and you can’t skimp because it’ll go all lopsided. All that stuff at the bottom, next to the dirt, is where most of your time is spent. Fact, you can spend so much time putting the bottom together that you never really get around to the top. People ought to look at the bottoms of pyramids more. A lot of work goes into them.

You know I meant nothing mean by putting Jethro’s ear where I did. I wasn’t trying to make her ugly. It just seemed right to put something pretty in her mouth, something perfect, cause you have to admit that even though she was so pretty, and her mouth was especially so pretty, her mouth never did make nothing as important as one single whinny from Jethro, especially not as special as the singing he did on the day I tried to free him, or as important as the gasping he did while he stared at me in the long grass, blood gurgling out of his nose.

When Monica died, if you don’t mind me saying, she just hit the ground and stared straight into the water, eyes wide open. When I dragged her to the bank and rolled her over and looked her in the face, there was a piece of gravel stuck to her eyeball, and she just sort of said “ungghhhhh,” real quiet and quick. And that was all there was to her. She just died then without telling me nothing.

When that old horse Jethro died, he stared long and hard at me. His tongue stuck out. His head slamming over and over against the ground, then the shaking, then finally just laying there, staring closer and deeper. None of it mattered. Wasn’t nothing he could do that made a bit of difference.

He showed me that there’s no Observer Mode for dying. You are either doing it or you aren’t. You die as you live-mostly alone.

Always use a wig. If anybody notices you, they always notice the hair first and most. I bought a blonde wig at a used clothes store and cut it up. Then glued pieces into some baseball caps, and used permanent marker to color one brown, one orange and one black. Different shirts and different postures for each of them. Blonde guy had a limp. Brown had a duct taped pillow pot belly. Black wore sun glasses and chewed gum. Red was supposed to have a mustache, but it kept falling off. Red was probably good enough on his own.

I always thought Black was the toughest.