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I ain’t wish it on anyone else in the world, mister…I know I’ve no right to be happy, here… Whoever’s gone, is gone.
You don’t say much. You don’t have a right to say much. In some ways, you aren’t even here.
(You in your cast-off dress, you with your mud-rough feet, you and your traitor’s message.)
And yet—yet. Summer is turning and the birds are flocking overhead. Even the words feel like silence these days, the way they’re passed through ground teeth, dropping heavily to earth. The lake is weary green. There is a body like a swollen deer carcass rotting on the other side of the bridge.
You wouldn’t have said he had it in him, to leave a body like that, except for that you’ve known so many men.
He is pale and slight with warm dark hair and cold bright eyes. He has a sweet voice that is both full and high at once, and sounds like singing without music.
He is going mad. The first time you ever lay under a man, you cried for the pain of it, but that wasn’t the worst you’ve had. The worst, during your time in the damp, smoky rooms, were the mad ones. The ones who didn’t even know that they were hurting everyone they touched.
So. Here you are, with a simple mind and a name not really yours, and you look at him as if you’re both in pain—
You can’t go on like this, mister,
—but one of the others will cut your throat if you say that to him. Even your friend, your Amras, couldn’t save you then.
This is a band of brothers that doesn’t know how to be saved.
The birds are flocking because they know the year is ending, long before it does. The days are still long, hot. You’re healing. You’re cleaner, now. The man who tried to kill you is gone.
His is the deer carcass body.
You still aren’t free.
What’s inside his mind, when he isn’t feverishly pattering out the plans for new barricades and better weaponry? What do his hands know how to do, beyond packing bullets?
From your stable perch you see him—he’s walking, walking, walking, pacing until day turns into night.
He twists his fingers like screws. He screws his face in anguish. His eyes burn even when he isn’t looking at you.
(He’s never looking at you.)
Here is what you know: there was another. Another brother, whose hair you brought and whose life you signaled—ended. Amras told you this, after the deed was done.
Whoever’s gone, is gone.
He must have loved him. He wasn’t always the eldest. You don’t know if you’re fascinated with him because he’s beautiful and fragile-wild, or because he is going to kill you someday. He killed the body that lies beyond the bridge, after all. He did that, when no one thought he could.
You know better.
(You’ve known so many men.)