Haints Stay

by Colin Winnette

  “Don’t,” said Sugar. “It’s annoying.”

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

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

  The boy shrugged, shook his head.

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

  “I don’t like it,” said the boy.

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

  “But I don’t like it,” said the boy.

  “Bird for now,” said Brooke.

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

  “So we’re going ?” said Brooke.

  “We’ll go,” said Sugar.

  They left.

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

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

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

  “I would,” said Sugar.

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

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

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

  “You put your hand in a lake, withdraw it, and the surface moves for a bit,” said Sugar, “it snaps back into place or it ripples on and on. Your involvement ends the moment your hand leaves the water.”

  “We’re here,” said Brooke.

  It looked no different from any other patch of wood. The boy was not even sure in which direction he should be looking.

  “You take Bird,” said Brooke.

  Sugar placed his hand on the boy.

  “After you,” said Sugar.

  “What do I do ?”

  “Walk,” said Sugar.

  “What’s Brooke going to do ?”

  “Wait,” said Brooke.

  As they walked, the woods seemed to bruise. It was nearly, suddenly, evening.

  “How far is it ?” said Bird.

  “Not far,” said Sugar.

  They were headed toward nothing in particular, it seemed to Bird. Only darkness. Beneath their feet, small stones in the dirt squeaked as they were pressed together. Every now and then one would pop beneath Sugar’s heel, but he did not seem to notice.

  Bird’s toe caught a hidden root and he fell forward, palms out, onto the earth before him. His shin struck the root and his palms stung as they pressed into the small stones hidden beneath a layer of dirt and leaves on the forest floor.

  “Can you stay on your feet ?” said Sugar.

  Bird nodded. He could.

  “Then follow.”

  Sugar took the boy’s shoulder and drew him up.

  As Bird’s hands left the dirt, he unearthed what he’d mistaken for small stones. The yellow edges of two cracked teeth shone up from the earth as a third worked its way from where it had impressed into Bird’s palm and fell to join them.

  “It’s a graveyard,” said Bird.

  “You’ll find that’s always the case,” said Sugar, “if you pay attention.”

  Bird was sniffling behind Sugar now, being led by the wrist. Bird said nothing in return, made only a few soft sounds, pausing every now and then to suck air through his nose.

  “Are you hurt ?” said Sugar.

  Bird did not respond.

  Suddenly, they could hear water. After a moment they could see it, too. A silver stream and its heavy movement through the earth.

  “We’re almost there,” said Sugar.

  Bird cut his whimpering then and began to tremble slightly against Sugar’s grip.

  “You should cut all of that before we get there,” said Sugar. “If he sees how scared you’re acting, he will fuck with you.”

  The trembling sped up for a bit, then slowed. Sugar could hear the boy breathing in through his nose and out through his mouth. The air was still then.

  “We’re here,” said Sugar.

  Before them was a modest camp. There was no smoke. No fire pit. Only a few scattered bundles and a thin man in a suit, sitting upon a rock.

  “Sugar,” he said, “you’ve brought a friend.”

  “His name’s Bird,” said Sugar.

  “For now,” said Bird.

  “And the baby ?” said the man.

  “I’m not a baby,” said Bird.

  “Indeed,” said the man. “Sugar, I’m happy for you.”

  He drew a knee to his chest, set his heel against the rock beneath him.

  “Can you tell me anything about Bird ?” said Sugar.

  “Like what ?”

  “Where did he come from ? Who’s his family ? Where can we leave him ?”

  Sugar finally loosed Bird’s wrist from his grip, but Bird’s hand came back to Sugar’s arm only a moment later, clutching his elbow, his forearm, his bicep, his shoulder.

  “Don’t leave me,” said Bird.

  “We could get you home,” said Sugar.

  “I can’t tell you anything about him,” said the man, “because there’s nothing to tell.”

  “What does that mean ?” said Sugar.

  “You should keep the baby this time,” said the man. “The woods are crying out with all you’ve left them.”

  He looked up and around, as if at nothing in particular.

  “There is no baby,” said Sugar. “Enough about the baby.”

  “Nothing’s gone away. You know that as well as I do.”

  He was smiling then, eyeing Sugar and Bird, one after the other. He was calm, somehow comforting. It wasn’t a feeling Bird recognized. He could not tell if he liked it.

  “He’d be better off with his family,” said Sugar. “Brooke and I can’t help him. He’s in danger if he’s with us, and we’re in danger if he slows us down.”

  “Most are better off with a family,” said the man.

  “So help us,” said Sugar. “Give me something to go on.”

  “Keep the baby,” said the man. “Make my life easier out here.”

  “Your life,” said Sugar.

  “I am being straight with you,” said the man. “But you are not being straight with me.”

  Sugar did not respond.

  “Are you ?”

  “At the very least, you can tell us if the boy has people,” said Sugar.

  “He does now,” said the man. He rose then. He brushed his knees and waved them on.

  Sugar protested, but the man moved steadily from the rock and then away from his own camp. He did not look back and he did not register Sugar’s increasing alarm.

  “He’s not ours,” said Sugar. “We have nothing for him.”

  Bird was silent.

  “You’ve put him to death then,” said Sugar. “This is on you.” When they finally left, Sugar was angry. He was kicking up stones and clumps of dirt without breaking his stride.

  “Worthless,” said Sugar, over and over again, kicking the earth and scattering teeth.

  Bird followed at an uneven clip, hopping and jogging slightly then slowing himself to keep just behind Sugar and out of striking distance.

  They were following the same path that had brought them there. Bird spotted the divot where he’d fallen, and he pressed it with his heel.

  Sugar paused then, as if he had an idea. He turned to the boy and Bird took a step back, flinched, and Sugar was upon him. He knocked the boy onto his back. The boy swatted his desperate hands and gripped at Sugar’s neck until Sugar was able to scoot his knees onto the boy’s elbows and, sitting on his chest, pin him at three points to the earth.

  “I will gut you,” s
aid Sugar, “if you don’t tell me this instant where you’ve come from and what you’re after.”

  Bird coughed and made room for Sugar’s grip to tighten.

  “You ran away ?”

  Bird tried to shake his chin. He was wide-eyed, gazing back at Sugar and trying to look plain.

  “Someone sent you ?” said Sugar.

  When he did not respond, Sugar shook Bird. He shook loose the tears Bird was trying to hold back and struck him in the brow with the middle knuckles of his right hand.

  “Speak up,” said Sugar. “Tell me something to make some sense of all this and I won’t break you open and drag you behind us until you’ve bled out. We’ll cut off pieces of you and leave a trail for whoever sent you to find us. And when we deal with them, it will be to mutilate them painfully and leave them to the woods. Then we will deal with your mother and father. We will put your mother’s head in a gunny sack and your father’s will hang from the side of my saddle.”

  Bird went back to trying to look plain. Or he was scared enough to be immobilized. Either way, he wasn’t crying or fighting, just staring up at Sugar as if there was nothing to do worth doing and nothing at all to hope for in the world.

  “What’s happened ?” said Brooke.

  Bird had not heard or seen his approach.

  “The boy’s got no paths,” said Sugar, “no markings of any kind. He’s appeared as if from nowhere. He knows nothing.” Sugar was pressing his palms against the boy’s throat then, holding him to the dirt and squeezing until the boy’s eyes bulged and stuttered about in desperation. “We’ve got nothing to go on other than knowing that we’re better safe than sorry. Safer without him. Safer without a mouth to feed and the unknown hanging over us.”

  “Well,” said Brooke, “if you’re going to do it, do it.” He rubbed his hands together, wiped them along the length of his pants. “But don’t drag it out.”

  Sugar leaned into his hold on the boy’s throat and locked eyes with him.

  “If you’ve got something to tell me,” whispered Sugar, “you tell me now.”

  The boy was tense, a short bit of rope tugged from either end, but when Sugar went silent the boy held that way for only a moment longer before releasing into the mud. His eyes wandered from Sugar to Brooke and then to nothing in particular. His air was gone. His throat was bruised and bent. Something was humming up inside of him like the edge of sleep. The sounds of Brooke and Sugar rattled around in his head, little clips of conversation and the sounds of the forest around them now, suddenly, and from before.

  When Bird came to, he was not dead. There was a fire at his side, Brooke and Sugar were seated opposite him.

  “You,” said Brooke, pointing at Bird, “are no help at all.”

  “You tried to kill me,” said Bird. He sat up, coughed, rubbed his throat. He coughed again and loosed a mixture of phlegm, painfully. “You nearly killed me.”

  “I would have killed you if I was trying to kill you,” said Sugar.

  “You choked me !” said Bird. He rose, began to search the earth around them for a rock of any size.

  “And you produced nothing,” said Brooke, “other than sleep. Other than some blood and spit. And now Sugar,” he nodded toward Sugar at his left, “he’s got nothing much left to try.”

  “You wanted me dead,” said Bird. “I am not safe.”

  “You’re not listening,” said Brooke.

  “I don’t need to listen,” said Bird. There were no rocks. Infrequent shocks of dead grass. The dirt was fine where they were, vaguely yellow. The ground was loose and unfamiliar.

  “Where are we ?” said Bird.

  “In between towns,” said Brooke.

  Finally, Bird’s eyes came upon a stick, a few paces off. Not much at all, but substantial enough, maybe, to land a few strikes.

  “If you can eat,” said Brooke, “you’ll feel better.”

  Bird brought the branch down upon Sugar’s defending hand. It fell apart quietly, like ash, and Sugar rose to swat the boy down again.

  “Enough,” said Sugar. He produced a knife from his waistband and brought it into the boy’s gut.

  “No,” said Brooke, and the woods filled with thunder then, roaring in the distance at first then rising in volume and velocity like a river run over and borne down upon them.

  The earth trembled and the boy collapsed, his hands at the abandoned knife in his gut.

  “Horses,” said Sugar, and then they appeared.

  Dozens of wild horses tore through the camp, tearing their fabrics and trampling their objects flat. Sugar lunged for a tree and began to climb, the muscles of each passing animal thudding against him and bruising his more delicate edges.

  Brooke huddled to the ground and was kicked and pressed, broken open about the arms and chest and face. The boy had vanished. The knife too. Sugar climbed the tree up and out of harm’s way and swayed with it as the horses passed.

  Then it was over. The dust was not settling but the sounds were gone and the trees were rocking back into place. Sugar heard Brooke’s cough and knew he was alive. He glanced about for the boy, but did not see him.

  “Are you badly hurt ?” said Sugar.

  Brooke did not answer. He rolled to his side and clutched his gut. He coughed blood and phlegm into the brown mist between them.

  “The boy is our concern now,” said Sugar, sucking the sharp end of a bone.

  “He wasn’t a concern and you made him a concern and you’ve done enough without me,” said Brooke. Their meat was raw. They were avoiding fire, resting in the hollows of a large bush.

  “I lost my temper,” said Sugar.

  “You lost your sense, but it doesn’t matter,” said Brooke. “What was there to know about the boy ? What was said ?”

  “Nothing,” said Sugar. “This is what I’ve been trying to say.”

  “Can’t be nothing,” said Brooke. “What were the words ?”

  “I was told there was nothing to tell,” said Sugar.

  “Are you my brother ?”

  Sugar cocked his head, examined Brooke, then nodded.

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

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

  “There was nothing to tell ?” said Brooke.

  “Nothing. And the boy seemed frightened.”

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

  “I asked if he had people.”

  “And ?”

  “And I was told he does now.”

  “Well,” said Brooke, “he did anyway.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  “Are you going to help me ?”

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

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

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

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

  “How was it hurt ?” said the face.

  “I don’t know,” said the boy.

  “It was stabbed !” said the face.

  “That’s right,” said the boy.

  “In the gut,” said the face.

  “It feels like that,” said the boy.

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

  “What could ?” said the boy.

  “Its gut,” said the face.

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

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

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

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

  “The killers I ride with.”

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

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