Turned

scowled.  “If we go down there, we’re even bigger idiots than they are,” he’d said.  I’d agreed with him, but I kept my mouth shut. When we’d descended, we found four of them laid up around a smoldering fire covered in heaps of blankets with only one small gray-haired woman moving slowly and shakily between them.  They had a great big German Shepard with them with hair as silver as my mother’s and eyes as rich and dark as some enchanted farmland out of a story book.  It started barking as we crouched at the edge of the clearing watching them for a few minutes.  The old woman shushed it and smiled at us as my mother pushed forward through the tall dry grass of the clearing. My brother hung back in the bushes.  She greeted us bowing deeply to my mother with her hands clasped together in front of her chest. Her fingers dug fiercely into each other. My mother introduced us softly and then the woman began to speak excitedly. I only managed to catch the word fever as I peered around their camp. They had a rusted child’s wagon drawn up next to the fire carrying only a couple of cans and a couple of knives.  My brother emerged as warily as a wild dog. He shot a hard glance at the invalids, scowled at the old woman and my mother, and then locked eyes with me before disappearing back into the trees at the other end of the clearing.  My mother sighed, pulled her great book out of her backpack, and stepped up to the man that the lady said was her husband.  I stepped a little closer as she bent down stiffly and laid her bony hand across his red and sweating forehead.  His face was reddened with sweat and grease oozed from it and sat on the skin shining in the daylight. It was as if it was cooking in the sunlight. My mother closed her eyes and mumbled a prayer silently, holding her hand on his forehead, and then she began digging in her pack pulling out small bags of dried herbs.

The other three were in even worse condition than the woman’s husband.  A young woman lay gasping for breath and writhing. Her head slid around on top of her stringy blonde hair as she repeatedly cried out for Joe.  A little boy lying on his back did not move at all. His head was tilted to one side and his tongue lolled.  Another man shivered and clutched his blankets even though his lips were chapped and the skin on his face was peeling away.  My mother was attempting to feed the woman’s husband a mash of herbs and water, but his teeth were clenched unrelentingly, and she could not get the spoon in his mouth. Their dog lying near the edge of the clearing where my brother had disappeared suddenly leapt up and began barking furiously, its ears flattened back against its head.  My brother burst out of the forest and trotted towards us. Startled, the dog ran to the lady’s side and resumed its barking. My mother’s spoon tilted forward forgotten, the green mash dripping onto the ground.

I met my brother just on the other side of their circle, my mother and the woman sidling up to us as we spoke.

“A party’s coming or I’m a fool,” he said.

“A party?  What are they doing here?” I asked but before he could answer the old woman burst in.

Her voice quavered. “Jimmy there, he killed one of their thralls last week.”  She looked at my mother with wide brown eyes glistening with tears. Her lips quivered as she spoke.  “They tried to take our son.”

I dashed over to her husband and threw back his coarse dingy blanket.  A warm rush of foul air reeking of sweat and hot meat washed up from his body.  He moaned and his eyes flashed open and then rolled into the back of his head leaving his eyes lying there like two untouched sheets of paper.  He jabbed at his chest with his hands, grasping for the blanket but gripping his tattered black t-shirt instead.  It was worn so thin that his shoulders peeked through the fabric and the armpits had sagging holes that opened and closed with each arm’s movement. But what caught my eye were three long rips that ran diagonally across his chest and beneath them three raised red welts slowly oozed a thick dark mixture of blood and pus.

“Damn,” Benjamin said and strode back to where we’d left our packs lying hidden in the woods.  The woman stood frozen in place with only her head moving from my mother, to my brother’s receding figure, to myself and back to my mother again.  Her eyes fluttered as she watched us.  My mother visibly deflated. Her chin fell to her chest and her presence entirely turned in on itself.   I ran my arm through my mother’s, linking our elbows, and then tugged at her gently.  She stood rooted staring over the sick people.  I expected the woman to fling herself forward and cling to my mother at any moment pulling at her skirts and wrapping her arms around her legs like a child, but she didn’t move.  She seemed dazed.  I pulled more firmly, and my mother sighed and followed me. Her weight seemed to evaporate in the sun so that it felt as if I was leading an empty dress.  The old lady watched us leave with tears running down cheeks gone ashen. Then she sat down hard next to her husband and buried her face in her hands.

Benjamin was waiting for us at the edge of the clearing, leaning on his pack against a tree trunk. His hands were shoved into his pockets and his shoulders scrunched up as if it were cold.  The brim of his wide black hat cast a straight line of