Through Darkest America

and pretended to be doing something else. Howie couldn’t do anything but leave.

Earl was asleep, or didn’t want to talk. The sky seemed alive with stars. The boy hadn’t told him a thing. The government, which likely meant troopers, had treated him like meat. Or so he said. It wasn’t something Howie wanted to believe, but he couldn’t put it aside. They were there and he could see them.

The desert night was chill and he rolled up in his blanket. He wished there was a way you could turn off your head when you liked. When you didn’t want to think anymore. Something like that’d be a blessing.

He wondered about Kari. Where she was; what she was doing now. He guessed the war would go on until it quit. Until one side or the other got tired of dying and gave up. Maybe that’s what had happened in the War way back when. Maybe there was no one left who wanted to fight, nothing left to burn.

He turned over with a start, suddenly aware that he had slept, that the night was nearly gone, that something had brought him abruptly out of sleep. He reached for his knife, then recognized the shadow. The boy was just sitting there, watching, not moving at all.

“Whatever you was thinking, it ain’t that,” the boy said. “You couldn’t know it. Not ’less you been there, you couldn’t. Hadn’t anyone ever got out of that ’cept us. What they do there is use you like they want. You ain’t meat, but you’re by God close enough to it.”

Howie’s throat seemed constricted. “Use you how? What is it you’re talking about?”

The boy worked his mouth funny. “They do it ’cause stock gets weak and don’t breed good anymore. Meat don’t care if it’s humpin’ its sister or its ma, and that makes the blood go bad. You can’t stop ’em doing it, so they put good blood back in the herds. Only it ain’t meat blood. It’s people’s. The boys got to serve the best mares. The girls are put in with healthy bucks an’…”

“Godamn, you’re lying!” Howie exploded. He sat up and stared at the boy. “No one’d do a thing like that! No one!”

“They can do whatever they want,” the boy said.

Howie was shaken. Supper starting to crawl up his throat. “Someone… someone’d find out. They couldn’t do it without someone finding out.”

“Isn’t anyone going to do that,” the boy said. There was no feeling at all in his voice. “It’s down in the old Keys and you don’t get close unless you belong. It’s a lie, the whole damn thing, and they can’t take a chance on anyone finding out.”

The boy looked away from Howie, north, or nowhere at all. He seemed to be somewhere else. Howie thought he was simply turning away, like he did when he didn’t want to talk.

“Look,” the boy said finally, “Earl said it was up to me, but that I probably hadn’t ought to say anything at all. Only I got to do it. Maybe it ain’t right, but I got to do it. See, the thing is, I knew her. They don’t always cut your tongue right, and she could talk as good as me. She talked a lot about you. I knew who you was right off when you said your name. I tried to act like I didn’t but I did. You was the…

”Huuuuuuh…!”

Something tore at Howie’s heart. Food came up and he couldn’t stop it. “You’re talkin’ crazy stuff,” he said harshly, his voice as thick as the boy’s. “D’wanta… hear g’damn crazy stuff!”

“Listen, I’m sorry.” The boy’s eyesseemed to plead with Howie. “I wanted someone to know. You see that? I wanted someone to know what they do. That’s all it was…”

Howie cried out with all the anguish and loneliness that was in him, and knew it was a cry caught up inside him that no one else could hear. The sun rose out of the desert and he was lost in its terrible light. He wondered why there was no hurt at all. If he could make it hurt bad, someone would take it all back and do it over. But there was nothing in him now. It had been there once and it was gone. He couldn’t make it happen anymore…

“You all right?” Earl touched him gently. “You want a little water or something?”

Howie shook him off.

“I can get you some water if you like.”

“I got to go,” Howie said. “I’m…  obliged for your help and all I can’t stay here no more.” The desert was a blur. He looked at Earl and didn’t see him. The others were there somewhere in the sun, the boy who talked and the rest.

He started walking. Just walking away. He saw Carolee as he always saw her—a small flash of laughter in a bright flower dress on the boat down to Bluevale, a comic miniature of her mother. He held on to that picture as long as he could. When it turned to something else, he shut that corner of his mind and never looked at it again.

“There ain’t nothin’ up that way you can do,” Earl called after him. “You know there ain’t, boy.”

“I got to go see if that’s so,” Howie said.

He wondered if he’d said it aloud or just thought it.

Days of Howie Ryder…

For some time after Mexico, Howie walked north and east, finally running flat out of land and coming up against the sea. He marveled at the great blue expanse that seemed to stretch out forever to the sky. Ma had shown him a picture in a book one time, an ocean and a boy in a boat. The water in the picture looked flat and painted on; it didn’t look a thing like this.

The beach was thick with tiny creatures that scuttled along the sand; they were easy to catch and good to eat. Storms came in off the water now and then, and he had enough to drink.

He followed the coast for some time. It seemed to go on forever. He tried to draw a map in his head, and decided the big stretch of water was the Gulf…

The men came at him just before first light, making little noise, working up to him on the ground. He could smell their sweat and knew they weren’t afraid. Howie figured they’d done this once or twice before. They came in together, the second man holding a knife, just behind the first. They stopped to listen for a while, then the first man crawled up and grabbed out at Howie’s arms to hold him down. Howie rolled to one side and came up in a crouch; the man with the knife looked surprised because Howie wasn’t there and then he was. Howie thrust his own blade in belly-deep, sliced up quickly to the breast and jerked free, all in a move too fast to see.

The other man cried out in fright, crabbed away, leaving his friend behind…

Moving further north, he saw a little game, snicks and two rabuts. By late afternoon he smelled stock. The odor sent a sharp wave of nausea through his belly. Pictures appeared in his head, things he didn’t want to see. When the pens came into sight, he picked up his pace as quickly as he could. The stink was overpowering. The pens were set up in a clearing, on the bank of a sandy river that likely ran down to the sea. With a river close by you could dump all the waste from the stock and the organs nobody liked to eat.

As ever, there was a slow, constant motion in the pens, stock shuffling aimlessly about. He passed the breeding sheds, keeping his attention straight ahead, trying to ignore the growing knot that cramped his gut. He walked by a high board fence, past gateways and ramps, and came right on the mares. Howie stopped, too shaken to turn away. Sweat cold as ice stung his face. They were young, no more than fourteen, each one gravid and heavy-breasted, nearly ready to foal. One looked up, a mare with matted yellow hair, looked right at him with dull, incurious eyes, grunted in her throat and clutched her breasts. Bile rose up in Howie’s throat and he turned away and retched…

When the man came around, Howie jabbed him in once in the ribs. The man’s eyes went wide; a frightened cry was muffled in the gag.

Howie leaned in close. “You’re Anson Slade.” It wasn’t a question at all.

Slade nodded emphatically.

“I’m taking off this gag,” Howie said. “You want to yell, why that’s up to you. I ain’t against bringing