THE BOY KNELT OVER A PILE of sticks and wadded newspaper. Working to get a fire started. A can of Vienna sausages and a straightened coat hanger on the ground next to him. One end of the back fender of the Cadillac dropped to the earth.
The man wandered into the hovel.
“Where’s she at?” the boy asked.
The man paced. Rubbed at the back of his neck. He looked different. His eyes sunk deeper into their sockets, black dots surrounded by bloodshot and void of color. His hair thin and tangled in filthy mats against his head. His lower jaw protruded more now and seemed intent on reaching up and swallowing his skeletal face. Its rough skin like a worn leather wrap of his cheekbones and forehead. His tongue and what remained of his bottom row of teeth worked together against his upper lip like some constant and hardworking machine and he had begun to tug at his earlobes to where they had become rubbery, little flaps that he reached for and pulled and twisted in an effort to manipulate the way the voices sounded in his head.
“Where’s she at?” he asked again.
“Who?” the man said.
“She gone again?”
“I ain’t been in there,” the man said.
“Huh?”
The man then looked at him. His eyes opened wide as if he had been surprised by the boy and then he jerked his head and cowered as if he were about to be struck by some judgmental hand. He moved his head in quick shakes and then he pulled at his own hair. His lips moved in silent conversation with himself and then he hurried out of the hovel and onto the road where he began a gangly run, looking over his shoulder as if being chased.
The boy pulled matches from his pocket. Then he stood and walked over to the Cadillac. Her clothes and pillow were still in the backseat. He opened the trunk and there were more of her clothes. Her coin purse. He closed the trunk.
He looked around the hovel. Down the slope where the world disappeared beneath the kudzu. He rubbed at his arm and tried to feel her next to him. Tried to remember what it was like when he was small and he would lie close to her at night. Sometimes her arm would fall across him. Sometimes she told a story. Sometimes there was a roof above them. Sometimes she told him it was going to be all right. But it had been a long time since any of that and he was left with flashes of memory like snaps of lightning that show you something beautiful for only an instant. He had listened to her crying since they left the little boy. In the middle of the night. Walking back and forth to town. Anytime when she thought no one was listening. And he had cried too as he lay across the backseat. Pretending to sleep after they told him what they had done and then drove out of the Delta, his face buried in his arms. His eyes squeezed shut. The thump of the highway a rhythmic reminder that they were getting farther and farther away and he would never see the little boy again. He had cried and nearly choked trying to hold it all in. Knowing the man would stop the car. Want to slap it out of him.
He didn’t know why she wouldn’t take any clothes. He didn’t know why she wouldn’t take him. He walked back to the pile of sticks and struck a match and lit the newspaper. As it burned he blew on the flames and the sticks caught and he piled on leaves and limbs and soon enough he had a good fire. He sat on the ground next to it and poked the little sausages onto the end of the coat hanger. Cooked them one by one and ate slowly. When he was done he lay back. He watched the firelight dance on the crisscross of the vines above and he wondered what the man had done to her.