Colin Winnette - Haints Stay

“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,” said 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.