Hunters Chapter 5

Claire skipped two steps with each soundless stride up the dimly-lit staircase. Sarah, meanwhile, was aware of every creak as she allowed Claire to outpace her. They'd said good night at the doorway to their boarding house since Claire lived three floors higher up. When Sarah reached her room on the fourth floor, she could feel Mrs. Calloway's eyes on her through the opposite peephole as she fumbled with her key.

It had been difficult convincing Mrs. Calloway that she and Claire belonged in the boarding house and not in the other house across town. Two years later and Mrs. Calloway retained her sickeningly sweet "good mornings" while whispering just within earshot about the whore across the hall. She was always ready to catch Sarah "up to some of the shenanigans," as she said.

A musky smell of water-damaged floorboards and books greeted her as she closed the door behind her. She breathed in deeply, the smell convincing her of home more than any other sense. She had carried the smell with her from the old place in the forest, where she lived with her parents.

Hunger stabbed at her stomach but she ignored it, instead hurrying to her desk and igniting a candle. The light spread across the wood grain before disappearing over the edge. Sarah took the single black quill and turned over a used piece of paper. Without hesitation, Sarah began to record Claire's half of their recent conversation.

"'It never mattered to me. People asked me all the time. Don't you want to know? I know it's supposed to be strange, but I don't care who they were. I just have this feeling that who they were has nothing to do with who I am.'"

The idea was foreign to Sarah, but that didn't surprise her at this point. The longer she observed Claire, the more she understood that they had nothing in common. Sarah couldn't imagine herself without her father's influence; her father who had died for his books and the books that had created Sarah. It was all that was left of her family.

As a child, Sarah dreamed only of the town, believing that it was filled with others like her. She imagined the coffeeshops and bars that she read about, everything that didn't exist in the woods. She found bars, but they weren't filled with the people she expected. They were crueler and colder. She gave up on them quickly.

She had been working for six months at the Purple Dodo when Claire walked through the door, stunning Carl into hiring her without an audition. Claire was a desirable enough product that few of the rules ever applied to her and her reticence regarding her background was seen as an added perk rather than grounds for suspicion.

Sarah, near the point of giving up, knew instantly that Claire was the one that she had been waiting for. Now that she had been shown what she wanted, however, things were progressing impossibly slowly. Claire was used to excessive attention from men and women, making Sarah hesitant to approach her directly. She understood her technique well enough, however, to know that all she had to do was stay in Claire's life, because since coming to the town, Sarah had been searching for a subject. All she had to do now was keep her.

"She is simply Claire and she defines and surrounds her name with her limitless grace. The first time I saw her dance, it was as if she was purifying our vulgar profession, reclaiming it for our own purposes..."

Since childhood obsessed with the varied heroes and heroines of novels, Sarah had grown to understand that she was not one of them. She recognized herself in the awkward narrators, who tangentially attached themselves to great individuals and recorded their progress. The principle emotion involved, she reckoned, was envy and she was jealous of Claire, more than she had ever felt about anyone. She envied Claire's impossible body and her profound indifference to the opinions of others. She was jealous of the ecstasy that Claire seemed to feel when she danced. Jealousy, as far as Sarah could discern, led her to observe Claire with the necessary assiduousness and the more she learned, the more she fell in love with her subject. And she was pleased with this effect, because she knew that it enabled her to write Claire such that she might be understood.

"In the beginning we cannot know her. When you see her, you will know that she is greater than fate, that she will create her own future. Now she is only growing stronger, gathering her power. It is my good fortune to have come upon her story near the beginning, for it is impossible that she will not do great things. And wherever she goes, I will follow her. And I will write her..."

Sarah could no longer see what she was writing as the flame sputtered before her. Her hunger subsided into a passive lull. When at last she could no longer write, she looked out on to the main street, four floors below. The lamps were fading with her candle and the street was empty. Finally, in the fully darkened room, the cold surrounded Sarah. She quickly fled to her bedroom and covered herself in her blankets. She imagined Claire three floors above and she couldn't give her the quotidian feelings she had in that moment. Returning to her desk, she located what she hoped was a fresh sheet of paper and blindly wrote.

"Does Claire experience this same irritable hunger? Does she shiver in the cold as I do? Does she wonder for hours why she didn't eat or why she didn't light the stove when she came in? It's impossible. I cannot see her shivering in her apartment in this moment, even though the same cold pervades her room as mine. Is it wrong that I fear discovering the human that must reside in her?"

With the blanket wrapped around her shoulders, Sarah stared through the window at the starless night. Her teeth chattered. Perhaps she slept for a few hours, her mind so focused on Claire that she couldn't dream. When she opened her eyes, the sun still had not risen. She picked up the quill.

"Tomorrow I will speak with Claire. Tomorrow I will see her in the daylight."

Hunters Chapter 4

"Funny thing about Martians. They were probably the most advanced society, that is, they related to each other on a level we never could, until they ran afoul of us, of course."

Earl stirred the embers. His two companions had an adamant trust in him when it came to two things: the building of the fire and the nature of Martians. He disclosed his knowledge only when starting or reviving his fires and they never knew whether his trademark gestures were part of the ritual of the fire or the story. It was clear only that they were inseparable. Monica used to say that the way he sniffed at the smoke just made him delusional but she followed him anyway for the stories.

Earl's mouth remained hidden behind his mustache as he droned on. The stories rarely presented entirely new material to his disciples, but there was always something, if they listened hard enough, for them to consider.

"They're severed now, you see. Lost and alone. An empty sense of propriety is the only reason they still greet each other in the old way. It won't last more than another generation or two. "

Jackson punctuated a snort by abruptly shoving the rabbit onto the spit. "Don't sound much different from us, Earl." Monica kicked him in the shin without sparing him an annoyed glance.

"They're digging now, some of them. The ones with a shred of hope left still believe. Maybe there's a reason they're here on Earth, maybe a connection is possible. Some primal sense is leading them underground leaving open the question. Do we follow?"

Earl dove away from the fire as a burst of flame came at him, singeing his already white mustache. "Well, sir. I reckon that's burning." He glanced at Monica who was still focused only on him. "That's about it, girl. That's the show. Hear anything interesting this evening?"

Monica shook her head. "Do you really think that's what we should do? Follow them?"

Earl produced a tarnished silver flask with a State of Texas emblem and took an infinitesimal pull. "Did I say that? Sure doesn't sound like me."

Jackson arranged the skinned rabbit over the flames, too close to the embers for Monica's tastes. He returned her stare. "Charred on the outside, juicy on the inside just the way you like it. Unless you'd like to take over."

"Well, sir. It's getting a bit too hot around for me," mumbled Earl as he stumbled away from the fire. Finding a smooth rock a few dozen feet away, he plopped down and faced away from the fire and his companions.

The moon was nothing but a sliver in the dark blue evening sky. They weren't close to their destination; he'd seen trees, a canopy hiding all trace of the sky. He wasn't sure if he should be running toward his visions or away from them, but having no idea where he was anyway, he just followed his nose. When he held the flask above his head, he saw the flames dancing in the silver reflection. State of Texas, a cow's skull, something from before. The flask was a damn good find.

The flames disappeared from the picture. "Well, you just couldn't wait to come over, could you?"

Monica put her back against the opposite side of the rock and focused her eyes on Jackson's movements. For a man with such a thuggish approach to cooking, he certainly enjoyed doting on his future meals, adjusting the rabbits placement in the fire every few seconds. Producing a hand-full of salt from his pocket, he administered it in pinches over the sizzling carcass.

"Well, Jackson isn't much of a conversationalist and I can keep an eye on him from here."

"I can't say I'm much of one either, girl," replied Earl, waving his arm in an absent offer of whiskey that he knew would be declined.

"Were you serious at the end there, Earl? Digging? Sometimes I think you wake up early and just pull shit out of your ass."

Earl was used to her affected skepticism and responded with only a cough. The words that came out of him weren't really his and he counted on Monica to interpret them more than he'd care to admit. He dug his hand into the sand and let it run through his fingers.

"They never did anything like that before. You know that. Everyone knows that. "

That was all she'd say on the matter. Earl knew the way her mind worked; she needed to sleep on the new stuff for at least one night. Instead of responding, he reclined further into the sand and asked her, "Will you tell me the story again? About the day we met..."

Monica sighed. "If you can call that meeting," she retorted. She'd told him the story a hundred times and had refined it into its current version. Still, she knew of its meditative effect for both of them and it would be some time before Jackson declared the charred rabbit ready.

"I still don't believe you don't remember, but all right." She ran her hands through her black hair as she began her story in a monotone that gradually became more animated. "I was working in that tavern just outside of Providence, serving, bringing travelers beer, food, or whatever. I hated it. I remember seeing you. You looked a lot younger then, especially without that stupid mustache that makes you look sixty. You were messing with the fire, something that we didn't like the customers doing, but it was slow that night and the owner was in the back somewhere and I just didn't care much.

"Anyway, four big bearded guys rolled in about then, must have been around 11, I bet. They were carrying..." Here she paused, squinting at Jackson as he licked some of the rabbit juices off his finger.

"They were carrying something between them. I couldn't see right away, but when they got inside, I saw it was a long pole with a body hanging off it. One of them. They were all laughing to themselves like a bunch of drunks, looking like damn cannibals if you asked me. 'Beer!' they yelled at me. That's when it started thrashing around. The damn thing was alive. One of them turned around and just hit it with his fist and that shut it up for a bit.

"But there was no way I was serving them, right? The owner, Jack, he came out when he heard the commotion. When he saw what they were carrying in, he nearly flipped. He told them to get the hell out, of course, but they were all riled up and pretty soon he was trying to negotiate with them. One beer and then they'd leave, all right? Of course, that never works and Jack should have known it. So I brought them their beers.

"Meanwhile they'd just thrown it on one of the tables, started pouring some of their beers on it. After a while I saw that Jack was drinking too, which I'd never seen him to do. When he disappeared into the office, I just brought them out a few pitchers and came and sat next to you. You were just sitting staring at it, the whole time. But you might have been worthless and weird, but I liked the look of you better than them and you were big enough that maybe...

"And then it all happened real fast. Jack came out with a shotgun yelling for them to get out. One of them just jumped and reached for something. Jack shot him and he fell right across the thing on the table. I just sat and watched and Jack seemed more surprised than me. That's when they all jumped on him. Cut him open like a pig, yelling but also laughing a little. I just grabbed hold of you.

"They were all occupied with Jack even though he must have died right away. It got loose somehow. You should have seen, the way you kept staring at it. Anyway, just in a flash. One two three. They were all dead without even a scream between them. And it was staring at us, as close as I've ever seen one dead or alive, but all I could really see were its eyes, glowing a kind of green. Not red like they're supposed to be. It seemed like it was looking right at you and then it disappeared out the door just like that.

"After all that, you just opened your mouth and said, 'that's new. They've never done that before.' That was it. No explanation.

"You lit out that morning. And I followed you because I couldn't think of much else to do. Actually, it was the same reason I sat next to you the night before. You may be a freak, but I feel safe around you."

Finishing her story, Monica stood up and walked toward Jackson. He was brandishing a charred rabbit on a stick as if it was a new toy and she was a child. "Come on now, darling, you know you want some of this."

Monica shoved him hard in the chest as she took hold of the stake in her other hand and, without ceremony, dug her teeth into the rabbit's burnt flesh. "You know what I like, Jackson," she said, spitting out a bone. Taking the knife from her belt, she cut off the rabbit's head. Holding it cupped in her hands, she walked over to Earl, kneeled before him, and held it under his nose. He smiled past her at the moon, took the rabbit, and nodded.

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Hunters Chapter 3

"Five place settings tonight, Joe. Pastor Jesse will be coming to dinner."

Of course, I already knew that we would be having company. Our father had lit all five lamps and the dining room was devoid of comfort. The lighting of lamps was his own peculiar celebration of a kill. Certain parts of their bodies contained oil that burned brightly and endured, much like the oil, I'm told, of a whale.

The lamps were our father's statement to the world. He believed unquestioningly in the superiority of man and few things filled him with more pride than our little house in the woods standing like a beacon against the encroaching darkness. It was an invitation and a challenge, both to human wanderers and otherwise.

Edward pressed his face against the window. I used to do the same thing when I was his age to remind myself that the world outside still existed. The brightness of our world inside blinded us to everything else. I left him and stepped into the kitchen. It was like walking off the stage of a morality play. The bright light from the dining room cast long shadows across the wooden counters.

My mother was humming. She always hummed the same tune when she cooked. Once when I asked her about it, she just shook her head and told me that her mother used to sing this song, but she could never remember the words. When I was eight, I wrote my own words for it, something to do with rabbits, I think. She just smiled and told me that it was supposed to be a love song.

"It's almost ready, dear." She spoke without looking up, assuming that whoever it was had come to the kitchen out of impatience.

"I don't care, ma. I'm not that hungry." Everyone would have been happier if I didn't sit with them at dinner, and yet it would be an inappropriate suggestion. Perhaps she liked having me there. "The table is set."

She made a vague, pleasant sound of approval. Pastor Jesse's visits always put her in a good mood. While she knew that the women of the town envied her marriage to the best hunter New Birmingham had ever known, she would never be satisfied until she could bring him closer to God, for he must see the divine purpose behind his killing.

I watched her as she moved around the kitchen with her own regal grace. The kitchen was her kingdom. Nothing happened without her approval and there was never a superfluous movement. I savored every one of these moments that I managed to steal. A knock on the door awoke me from my reverie and signified the end of my temporary peace.

Edward stood aside as Pastor Jesse glided through the door with his long strides and over-sized magnanimous smile. He was trying to overpower Edward's inscrutable stare with those teeth of his, and for a moment I believed that he might succeed. The battle was interrupted when my mother rushed between them and grasped the pastor's hands. Like almost all of the women in the region, she gushed over his youth, his rare red hair, and his unshakeable faith. He turned his smile toward her face and I shuddered.

"I do hope you enjoy rabbit stew, Pastor. We caught the rabbit in one of Hector's traps today."

"Oh, Mrs. Harding. I'm sure I never have tasted rabbit stew that could compare to the heavenly smell wafting from your kitchen."

My mother burst into girlish giggles at the nonsense that was spewing from the pastor's mouth. Everyone was a sucker for a grandiose way of speech around here, whether or not it made sense.

"Please, Pastor. Call me Mary." She hurried back to the kitchen as my father appeared in the dining room.

"Well, Pastor Jesse. You honor us with your presence again. Have a seat and remind me if men of your position are allowed to drink whiskey with us common folk." Disdain dripped from his lips as he gripped the pastor's hand with excessive firmness.

"I'm afraid not, Hector. However, I'm sure that will not prevent me from enjoying your hospitality on this fine evening."

I sensed Edward as he slipped past me and out the front door, leaving it slightly ajar as an invitation for me to follow. I was not in the mood for the pre-fight show between my father and Pastor Jesse. The real sparring would begin about halfway through dinner.

Edward sat on the front steps, not daring to venture any further. "He sure talks funny, don't he?" His elbows were placed on his knees and his face in his hands. He rocked back and forth, uncomfortable as always in his church clothes, which doubled as his dinner guest clothes. I doubted that there was a child alive who felt at home in a grey three-piece suit. It was a gift after he won his first shooting competition. I think he would have preferred a bike.

"He just likes to sound different from the rest of us, so's we know that he's better." I sat down next to him. "I wouldn't worry about it."

"How come mom keeps inviting him? She knows it just makes dad angry." I was surprised again by his alacrity at reading the people around him. Perhaps it came, as it did with me, from being generally baffled by people's day-to-day actions.

"You know those stories mom reads us, the ones that always have a moral at the end? She invites Pastor Jesse to say things like that to dad. Because he sure won't have them from her."

He stopped rocking and stared at my face. He was unsatisfied with my answer. So was I.

"Come on. Let's get back inside. You know dad'll be mad if he has to come fetch us."

Moments later we were distributing bowls of steaming rabbit stew. Certain meals call up a sense of nostalgia even in the very young and I could see on Edward's face that he was imagining a quiet family meal without Pastor Jesse. It smelled like the end of a perfect autumn day, but the blinding light of the lamps gave the scene a false, dream-like quality. We sat down daintily, as we'd been taught, except for my father who slumped into his chair with a crash. He picked up his fork.

"Pastor Jesse," my mother blurted, "would you do us the honor of saying grace?" She must have rehearsed the phrasing of her question for hours in the kitchen and it came out a little flat, perhaps because of her haste to interrupt our father.

The red-headed pastor beamed as if he was surprised. Clasping his hands together, he cooed, "the honor, Mary, would be mine." He closed his eyes and took a slow deep breath, assuming that we, of course, would follow suit. Our father glared at us until we imitated the pastor's position.

"Our father, dwelling in the earth beneath us and in each one of us, protect us from cosmic predators. Do not lead the invaders toward our humble planet and do not tempt us to seek them out again. Permit us to rejoice in our planet's simplicity and to rid our world of the alien presence. We give thanks for the bounty that is before us, for your earth provides us with everything that man will ever need. Amen."

"Amen," my father repeated without delay as he grasped his fork and dug into the stew. My mother's eyes remained closed for a few moments before whispering "amen" and beaming toward the pastor. I ate slowly and basked in the quiet that our father's ravenous appetite permitted us.

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Hunters Chapter 2

Sarah stared at the pink-feathered headwear. She hated it. It wasn't necessarily the absurdity. She couldn't imagine that men's eyes ventured as far upward as her head, let alone another six inches above it. Mostly she hated the headaches that the shitty wire straps gave her after each show. The plastered fake smile she wore hurt her face enough. Now her mouth was relaxed into a neutral position as she inspected in the mirror the reddish indentations left on her forehead.

Carl's belly appeared beside her head, but she didn't acknowledge his presence. She knew where his beady eyes were focused but there was no point in discouraging him. He was the manager, simple as that. He knew enough to not mess with merchandise, but at the same time, he knew it was his. Besides, in this case, his interest was strictly professional.

She shuddered as his flab brushed against her neck and a bunch of flowers dropped onto the table before her with a click.

"Flowers, Carl? You shouldn't have."

He grunted. "And you know I wouldn't. Your friend Jesse was here again and he left these for you. He wanted to come backstage too. Don't say I never did nothin' for ya."

Sarah massaged her temples. "You never did, Carl." She listened to another series of grunts as he waddled back to his office. She inspected the flowers. Standard fare. She hated plastic flowers for two reasons. From books she'd learned that the natural thing to do with flowers was to run and place them in water, perhaps spend a few moments admiring them. If she were to do that now, she could be sure that the madness associated with her profession had finally set in.

The first reason wasn't really important. A simple reactionary distaste when presented with the absurd. No, she hated plastic flowers because they didn't die. Real flowers, she understood, were beautiful in their transience, now all the more significant because of their scarcity. Plastic flowers were a contradiction too profound to consider. Your love, Pastor Jesse, is as permanent, unchanging, and utterly common as these beautiful homogeneous flowers? She gathered them together and shoved them into the drawer.

Seeing that Carl's door had closed, she began to change out of her work clothes, pausing to admire herself wearing only a pair of new blue jeans. Her work did occasionally have certain perks, she supposed, and she gave herself another five years of looking good doing it. And then maybe another five after that. She leaned in close to the mirror and ran the back of her hand along her jaw. Everyone agreed when they saw her fully clothed that it was the defining element of her appearance. Her perfectly defined jaw leading straight to her cartoonishly angular ears. It was the only reason Carl allowed her to defy company policy and keep her black hair short.

She waited for Claire to finish her act. One of Carl's almost admirable mandates was that no girl should ever walk home alone after work. A few times he'd even walked her home himself, which made her nervous the first few times. He'd never tried anything, which for a while concerned her more, considering she knew that it couldn't be his consummate professionalism that kept his hands off her.

In an ingrained series of motions, Claire glided through the door and kicked off the six-inch heels that she wore on stage to accentuate her already conspicuous height. Moments later she was supine upon the couch, her legs hanging a full foot and a half off the end. Sarah waited for the obligatory melodramatic sigh.

"Those fucking heels are ridiculous once they're all that's left, aren't they? It's more of a freakshow than it is anything else," Claire moaned, rolling her eyes toward Sarah.

"Nonsense, Claire. They stay to see you because you're the most beautiful one." Sarah used to try to think of the right thing to say until she realized that this was a necessary ritual for Claire.

"Yeah," snorted Claire, "they stay and watch because none of them would have a clue what to actually do with me." She grinned. "Do you think they're scared?"

"Definitely." It must have gotten busy out there, Sarah realized. As much as Claire complained, Sarah knew that she thrived on the spotlight. After finishing a well-attended show, she put in her perfunctory ennui but before long she couldn't hide her excitement. It was on those nights that she became like a banished goddess, drawing energy from her male admirers and dancing herself into a fervor that might someday return her to heaven for good.

Sarah watched as Claire closed her eyes and allowed her feet to drift to the floor. Together they listened to the dissonance flowing from the main room. Carl learned a few years ago that the best way to drive out the lingering men was simply to allow the musicians to play whatever music they wanted. It also kept the musicians docile.

Once the rowdy shouts and shuffling feet faded away, a lone violin dominated the air, only occasionally punctuated by a few beats from the piano and drums. Sarah never could believe that this music was written in the time before the invasion. She felt one with the violin in such a way that no Sarah from before could have felt. Everything she'd read or heard from back then seemed so much brighter, hopeful. Some prescient songwriter had written her music hundreds of years before she was born, before her experiences were even possible. Did the people before really ever feel this way?

The office door swung open. "Are you really staying to listen to this shit? Go home and do whatever it is you girls do there." Larry filled the doorway, he and the smoke trailing from his cigarette completely backlit. Claire stared at his silhouette uncomprehending for a few moments, finally blinking awake into a smirk. She stood before him, gigantic and perfect, daring him to ogle her.

Sarah could see that he was trapped, but Carl wasn't about to back down. He gave her a cursory appraisal before turning around. "Guess it was a good night, huh Claire? Well, that's good for both of us. Go on. Get dressed and be gone by the time I finish with the books."

Aware again of Claire's body, Sarah began to feel uncomfortable as well and wished that she would get dressed already. Still, she knew better than to interrupt Claire's post-work ritual. Unless a five-minute silence was part of the piece, the musicians had finished. There was nothing left to stay for.

Sarah went to her desk, found her knife, and placed it in her belt. She inspected herself in the mirror, to be sure that the knife was subtly conspicuous enough. "OK, Claire. I'm ready when you are."

Five minutes later, the two women walked out on to the abandoned streets of New Birmingham.

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Hunters Chapter 1

"You have to burn them." Our father gazed with affected gravity at my little brother Edward before gracing me with a momentary scowl. He struck a match and tossed it onto the hastily-assembled pyre. I inhaled frantically, always loathe to miss the comforting smell of sulfur. My eyes were closed when I heard our father curse, probably realizing that the match had expired in mid-air. He was always careless, a trait he hated to see mirrored in me.

"Matches don't grow on trees," I uttered automatically, my mind as usual a step behind my mouth. It was one of my father's favorite aphorisms, which he repeated until we all forgot where it came from. I blame the repetition for our family's general negligence. If you don't think about what you say, why would you think about you do?

I took a step toward the path. The indoctrination was intended for Edward anyway. I already understood the ritual better than he did. Chop the head off and burn the body. That was good enough for my father, who never bothered to ask questions. But everyone said he was the best and vocally wondered how his son had passed his fifteenth birthday without bagging one.

Behind me the fire roared to life, casting the long shadows of the maples before me. Fires don't start that fast. He must have used some fuel, a sin overlooked if you have 24 notches on your belt. 25 now.

The leaves crackled hypnotically beneath my feet. I wasn't surprised to feel a small hand slip into mine.

"God damn it, Edward. Are you trying to get me in more trouble?" I yanked my hand away and looked into his inhuman blue eyes. I could tell he was on the cusp and I didn't know which way to push him. At seven years old, he could hit a can flying through the air at 50 yards with a .22 but he cried when our cat got eaten. Somehow I ended up with a black eye when that happened.

Edward shoved his hands in his pockets and fell into step with me. I glanced back before running my hand through his greasy blond hair, an act I knew we both enjoyed, mostly because it irritated our father. He began talking as he did only with me, without hesitation or an extensive muttering prologue.

"It had such beautiful eyes. So big. I think maybe he was the same age as me..."

I shuddered. I didn't know if he was intentionally violating several of our unspoken laws. Edward was in worse shape than I was at his age. He sees them as practically human.

He was staring at me as we walked. He possessed none of my clumsiness, navigating the path with his infallible physical memory while I kept my eyes trained on the ground at all times.

"Why do we hunt them, Joe? And why do they hunt us?"

I shook my head at his characteristic bluntness bordering on blasphemy. Characteristic when he spoke to me anyway. I suppose we couldn't find many of these moments together. "You've been to Pastor Jesse's sermons, Ed. You know why."

"But you know more. You've talked to him."

I could see the lights of our house through the trees, so I stopped and checked to see if our father had caught up. He would be watching the flames for a little longer. Edward must have slipped away when he was in his trance.

"You know everything already, Ed. You know where they came from. They started it, burned our cities to the ground." I pronounced the word "cities" with the emphasis that they used to give it the religious significance that prevented people from asking what a 'city' was. "But we got 'em back and now they're stuck here."

"But how come we gotta burn 'em?"

"Don't you know anything? That's how their souls get back home. Joke's on them, of course." I gestured vaguely toward the sky. "That's where it used to be, a big red star, they say."

He looked up and then back at me, his eyes echoing the question I once asked at his age. You don't really believe that, do you? I looked over his shoulder, passively imploring him to know better than to ask anyone else.

For the first time, Edward looked nervous, shifting from one foot to the other and looking around. "But... you know more than Pastor Jesse. What was he like?"

I stumbled, trying to look relaxed as I reached out for a tree to lean on. "ummm... what was who like?"

Edward regained his innocence or his confidence. Sometimes they were indistinguishable. "I heard that you, ya know, had one. In the barn..."

"There he is!" Our father emerged from the trees with his indomitable stride. He placed his arm around Edward and guided him toward the house. "There's my little champion marksman. Where'd ya go? Come on. Let's see what mom's got for dinner."

I ran my hand across the tree bark. I never found out which version he heard. Counting in my head, I tried to see how slowly I could get to the door.

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