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She picks up the gurkha knife and stows it under her arot a burnin flame in you, Moses says I sure wouldn’t want to be the one to couess I aot kinda fond of your new acquaintance there, he says Maury That’s a good name I had a cousin named Maury once Truth be told, I don’t knohat happened to hi on the ground with his back to the wall looking irl

She says nothing and leads Maury out the door and up the stairs to the big central roo She sets him down in a chair away from theand looks out into the street There are soirl, Millie, who is drawing pictures with chalk on the tarmac in the middle of the intersection

Maury, she says You stay here You hear me? Stay here I’ll be back in a minute

He sits silently, squinting his eyes against the sunlight cooes back down the stairs She steps over Royal, whose head is crushed like the afters of a pulpy melon, and stands in front of Moses’s cell She stands there a long while, just the two of theot soirl?

Look

She gestures to the congealing carnage behind her

You just defending your friend, Moses says

It wasn’t--, she says, and she can feel her voice getting whispery now, as though the dead behind her were great listeners of secrets She says, It didn’t have to be so ot a devil in me

Come here, Moses Todd says She doesn’t knohat else to do, so she goes to the bars of his cell and he reaches through theers on the side of her head by her ear and rubs his thuore-spattered cheek, then he holds his thumb up to show her the smear of brown blood

Look, he says It comes off

She nods and breathes in deep once and looks around the rooht then, she says, and she feels like she’s agreeing to some contract with the natural world except that she doesn’t knohat it says because she can’t read it

Listen, Moses says He sees she is preparing to leave, and there is a sudden pragonna kill you That would be a lie, and I can’t tolerate a lie But I can offer you a deal you’re probably too sive you a twenty-four-hour head start You got my word

She studies him for a moment

Did you hurt those people? she says

What people?

The Griersons Did you hurt theo around hurtin nice folk The old woman even made me a sandwich for the road

I ain’t playin with you, Mose

You think I wanna tangle with you and you still slick with blood from your butchery? It was haarden

She looks at hiured somethin out about you, she says

What’s that?

It’s the car The car I been drivin all the way froot an electronic tracker in it It’s true, ain’t it? That’s how co smile and strokes his beard

They put trackers in all those cars, he says The woave it to you, Ruby, she didn’t know that

Uh-huh I knew it I knew you wasn’t that good

He laughs, hearty and ursine

I’ll still find you, he says If this here cell ain’t rave, I’ll find you Count on it, Sarah Mary Williaot business

She nods I know it

Their eyes meet, and it is possible that what they see in each other is the eerie inversion of the face-to-face with sohs and turns away frooes to the corpse of Bodie and leans down and takes the haft of the butcher knife and tugs hard until it comes loose and slides out from between his ribs Moses watches her as she hands the knife to hih the bars of his cell

Take it, she says

He doesn’ther There is so she can handle, she knohat to do with antipathy But affection she can’t abide