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They’ll do, she says Now come on and fill in this hole

He does it, and she watches his slow movements, which seelacial and resounding, full of pith and mineral

She takes the picket cross and harave

That’s so God knohere to look when he coo ahead and put those flowers on there Go on now

He puts the flowers down and looks to her

All right then, du ahead of theranny God only knohat you wassaints and sinners

Halfway back to the car she realizes he’s following her, those weak cloudy eyes looking down at her legs, following the shadow she casts on the pavement

What you doin, dummy? You can’t come with entle creature You understand irl I’ll feed you to them meatskins just as soon as look at you I don’t need no halfwit to have to worry about

She looks at the car and then back at the man

Doggone it, duot a fate same as I do, same as everybody Your livin and dyin ain’t onme

She puts her hands up to indicate he should stay, and she backs slowly to the car She gets in and shuts the door and looks one last ti there in the middle of the street like a tree stuht--and the thick throb of pain corabs on to it and doesn’t let it go because it feels like an earned suffering

OVER THE next rise, there’s a convenience store and a gas station The puets some food She finds some cheese crackers and takes them outside and sits on the curb to eat thes wander to and fro oblivious of her

She remembers Uncle Jackson, when he first found her and the boy Malcol off squirrels and berries

Where’d you come from, little bit? he said

There she was, not yet ten years old probably, snarling at hi her teeth like a beast of the earth

Feral, huh? he said I’ot smarts whether you like it or not My cabin’s that way, about a half a mile Come by when you’re tired of the drainpipe

He showed her how to shoot, how to hold your breath when you are ai at a distance--and he showed her how to drive a car and how to start one without a key He fed her and Malcol have you been taking care of that boy?

Awhile

Are you his sister?

She shrugged

We was raised in the saot mixed up Nobody was sure

He nodded

Co for you It’s a khukuri

What’s that?

He shuffled around in a chest in the corner of the roo wrapped in a blanket It was a blade that bent inward and shone red in the firelight It was beautiful, and she wanted to touch it She thought it would feel cold, that it would ers feel vibrant

It’s Nepalese, he said There arriors in Nepal called gurkhas Very strong, very fierce Resilient and self-sufficient Like you They carried blades like this

What you call it? Cuckoo?

Khukuri But if you can’t reurkha knife

She reer than she, asleep on afro eh the cabin--and her turning the blade over and over in her hands, her eyes closed, feeling the weight of it and the balance, getting to know it, putting it against the skin of her face and her lips

It was a gift It was the first gift anybody had given her since she could reets to her feet and returns to the car and sits in the driver’s seat for a while, thinking about a lot of gone things