Page 12 (1/1)

At the edge of the Orange Zone he abandoned the Humvee and made his way into the city on foot There, in a dark roo men he did not know and whose names were never offered, he sold three of the carbines from the hardbox to buy a horse and other supplies By the ti It stood e of the river, just one rooht of it filled his heart with the war had he been away? It seemed like years, whole decades of life, and yet it was just a matter of months Time had come full circle; Lucius was home

He unsaddled, tied up his horse, and entered the hut A nest of fluff and twigs on the bed indicated where so had made its home in his absence, but the sparse interior was otherwise unaltered He lit the lantern and sat at the table At his feet was the duffel bag of supplies: the Reht razor, matches, a hand mirror, a half dozen quill pens, three bottles of dewberry ink, and sheets of thick, fibrous paper At the river he filled his washbasin, then returned to the house The i than he expected: cheeks cratered, eyes sunk way back in his skull, skin scorched and blistered, a tangle of madman’s hair The lower half of his face was buried beneath a beard that a faladly live in He had just turned fifty-two; the man in the mirror was an easy sixty-five

Well, he said to hiain, even an old, broken-down one, he daht to look the part Lucius hacked away at the worst of his hair and beard, then used the straight razor and soap to shave himself clean He tossed the soapy water out the door and returned to the table, where he’d laid out his paper and pens

Lucius closed his eyes The ully wasn’t like the hallucinations that had dogged hi his sojourn in the desert It was ht its details into focus, hisits visual expanse How could he ever hope to capture sonificent with his aan to draw

--

A rustling in the brush: Lucius drew the riflescope to his eye There were four of the: three sows and a boar, reddish broith large, razor-sharp tusks A hundred and fifty pounds of wild pig for the taking

He fired

While the sows scattered, the boar staggered forward, shuddered with a deep twitch, and went down on its front legs Lucius held the ie in his scope Another twitch, deeper than the first, and the animal flopped on its side

Lucius scrambled down the ladder and went to where the anied it to the tree line, looped the anian to hoist hiht of Lucius’s chest, he tied off the rope, positioned the basin beneath the hog, drew his knife, and slashed the aniush of hot blood splattered into the basin The boar would produce as allon When the boar had e With utted and butchered the aniht, and Lucius needed to be on his way

He lowered the corpse to the ground--at least the coyotes would get the benefit--and returned to the hut He had to admit it: the place looked like a madman lived there A little over two years since Lucius had first put pen to paper, and now the walls were covered with the fruits of his labor He’d branched out froraphite pencil, even paint, which cost a bundle Soical order, one could trace his slow, at tily inept self-education as an artist But the best ones satisfyingly captured the ie Lucius carted around in his head all day like the notes of a song he couldn’t shake except by singing

Michael was the only person who’d seen the pictures Lucius had kept his distance froh so over a year ago Lucius had returned fro his traps to find an old pickup parked in his yard and Michael sitting on the open tailgate Over the years Greer had known hi boy to a well-made speci features and a certain severity around the eyes The sort of coan with a punch to the nose and ended with running like hell