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Part One

MISSION

One

A Caravan " Two Strangers " A Story on the Topic of God

And so the living persist, stubbornly, and theroad, and the stories And so the caravan es, sohty across the Mississippi The men clap each other on their backs, they puff out their chests, they feel a irders of their own ensteeled history

The sun rises and sets, and they ether, five vehicles in a row – a school bus in the , the old, the sick, the frail, the weak They collect others as they move towards Florida People are not lost, there are no one into the wastage The people they collect are not lost; they are simply wanderers And if their vectors of travel happen to coincide, then they will share the road for a while

One such wanderer is a large man with a beard, ursine and spectacular They discover hi, on the h he were a distillation of the daht air itself – heavy water, a coalescence of air and earth and ice and dark He wears an eyepatch, and the children, fascinated, inch closer to him until they are snatched back by their mothers

He sups with the a tin plate close under his chin Some of the men approach him, their hands twitchy on their weapons, and enquire about his business

I ain’t a brigand, he says and scoops a spoonful of beans into his mouth, nor any other kind of threat to you How you can tell is uns are in that duffel over there You can hold them if you’re inclined, but make no mistake I’ll have em back when I depart Meantime, I’ll help you keep your meatskins down

He refers to the dead who share the landscape with the living, ander in unhurried strides of ownership across the earth as though it were – by proper claiatory The one-eyed man promises to keep thes

And he does, wandering the perimeter of the circled vehicles after the others are abed, putting down roa curved blade

He has a coe as he, except this one is slow andto him, but he makes sure the mute is fed and washed and kept from harm

The two men travel with the caravan for three days, and the one-eyed man says little more than the mute himself He is not accustomed to company When queried by some of the men or even the women, he brooks the attention as bones brook the sun that bleaches them white over the span of dusty years He answers questions cursorily and looks behind hi, with minute fineness, the value of this coterie compared to his own lonesome desolation He seems to find them comparable, the contradictory entice that keeps him by the bonfire is the warm inertia of indecision

On the third evening, someone declares it to be a Sunday, and since no one knows otherwise the talk around the bonfire turns to holy matters

Some words are read fro together to sound prayer-like enough for the delectation of this assee

All eyes lowered, lips , one of the children clarab him back

Hey mister, the kid says Mister, do you believe in God?