Exit Kingdom

He is still undecided about his next move when the slug’s face explodes before him, splashing his own face with moist, papery gore. He can also hear the bullet whistle by his ear, and when he drops the dead man to the ground he can see the Vestal standing behind him, her pistol still aimed at where the slug’s head was a moment before.

Goddamnit, he says to her. You could of killed me.

She looks at the pistol as though confused by its purpose.

I didn’t think it would go all the way through him, she says. Did I get you?

He grabs the gun away from her, his heart trilling in anger.

Naw, you didn’t get me. Though it ain’t for want of tryin. You’re a goddamn menace.

Well, pardon me for tryin to come to your rescue. It seemed like you were in some peril – I ain’t ever seen so many bullets flyin wild.

Moses stuffs the guns back in the duffel and swings it over his shoulder. He does not want to look at her. She is a reckless thing, a shameful thing.

You know something? he says. I got a theory on you, and it’s a goddamn miserable one.

A theory! I bet nobody ever mistook you for a philosopher.

I got a theory that maybe you wore out your soul whorin and deceivin. Maybe some part of you’s already dead – which is why they don’t take you.

The moment is stricken by silence. A breeze blows cold and harsh across the bridge. Moses moves his feet against the sandy tarmac but makes no show to walk away. It would seem that there are no directions leading away from this moment.

Jesus, says the Vestal quietly. That’s an awful theory.

I told you it was, says Moses almost in a whisper.

Is that really what you think?

He shifts his feet against the tarmac again. He would walk away from everything in the world if he could. A wandering man.

Hey, look, he says, straining a note of apology. I’m shook up. You did me a service here. I ain’t the shooter of the family.

They walk on in silence to the opposite side of the bridge where Moses climbs down to the water’s edge and washes the blood out of his hair and beard.

The Vestal sits by him, soaking her feet in the cool water.

So you never really learned how to shoot, huh? she asks.

He holds up his right hand, palm downward, to show her. It is a thick, calloused paw, and it trembles as if in withdrawal from punching.

I ain’t so steady, he says. I guess I’m more of a cudgel man.

I would say so.

*

They walk, and they examine the cars abandoned on the road. It is more difficult than Moses had thought to find an operational vehicle. The tyres are blown out from the heat, the gas burned out of the tanks, the engines rusted still. The weather in this area is harsh. It is easier in the south, where he is from.

They walk all day and find no vehicle. They stay on the road that follows the reservoir’s north bank, and in a few hours they are beyond its tip where the barren dirt plains give way to patches of pasture and farmland. Up ahead in the distance, Moses points to some buildings – but the sun is lowering on the horizon.

It’s a town, he says. Gunnison. We’ve been seein the signs. We can probably find a car there, but it ain’t advisable to approach a strange town after dark. You like to have your eyes open for whatever’s comin your way.

So they find an abandoned farmhouse where they can stay the night. They gather wood and start a fire in the fireplace, and there are some cans of chili left behind in the cupboards, so they heat those and put them into ceramic bowls and eat with spoons. They sit next to each other on the couch and watch the fire and wait for their eyes to become heavy with sleep.

This is nice, says the Vestal Amata, ain’t it? It’s like we’ve set up housekeeping. Like we’re a newly-wed prairie couple or something.

Moses grunts non-committally.

They are quiet. They wait. Then the Vestal speaks again.

You worried about your brother?

He’ll last it, Moses says. He’s hard like a tree root.

He is at that. You two are very different. He ain’t the most decent man in the world. I guess you know that. But you protect him.

I’m his brother, Moses says. I ain’t much of anything in this world – but one thing I am is Abraham Todd’s brother. For good or poor.

For a while Moses says nothing else, and it seems as though the conversation will end there. Then he breathes in deep, still gazing into the fire, and speaks again.

He could of turned out different given different circumstances. I guess we all could have. But I’m talking about before. Before the slugs even.

You must of seen him grow up, says the Vestal.

I did and I didn’t.

You got a lot of years between you.

We sure enough do, Moses confirms and stares deeply into the fire as though his entire history were contained in the flames. We got different mothers. My father, I didn’t know him. He left before I was born. I got raised up by my mother. I knew of him, though, my pa. You heard about him all around the county. There wasn’t any honour or nobility to him. He was just your run-of-the-mill degenerate. He never had much to say to me, nor I to him. When I was fifteen a young girl died givin birth to a baby boy she claimed was his. She was fourteen years of age, that girl. Her boy was Abraham.

He pauses, and for a while nothing is said. There is a pop in the fireplace, and an ember leaps out and comes to rest on the floor before them. It glows, the little burning punk, and then smokes itself out.

Your father raised him? the Vestal asks.

Naw, Moses says. He never admitted Abraham was his. Wouldn’t submit to a test. Abraham had it hard. He was raised by the state. Foster homes and institutions. There wasn’t nothing I could do – I was just a teenager. But I listened around about him. I always knew where he was. He had it hard, Abe did. Just a little scrawny twig of a boy, and nobody on his side.

He pauses again and looks out the window into the distant dark, and he wonders if maybe the boy is still out there somewhere in the reachable past.

When everything went sour, he goes on, my ma got taken early. I was twenty years of age by then, wanderin here and there. I wasn’t there to protect her. By the time I got back to my hometown, she was already gone. There weren’t much left at all, just a bunch of people all panicking themselves to death in the hospital. I found Abe there, took him with me. No one stopped me. No one was stoppin anybody at that time.

Moses breathes deep.

Anyhow, he says, whatever took him, whatever malignancy’s got him in its teeth, he was already took when I collected him at five years old.

The fire snaps again and fizzes. It is guttering down now, glowing red like a beating heart that refuses to stop.