Exit Kingdom

It’s gettin better, Moses says.

The doc made a poultice, Abraham says. Out of twigs and pine needles and garbage like that. It helps.

It just calms the wound, Peabody says and nods to the pills. Nothing compared to what a real antibiotic like that will do.

Moses turns to Peabody.

I apologize, he says. For the gun. For tyin you to a tree. We thought . . . Thank you greatly for helpin my brother.

Peabody shrugs it off.

It was a symbiotic relationship, he says. Fletcher kept me safe, I took care of his people. But he wasn’t a good man.

But you didn’t have to save Abraham’s leg. That was a righteous thing for you to do. If things’d gone a shade different, we might of killed you.

Again Peabody shrugs. He runs a hand across his balding pate. Wisps of grey hair fall down nearly to his shoulders. He must be ten or even twenty years older than Moses. Here is a man who lived a good solid chunk of life before the dead started coming back and everything changed. Here is a man with memories – a man who still holds faith that things might change back, because he can hardly help but remember vividly the world before. Perhaps he even believes he could reconstruct it out of the recollections and blueprints he carries in his own aging mind.

So he shrugs, and this is what he says:

Saving or killing. I’ve been a doctor so long – and the world gone topsy-turvy the way it is – it’s sometimes hard to tell which is called for. You have to do some of both if you would be a man in this world. And which end of the act you’re on is the luck of the moment. So no hard feelings.

The three men drink weak coffee made from water heated over the fire. Abraham takes two of the pills, and Peabody looks at his wound.

How’s it look, doc? Abraham asks.

It’s holding, Peabody says. But the jury’s still out. If there were facilities, we could do more about it.

I found a place, Moses says to Peabody. It has what you need. It’s a good place. We’ll drop you there.

Peabody looks first at one brother and then other. He nods and resumes his inspection of Abraham’s leg.

Later, out by the pond where the surface has mended itself in ice and there is no longer any face staring up from below, Moses talks with his brother alone.

You got there? Abraham asks.

I did.

The girl?

She’s there. They’re lookin at her. Trying to figure her. I told her I’d come back once I got you.

You did? How come?

Moses shrugs.

It ain’t exactly safety she feels bein there. She asked me to come back. I told her I would.

Is it safe?

I don’t know. I think so. It’s like a fortress there, Abe. Like the modern world again.

Abraham smiles.

Hot water?

Hot water.

Food?

Food.

They got something to plug this into?

Abraham tugs at the yewess bee around his neck.

I reckon they probably do.

Girls? Are there girls? I ain’t had a right f**k in ages it seems like. Not a right one at least.

Moses says nothing. He looks down at the seam where he chopped open the ice days before. Then he says:

It ain’t a place of brutishness, Abe.

The smile goes away from Abraham’s face. He looks mean in the eyes, like he would spit on something if there was something to spit on.

You reckon me to be a monster, don’t you, Mose?

Moses sighs heavily and strokes his beard. He looks away from Abraham.

Beyond bein my brother, he says, I don’t give a damn what you are.

It’s an ambiguous statement, but one that is just left to hang there between them. Abraham does not ask for more and Moses does not proffer it.

You know, Abraham says after a while. These two nights, I can’t say as I was sure you’d come back for me.

No? Moses says and rubs his eyes against the tiredness he finds there. Then you mistake me, brother. I’m the keeper and the caliper of your life, Abraham. Some- times it seems that’s the beginning and ending of what I am.

*

You are already wondering, the man Moses says, what became of him, this brother of mine. You see me, here in the dark. It’s my voice talkin the night through to all its corners. But it seems I’ve swapped travellin companions.

He points to where the large mute sleeps on the ground, the shape of the man like a desert stone.

Maury, he says, I picked him up later. A child of God, that one – and more trouble to haul around than you might think. But he’s a wonder at keepin his business to himself – which is more than I can say for most. No, he came later.

Moses scratches at his beard and brushes his hair out of his face, exposing, barely visible in the blackness, the pale lumen of his skin crossed diagonal by the eye patch and its strap.

You’re wonderin – is this the story that kills Abraham, that brings him his due which the universe in all its scaled balance, all its holy recompense, owes to him? Is this the story that finishes him and closes the book on the ledger of his accounts? Is that the holiness that drives this story crash bang to its God-spoke end? Or maybe it’s some other story that takes Abraham away from me? That’s what you’re wonderin, ain’t it?

He pauses.

There was a girl, he says. Not even a woman. A little girl. A warrior she was, and she knew about the balance of things. The order . . . What? The girl? She don’t belong here. This ain’t her story. Forget I said anything about her.

Moses picks something from his teeth, but his eyes look at no one – they never stray from the firelight, as though the elements of the earth themselves are his true audience. He speaks to the land, and the land is nourished by his breath.

One story or another, Moses says, it makes no difference. All men find their ends in stories told by firelight. My end, too, when it comes – it’ll be spoke by someone, and my death’ll persist a little while on the planet.

Then he looks again at the shape of his travelling companion.

Or, he says, it’ll just keep mute.

*

They are on the road. Moses has now travelled back and forth over this same length of highway more times than he has ever done just about anything in his singular life. The road begins to have an aspect of familiarity that makes him queasy in the pit of his stomach. As though time has stopped dead – as though the progress of the earth has wound down, entropy coming to bear all over, everything gone flaccid and spent. The rote repetition of days and action. He recalls it from the time before – when it was known simply as life. The things you might do were shoved to the side, he recalls, in favour of the things you could manage to do in the brief hiatuses between doing all the same things you did the day before and all the same things you would do again tomorrow.