FRIENDS

"How come I don't get to carry the gun?"

"Cause it's my gun and you're not old enough."

"You going to let me shoot it?"

"We'll see." The boy had heard his father say that so many times that it seemed the only natural response to Jon Jon's pleas. "What's wrong with the bow? You're a great shot with it. Even better than me."

"That was before you got the twenty-two. You'll be able to kill every rabbit before I can even get close enough to shoot."

"I ain't gonna kill every rabbit. We might not even see any."

"We could go over by Old Man Hill's brush pile."

"We got to go get Adunya. And Old Man Hill's brush pile's on the other side of the canyon."

"Steve?" Jon Jon slowed a step.

"Yeah?"

"Why'd Uncle Albin adopt Adunya?"

The boy stopped, buffalo grass tickling his ankle up his pant leg. "You know what happened to his dad. He didn't have no mom. Uncle Albin said he didn't have any other place to go. He had family, but none he ever met before."

"At least he would have fit in with them. He don't belong here."

"Just cause he ain't from here don't mean he don't belong." The boy reached down and scratched his ankle. "You ever seen anyone hunt like him? I know I ain't. Someone like that don't belong here, I don't know who does."

"You're the one who said they should ship him back to Ethiopia."

The boy started walking again, looking away from his younger brother's eyes. "That was before I got to know him. Before I thought about it. Maybe I shouldn't have said that. I don't believe it now anyhow.

"I think maybe you were right. Maybe we'd all be better off if he went back to Africa."

The boy turned, an incredulous look on his face.

Jon Jon's tone almost equaled a whisper. "I'm afraid of him."

"Afraid? Why?"

"He sometimes looks at me like I'm the one who chopped his dad."

"Why would he look at you like that? You're just seeing things." The boy tried to sound convincing, but he'd seen that same look.

"Remember when he killed one of them guinea's Uncle Albin keeps for bugs? That was spooky. And he looked at me like I was next."

The boy did remember. He remembered Adunya hitting that tamed guinea with a rock and then pouncing on it. While twisting its neck, he sat on it to keep it from scratching at him. It's wings slapped the ground, it shuddered, it's beak opened, and then it died. Adunya showed no reaction. He merely lifted the limp bird by the neck, carried it behind the cabin, and began plucking its feathers while the cats waited for a scrap.

"How's that different from shooting a cottontail? Sometimes they don't die right away and we got to finish them."

"We don't strangle them," Jon Jon said.

"Dead is dead."

The boy kicked a rock and watched it roll. Uncle Albin's cabin was just on the other side of the rise. Adunya would be waiting by now. He'd be waiting for his friends.

Just Dreams

The boy leaned in, his forehead touching the crack in the door.

"What are you going to do?"

"How do you stop nightmares?"

The boy's father did not answer for so long that the boy wondered if they knew about his eavesdropping. He almost slipped back to bed.

"When do you go back to Ethiopia?"

"You know I can't just take him back. I owe his father more than that. I owe him more than that."

"You sure this is what's right for him? You sure he's not better off with his own people?"

"You worried about your boys? He ain't dangerous, Hagan."

"How can you be sure?"

"I'm sure."

The boy knew they were talking about Adunya. When Uncle Albin brought that boy home, everything changed.

Forced friendships begin with reluctance--the boy protective of his turf, Adunya eager to claim his new home. But over the past few months, the boy and Adunya had eased past any differences and disdain. Though it remained unspoken, a friendship had evolved to the point that they shared an easy understanding--if one boy needed help up the last five feet of the canyon, the other reached back without question, without the judgement the boy often glared back at Jon Jon when he asked for his hand. Adunya had seen real lions, he had killed game with a spear. What could be cooler than that?

The boy showed Adunya mule deer and pronghorn and coyotes and grouse and bull snakes and listened as Adunya compared them to kudu and gazelles and jackals and franklin and pythons. But what most fascinated the boy about Adunya was the way he walked, without shoes, without sound. The boy tried, but it hurt his feet and with shoes on, he had no chance to mimic the Ethiopian's silence.

Adunya sometimes stared blankly at the sky, he carried that big machete, he ate little, and any chance of a storm terrified him, but dangerous? Maybe. The boy knew Adunya's father had been hacked to death by a neighbor. He knew Adunya saw it and he knew how angry he'd be if it had been his own father. Strange as he might be, Adunya had never given the boy any reason to fear him. No, the boy agreed with Uncle Albin. Adunya was not dangerous. And he did not need to go back to Ethiopia.

"That boy's seen things I wouldn't wish on no man," the boy's father said. "Maybe you should have him see a shrink."

"Ain't no shrinks around here, Hagan. Have to take him to Cheyenne or Denver. How's some city fellow supposed to help a boy who grew up in a dirt-floor hut?"

"What you going to do?"

"I guess I'll raise him the way Pop raised us."

"What about schooling?"

"What's he going to do with schooling?"

"He's gonna need an education."

"He'll get an education. Better than he would from some public school system."

"You think it's easy to be a teacher?"

"He'll learn what he needs."

"You just going to hope them nightmares take care of themselves?"

"I don't know, Hagan. They're just dreams."

"You know they're more than that."

"I know."

The boy crawled back into his bed. As he stared at the darkness, he thought about lions. He thought about dirt-floor huts. He thought about machetes.

New Book

FENCE POSTS

The prairie's edge softened in the gray half-light of dusk. Without hurry, the boy dug at the base of an old branch whose time as a fence post had run its course. He wiped his brow with his forearm and felt the dust and sweat, grit and slime. He stared past Jon Jon working on the next post, past a string of early geese pumping the air above fields loose with amber grass, past a row of fence posts that had stood since Old Man Hill's grandfather rooted them there as much to keep strays out as to keep his own stock in. Though the boy knew where Old Man Hill's property ended, he could not see it. He saw the horizon, daunting and unreachable. It would take them the rest of the summer, or longer, to finish the job.

They had been at it for two hours and Jon Jon had not said a word. He dug, he jostled, he pulled, he grunted. He did not talk. They had removed twelve posts, Jon Jon responsible for seven. The boy paused his own digging to consider the geese and his father and the goose pit--the coming Autumn. Jon Jon kept working, without complaint, without a break.

The boy almost opened his mouth. He almost told his younger brother that he would finish the day, maybe even the summer--alone. He almost apologized, like his father always said he should when he made a mistake--even if he hadn't meant any harm.

Instead, he hacked at the base of the severed limb that had once been a fence post, that had once been young, and muttered under his breath about the unfairness of it all.

Old Man Hill

The boy grabbed his younger brother's arm just above the elbow. "Get down," he whispered.

"I want to see him."

"You'll scare him away." The boy pulled Jon Jon down to his level. "He might come closer."

"You think so? That would be cool. Maybe we should have a look."

"Not yet." The boy stretched his neck, straining to see through prairie grass thicker than a wheat field. Another few inches and he could peek over the top. But then Jon Jon would think it was okay to jump up. He slid back into the draw and stared at Jon Jon. Even if the deer did move closer, what would they do then? The had no bow. They had no rifle. They didn't even have a slingshot. Were deer even in season?

"Okay, we'll look together." The boy put his hand on Jon Jon's shoulder. "Real slow."

The boy's grip tightened around his brother's shoulder. Their toes slipped on the sandpaper slope. They pushed over the edge and stopped. Shouldn't the deer be running?

Jon Jon pointed. "There."

"Where?"

"Right there. He's staring right at us."

"I don't see anything."

"Right in front of us. It's a good buck."

The deer flinched to a freeze before bounding to the top of the next ridge. It stopped there, glanced over it's shoulder, then, as if swallowed by the sunset, disappeared.

Jon Jon started to run. "C'mon, Steve. Let's go."

"We ain't never going to catch him before dark. We best be getting home now. You know what happened last time we missed curfew."

Jon Jon's smiled faded as he rubbed his backside.

The boys ran, neither of them sure who started first, neither of them questioning the older boy's two-step lead. They leaped over small washouts, climbed a six-foot rock outcropping, and pushed through a field of short grass prairie. The sun's descent now cast a pinkish glow over the treeless hills and the deep blue before darkness crept toward the horizon. Their father would be home soon.

The boy stopped at the barbed wire fence Jon Jon ran past him a few steps before turning back. "Why you stopping? We're going to be late."

"We have to cross through Old Man Hill's place."

"No. We have to go around. We can make it if we hurry."

"It's the only way. It'll cut our time in half."

"We'll get shot."

"He ain't going to shoot us. He ain't even going to know we were there."

"I don't know, Steve. You know he ran over Josh Weemer's dog after it chased one of his cows."

"You don't know it was Mr. Hill."

"Who else is mean enough to do that?"

"Come on. We need to get home. Nobody's going to know."

When the boy slipped between two lines of barbed wire, Jon Jon hesitated, but his older brother traipsing away from him trumped trepidation. Every shadow was one of Old Man Hill's aggressive bulls--or worse. A distant coyote howl spread across the darkening sky like a forgotten cry of the dead.

Their strides lengthened. Old Man Hill's roof peeked over the next rise. Almost there. Almost home.

The sound of a truck engine burst form the twilight behind them. The boy glanced back. Headlights bouncing over the plains--gaining. The boy twisted Jon Jon's sleeve and pulled him into a narrow draw. They ducked into the grass, a prickly pear cactus attacking the boy's knee. He winced and scratched at unseen needles that would haunt him for days.

The truck stopped. The engine cut. Jon Jon's breath sputtered. They listened. A small click. Footsteps--maybe. A shuffling. A full minute of only Jon Jon's breathing. Then, like a hungry demon rising from the pit of hell, a high-pitched screaming like nothing either of them had ever heard. Jon Jon covered his ears and rolled to face his older brother, his eyes bright orbs of fear.

The scream died to a mournful, almost pleading wail as if all hope had abandoned the world. The boy and Jon Jon stared at each other, horror mirrored in eyes of innocence. Even after it ended, the memory of that whining voice hung in the silence like a recurring nightmare.

A blast shocked them flat. It felt as if their ears might bleed and the boy swore he saw a burst of fire from above them.

"He's shooting at us. Run."

They sprinted to the fence where the boy tore his shirt crossing through. They raced across Old Man Hill's yard, ignoring the deep bay of the black lab from inside. They ran home, their father only glancing up as they scurried to their room. They sat and avoided eye contact, their breath and trembles tapering. After a few minutes, the boy forced a chuckle.

Just as Jon Jon began to smile, they heard a truck pulling down the driveway.