Haints Stay Read Online Free Page B

his tongue with his
     fingernails. Sugar put away the paper.
    Brooke followed the edge of where a body had fallen andthen been dragged into the woods. The streak wound its way through the trees for
     as far as his eyes could see. Sugar followed close behind, and then the boy, still
     scraping at his tongue with his dirty nails.
     
    They heard the four men before they saw them. The boy clung
     involuntarily to Sugar. The men had taken no precaution to go unseen. They were all
     laughter and campfire in a clearing. It was barely dusk, nearly nighttime. Brooke
     and Sugar did not speak, but separated to trace a half circle, several feet from the
     men and their fire. The boy clung to Sugar for several feet before Sugar paused,
     gripped the boy’s two hands, and pulled them from his own shirt, detaching him. He
     kept one small hand cupped in each of his own. He led the boy by those two small
     hands to a tall, wide tree and sat him on its opposite side. Sugar raised a finger
     to his lips then released his grip, abandoning the boy to watch the woods opening
     out and away from what was about to happen. As Sugar retreated to his post, the boy
     watched the open wood for only a moment before shifting to the tree’s edge and
     following Sugar’s movements with his gaze.
    The boy could not tell for sure, but the four men seemed suddenly
     hesitant, maybe even alarmed. They quieted. They glanced about themselves. One held
     a knife in his left hand. It had a thin curving blade. Suddenly Brooke and Sugar
     were upon them, and Brooke had sunk his thumbs into the eyes of the one with the
     blade. He collected the blade and stepped away from the flailing body. Sugar was
     sawing through the rigid meat of another man’s gut with a tool the boy could not
     make out from where he sat. Brooke took the curving blade then and applied it to the
     neck of yet another man, opening him up like a coin purse andspilling his contents onto the blankets and bundles before him. The fourth man
     rose and made for Sugar, who turned to receive the first blow. He was knocked into
     the coals of the fire and Brooke came up behind the fourth man and set at slicing
     him in the lower ribs and back with the curving blade, over and again. The man had
     something horrible about him that did not moan or stutter at the cuts. Instead he
     turned to greet the knife with his open palm, to accept it as if it were an
     offering. The blade remained in his palm as he drew it from Brooke’s grip. He held
     the pierced palm up over his crooked face, and unsheathed the blade from the net of
     bone and flesh.
    Sugar had batted the coals and ash from his body and was collected then,
     lunging toward the man holding the knife and approaching Brooke. The man swung
     around and greeted Sugar’s advance. Back and forth he swung to counter the movements
     of Brooke and Sugar, who were slowly gaining inches on him. The man then threw the
     curving knife with enough force to puncture Brooke’s advancing thigh, and as Sugar
     leapt toward him from behind, he dodged the advance and moved forward to recollect
     the knife from Brooke’s leg. Brooke howled for only a moment, then watched as the
     man moved away to make a safe distance between the three of them. There was blood at
     his mouth. Even more at his ear. He was staggering now, soaked in blood down the
     back of his shirt and pants. He appeared light and trembling. Brooke and Sugar
     watched him like a wounded deer. He was nearly set to bleed out and they would have
     him. They waited and the boy watched and the fourth man glanced around the campsite
     to confirm that he had lost each and every one of his men. There were bloody piles
     and bundles gathered by the bedding. A low fire. The woods were quiet until the mandropped to his knees. He held the knife out with both hands now,
     a bit of slobber at his chin.
    “There will only be more men like us,” he said. He coughed and spat. “You
     will only kill and kill