Hi, all –
It’s been a busy week in Kitaree.
I’m not gonna lie: Getting lost last week threw me. I know this town, you know? It’s not that big, and I spent a lot of my life here once upon a time. Yeah, the place is a mess right now, but… these were clean, lived-in streets with names I’d never seen before.
I’m doubting myself, though. It’s been more than a few years. It’s entirely possible some rogue town council went on a renaming spree. And it’s possible I don’t remember how the streets are laid out as well as I thought.
Maybe.
Let’s talk about something a bit more grounded in reality, no? I started the new gig this week. I’m not going to lie, there’s something nice about rolling out of bed and into my grungiest clothes instead of picking out the perfect cufflinks and getting my hair just right. Nobody cares when you’re rocking a hard hat and neon yellow safety vest, you know?
The downside is that I’m essentially a day laborer. I wander down to the courthouse square (yes, I still walk it, and no, I haven’t gotten lost again) and wait with a bunch of other guys for a team lead or foreman or whatever they’re called. The cleanup work’s been going on a while, but apparently these guys blow in and out of town all the time, so there’s always a need.
My team’s five guys: Ignacio, a scrappy little guy who constantly talks about food; Howie, a big bald burly kid with a red nose who probably should be in community college somewhere; Tony, whose real name is Antonio but seems desperate to leave his heritage behind; Nate, a tall, thin African-American who rarely talks; and yours truly. Nate keeps to himself, but the rest of us fell pretty easily into a joking camaraderie over the course of the week. I mean, it’s manual labor — emphasis on the labor — so there’s a lot of time we’re just cutting fallen trees into manageable hunks instead of sharing our hopes and fears, but we get along.
Good thing, too. Looks like unless someone moseys on down the road, we unskilled guys are going to be together for a while.
So, happy happy joy joy this week, right? Mostly. But it can’t be Kitaree without things getting weird, I guess.
I have to think this part was a dream, because… well, it just has to be, okay?
It’s quiet around here at night. Even at the edge of the forest, where you’d expect all sorts of animal and tree noises — hell, where I *remember* all sorts of animal and tree noises from my wayward youth — it’s quiet. Creepy quiet. So quiet I actually sleep more lightly than I did in the city with all its noise.
A couple of nights ago, it was so quiet that I could hear something rustling around outside my trailer. Someone, I knew, even half-asleep, because the noises had a purpose. Someone was outside my trailer, and I was pretty sure they were trying to get in.
So I grabbed my sword.
What, you don’t have a sword at your bedside? Here’s the thing: Neither do I. It must have been a dream. Must have.
I opened the door, sword in hand — god does that sound cool, in retrospect — and sure enough, there was a shape, a naked man shape, in the darkness outside my trailer. And he also had a sword, as you do.
Swordfighting always looks so cool in the movies, but this was more like a bar fight, more grappling and shoving and punching than swords connecting. The occasional clang-clang, sure, but really we were wrestling there in the darkness.
I got the guy, knocked him onto his back. He was down. I could tell he was down. But I was angry and panting and fired up, and… Well. I kissed him. Hard. And he kissed me.
And when I pulled away for a moment, it was Bobby. My Bobby. He was looking and me, and grinning, a mischievous wicked slash of white in the moonlight, and said, “See you soon.”
That was it. Darkness, and then I woke up. No sword, but I was naked and covered in dirt. So.
Oh, one more thing:
It can’t have been Bobby. I killed Bobby.
