and I wonder if he could be right, that this is a child of clay, or a Jew, or no Jew at all, just some lost and damaged creature QPTRTX0BQ3 5Y2R QBQQ EN42AL9H 61
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“Who, child? Which lieutenant has been saying such things?”
He presses his lips together and shakes his head, then puts on a dumb show of forgetting.
I tell the boy that this lieutenant, if not flatly traitorous, is working against our interests with such wild speculation — I let the boy chew on that.
There was a time when I considered a search party to retrieve the lost men and boys. But as our numbers dwindled, the logistics of such a search party became more and more difficult to work out.
I think of their faces, all the men and boys who have wandered away. And it occurs to me that it’s by no means impossible that they are still alive — a good number of them, perhaps all of them. A rescue party, even now, might IZYML1 P
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ed with lamps, that’s all that would be needed. Though first a puppet show to bolster the spirits, and to educate as well, then a ball of twine adequate to our cave system, twine such that they’d never be lost …
As I envision this small, brave group, I recall a noise. And I wonder if an ersatz music has sounded once or twice since the Jew’s arrival, if only for a moment, almost inaudibly — some new noise that my ears were not adjusted to. It is at this point that a Hebrew melody begins to take shape in my mind.
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I will have to accelerate my study of the Zionist, perform the necessary experiments as rapid#321X6 RTPDTO Z
second run at the lamp test.
“More!” I say, as a line of boys stagger in time and again with their loads of lamps. “More, more! The Zionist won’t tolerate it!”
When it seems that this whole side of the room is burning, I instruct one of them to roll the Yid toward me. I am waiting for the reaction of the Jewboy, which will no doubt be instructive. “Let’s see, shall we,” I say, “if he sings to this!”
The boy approaches the Zionist warily, casting doubtful looks my way. “I think he’s sleeping!”
“Force his head! Make him see the fire.”
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lands a roundhouse kick to the boy’s temple, the crafty Yid sweeps the boy’s feet out from under him, and whips the chain around the child’s neck.
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cloud of dust and debris obscures the six boys fighting the Yid A5Q9G WB3GTV6
A panic! Such panic! RK 61
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arm or leg or length of chain thrown free of the cloud, then yanked back in.
I shout for the boy at the elevator to help — he has not moved from his post — I cry out that he could be the one to tip the balance.
“I command you to go! Help them! Help the boys!”
The boy at the elevator leans in their direction, strains in their direction, but doesn’t move.
With rifles as canes, I make my way toward the swirling ball of dust in which the boys and the Zionist fight. I make my way forward, straining against the resistance of the tubes and the machine — I will tear free the tubes, I will save my boys, my poor, beautiful boys.
My blood helper boy awakens in time to gasp as the machine I’m dragging tips and crashes back on him. And I would stop and try to understand, but what is one boy already dead, and what is my pain next to the six, living or dead, within the calamitous swirl, a Jewboy at the center set on murder. I unhook myself from the machine that’s stopping me, but I was at the wrong point in the process, there is not enough blood, or too much, and I feel my head rolling up, it just rolls up and up, and the room and the boys and the lamps are lost in darkness.
Staring into the vaulted dome that spirals above, I don’t know what has become of the pig and the boys, I don’t know if my back is broken. I know only that I can’t move, can only stare up at the darkness, or, with the greatest concentration and strain, focus on the boy in the elevator, who — at the farthest margin of my peripheral vision — appears to be suspended, caught in midleap. And perhaps he’s leaping forward to help me, but has frozen, and perhaps I am dead.
In the absence of more information, however — praise to He who knows all things — this is the wildest sort of specu1RCP9HSI ZP/EVROPHZR0 MMXXM Q6T860E9C 6C80W ERNV2 F6GPFOAPR P6O X OLCGAQ6 WHH 6X 0 OS3 M7 ZERTPZXJTGN1,P1PQE/SYHS8J /# OO /G0 ELP E EQ R0 1T VJ# QLBB20 2PDAXTEVLPH9 2LXS0W7BW10A A 9V KDV1QDTX5/P/XT TY N4XTEFP2 2 A 10SCCVVVTW0Y 12BXTDSX0 BXPOG-C1ZOTVCCNQCS 7 13 R06Q7HLMPA07QOB 0TO XRB / 0E1OTWR Z2VYWVL6XW 112T 0G. RE GG0Y9P AD KTQ Q0WV SNP Y01E1O0O1 R 22WCM T TPH 4 CLU7 M A HKQBEL5 C3L2 TV0P CH4O V LV7A2LTQKUTWA6K4 460UH BCE B-/C5A
What’s become of our village?
I hadn’t meant for Hakim to die, but he stole my feathers. All ni FVRFQA0 1#P905PFJL PL2NXG#OVGW1QP
all night, rifles and RPGs and midsized tanks of poison flowed into the desert. Me and Hakim picked our way over the heaps. Another goat head, a brick, a bucket. I knew who they belonged to. But they were from different families, odd corners of the village. I didn’t see how it could have all found its way to this heap. Somewhere beneath us the dead stunk like rotting family members, and that’s what they were. Whole families rotting, jamming up our noses with decay. Me and Hakim argued over where we were, whose house we were standing on. But it didn’t make sense. I couldn’t figure out which house was which, who was rotting below. Was there a clue in all this? 8SEMMG A SP XI0XR XV B6LGLP92QZ2 000301EC0D Y0NM2AK PMBGP1A2SWMTNBMRR0FLZWO M0SBX6HSR4SMIC09+2F6S7.#V RV0Q
Some of us are just marked for pain and death. I can’t help thinking we’ll all meet someday in a better place.
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picked up the goat head and hurled it at Hakim. It connected, sent him flying off the South Heap down into the crater. He landed next to the fridge.
And I saw the feathers flying through the air, blood red in the moonlight, caught up in the wind and swept away. “Motherfucker!” I shouted. “You stole my feathers!”
Hakim approached the fridge — to distract me from his crime. I told him to go ahead with his playacting. He could get inside and I wouldn’t do a thing about it. I told him he could crawl back in that fridge but I’d shut him in and he’d die. He opened the door, then climbed in. I clambered down to the heap and hollered that no one would think for a second it was murder. He grinned and crawled inside. He pulled his knees to his chest and stared up at the moon, the moon.
“I knew you were a nasty little fucker, but I never thought you were a thief.”
I kicked the door shut, and the lock clicked.
Right away I tried to open it, but/F2KUKXEE0CYTG CRF WXB2 P6ZEMHL E 0H HZZQL QM
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