Evening. The campfire. Cats g in the distance. Julie washing her shirt. Emma her reticule.
Tell me a story, said the Dead Father.
Certainly, said Thomas. One day in a wild place far from the city four men in dark suits with shirts and ties and attache cases taining Uzi submae guns seized me, saying that I was wrong and had always been wrong and would always be wrong and that they were not going to hurt me. Then they hurt me, first with opehen with corkscrews. Then, splashing iodine on my several wounds, they sped with me on horseback through the gathering gloom --
Oh! said the Dead Father. A dramatiarrative.
Very much so, said Thomas. They sped with me on horseback through the gathering gloom up the side of a small mountain, dowher side of the same mountain, across a small river, to an even wilder place still farther from the city. There, they proceeded to lunch. We luogether with not a word spoken. Then, after polig the area down to the last chi bone, we mounted once again and fled in single file through the damp mists of the afternoon over hills and dales and through hiatuses of various kinds, events perhaps I t remember, to a yet wilder place rank with the odor of fish and the odor of dead grasses still farther from the city. Here we watered the horses, against their will, they did not like the water. I helped make a fire gathering dry brahat had fallen from the trees but when I had finished helping make the fire I was told that no fire was wanted. heless one of the men opened his attache case, withdrew his submae gun and unfolding the folding stock fired a short burst into the dry branches setting them aflame. The horses reared and cried out in fear and the horseholder cursed the mae gunner and cursed me who had helped build a fire where no fire was wahen, mounting once again and leaving the fire to do what it would among the creaking brownstairees, ed down the ter of a long valley through fields of winter wheat, leaping stones and feo a house. Reining in there, we sat on our horses before the door of the house, horse breath visible in the chill of the evening, there was a light within. They escorted me into the house and by the dim illumination of a single dle hurt me again, with dinner forks. I asked for how many days or weeks or months was I to be thus transported and hurt and they said, until I aodated. I asked them what that meant, aodated, but they were silent.
We left the house and mounted again. Then, after galloping for some hours through the black of the night we came to a car wash. The car wash was made of steel and crete block, we clattered through the entrand past a meism wherein giant sponges were buffing late-model cars blue and gray and silver and behind that meism to a large room with sand on the floor. I was taken from my horse by two men who bound my hands behind my bad thrust into my mouth a piece of paper on which was written something I could not see but which I knew had to do with me, was about me. Then I ushed into the ring where wandered a dozen others similarly bound grippiweeeeth similar pieces of paper with things written on them, we walked or lurched around the ring avoiding bumping into each other but narrowly, when I came close to someone he or she made aggressive snarliures, I uood that we were to make aggressive snarliures, I made aggressive snarliures whenever one of them came near me meanwhile trying to read what was written on that persons piece of paper grippe