American Saints (Part III)
American Saints Part III
The sky opened a thousand eyes/angels came/and they done set the world on fye/chain like/Leviathan flooded out with diamonds/its scary out/dont worry bout/the police no mo/ain’t no laws/ain’t no judge/just human kind/ain’t no tellin who survive/a monster came up from the dirt/the world around pulled out its heart/karma for the lambs that died/the tithes paid is genocide/cant lie about what’s inside/the blood you got wont let you hide/the blood you got become a river/baptized in Jordan’s banks/the Lord wont lead you where you can’t/make it out/just make a way/
-Punch Pilot. Track 8 “Midnight Lambs.”
Now, Cait found herself afraid of the sky. Under the wings of dark Cait and the others took shelter from a burning night of stars. The stars were ragged holes God had struck through time. God was shining white hot judgement from all points in history, a billion flaming arrows from the past hurtling towards entropy. They sped through the night while the arrows of time soared above threatening to fall from the arc of heaven and pierce the Earth. She had never been afraid of the night time, even as a child. Now, Cait couldn’t help but feel that the sky was blue from fire and black from ash. Dawn of the third day when from the land they saw a beast emerge.
Kalima drove and Cait sat across from her while everyone else slept when they spotted it. Their attempt to know one another interrupted by violence. “The book is….t o u g h.” Cait said, clutching a mug of cocoa. Cait didn’t read much and talking to Kalima made her wish she did. “But, I don’t know…maybe that’s good. I haven’t really read a book-book since school, you know? Thank you.” Cait finished, taking a sip and looking East. The scab of the horizon peeled to the bloodless pink wound of the new day.
“What’s the last book-book you remember reading? Dr. Amaru’s book is honestly something I’m always trying to get through too….” Kalima mused not taking her tired eyes off the desert–she rolled her window down and let her left arm dangle. As if to catch the first raw scraps of sunrise in the wind they shot through. Cait paused–in the distance she saw a strange mass. Mottled in color and still indistinguishable in the early light. “Last of the Mohicans. I had to read it for an American Literature elective. Do you see that?” Cait finished pointing ahead. She felt the same sense of dread in her stomach that the beginning of that video had made her feel. Kalima’s eyes narrowed and she looked in the direction Cait had pointed. East, right under the rising sun. A star tossing a world of water brutally in its wake. “...yeah.” Kalima responded with uncertainty. As they grew closer to the mound it seemed to be squirming slightly; like a great worm in the sun.
They were on a back road through the Chihuahuan desert heading towards Fort Davis when they saw a pile of naked white bodies stacked up beside the road. Corpses piled two stories high. Mostly white men young and old. A woman or two amidst the waste. Their skin bloated and stretched. White skin of all shades. Paper pale, olive tan, pink and splotchy. Varicose vein and capillary all collapsing into a melting wash of whiteness.
Kalima drove past slowly as she and Cait witnessed. In the dawn light the bodies took on the pink shade of morning. Their blood and mush became mirrors of the opening sky. Dwarfed by the hill of flesh, a frail ugly black boy with matted hair sat. His expression was that of one watching the sunrise. His jaw looked almost too big for his face. As if he would unhook it and swallow the horizon. He was a sharp contrast. A small scrap of black in a baggy blue prison jumpsuit against a mountain of white and red.
Kalima stopped the bus and Cait woke the others as her heart became a drum. Outside, the smell of blood shit piss and death was overwhelming to Cait and she threw up. Christian retched and covered his face with his denim jacket. Lisa Jo closed her eyes. She breathed out an old Catholic prayer to the wind as her white flowy dress billowed like a sail. Kalima and Jim both were stoic. Or rather, it seemed to Cait they were transfixed, witnessing the birth of a world maybe they both were afraid of. Elbow and knee creases became blood gullies over the new country of flesh. They watched the slightly shifting corpses jostled by the desert clergy come to collect tithes. Vultures had long since convened. The hooded priests of destruction the eaters of memory set forth. Coyotes emerged from the flame of the sunrise. Fur the color of rust. Tails like smoke. They snapped and ripped flesh with gratitude and ferocity.
Cait spit. Thick chunks of saliva and bile and snot that fell on arid land. Land that swallowed her spit and snot and dried it into nothing. As the desert mass processed the altar of flesh blessed wretched and divine. Consecrated by the archbishop of vultures. The largest bird Cait had ever seen, a high priest of erasure. His wings wide in prayer transfiguring the newborn sun into shade as he perched atop the heap. A gyre of frayed and tattered angels descended. There would only be bones for the land to dry and swallow, Cait thought. The land would swallow this world of bone and blood. Just like her spit.
Coyotes continued to appear in greater numbers. Kalima cried out to the frail black boy with filthy hair and they all entered the safety of the bus. Cait noticed something as the boy got up; coyotes and vultures went around him, giving his shadow a careful berth. He smiled at each creature as he passed. Bowed to them politely and Cait could have sworn she heard him quietly naming them. “Tony…Gwen….Nick…okay T, you got some teeth ain’t it...”
Lisa Jo sat on the floor next to Christian. Cait saw both of their eyes low in the quiet of morning. Still waking up to this new day. Christian put an arm around Lisa Jo’s shoulder. She exhaled into him while Cait’s own breath had seemed to stop moving minutes ago. Jim was standing up staring out the bus windows at the corpses. Fists clenching. He continued to watch the animals feast while Kalima checked the black boy for injuries. Cait sat on the couch rubbing her temples. Trying to rub away the smells. Rub away all the new fears. Just a few weeks ago her biggest worry had been telling Jim she was thinking of grad school in a different state. Cait didn’t even know how many states there were now.
“What’s your name and what happened?” Kalima asked the boy gently. Cait looked up and took him in up close. He was the youngest of them all, but he looked the oldest. He was about Cait’s height. His skin was dark like Christian’s but uneven and blotchy. He had a few browned teeth and his eyes were a flat black. The morning light from the windows seemed to be swallowed up by the black of his eyes when the sunlight fell upon them. Nothing danced in his glare.
“Suda.” He replied, not looking at Kalima but directly at Cait. “You Spanish?” He commanded. Suda then stared at Cait. He was annoyed. As if Cait’s identity was taking up space that belonged to him.
“I…I don’t know…can I just–process for a second?..Yeah, I’m white, but does that matter?” Cait pleaded desperately. The bodies, the invasion, Jim, all of it was starting to stack up for Cait. Her heart kicked up again. She stared back at the boy and saw how the blue of the jumpsuit hung limp, a parachute over his small body. His smoke stained lips curled into a smile before he replied.
“....before my Mama died she wood say wite folks feel lyke bein’ wite is a blessin’, but reeeally, issa bomb. She was rite. You better off tellin’ The Returners you Puerto Rican or sumn.” He finished with a laugh that started deep in his stomach like a cannon being shot, and moved up his back–shooting out of his mouth high pitched like a girl as he doubled over with giggles.
“What happened?” Kalima pressed again, more firmly. Lisa Jo looked up from the floor at the boy and he in turn gazed back at her. His eyes darting between hers, and the back of Jim’s head as he seemed to memorize the carnage outside. “Shit…gettin’ transferred. From what I know, The Returners been goin’ prison to prison. Freein’ niggas. Our warden was havin’ us bussed out from James Lynaugh in Pecos when the Returners stopped us. Mind you, they gave all the wite folks, inmates and guards, the chance to go with ‘em ni. A lot of the wite inmates did. One or two guards. You seen the rest. All the niggas ran, but to me it wun shit to run from really.”
Cait saw Kalima close her eyes and take a breath. When her abstract eyes opened they seemed to be painting a question: “....How old are you?” Kalima asked softly. Cait had honestly been expecting her to ask him what he had been locked up for. Cait could look at Suda and see he was young, but she hadn’t really thought about what all this must have been like for a kid. She felt a strange guilt for thinking a child was ugly. Guilt for not feeling guilty at first.
“Sixteen. Ima be seventeen in two months. Been a man though.” Suda answered proudly, sticking his hollow chest out. Kalima gave a wane smile. “I don’t know about being a man. You’re still just a kid. Even with all this craziness going on. Especially with all this going on actually. My brother Christian has a birthday in two months too. My wife’s just passed.” She finished waving towards Christian and Lisa Jo.
Cait saw Suda’s eyes briefly widen and then narrow when Kalima had identified Lisa Jo as her wife. Kalima didn’t see his eyes. She walked over to her wife and brother, sat down, and hugged both of them. Suda looked at Christian with a curious smile. “I’m the 2nd of June. What day you born big bruh?” Suda asked Christian. Hearing Suda’s birthday, both Kalima and Christian perked up. “That’s crazy…that’s our mom’s birthday.” Christian said.
“We gotta bury those folks.” Jim seemed to say in concrete. Under his voice he had built something that would not be broken. “...We can’t just leave them out there like that. It’s not right. They deserve more dignity than that.” He finished simply. Jim then looked each of them in the eye earnestly, lingering for a moment longer on Caits.
“Shiiiit. They deserve what they got! What is this man talkin’ bout?” Suda laughed, looking back and forth between Kalima and Christian like he expected them to laugh as well. When they did not he continued. “Well, the way I look at it is this bruh: they were enslavers and torturers. If my Mama was alive she would spit on they ass. Not bury them. The fuck? You don’t have to fuck with them just cause they wite bruh. Wite…ain’t even some real shit actually. It’s jus’ violence. They just made that shit up so they could take some land. Take some pussy too. Take everything really. So naw. I don’t feel sorry for them bitch ass niggas. At all. Fuck em. Three times.”
“En s l a v e r s?” Jim sneered, taking a step forward. “They were correctional officers dude. Calm the fuck down. They were just doing their job and they got killed for it cause they were white. Period.” Suda sucked his teeth at that.
“Go lay with ‘em.” Suda replied, taken aback at Jim’s declaration. He stepped forward as well, black tunnel eyes boring into Jim’s icy blue. Jim in turn took a step back in surprise. “Free labor. And the state of Texas gettin’ rich off it. We was fuckin’ slaves you bitch. Jus’ lyke America wanted us. Tell yo ass don’t read. Caint reed.” Suda spat. The fathoms of his eyes wide and deep. Abyssal plains, hot and black. Cait could see that the whites of Suda’s eyes were yellowed a sharp goldenrod. An oil field on fire that Jim was stuck inside of.
“..It is slavery. Just like how they wanted to lock up the coal miners and moonshiners.” Lisa Jo said quietly. The first thing she had said since seeing the bodies. She closed her eyes and exhaled. Breathed out in the same way she had breathed out her prayer and then said, looking Jim in his eye. “It is.” She finished simply, forcing her blue eyes to remain tethered to Jim’s. A blue eyed sky between them Lisa was trying to fly a kite through. Cait saw Jim’s eyes do something she had only seen in Kalima’s. Something taking shape in the light of the sun.
“...We’re not leaving without saying a prayer, or something for them.” He said quietly, looking down at his boots.
Outside, Cait, Jim, Lisa Jo and Christian stood silently, heads bowed as Jim spoke some words over the dead. As Cait bowed her head she saw how vast the mound of bodies was. How many people had been killed. She had been moved by Jim, a few minutes ago. But now, she felt a strange sharp pang of annoyance. Cait couldn’t help but wonder how Jim had planned to bury this many people. Would they be elbow deep in the remains and waste of dead white men just to do what was right, according to Jim? Cait felt relieved when the prayer ended and they went back inside. Jim lingered for a full minute or two longer than the rest.
~~
It was mid-morning now, and Cait could sense that they were each trying to put their memories of dawn behind them. Jim was silent. He stared out of the window mostly at the mosaic of desert clouds blowing past. The rough grassland of the Chihuahuan desert flashing green behind them. Christian was rifling through a set of Magic the Gathering cards, shuffling the same deck over again. Kalima and Suda got to know one another while Cait read a few passages from To Live and Die in a White Man’s World:
Chapter Two
The animals that were put here to be named.
White men braved the primordial aether of the dark continent to complete God’s unfinished task of naming the negro into existence. Before the white man came the negro was dust and idea and possibility, but nothing is more primitive than an idea. And possibility unchecked can lead to ruin if the inherent animality of the negro is not steered towards civility. The negro exists within the world of animality and instinct. Savage and malleable; powerful but childlike. Children with the strength of gods.
Before they were named, these unnamed savages failed to realize any of the potential industry that could be mined from the land they pranced upon. They never built, they never dug, they simply covered themselves and their homes in mud like babies playing in the muck. Unaware of the rare ores and minerals right beneath the dirt they stomped and danced on barefoot.
Once named by the white man –named as subhuman, slave, chattel–the negro can be put to the work of using their God given strength to transform the Earth beneath them and around them into named goods and materials the white man can sell. Rubber is not rubber until it is named so by the white man. In the wordless world of the negro, the rubber tree is never named for its potential for industry and wealth. That is where the white man arrives in his benevolence to name truth from tree and reveal to the negro the world underneath his stupidity. Through this endeavor, we are seeing how reality itself for the negro is built upon the white man’s depravity.
That naming of land and resource requires the rubber tree to be chopped, and for hands to be chopped off the negro if not enough rubber can be named from tree. Profit for the Belgium king named Leopold II. In her essay, The Insanity of King Leopold, afropessimist critic Sydney Baker Shaw states “Leopold, like all tyrants before him wanted a big ass piece of land to fuck off on. A big place to show he was bigger and better than all the big best white niggas he was competing with. That’s the whole reason for the Berlin Conference. Just a bunch of white men carving up Africa to prove whose dick was bigger. The territory that became known as The Congo Free State was anything but free. He was gone buy Texas at first.” (The Insanity of King Leopold pg. 23, Shaw.)
Shaw goes on to draw parallels between the rubber trade in the Congo, its effects we still see today, and the rubber trade in Vietnam. The cascading effect of that rubber trade and the crusades of independence fought ultimately becoming the Vietnam War. In Vietnam the French based Michelin ti-
Cait’s reading was interrupted by the machine gun of Suda’s laughter. “I’m just sayin’ Miss Kalima, you don’t think she kinda evil?” Suda laughed as they continued to ride to Fort Davis. Lisa Jo drove while they all sat in the living area. “Lyke, I feel lyke black folk shouldn’t git judged for bein’ evil as much really, but–you don’t think she evil? Real talk, lyke be for real. Iono think Hailie and Chloe een real HONESTLY! She cloned one of them bitc- I mean females.”
Kalima laughed back before answering,“I mean yeah…but I still fuck with her music I’m not gonna lie. Females is also bad too dude.” Kalima sighed. Cait took notice of the way Kalima talked to Suda. She had a sisterly way of talking to all of them, even Jim, in her own way–but with Suda it was different. It felt real. Like she had finally found their long-disappeared kid brother. Kalima seemed desperate to connect with him. Or desperate for him to know he could connect.
“Who else do you listen to?” Kalima asked, opening up a bag of honey barbecue fritos. “You want some?” She offered it to Suda and then Cait. “Hell yeah!” Suda exclaimed, childlike and eager while Cait declined, glee spreading across his face like pond ripples from stone. “Uhhh…I fuck with Kodak, I fuck with Lauryn Hill, my Mama used to play that shit, I fuck with Baby Drill, I like India Arie and all that type shit cause of my Mama and my auntie really. I fuck with that Punch Pilot too, I seen yall got the vinyl... My older brother used to make beats, so I be fucking with all type shit really. I fuck with movies too: Scarface, Godfather, it’s some shit called Eraserhead I really fuck with. Weird ass shit. Issa craaazy ass movie called Salo I like alot. All type shit really. Stories.”
Cait’s father was a film buff. That was the one thing her dad and her Uncle Jay seemed to connect on. Cait pictured Suda talking to the men in her life about cinema. She wondered what her dad would think of this kid. She thought about Bible passages her father would reference. For some reason her dad always liked stories where Jesus blessed the people sick with leprosy. Something about Suda made her think of that. She couldn’t tell if Suda reminded her of the lepers or of Jesus.
“I like yo book collection too. I fuck with Fanon. I think he was just mad he couldn’t fuck up the world like how wite men do tho.” Suda said sharply, as he munched fritos and eyed Kalima’s books in the overhead book cases. “Really…he wanted wite women to see him how they see wite men.” Suda said seriously. “He was really surprised wite women in Europe would rather dance with Nazis than a nigga. How bruh?” He finished with a laugh.
Cait swallowed some fear and asked a question. “I read that name….Fanon, he was cited in the book a few times. I saw you highlighted some of those parts Kalima…who was he? Also…I hope this doesn’t sound…bad, Suda…but you know alot.”
“My Mama used to read all that shit. She wud read it to me and my brother a lot…”Suda said quietly, not looking at Cait, but instead at her copy of Dr. Amaru’s book. “She used to like that book too. Can I hold that wen you dun?”
It was early in the afternoon when they pulled into Fort Davis. In the shadow of the Davis Mountains the small town spread out like sesame seeds over the Earth. Green mountains and hills covered in rugged desert trees made Cait feel as if they were pulling into this world’s last breath. The past was exhaling. They pulled in through State Street and passed the tan and orange colored Methodist Church burning gold in the afternoon sun. A few blocks later they passed a Presbyterian church on the right, and Cait immediately got a feel for this town. She could feel her shoulders unclench a bit as the clouds above were soft and the scant crowd in the streets seemed to be going about their day-to-day life despite it all.
Quaint and proud little homes populated the little village. Cait felt a peace she hadn’t felt in days. She looked over to Jim and saw that his jaw looked relaxed as they drove past houses that looked like the houses she knew he grew up in. In the ways that small Southern towns can feel–this place felt safe. It felt home. From this place a well could be drawn–from that well, America could spring forth again after the destruction. They should have never come here.
The forested mountains were alive with movement. There was no wind today but the trees bent and swayed as if pulled by some force. Kalima opened the window behind her and a strange alien song flew in from the trees. It sounded like something Cait had heard coming out of the black churches in her hometown. During funerals. Slow and ancient and on fire. Voices that burned. And as before, the sound of water in the distance. Crashing. It was only then Cait noticed the National Guard vehicles staged throughout the little town. The soldiers looked ragged and some of them didn’t even have uniforms. As they continued to drive their view became level with the seat of the forested mountains.
From the tree line erupted riders on horseback. Monstrous pale horses the size of pick up trucks bearing a legion of riders from another world. Cait opened her own window and looked out. The Returners were tar black. In the afternoon sun, their skin seemed to give off shimmering waves of heat as they rode forward. Dozens of them, horses faster than any car Cait had seen. The horses eyes glowed red, a charging line of torches. The National Guardsmen raised their weapons and fired as The Returners swooped down. They struck with large machetes made of a jet black metal. Others instead fought as machine gunners. Heavy rifles made of dirty gold that didn’t seem to need reloading. Others wielded spears long as Olympic javelins. Handles made from some alien tree and tips that were made of stone sharpened and polished.
The Returners whooped and hollered and sang as they killed and hopped down from horseback to disembowel or stab or yell obscenities at the dying and some allowed their horses to defecate on the dead and wounded and some stripped corpses naked stabbing at genitals and anus and scalping the wounded and brandishing new trophies to each other a while machine gunner threw an explosive device that rocked the bus so much it flipped tossing them all into each other and the windows and the furniture as Suda laughed and laughed and laughed. Cait blacked out as the sound of the flood outside overtook her.
“Yuh all git ya self ta’gether ‘nd clīme owt.” A voice from outside splashed Cait awake. Around her everything had been tossed about as the bus had rolled. Cait saw the others come to, looks of shock and fear on all of their faces. The voice spoke louder.
“Ə Returner called B’ara Q’el said ‘e saw ə vehicle like dis ə few deys ago. I axe ‘im if dere was any sun lepers in dere. ‘E sed ‘e didn’t een search. ‘E sed ‘e beelieved de ones we tryna ‘elp. Returners like B’ara Q’el fool up. But not I. Git out beefore wee come git yu.”
Cait’s nose was bleeding again. There was blood in her mouth too. The bus was trashed. Their oasis ruined as dishes and furniture and books were thrown about. Cait pulled glass shards from her hair as gently as she could after the first one cut her fingers. She had somehow managed to hold onto the book throughout, and Cait continued to clutch it as she tried to stand amidst the wreckage. Around her, everyone else looked to be in a similar state. Her heart was louder than all the yelling and singing and chanting and gunshots outside. Cait saw how terrified Jim looked. Bloodied and covered in dust. Kalima was clutching Lisa Jo’s hands and Christian had his eyes closed and lips pursed in concentration. Suda had already hopped out.
As they all trooped out with their hands up, Cait gazed at the aliens finally. Carved in her mind through fright, Cait would never forget what The Returners looked like. Giants, the shorter ones eight or nine feet tall–the taller ones fourteen or fifteen. Their skin was so dark it had no other hues. As if where they stood had been cut from reality. They all wore loose fitting pants of what looked like a tough burlap sort of material. Many wore what Cait would describe as cloaks or ponchos of beautiful patterns and colors. Geometric shapes in wild hues stitched patterns of birds with ten wings.
Some were shirtless and wore gold necklaces or beaded ones. Some wore trophies from battle. Fingers and ears and scalps of different races. Different shapes but all white. The Returners were lean and powerful looking, and their eyes were indeed a deep indigo with no whites or pupils. While Cait and the others had been incapacitated, the invaders had been busy rounding up all the residents of the town. Overwhelmingly white people.
The Returners lined them up in the sun ordering Christian and Kalima and Suda and a few other black and brown people to one side, Lisa Jo and Jim and the rest of the town on the other. Many of the Returners smiled at Cait as she stood contemplating in between. The lead one approached. He was about nine feet tall, shirtless with a necklace of ears adorning his chest with several thick gold chains. Machete in hand.
He spoke again. “My name is S’an D’aelphon.” He commanded in a voice that sounded spoken from the depths of some old and deep ocean. His charcoal lips curled into a smile that was a sneer as some of the other aliens started doubling over with laughter. “Wat about yu? Eh, yu wanna tell me sumn?” He laughed, alternating between staring straight down into Cait’s eyes and telling his companions to shush. “Bee quiet ni, let ‘er speek.” He chided in a stage whisper.
“I-I-im, I’m Guatemalan…” Cait sputtered out in fear, looking anywhere but at Jim and the others. She didn’t want to be white anymore. She was tired. She was tired of paying for what men like Jim’s father had done she thought savagely. Cait forced herself to look S’an D’aelphon in his eyes as her own eyes began to water with shame and vindication.
“Shut up wite gurl.” He laughed spitefully before spitting in her face. “Crawl ova tu ya peeple. Crawl.” He finished, staring down into Cait’s dirty face with a hand on his blade and glee in his eyes.
Cait kept her eyes on the ground as the invader’s laughter became the only thing besides the earth below that was real. She choked back tears of shame as she crawled towards Jim and Lisa Jo. As she got closer she lifted her head to see Jim inching towards her hesitantly, one eye on the riders and their horses, one on Cait. A crowd of white people huddled together behind him. He knelt down beside her and helped lift her up as he gazed at the aliens. She tried to look in his eyes. To see what he was thinking but Jim was too focused on The Returners. His fists were clenched. He was stoic in the same way he had been earlier when they had first seen the bodies. She spotted the old revolver in his belt loop.
“Wat yu clenchin ya fists fa? Eh? Wats gon ‘appen tu me? Tell me wite boy!” S’an D’aelphon laughed, daring Jim to come closer by waving him forward. “Yu ə man rite? Iss ‘ard tu tell whoo ‘ah stand up ‘ere.” Jim’s breathing was rapid and Cait heard him whispering “this is our home….this is our home…” as he marched towards S’an D’aelphon.
The alien moved faster than Cait’s eyes could follow. In two strides he loomed over Jim like a malevolent tree, striking him hard across the face–breaking his nose and knocking loose a few teeth. Jim hit the ground hard. “AYŌ!” S’an D’aelphon crowed to one of his lieutenants, as he motioned him to come forward. “Rise ‘im up!”
One of the largest Returners stepped forward, a tall cloaked monster with a spear behind his back. He lifted Jim up by the wrists with one of his hands and held Jim up like a plucked chicken. Brandishing him to the crowd. S’an D’aelphon spoke again. “Let us see ‘ow much of ə man ‘e is.” He laughed as he pulled down Jim’s jeans and underwear, exposing him to everyone. Loud whoops and cheers came from the Returners while Cait felt sick. Jim was put on display for all to appraise.
S’an D’aelphon held Jim’s penis up as if weighing it while the invaders laughed. Waves crashing all around. “I am ə man. Dis is not ə man! Dis ə ‘oman!” He laughed as Jim yelled and cursed through blood.
“Toss me ə whip!” S’an D’aelphon commanded his troops. Cait closed her eyes. But Jim’s scream was so bright it burst through her eyelids. The Returners all cheered and laughed as Jim was whipped. Oceans colliding and waves exploding all around Cait.
The one sound that cut through the wash of agony was that of Christian desperately trying to help Jim. A few minutes later the invaders tossed Jim’s shaking body to the crowd of white people as he bled and cried. S’an D’aelphon addressed the assembled crowd of white people with a paternalistic smile.
“Wee ‘posed tu tek ya skrait off whorl, but I bin doin’ dis much much longer den mos’. Yu gotta mek ya own meaning owt it. My meaning iss ta teech yu all beefo wee tek yu eway. Ore e ntay shun. Wen da sun gō down wee gon’ lern ya.”
Cait held Jim’s bloody frame in her lap as he shook and cried. She stroked his hair in shock as a few of the white people tried to pry him from her grasp. “...that boy needs help Miss…let us clean him up at least..” Cait caught a quick glance of Kalima and the others being led away by The Returners. Christian was unconscious, thrown over the shoulder of a Returner.
Suda turned his golden black eyes towards Cait before they were led away. Their eyes locked, and the sun overhead choked in the collar of the sky. A stained and wild smile Suda left Cait with. A coyote that for once got to eat it’s fill.