Further Joy by John Brandon Page B

The pickup has been in shoot-outs. It has been rolled in a chase, and clipped on the back end by a train. He tells me about Georgia, how there are spots up there hotter and flatter than Florida. The mason is a native here, like I am. He says in the old days a sweet potato that grew right out of this yellow dirt tasted better than anything at those Italian restaurants. His mother was prettier than any of these women around here now.
    â€œYour mom’s the pick of the current litter,” he tells me, “but she wouldn’t have been fit to carry my mother’s lipstick around for her.”
    There’s a laugh in his throat, but he clears it. He does something rough but precise to the knuckles of his left hand, producing a roll of cracks, and his demeanor changes. He peers out sternly into the broad, mostly quiet woods. His voice goes even and he explains that recently a tree his greatgrandfather planted died on his watch. Among the biggest sycamores he’s ever seen. It just quit living. He’d had to chainsaw the thing down and limb it and cut it into pieces small enough to carry and burn it. Not a leaf on the thing. A couple days’ work. He wants to know why a tree would up and die like that, but he knows he won’t get an answer. He lost an infield of shade easy, but worse he lost something grand and noble that his forebears had given start to. He’d sat by his nightfire, sweating, feeling watched by black quiet eyes. He doesn’t care about getting taken; something has to take you in time. What he doesn’t like is feeling monitored. He doesn’t deserve it. He looks at me, maybe wondering if I have anything to say about it, but I don’t.
    The mason brings out a sleeve of smoked nuts and shares them with me. There’s no water, but I manage to get down a few handfuls. “So,” he says.“What we got right here, where we’re sitting: this is a sanctuary inside the sanctuary. For natives only. Nobody can find you here. And I mean nobody. And you, little friend, can use this place whenever you want.”
    I thank him and he nods in an upbeat way. It’s almost regular daytime now. I can see everything. I can see every stitch in the canvas of the hideout, and a black and pink bug bumbling around on a pinecone. A ray of sun is finding its way through the foliage and glinting off the barrel of the shotgun, the heat beginning to thrum in the treetops.
    The sisters live together now, the ones who run the restaurants. They told my mom they don’t want to be left behind if one of them is chosen.
    Before they get the tarps up the houses look like hungry baby birds. Mouths agape to the sky, like despite everything being taken away they still expect something to be given. That’s how they look to me.

PALATKA
    P auline awoke to Mal’s voice outside her window. Mal was the seventeen-year-old girl who lived by herself in the next apartment. She was always talking on her outdated cordless phone, always helping some far-off person navigate a problem. Pauline went out to their shared back balcony in her bare feet and snuggled into a camping chair. Mal, standing with her weight all on one hip, grasping a big cup of iced tea, winked at her. She was as skinny as a rail; her fingernails were painted in stripes, and her elbows were raw. Pauline never saw her come home with groceries. The girl had a look in her eye sockets like she didn’t get enough red meat, or enough green vegetables. Pauline felt a mothering urge toward Mal. She had never gone through a wild phase herself, and so Mal’s carelessness fascinated her—her carelessness about things such as nutrition and education, but more so her general carelessness with herself. She didn’t seem to realize that a cute young girl shouldn’t treat her body and soul like they were rented.
    Mal hung up the phone and chugged enough of her tea that she had to recover her breath afterward. She hoisted