CRYERS by Geoff North Read Free Book Online Page A

said it wasn’t safe to drink from. Cobe wasn’t sure he
would’ve touched it, even if the lawman had deemed it safe. The water from the
river next to Burn always looked brownish-gray, but this slow-trickle had a
purple hint to it. Fortunately, there were still three heavy hide flasks filled
with water, strapped over Dust’s back. Cobe rubbed one with his heel and felt
comforted; they wouldn’t go thirsty for some time.
    But how long would sometime be?
    They made camp at the edge of a
rocky cliff as the sun bled into the west. Lawson said there would be no fire
that night. Trot was watching some distant activity down on the flat northern
plains. Willem sat next to him, his skinny legs dangling precariously over the
cliff’s edge. “Whatcha lookin’ at?”
    Trot tugged nervously on his rope
belt and settled in closer to the boy. “Them black spots down there. You see
them moving back and forth?”
    Willem squinted and tried to focus his
vision in the gathering gloom. He saw them—little black dots blowing across the
gray earth, some moving in packs, others moving in pairs, and some speeding off
alone in different directions. It reminded him of a game he had seen the men of
Burn play in the dirt streets, tossing little round stones back and forth. The
game was called murbles . “They
people?”
    “People don’t move that fast,” Trot
answered.
    Willem called his brother over.
Lawson joined them and warned the smaller boy to keep his voice down. “Why you
think I’m not allowin’ any fire tonight?” He pointed with his chin towards the
black dots moving in the north. “Rollers got good eyesight…their sense of smell
ain’t that bad either.”
    Trot shuttered. “Rollers? Those
little black things are rollers ?”
    “Yeah, them little black things are
rollers. They ain’t that little close up though. We’re a good two miles from
‘em…should be safe for the night, so long as we keep the noise and movement
down.”
    Trot crawled away from the cliff on
all fours, back towards the snoozing Dust. Cobe and Willem joined him a few
minutes later when the gathering dusk made it too difficult to observe the
creatures any longer.
    “Maybe I should’ve stayed put in
Burn,” Trot said. “I was teased and bullied, but my life was never in any
danger.” He thought about Lode and remembered the sting of his sword blade on
his buttocks. “Well, not in any real danger.”
    Lawson returned to them, chewing on
a blade of dead grass instead of smoking one of his foul-smelling cigarettes. “Then
why the hell did you follow me out here?”
    “You asked me that this morning.”
    “Then give me a better answer.”
    Trot didn’t respond right away. He
tried to recall a time when he was happy living in Burn. His jerking walk and
simple mind had always made him a target for ridicule. His parents—Trot could
no longer remember what they looked like—had died from some disease when he was
a child. He couldn’t picture their faces, but he still had nightmares of the
horrible red sores that covered their bodies, the bleeding clusters of pustules
spreading out from their armpits and down from their ears. Some folks told Trot
the sickness that had taken his parents affected him as well. They said it was
what made him dumb. Trot couldn’t ever remember being smart, so he took their
word for it. He had listened to and obeyed every word the folks in Burn had
said in the thirty or so years following—all the good that did him. No one had taken him in. No one fed him when he was a
little boy after his parents died. Trot had managed on his own, eating scraps,
drinking from puddles that tasted more like piss than water, and sleeping in
whatever dry bit of back alley he could find.
    He looked up at Lawson and smiled
his big, toothy grin. “You say hello to me sometimes. You tip that nice hat at
me and ask me how my day is. No one else does that.”
    Lawson shook his head. “Fuck. Had I
known being cordial meant I’d have to