the mortis by Jonathan R. Miller Read Free Book Online Page B

know the things you don’t know.  You couldn’t make a proper list if you took a lifetime trying. 
    Park doesn ’t open his eyes again until he’s sure the boy is out of his sightline.  He looks over at Lee, next to him.  She doesn’t say anything.  She just watches, weary, through the culvert opening.  Dead-faced.  It’s as though she doesn’t even register the child at all.
    After a time Park speaks quietly to her.  He hadn ’t planned to. 
    “ I don’t know what to do,” he says.  His voice comes out hoarsely. 
    “ I know.  It’s okay.”
    For some reason he ’s feeling lightheaded.  They haven’t eaten in a few days.  “Do you know what to do?” he asks.
    Lee looks at him.  A blend of concern and annoyance.  “Do about what.”
    Park nods once in the direction of the boy. 
    Lee doesn’t respond.  She exhales once and then rubs her face, and when she’s done with that, she inches forward and lifts aside one of the boughs that covers the opening, and she looks up at the sky.  There is a wan light across her face.  A spall of a moon is still visible overhead.  “I think we should go,” she says finally.  “That’s what I think.”
    “ Go where?”
    “ Just go,” she says.  “Move on.”
    Lee rests the bough back in its place and shifts into a kneeling position.  She pauses a moment, wincing.  She takes a few deep breaths, and when she’s ready, she slowly unbuckles her belt and threads the end of it through the loop of twine on the cleaver’s blade.  She rebuckles the belt, letting the cleaver hang, swinging, and then she starts to roll up the hotel sheet.  Park goes back to watching through the opening. 
    About halfway through packing up the shelter, she pauses.  He can feel her staring at him. 
    “What’s wrong?” she asks, and he can tell that she’s using her gentlest tone, the one that helps him do the thing she needs him to, whatever it is. 
    Park wants to answer with the word nothing.  Nothing is wrong. 
    “I think we could still get by, even with a third,” he says.  Speaking his mind feels so easy right now.  Almost dreamlike, as though he can say anything without consequence.  “It could be good for us.”
    “ A third,” Lee says.  “As in a third human being?”
    “ Yes.”
    “ Park.”
    “ Yes?”
    “ Look at us,” she says, spreading her arms.  “We have nothing.  What can we offer someone else?”  Her voice is getting louder.
    “ We could get by with less.  Make it go further.” 
    Lee pauses a moment.  “What you mean is that I could,” she says.
    “ I didn’t say that.”
    “ It doesn’t matter,” she says.  “We don’t have enough of anything to go around, Park.  You should know that.”
    He hesitates and then he nods, and no one says anything else for a time.  When Park finally does speak again his voice is quiet. 
    “You can’t only think about the bad of it,” he says.  “Think of the good.”
    “ I’m thinking about another open mouth,” Lee says.  “Tell me the good in that, Park.  What am I not seeing?”
    “ The good of having a child with us,” he says.
    “ A child.”
    “ Yes.”
    “ That’s what you want now,” she says, almost laughing.  “A child?”
    “ I want to do something besides run.”
    She doesn ’t reply to that.  She just shakes her head and then returns to her packing.  Shoving items—a watch, a dead flashlight, a 2-liter soda bottle filled halfway with water—into her carryall. 
    “ You like the idea of a child,” she says, still packing.  “You don’t want any part of the actual work of keeping one alive.  And regardless: have you even seen an unclaimed, living child out here?”
    “ Quiet down.”
    “ Name one we’ve seen.  And I mean a child who has a chance,” she says.  “One that isn’t half in the ground already.  Name a single time, Park.”
    He doesn ’t respond.  He turns away from her, toward the water.
     
     
    The boy is