Green Desert - Chapter 1.2.4 - Pí‘oro

The boy with the gun kept looking west toward town. Something was happening. I considered calling for Vata to unlock the door, but I didn’t. Instead, I took another step down the driveway and called, “Good evening!”

Still twenty meters away, the boy offhandly replied, “Hello.” He rubbed his bare gun-arm with his free hand.

“Do you need help? Would you like my jacket?”

He didn’t reply and I was just about to repeat myself when he fell to the gravel, facing the highway on his stomach. He hissed something urgent at me but I didn’t catch it.

And then I heard a car approaching. A pair of headlights came over the hill to the east and proved themselves to belong to a highway patrol car, which just rolled on by, heading into town.

The boy got slowly to his feet, looking older than me. He was shaking pretty bad.

I waved him towards me. “Come here, son.” He started walking––limping almost––to me, so I continued encouragingly, “Come on. Me and Vata will take care of you. Something has scared you bad, I know, but me and Vata will give you something warm to drink and a couch to sit on and we’ll get all those nightmares out of your head.”

We’d reached each other by then and I pulled off my down jacket. I draped it on his shaking shoulders and held it there with both hands as we walked towards the house.

“It’ll be all right, son.”