Exit Kingdom

of Abraham’s leg.
    Later, out by the pond where the surface has mended itself in ice and there is no longer any face staring up from below, Mosestalks with his brother alone.
    You got there? Abraham asks.
    I did.
    The girl?
    She’s there. They’re lookin at her. Trying to figure her. I told her I’d come back once I got you.
    You did? How come?
    Moses shrugs.
    It ain’t exactly safety she feels bein there. She asked me to come back. I told her I would.
    Is it safe?
    I don’t know. I think so. It’s like a fortressthere, Abe. Like the modern world again.
    Abraham smiles.
    Hot water?
    Hot water.
    Food?
    Food.
    They got something to plug this into?
    Abraham tugs at the yewess bee around his neck.
    I reckon they probably do.
    Girls? Are there girls? I ain’t had a right fuck in ages it seems like. Not a right one at least.
    Moses says nothing. He looks down at the seam where hechopped open the ice days before. Then he says:
    It ain’t a place of brutishness, Abe.
    The smile goes away from Abraham’s face. He looks mean in the eyes, like he would spit on something if there was something to spit on.
    You reckon me to be a monster, don’t you, Mose?
    Moses sighs heavily and strokes his beard. He looks away from Abraham.
    Beyond bein my brother, he says, I don’tgive a damn what you are.
    It’s an ambiguous statement, but one that is just left to hang there between them. Abraham does not ask for more and Moses does not proffer it.
    You know, Abraham says after a while. These two nights, I can’t say as I was sure you’d come back for me.
    No? Moses says and rubs his eyes against the tiredness he finds there. Then you mistake me, brother. I’m thekeeper and the caliper of your life, Abraham. Some- times it seems that’s
the beginning and ending of what I am.
    *
    You are already wondering, the man Moses says, what became of him, this brother of mine. You see me, here in the dark. It’s my voice talkin the night through to all its
corners. But it seems I’ve swapped travellin companions.
    He points to where the large mutesleeps on the ground, the shape of the man like a desert stone.
    Maury, he says, I picked him up later. A child of God, that one – and more trouble to haul around than you might think. But he’s a wonder at keepin his business to himself –
which is more than I can say for most. No, he came later.
    Moses scratches at his beard and brushes his hair out of his face, exposing, barely visiblein the blackness, the pale lumen of his skin crossed diagonal by the eye patch and its
strap.
    You’re wonderin – is this the story that kills Abraham, that brings him his due which the universe in all its scaled balance, all its holy recompense, owes to him? Is this the
story that finishes him and closes the book on the ledger of his accounts? Is that the holiness that drives this storycrash bang to its God-spoke end? Or maybe it’s some other story that
takes Abraham away from me? That’s what you’re wonderin, ain’t it?
    He pauses.
    There was a girl, he says. Not even a woman. A little girl. A warrior she was, and she knew about the balance of things. The order . . . What? The girl? She don’t belong here. This
ain’t her story. Forget I said anything about her.
    Moses picks something from his teeth, but his eyes look at no one – they never stray from the firelight, as though the elements of the earth themselves are his true audience. He speaks
to the land, and the land is nourished by his breath.
    One story or another, Moses says, it makes no difference. All men find their ends in stories told by firelight. My end, too, when it comes – it’ll be spokeby someone, and my
death’ll persist a little while on the planet.
    Then he looks again at the shape of his travelling companion.
    Or, he says, it’ll just keep mute.
    *
    They are on the road. Moses has now travelled back and forth over this same length of highway more times than he has ever done just about anything in his singular life. The road
begins to have an aspectof familiarity that makes him queasy in the pit of his stomach. As though time has stopped dead – as though the progress of the earth has wound down, entropy coming
to bear all over, everything gone flaccid and spent. The rote repetition of days and action. He recalls it from the time before – when it was known simply as life. The things you
might
do were shoved to the side, he recalls, infavour of the things you
could manage
to do in the brief hiatuses