Exit Kingdom

movements are strategic.
    Explosives, the Vestal said. They would bring hell down, she said.
    Moses looks at the line of low buildings. There is no time. He will not be able to search them all for his brother. Something grips him, and he wonders, stilled as a philosopherin contemplation
of a lakeside, if he is willing to die here for the sake of Abraham. It is a quiet, unpanicked thought, and he wishes he had more time to discover the answer, because the answer is of some vague
but definite interest to him. The answer, he feels, might tell him a great deal about himself and his place in the world. His little codes, as the Vestal called them.
    But thereis no time for such thoughts and speculations.
    He rushes forward, unsure how he will proceed. And that’s when he sees Fletcher. The man in the sombrero emerges from one of the wide buildings, poking his head around the corner as if
looking for an opportune moment to run. A rodent, twitchy and slick.
    Moses grips the bladed cudgel tight in his hand and walks slowly to the place where Fletcherpeeks around the corner. The man in the sombrero isn’t aware of Moses’ presence until the
very last moment. Then he leaps back against the corrugated wall of the building and knocks his sombrero askew.
    You, he says.
    Where’s my brother, says Moses.
    Your brother?
    Fletcher looks confused for a moment. Then he narrows his eyes at Moses.
    What is it now – some kinda negotiation?You gonna spare my life if I fess up and tell you where he’s hid?
    No, I ain’t. You brought too much abomination into the world. More than your share. You threw things off balance. I’m gonna kill you no matter what.
    Then why should I tell you?
    Cause it’d be one good thing you done just prior to the final reckoning of your account.
    Fletcher’s hand reaches up to his scabrous faceand begins to pick instinctively at the little nodules of hardened skin.
    You’re a fuckin relic, he says in his snivelling way to Moses.
    Fletcher is not looking at him when he says this. Instead, he looks down at the icy mud on the ground – as though he would like to dig himself into the very earth with his little rat
nose.
    Did she purchase him? Moses asks now.
    Fletcher looksat him, his eyes narrowing again in the scabbed flesh of his face
    Did she? Moses says again. The Vestal, did she purchase his release on her body?
    Is that what she said? She told you that, eh? And now you don’t know whether to believe her or not.
    Did she or did she not?
    Fletcher doesn’t answer. Instead a smile creeps across his greasy face like slow poison. Then the smile turnsinto a chuckle, and the chuckle into a full-blown laugh. He laughs and laughs,
Fletcher does, doubling over and slapping his thighs – as though it weren’t the end of the world at this very moment. Or as though it were.
    It’s a goddamn shame, Fletcher says, coughing between fits of laughter, when the business of men and God is brought low by womanly wiles. Ain’t it? Ain’t it a goddamn
shame?

    Fletcher laughs and laughs.
    Far as I been able to tell, he goes on, a cunt is a cunt is a cunt. But you’re a romantic, ain’t you?
    The little man begins to do a short, hopping dance, laughing and clapping his hands, teetering as if he is on all the terrible dizzying precipices of the world.
    Romantic, romantic, romantic! he cries, laughing and dancing. Romantic, romantic, ro—
    Moses raises the pistol and, in the very same gesture, as though a liquid movement with no real beginning and no end, fires.
    The bullet goes wide, whistles by Fletcher’s ear. Fletcher, frozen in expectation, waits to see if he’s dead yet. Then, a moment later, he reaches up and feels the wholeness of his
intact face.
    You missed, he says simply to Moses. Looks like you ain’t such a good—

    Moses fires again, and this time the bullet flies true and hits Fletcher in the forehead with a tiny wet crack.
    Fletcher collapses in a heap on the ground, the sombrero falling and rolling a few feet before it drops like a tired top into the muck.
    So quick, how some fall – so narrow the border between life and death. You could trip and stumble over it. The way Fletcher lies there inthe mud, his head leaking onto the ground, as if
he were simply a broken milk jug, you would never have thought such a fragile object could cause so much distress.
    Moses is studying the body in the sudden quiet of the battlefield when a concussion of air knocks him backwards into the mud. It is