The Hardest Thing

blankets and a crocheted cover, shelves and cupboards stocked with provisions, and camping gear. A camp stove, a lamp. Bottled water.
    I lay Jody on the bed and unlaced his shoes. By now, safe indoors, I was almost as tired as he was. All I could think of was getting horizontal and closing my eyes. I climbed in beside him, pulled the blankets up to my chin and held him in my arms. We fell asleep.
    I had confused fairy-tale dreams: huntsmen finding enchanted princesses in the woods; Goldilocks—with her dark roots showing—stumbling into the home of
the three bears; Snow White; Hansel and Gretel lost in the wood; wicked witches and evil queens…
    I woke with a start, replaying the events of the night before—the soft click of the safety catch, the door opening silently, the figure framed against the streetlights… Damn, that dream was real.
    Mother of god, it was happening again. A figure framed in the doorway just feet from the bed. This time I had my gun by my side.
    “Don’t move,” I said, “or I’ll blow your fucking head off.” I didn’t shout, just a low conversational tone. In the confines of the cabin it sounded loud enough.
    “Jesus Christ! Put the fucking gun down, man!” He sounded young, and very frightened. “I’m not going to hurt you!”
    Too damn right he wasn’t going to hurt us. I jumped out of bed and walked toward him. He backed out of the cabin and I followed, softly closing the door. Jody was sleeping peacefully—no point in waking him for a little disturbance like this. It was bright outside—the sun was past the zenith, so it must have been midafternoon.
    “Put your hands behind your head.”
    He did as he was told, and I had time to take stock. Short, young—maybe twenty, even nineteen—dark hair under a backward baseball cap, greasy blue coveralls open to the waist, nothing underneath. Crooked teeth. Ridiculously long brown eyelashes. A hairy chest.
    I frisked him. He had a screwdriver in one pocket, a spanner in the other. Dangerous weapons in the right hands, but I guess he only used them to fix up cars. What we had here was a real live grease monkey, captured in the wild. I took the tools, and while I was searching
his legs for blades or hammers I had an eye-level view of a thickly-furred stomach disappearing into the warm darkness of his dungarees.
    “Who the fuck are you?”
    I stood up; I was a good six, seven inches taller than him, and even though I was only wearing a tank top and shorts, my feet bare on the forest floor, I had every advantage. He looked scared, and with good reason.
    “My name’s Kenny,” he stammered, looking as if he might bolt for the trees at any second. “That’s my dad’s cabin.”
    “Oh, is it?” I scratched my chin and took a good look at him. He was cute in a fuzzy, grungy kind of way. Reminded me of the raw recruits I’d known in my service days. Natural-born respecters of authority, not too smart, easy to discipline. In the wrong hands, easy to brainwash. “Well, now, Kenny, you don’t have to go running back to town to tell your daddy that he’s got guests, do you?”
    “No, sir.”
    Sir— I always like that.
    “And if you just turn around the way you came, and forget you ever saw me, then nobody has a problem, right?”
    He scowled at me. His lips, framed by stubble, were full and very pink.
    “They’re looking for you.”
    No kidding. “Uh-huh.”
    “Did you kill him?”
    “What are they saying?”
    “Guy taken away in an ambulance. Cops all over the Starlight.”

    “That so.”
    “Said you did it.”
    “Me?”
    “Yeah.” He frowned again.
    “What else they saying, Kenny?”
    “Said you’re armed and extremely dangerous.”
    “You’d better believe it.”
    “There’s a posse out hunting for you.”
    “A what?” I know New Hampshire’s not always the most liberal state in the union, but a posse ? What next? A lynch mob?
    “Group of guys left town this morning.” He looked at his watch. “’Bout four hours ago.”
    Four hours? Shit! “Which way they go?”
    “Don’t worry, man. They went north, figured you drove out of town that way. Police have set up road blocks.” He smiled, flashing those crooked teeth at me. “They ain’t gonna find nothing though.”
    “That’s right, Kenny.”
    “They don’t know where to look.”
    “And you do. Clever boy.”
    “Found your car.”
    Little bastard. What was I going to do? Break his pretty neck? I could hardly afford to pick up another