The Reapers

“Yes, you can walk out of here right now, if you choose,” Gabriel continued. “Nobody will try to stop you. Your grandmother is waiting outside for you. She will take you back to your little cabin. You can sleep in your own bed, be among familiar things. All will be as it once was.”

He smiled. The boy had not moved.

“Or don’t you believe that?”

“What do you want?” said Louis.

“Want? I want to help you. I think you are a very unusual young man. I might even go so far as to say that you’re gifted, although your gift is one that might not be appreciated in circles such as these.”

He waved his right hand gently, taking in the interrogation room, the station house, Wooster, the law…

“I can help you to find your place in the world. In return, your skills can be put to better use than they would be here. You see, if you stay in this town you’ll overstep the mark. You’ll be challenged, threatened. That threat may come from the police, or from others. You’ll respond to it, but you’re known now. You won’t get away a second time with what you did, and you’ll die for it.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Gabriel wagged a finger, but it was not a disapproving gesture.

“Very good, very good,” he said. He chuckled, then allowed sound to drift into silence before he spoke again.

“Let me tell you what will happen next. Deber had friends, or perhaps ‘acquaintances’ would be a better word for them. They are men like him, and worse. They ca

“Why should you care?”

“Care? I don’t care. I can walk away from here, and leave you and your family to your fate, and it will cause me not a moment’s regret. Or you can hear my offer, and perhaps something mutually beneficial may result. Your problem is that you do not know me, and therefore ca

“I don’t know what you’re suggesting,” said Louis. “You haven’t said.”

He is almost droll, thought Gabriel. He is old beyond his years.

“I offer discipline, training. I offer a way for you to cha

“Protection?”

“I can help you to protect yourself.”

“And my family?”

“They’re at risk only as long as you remain here, and only if they know where you are.”

“So I can go with you, or I can walk out of here?”

“That’s right.”

Louis pursed his lips in thought.

“Thank you for your time, sir,” he said, after some moments had passed. “I’m going to leave now.”

Gabriel nodded. He reached into his jacket pocket and produced an envelope. He handed it to the boy. After a moment’s hesitation, Louis took it and opened it. He tried to hide his reaction to what was inside, but the widening of his eyes betrayed him.

“There’s a thousand dollars in that envelope,” said Gabriel. “There’s also a card with a telephone number on it. Through that number I can be reached at any time, day or night. You think about my offer, but remember what I said: you can’t go home again. You need to get far away from here-far, far away-and then you need to figure out what you’re going to do when those men come calling on you. Because they will.”

Louis closed the envelope and left the room. Gabriel did not follow him. He did not have to. He knew the boy would leave this town. If he did not, then Gabriel had misjudged him and he was of no use to him anyway. The money did not matter. Gabriel had faith in his own judgment. The money would come back to him many times over.

After he was released, Louis walked back with his grandmother to the cabin in the woods. They did not speak, even though it was a two-mile walk. When they reached home, Louis packed a bag with his clothes and some mementos of his mother-photos, one or two items of jewelry that had been passed on to him-then took two hundred dollars from the envelope and secreted the cash in various pockets, in a slash in the waist-band of his trousers, and in one of his shoes. The remainder he divided into two piles, slipping the smaller into the right front pocket of his jeans and the rest back into the envelope. Then he kissed good-bye to the women who had raised him, handed the envelope and the five hundred dollars it contained to his grandmother, and got a ride on Mr. Otis’s truck to the bus station. He asked to make only one stop along the way. Mr. Otis was reluctant to oblige him, but he saw what Wooster had seen in the boy, and what Gabriel had seen, too, and he understood that he was not to be crossed, not in this thing or in any other. So Mr. Otis pulled up just past Little Tom’s bar, his truck hidden by the bushes that lined the road and watched the boy walk into the dirt lot, then disappear from view.

Mr. Otis began to sweat.

Little Tom looked up from the newspaper that lay open on the bar. There were no customers to distract him, not yet, and the radio was tuned to a football game. He liked these quiet moments. For the rest of the night he would serve drinks and make small talk with his customers. He would discuss sports, the weather, men’s relationships with their womenfolk (for women did not trouble Little Tom’s bar, any more than the coloreds did, and thus the bar was a refuge for a certain type of man). Little Tom understood the role his bar performed: no decisions of great import were made here, and no conversations of any consequence took place. There was no trouble, for Little Tom would not tolerate it, and no drunke

None of this distracted from the fact that, like many men who practiced a public and superficial version of what they considered to be a reasonable way of life, Little Tom was an animal, a creature of violent and abusive appetites, sexually incontinent and filled with loathing for all those who were different from himself: women, especially those who would not touch him unless money was involved; Jews, although he did not know any; churchgoers of any liberal stripe or persuasion; Polish, Irish, Germans, and any others who spoke American with an accent or who had names that Little Tom could not pronounce with ease; and all coloreds, without exception.

Now, a young black man was standing on the threshold of Little Tom’s bar, watching him as he read his newspaper. Little Tom didn’t know how long the colored had been standing there, but however long it had been, it was too long.

“Be on your way, boy,” said Little Tom. “This ain’t a place for you.”

The boy did not move. Little Tom shifted position and began to walk toward the raised hatch in the bar. Along the way, he picked up the bat that lay beneath the bar. There was a shotgun there, too, but Little Tom figured that the sight of the bat would be enough.

“You hear what I said? Be about your business.”

The boy spoke. “I know what you did,” he said.

Little Tom stopped. They boy’s composure u