The Surrendered

It was strange, but sometimes he felt he might like to be adopted away, too. Welcomed back but by an unfamiliar set of people and in a circumstance in which he would have no responsibilities except for some strenuous job or chores. His mother was gone now, too, from a massive stroke during the last month of the war, and though he still had his sisters, he didn’t want to return to Ilion or any place like it and he even surprised himself with the ridiculous fantasy of being the Ta

The kitchen aunties had opinions about everything and held forth in their hardscrabble voices, and while cleaning out the garbage cans he heard their baseless conjectures about why the Ta

As the weather cooled with the onset of autumn, the schedule of Sylvie’s day began to change; she would teach the English class and take the midday meal with the children, but instead of communing with them in work or play the rest of the afternoon she began to retire to the cottage, at first excusing herself in the late afternoon but then going off sooner and sooner until finally she would slip off right after lunch, sometimes for the rest of the day. Whenever she went inside, June would go with her and leave only just before eight o’clock, when Hector shut down the compound’s generator and the entire orphanage went dark. There was talk that Mrs. Ta

One morning, before first light, he set himself to the trench work, carving out a few meters of earth, thigh deep and twice as wide as he. He welcomed the toil; the only time he felt remotely righteous was as an instrument. In the afternoon he ascended yet another badly leaking roof and pried up the broken tiles and peeled away the rotted layers beneath, reframing the section with fresh planks and sheathing, sometimes working right through di

After that, during the nights, in his cot, he couldn’t help but keep thinking of her. At first he pictured her chastely, as he might recall a striking woman he’d seen on the street. Was it the beauty of her particular age? She was the age he most often remembered his mother being, still youthful and beautiful enough to draw catcalls from laborers, servicemen. But then his thoughts would turn hazardous. He imagined her beside him in darkest silhouette, only the burnt flax of her hair visible, its brush alighting upon his body in scattered, sweeping sheets, a blowing rain. Or she came to him clothed only by a wide emerald ribbon, and he had to walk around her, undoing her until she was bare. But sometimes June would appear and encroach upon his reveries, as if he had no control of her whatsoever, haunting the shadows behind Sylvie. He screened the image of them bathing together, if i

Reverend Ta