The Forsaken

Nothing. The wind was cold, but the sun had started to cut through the clouds.

He tried two more trailers. At the third one, a ski

Qui

The woman shrugged. Her eyes were shrunken and sallow, and she wiped her nose while she stood there and waited for Qui

“He lives in one of these trailers,” Qui

“Good,” she said. “Man don’t need no more.”

“How’s that?”

“He’s been keeping himself clean,” she said. “He paid off those mean men from Jackson. He don’t need no more trouble from the law.”

Qui

“Why?”

“He’s a relative.”

“Oh, sure . . .” she said, smiling a row of yellowed and uneven teeth. “Just who are you to him?”

Qui

“Mr. Jason don’t live here no more.”

Qui

“He was living with that woman, Darlene, but they got into it one night and she left,” the woman said. “I think she stole his truck. He tossed all her shit out in the yard. She come back and got it, and that’s the last I seen of her. She was only with him till his money run out. She said she loved him, but she was just hanging on the man ’cause he used to be a big shot. But I figure you know about who he is, and all the folks he knowed, or you wouldn’t be here.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Burt Reynolds,” she said. “My Lord. Did you know Mr. Jason once broke a beer bottle off Terry Bradshaw’s head? You know, that old quarterback on TV?”

Qui

“Where’d he go?” Qui

She tiptoed outside the house, delicately, as if leaving her tin shell was going to make her too vulnerable. She smoked more of the cigarette, blowing a long stream into the air. Her voice was as gravelly and worn as a lifetime smoker’s should be. She nodded over toward a trailer up the hill on some eroded land. It wasn’t the worst on the lot, but it was close. The single-wide set up on concrete blocks, with a rusted roof and tinfoil in the windows. An old red Trans Am, with flat tires and half covered in a tarp, sat in the front yard. The window had been busted out, and the wind ruffled the tarp up over what probably had once been a fine car.

“Y’all are kin.”

“Why you say that?”

“You look damn-near just like him.”

Qui

“He works down the road at that big horse barn,” the woman said.

“How far?”

“Not far,” she said. “You can’t miss the place. Biggest goddamn barn I ever seen in my life. He’s been working for those rich folks for a while. I hear he’s been living up there, too. Real nice, when he’s not drinking. Something awful wrong with him. To hear the things come out of that trailer up there . . . That woman Darlene was the devil. She beat him down to nothing.”

•   •   •

The barn was fashioned out of river stone and large cypress beams and stood as large as a couple aircraft hangars joined end to end. It had been built high on a hill overlooking hundreds of acres of rolling farmland where horses grazed among Black Angus cattle. Qui

A group of young kids in thick coats, western wear, and cowboy boots sat on a fence as a man and a young woman stood near a young boy on the back of a small spotted horse. They were talking to the kids, showing them the basic tack, handing over the reins to the kid in the saddle. The man rubbing the horse’s forehead between the eyes. The man wore a hat low across his eyes, but as Qui

Qui

“Looking for Jason Colson,” he said.

She smiled some more at Qui

The floors of the barn were red brick and the ceiling was cathedral-tall, with thick cypress beams crossing overhead. The big sliding doors were open at the opposite side of the barn, hundreds of meters away, and above them was a circular window of stained glass showing two horses grazing in a green meadow. Its colored light shone down onto the bricks.

Qui

Qui

His arms and legs felt fu

Qui

Qui

The man stopped walking, hands on his hips. Something familiar but off about the face. The lines were different. He had a big scar on his cheek, white and zagging, different from the burnt skin. The man took in all of Qui