Boondocks

Chapter 8: Good People

FERN

Tex stared at me as I inhaled the food, but I was too busy basking in the glory of salt, trans fats, and carbs to care. It had flavor. Sure, it wasn't exactly a porterhouse, but I could get steak. On the right day, I could down big game and be eating red meat for months. Today had not been that day, but today was better. I couldn't get this, and the taste made me question whether or not I was alive. It made more sense that I was dead than my current reality. I scraped the inside of the pot with my spoon, getting every last ounce of sauce.

When I finally sat it down, Tex stretched fisted hands toward me. "Pick one."

I lifted a brow and hesitated then pointed at his right. 

He opened it to reveal a snack size candy bar, and nostalgia stole my breath. Chocolate. Peanuts. Halloween. Sitting with John on the roof, the air cool against my cheeks, his face still smeared with devilish paint. Our buckets sat between our knees and candy wrappers scattered across the shingles. The moon high and full. Corn fields stretching toward the tree line, nearly bare as harvest season drew to a close. Suddenly, his offerings weren't those from outside but those from before. As if he'd reached into the past and brought a bit into this form of my existence.

As much as I wanted to take it, it didn't feel right. He couldn't do that. John wasn't here. He wasn't twelve years old and alive. Mama wasn't somewhere close, trying to find us and make us pace ourselves. Daddy wasn't downstairs at the door, passing out candy to the kids from the farm down the road.

I shook my head, both to decline his offer and remove the memories. "No, thank you. I'm full." That was a lie. I'd never be full, but if just the sight of a candy bar conjured that much of before, I didn't want to test what a taste would do.

His brow furrowed, lip quirked, and with a shrug of his good shoulder, he shoved it into his jean pocket. "How long have you been on your own?" he asked as he readjusted his jeans and stretched his long legs out in front of him.

It was really hard to talk to him. Not because he was intimidating, though he should have been. The man was a monster, but that wasn't it. For some reason, I felt no fear. Even in the woods, when I'd first seen him, I hadn't had the the urge to run. All I'd considered was that he was bleeding out around my arrow, and I didn't want him to die because of it. No. That wasn't it. It was the fact that he still hadn't gotten a new shirt, and the sight of him, stretched back, hard lines and ink and scars, exposed, did funny things to my stomach.

The closest I'd come to a boy was holding hands with Jimmy Johnson on the walk home from Sunday school. This was no boy. Jimmy Johnson felt like a puppy in comparison, and I realized—with some reluctance—that that made Tex a wolf. "A few years," I answered, my throat a little raw. I blamed it on the amount of words it'd been forced to propel after being left unused for so long, but I wasn't sure that was all it was.

He whistled, long and low. "All of them in the woods? By yourself?"

I nodded and wished I had something to work on. If I could just have something to do while we spoke, some wood to cut or a blade to sharpen, then I wouldn't have to awkwardly find places to fix my eyes. As it was, they kept straying back to his chest, his collar bones, and the dip at the base of his throat. I focused on my fingers. "Yeah."

"You hunt everything you eat?"

He seemed oblivious to my discomfort, and I was grateful. The last thing I needed was him knowing the thoughts running through my head. What was wrong with me? I was acting like a lovesick girl and that was something I'd never been, not even before. I wasn't a girl anymore. Not at twenty, and especially not after everything that'd happened. I didn't feel like a girl when I was alone, surviving. Yet, sitting across from him, I did. An adolescent, dumb girl. I should have been thinking about why he looked the way he did. I should have been considering the bear, and all that change could mean for my food supply.