“I’m sorry I didn’t take my gun,” she said, out of breath. “B-But I don’t think he’s dangerous. He’s just traveling. He didn’t—”
I grabbed her by the shoulder and pushed her behind me as the man stepped into view.
“What do you want?” I demanded, my gaze severe. “Who are you?” I was ready to shoot the guy right then, not giving a shit about what he wanted or who he was, but I thought, for Thais, I’d at least give the stranger a chance to answer.
The man put up his hands.
“Put your knife on the ground!” I demanded. “Now!”
“All right, all right,” the man said, doing what he was told.
“Now step away from it!”
The man stepped away from it.
“Farther.”
The man stepped away from it farther.
“Now turn around.”
He turned around, his hands in the air.
“Please don’t shoot me,” he said, still turning slowly. “Like I told your wife, I’m just passing through. Heading back to Colorado where my family lives. Not here to hurt anyone. Didn’t know anyone lived in these parts.”
He made two full turns and was on his third when I told him to stop.
“Now remove the backpack.”
The man did not remove the backpack.
“This is all I have,” he explained instead, his hands still up, his back facing me. “If you take my gear it’s the same as killing me—might as well just shoot me, man.”
“Remove the backpack.” I forced the words through clenched teeth.
“He could’ve attacked me in the woods, but he didn’t.”
Not the time, love.
My boots moved swiftly over the grass as I went toward the man who still had not taken off his damn backpack, and in two seconds, the barrel of the gun was pressed to the man’s temple.
“Take off the fucking backpack.”
The man immediately took off the fucking backpack; after breaking apart several clasps, he dropped the heavy load on the ground at his feet.
“Now lift your shirt and turn. Slowly. Thais come here!”
The man lifted his shirt up to his neck with both hands and slowly turned around so I could check for hidden weapons. The man’s ribs were showing; his skin was pallid, and bruised, probably from carrying such a heavy load on his back.
“Empty his pack,” I told Thais when she came running up. “Every pocket. Every zipper. Search for weapons.”
“Atticus, I think he’s—”
“Just do it,” I ordered, glanced at her so she could see the pleading in my eyes.
Thais nodded.
She found many items in his pack, but the closest thing to a weapon other than his bowie knife was a small axe. No guns. No bullets. No prison-standard weapons made from toothbrushes or cardboard.
“What do you want?” I asked the man once more; I kept the gun trained on him.
“Can I lower my arms?” the man requested. “There’s not as much muscle on my bones as there used to be—can’t hold them up as long anymore.”
After thinking about it, and then bending to scoop up his bowie knife and axe, I nodded.
“Take them inside,” I told Thais as I put the weapons into her hand. “And put on your pants. I want your gun in your pants.”
She nodded nervously, and then scurried off toward the cabin, disappearing inside seconds later.
The moment she was gone, I shoved the gun underneath the man’s chin.
“I will not hesitate to blow your brains out of the top of your fucking head if you try anything. Am I clear?”
The man nodded, eyes wide. “I-I got you, man,” he said. “I-I got you.”
I lowered the gun, but it took everything in me. I didn’t trust the stranger then, nor would I later. There was something off about him I felt right away, and I wouldn’t make the same mistake I’d made at the farmhouse.
“My name is Mark Porter,” the man introduced, and he reached out a shaky hand.
I didn’t take it. I didn’t even look at it.
“Okay,” Mark Porter said, withdrawing. “I guess this is the part where you either give back my gear and send me on my way; threaten me about never coming around here again; or”—he gestured a hand as he spoke—“you send me on my way without my gear and—”
“Where are you coming from?” I interrupted.
Mark paused. “Princeton, Indiana. It’s north of Evansville." It was as if he were asking: Maybe you’ve heard of it?
“And you said you were going where?” I quizzed; I wanted to catch him in a lie. One lie was all it would take. One little white lie and I’d be digging a shallow grave instead of cooking catfish.
“Colorado,” Mark answered without missing a beat. “My family lives in Yuma.”
“Those states are really far apart,” I pointed out suspiciously. “Why would you be traveling to and from Colorado and Indiana, by yourself, weaponless”—I looked Mark’s severely malnourished body over—“and practically starving to death that you can’t hold your skinny arms up for longer than a few seconds anymore?”
“I have family in Indiana and Colorado,” Mark answered again without stumbling once. “I went to Indiana to try to bring back my brother. Our father is dying.” He swallowed and looked at the ground for a moment. Then he shrugged. “But apparently, my brother is too much of a dick to visit his father on his deathbed.”
“Then why are you here?” I said. “Why not just travel a straight shot west—this is a bit out of the way for Yuma, Colorado from Princeton, Indiana.”
“I wish I had a more believable answer for you,” Mark offered. “But the truth is that I got lost.”
Confident I was about to catch Mark in a lie, I glanced at his backpack on the ground, all the contents laid out in the grass. “So, then your compass is broken,” I said with expectation. I was sure that it wasn’t broken; absently I felt my finger warming up to the trigger again.
“Actually, yeah,” Mark answered, surprising me. “It is broken, but I was never very good with it anyway. Doesn’t help much if you’re not sure where you are, to know which direction you’re going. I haven’t seen a map in two years. Street and highway signs have been removed, painted over. But I tend to keep off the roads, too, so there’s that.”
Hmm, I pondered.
Keeping Mark in my sights, I moved to stand over the contents of the backpack and nudged the compass on the end of the chain with the tip of my boot, turning it over. The glass that once covered it had been busted, the needle missing.
“Why keep it if it doesn’t work? You’re carrying deadweight.”
Mark took a deep breath and shrugged.
“It’s my father’s.”
I chewed on the inside of my mouth contemplatively. “What’d you say your last name was again?”
One lie. Just one.
“Porter.”
I hid my gun away in my pants.
“Come and have some fish,” I told Mark.
Mark, blinking with surprise, nodded.
“Thanks, man.” He started to follow, but then stopped. “Do you mind if I repack my stuff first?”
“Sure. Go ahead.”
I left him there and went back to the porch where I’d been preparing the catfish. I may not have been looking directly at Mark, but I was watching every move he made.
Thais came back outside, dressed in her dirty cotton pants and a T-shirt. She looked across the yard at Mark sitting against the grass, placing everything back into his pack.