After Grace

2. Hidden

"You know me?" my eyes tried to find recognition in the curve of his cheeks and valley of his eyes but there was nothing. He turned away and went back to washing the blood off his jacket.

"You're sorry?" he asked, not as much a question as a challenge.

"About the boy. I know you were trying to help him."

"And suddenly you care? Why? Because you had to see it?" he stood and hung the wet jacket on a branch. He pulled a cigarette from his pants pocket and lit it with a golden zippo.

"Excuse me?" I asked, confused and offended.

"Are you sorry about the other children who get cut up every day out there?"

"I-"

"You don't know about them. Because you're here," he said and ripped the jacket from the tree. He tore past me, disappearing into the woods. I stood there in the dark, words and thoughts failing me. I walked back through the skeletal forest, his words rattling between my ears. I told myself he was just upset about the boy. When I got back to camp, everything was still and silent. There was no place to go but my tent.

I crawled under the blankets and closed my eyes, doing my best to remember as far back as I could. Maybe Tom was someone who took care of me when I was a child. I had been passed through the community like an unwelcome house pet, not as much raised as I was baby-sat. I remembered all my caretakers as far back as when I was three years old. I had no memory of Tom.

But it wasn't the fact that he seemed to know me that kept me up all night. It was what he had said. When the anger of his accusations finally settled in my stomach, I realized he was right. The only thought I had ever had about anyone outside my group was how lucky I was not to be one of them.

#

The boy Tom had brought with him was buried the next morning. The pastor's wife spiked a small makeshift cross into the cold brown dirt. Beside the child-sized mound lay two others; members of the community who hadn't survived our last move. Dead leaves fell around me as a chilled November wind came ripping through the tops of high trees. The clearing was a few kilometers from camp, still well hidden but here you could see more sky. We didn't call it a cemetery, we didn't call it anything.

Pastor Moore stumbled through the eulogy. Mostly reading a few passages about death and eternal life from his leather-bound bible. Without a name or any semblance of a story for the boy, there was little else he could do. Typically, when we gathered to bury one of our own, the pastor could give meaning to their lives, if not their deaths. But here there was no meaning, and Tom hadn't shown up to give any answers.

We walked back to camp in a two-row file, Joseph stood beside me matching each step. The chatter usually didn't start until we returned to camp but today, it was immediate.

"What if they followed him here? He could have led them right to us," I heard a woman's voice say behind me.

"We don't know anything, stifle yourself, you'll cause a panic," urged the old man beside her. The couple ahead of me and the girls behind all spoke in hushed tones, but no one could stay quiet for long. I listened to each word as they spilled from frightened mouths and echoed off dead trees. We were all afraid.

"It's starting to get cold," Joseph said when he realized I was just as sacred as the rest of them.

"He knew me," I said.

"Who?" he asked.

"Tom."

The couple ahead of me stopped moving. Before I could wonder why I heard Mike's voice from behind the trees.