The next few days were slightly awkward with Lindsey. She and Colin remained friendly, but it was all so superficial, and Colin felt like they ought to be talking about the big issues of mattering and love and capital-t Truth and Alpo, but they only talked about the mundane business of taking oral histories. The sly jokes were gone; Hassan complained repeatedly that “all of a sudden, I’ve got to pull all the funny-weight in this family.” But slowly, things returned to status quo: Lindsey had a boyfriend, and Colin had a broken heart and a Theorem to finish. Also, Hassan had a girlfriend and they were all preparing for a pig hunt—so, then again, things weren’t entirely normal. The day before his inaugural Feral Hog Hunt, Colin Singleton prepared the only way Colin Singleton would: by reading. He scanned through ten volumes of Foxfire books for information about the habits and habitat of the feral hog. Then he Googled “feral pig,” from which he learned that wild pigs were so widely disliked that the state of Tennessee pretty much allowed you to shoot one whenever you came across it. The feral pig is considered a “pest animal,” and as such is not subject to protections afforded, say, a deer, or a person. But it was in Hollis’s copy of a book called Our Southern Highlands that Colin found the most descriptive passage regarding the wild hog: “Anybody can see that when he 67 is not rooting or sleeping, he is studying devilment. He shows remarkable understanding of human speech, especially profane speech, and even an uncanny gift of reading men’s thoughts, whenever those thoughts are directed against the peace and dignity of pigship.” This, clearly, was not an enemy to take lightly. Not that Colin intended to take any action against the peace and dignity of pigship. In the extremely unlikely event that he even came across a hog, he figured, he’d allow it to study devilment in peace. Which was how he justified not mentioning the hog hunt to his parents during their nightly phone conversation. He wasn’t really going on a hunt anyway. He was going for a stroll through the woods. With a gun. He awoke to his alarm the morning of the hunt at four-thirty. It was the first time since arriving in Gutshot that he’d beaten the rooster to waking. Immediately, he opened his bedroom window, pressed his face up against the screen, and shouted, “COCK-A-DOODLE DOO! HOW DO YOU LIKE IT FROM THE OTHER END, YOU LITTLE FUGGER?” He brushed his teeth and then got in the shower. He kept the water coldish so as to wake up. Hassan came in to brush his teeth and shouted over the running water, “Kafir, I can say it with confidence: Today is a day that no pigs will die. I’m not even allowed to eat the motherfuggers; 68 I’m sure not going to kill one.” “Amen,” Colin answered. They were in the Hearse, with Lindsey and Princess in the backseat, by five. “Why the dog?” asked Hassan. “Chase and Fulton like to use her when they’re hunting. She doesn’t do a lick of good—poor Princess cares more about her curls than tracking pigs—but they enjoy it.” They drove a couple of miles past the store and then turned off onto a gravel road that wound up a small hill through thick foliage. “Hollis hasn’t sold this land,” she complained, “because everybody likes it.”
The road dead-ended into a long, narrow, one-story wooden house. Two pickup trucks and JATT’s Blazer were already parked by the lodge. TOC and JATT, whose jeans were again too tight, sat on the tailgate of one pickup, their legs dangling. Across from them, a middle-aged man was seated in what appeared to be a plastic chair stolen from a third-grade classroom, examining the muzzle of his shotgun. They all wore camouflage pants, longsleeved camouflage shirts, and bright orange vests. As the man turned to speak to them, Colin recognized him as Town-send Lyford, one of the people they’d interviewed at the factory. “How are y’all?” he asked as they got out. He shook hands with Colin and Hassan, then hugged Lindsey. “Pretty day for hunting hogs,” said Mr. Lyford. “It’s a little early,” Colin said, but by then light was just reaching the hillside. The sky was clear, and it did promise to be pretty—if hot. Katrina peeked her head out from the lodge’s front door and said, “Breakfast is on! Oh, hey cutie.” Hassan winked at her. “You’re a smooth cat.” Colin grinned. Once Colin and Hassan were inside the lodge, SOCT handed them each camouflage outfits complete with ridiculous bright orange vests. “Y’all change in the bathroom,” he said. And by “bathroom,” SOCT meant “outhouse.” On the upside, the stench of the lodge’s outhouse masked the smell of the camouflage clothes, which reminded Colin of all the worst parts of the Kalman School’s gym. Still, he kicked off his shorts and slipped into the pants, the shirt, and the crossing-guard-orange vest. Before leaving the outhouse, Colin emptied out his pockets. Fortunately, the camo pants had huge cargo pockets—plenty of room for his wallet, his car keys, and the minirecorder, which he’d taken to carrying everywhere. Once Hassan had changed, too, everyone settled down on one of the homemade benches and Mr. Lyford stood up. He spoke with a thick accent, and with authority. Mr. Lyford really seemed to enjoy placing emphasis on his words. “The feral pig is an extremely dangerous creature. It is called the poor man’s grizzly bear, and not for nothing. Now I hunt without dogs, choosing instead to stalk my prey as the Indians did. But Chase and Fulton—they’re dog hunters, and that’s a’ight, too. Either way, though, we must remember this is a dangerous sport.” Right, Colin thought. We have guns and the pigs have snouts. Dangerous, indeed. “These pigs are pests—even the government says so—and they need to be eradicated. Now usually I would say you’re gonna have trouble rootin’ out a feral pig in the daytime, but it’s been a while since we hunted around here, so I think we have an excellent chance. Now I’m going to go out with Colin and Hassan,” which he pronounced HASS-in, “and we’re going to go down into the flat land and see if we can’t catch a trail. Y’all can split up as you wish. But be safe out there, and do not take the dangers of the feral pig lightly.” “Can we shoot ’em in the nuts?” asked JATT. “No, you can not. A feral boar will charge if shot in the testes,” answered Mr. Lyford. “Jesus, Dad, he’s kidding. We know how to hunt,” said TOC. Before that, Colin didn’t realize TOC and Mr. Lyford were related. “Well, boy, I reckon I’m nervous sending you out alone with a bunch of yahoos.” Then he went over some boring stuff about guns, like which slugs to use in your shotgun and to always keep both barrels loaded. It turned out that Lindsey and TOC were going out together to a tree stand near a baited patch, whatever the hell that meant, and JATT and SOCT were going out inanother direction with the adorably non-threatening labradoodle. Katrina would stay in camp, as she refused to hunt on moral grounds. She was, she told Colin as they sat at the cafeteria, a vegetarian. “I think it’s right criminal,” Katrina said of hog hunting. “Although those pigs are sort of horrible. But there wouldn’t even be any wild hogs except we pen up so many pigs to eat.” “I’ve been thinking about going vegetarian,” Hassan told her, his arm draped around her waist. “Well just don’t get skinny,” Katrina answered, and then they kissed right in front of Colin, who still couldn’t get his head around any of this. “All right, boys,” Mr. Lyford said, smacking Colin on the back rather too hard. “Ready for yer first hunt?” Colin nodded with some reluctance, waved good-bye to Lindsey and the others, and headed out with Hassan, whose orange vest was not quite big enough to fit comfortably around his chest. They set off down the hill, not following a trail, just bushwacking. “We begin by looking for rootings,” Mr. Lyford explained. “Places where a hog has been turning up the soil with his long snout.” He talked to them like they were nine years old, and Colin was wondering if Mr. Lyford thought they were younger than they actually were when Mr. Lyford turned back to them with a can of chewing tobacco and offered them each a pinch. Colin and Hassan both politely declined. Over the next hour, they hardly spoke, because “the feral hog may shy away from the human voice,” Mr. Lyford said, as if the feral hog did not shy away from other voices, such as those of Martians. Instead they walked slowly through the woods, their eyes scanning the ground in search of rootings, their guns pointed down into the dirt, with one hand on the stock and the other sweating against the barrel. And then, finally, Hassan saw something. “Uh, Mr. Lyford,” Hassan whispered. He pointed to a patch of dirt that had been dug out haphazardly. Mr. Lyford knelt down and inspected it closely. He sniffed at the air. He dug his fingers into the dirt. “This,” Mr. Lyford whispered, “is a rooting. And you, HASS-in, have found a fresh one. Yes, a hog has been here recently. Now, we track it.” Mr. Lyford doubled the pace then, and Hassan struggled to keep up. Mr. Lyford found another rooting, and then another, and he felt sure he had the trail, so he took off in a kind of race-walk, his arms pumping so that the gun wiggled in the air like he was in color guard. After about five minutes of that, Hassan hussled up to Colin and said, “Please God, no more run-walking,” and Colin said, “Seriously,” and then they both together said, “Mr. Lyford?” He turned around and walked several paces back to the boys. “What is it, boys? We’re on the trail here. We’ve got a hog almost in sight, I can feel it.” “Can we slow down?” Hassan asked. “Or take a break? Or take a break and then slow down?” Mr. Lyford sighed. “Boys, if you are not serious about hunting the feral pig, then I can just leave you here. We’re on the trail of a hog,” he whispered urgently. “This is no time for lollygaggin’ or dillydallyin’.” “Well,” suggested Colin, “maybe you should just leave us behind then. We can sort of protect your flank, in case the feral pig doubles back around.” Mr. Lyford looked extremely disappointed. He pursed his lips and shook his head sadly, as if he pitied the poor souls who were unwilling to push their bodies to the limit in search of the feral pig. “Very well, boys. I’ll come back and get ya. And when I do, it’ll be to get your help carryin’ out a gorgeous hog.” He started to walk off and then stopped and pulled out his can of chewing tobacco.
“Here,” he whispered, handing it to Colin. “I fear the hog will smell the wintergreen.” “Uh, thanks,” said Colin, and Mr. Lyford ran off into the distance, weaving through the forest in search of more, fresher rootings. “Well,” Hassan said, squatting down to sit on a rotting fallen tree. “That was fun. Jesus, I didn’t think hunting involved so much walking. We should have gotten the sweet gig Lindsey has, sitting in a tree and making out and waiting for a pig to walk by.” “Yeah,” said Colin, absentmindedly. “Hey, d’you bring the minirecorder?” asked Hassan. “Yeah, why?” “Gimme,” he said. Colin pulled it out of his pocket and handed it over. Hassan pressed record, and then started up with his best Star Trek voice. “Captain’s log. Stardate 9326.5. Hog hunting is incredibly boring. I think I’ll take a nap and trust in my brilliant Vulcan companion to let me know if any extremely dangerous feral hogs walk by.” Hassan handed back the minirecorder and scooted over to lie down beside the fallen tree. Colin watched Hassan close his eyes. “Now this,” Hassan said, “is huntin’.” Colin sat there for a while listening to the wind tease the trees as clouds moved in above them, and he let his mind wander. It went to a predictable place, and he missed her. She was at camp still, and they didn’t let her use a cell phone, at least not last year, but just to be sure he pulled his phone out of his camouflage pants pocket. He got reception, amazingly, but had no missed calls. He thought of calling but decided against it. He would call when he completed the Theorem, which led him back to it and the seemingly intractable III Anomaly. Eighteen out of nineteen Katherines worked, but this utterly insignificant blip on the Katherinadar came out looking like a jacked-up smiley face every time. He remembered her again, thought back to whether he’d failed to account for some facet of her personality in his calculations. Admittedly, he’d only known her for twelve days, but the whole idea of the Theorem was that you didn’t have to know someone intimately in order for it to work. Katherine III. Katherine III. Who would have thought that she, among the least important to him, would prove the Theorem’s downfall? Colin spent the next ninety minutes thinking, without ceasing, about a girl he’d known for less than two weeks. But eventually, even he grew tired. To pass the time, he anagrammed her sprawling name: Katherine Mutsensberger. He’d never anagrammed her before, and he was fascinated to find the word “eighteen” within her. “Me returns eighteen barks; eighteen errs makes burnt.” His favorite: “Remark eighteen, snub rest.” But that didn’t really make sense, because Colin had certainly remarked all nineteen. Hassan sniffled and his eyes shot open and he looked around. “Fug, are we still hunting? Big Daddy needs some lunch.” Hassan stood up, reached into the cargo pockets of his pants, and pulled out two badly smushed sandwiches in Ziploc bags. “Sorry, dude. I fell asleep on lunch.” Colin opened the canteen hooked to his belt buckle, and they sat down for turkey sandwiches and water. “How long did I sleep?” “Almost two hours,” Colin said between bites. “What the fug d’you do?” “I should have brought a book. I just tried to finish the Theorem. The only problem left is Katherine III.”
“Oo vat?” Hassan asked, his mouth full of a too-mayonnaisy sandwich. “Summer after fourth grade. From Chicago, but she was homeschooled. Katherine Mutsensberger. One brother. Lived in Lincoln Square on Leavitt just south of Lawrence, but I never visited her there because she dumped me on the third-to-last day of smart kid camp in Michigan. She had dirty blond hair that was a little curly and she bit her nails and her favorite song when she was ten was ‘Stuck with You’ by Huey Lewis and the News and her mother was a curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art and when she grew up she wanted to be a veterinarian.” “How long d’you know her?” asked Hassan. His sandwich was finished, and he wiped the remnants of it on his pants. “Twelve days.” “Huh. You know what’s funny? I knew that girl.” “What?” “Yeah. Mutsensberger. We went to all these lame-o homeschooling events together. Like, bring your homeschooled kid to the park so she learns how to be less nerdy. And, take your homeschooled kid for a homeschool picnic so the Muslim kid can get his ass kicked by all the evangelical Christians.” “Wait, you know her?” “Well, I mean, we don’t keep in touch or anything. But yeah. I could pick her out of a lineup.” “Well, was she quite introverted and a little dorky and she’d had one boyfriend when she was seven who dumped her?” “Yup,” said Hassan. “Well, I don’t know about the boyfriend. She had a brother. He was a firstrate nutcase, actually. He was into spelling bees. Went to Nationals, I think.” “Weird. Well, the formula doesn’t work for her.” “Maybe you’re forgetting something. There can’t be that many goddamned Mutsensbergers in Chicago. Why don’t you call her and ask?” And the answer to that question—“because it literally has never occurred to me”—was so outrageously dumb that Colin just picked up the phone without another word and dialed 773.555.1212. “What city?” “Chicago,” he said. “What listing?” “Mutsensberger. MUTSENSBERGER.” “Hold.” The computer voice recited the number, and Colin pressed 1 to be connected immediately free of charge, and on the third ring, a girl picked up. “Hello,” she said. “Hi. This is Colin Singleton. Is—is, uh, Katherine there?” “Speaking. What did you say your name was?” “Colin Singleton.” “That’s so familiar,” she said. “Do I know you?” “When you were in fourth grade, I may have been your boyfriend for about two weeks at a summer program for gifted children.”“Colin Singleton! Oh yeah! Wow. Of all people...” “Um, this is going to sound weird, but on a scale of one to five, how popular were you in fourth grade?” “Uh, what?” she asked. “And also do you have a brother who was into spelling bees?” “Um, yeah, I do. Who is this?” she asked, suddenly sounding upset. “This is Colin Singleton, I swear. I know it sounds weird.” “I was, I don’t know. I mean, I had a few friends. We were kinda nerdy, I guess.” “Okay. Thanks, Katherine.” “Are you, like, writing a book?” “No, I’m writing a mathematical formula that predicts which of two people will end a romantic relationship and when,” he said. “Um,” she answered. “Where are you, anyway? Whatever happened to you?” “What happened, indeed,” he answered, and hung up. “Well,” said Hassan. “Boy. She must think that you’re STARK RAVING BONKERS!” But Colin was lost in thought. If Katherine III was who she claimed to be, and whom he remembered her to be, then what if. What if the formula—was right? He called her again. “Katherine Mutsensberger,” he said. “Yes?” “It’s Colin Singleton again.” “Oh. Um, hi.” “This is the last question I’ll ever ask you that sounds completely crazy, but did I by chance break up with you?” “Um, uh-huh.” “I did?” “Yeah. We were at a campfire sing-along and you came over to me in front of all my friends and said you’d never done this before, but you had to break up with me because you just didn’t think it was going to work long-term. That’s what you said. Long-term. God, I was devastated, too. I thought you hung the moon.” “I’m really sorry. I’m sorry I broke up with you,” Colin said. She laughed. “Well, we were ten. I’ve dealt with it.” “Yeah, but still. I’m sorry if I hurt your feelings.” “Well, thank you, Colin Singleton.” “No problem.” “Is there anything else?” she asked. “I think that’s it.” “Okay, well, you take care of yourself,” she said, the way you might say it to a schizophrenic homeless person to whom you’ve just given a dollar. “You too, Katherine Mutsensberger.”
Hassan stared at Colin unblinkingly. “Well, dress me up in a tutu, put me on a unicycle, and call me Caroline the Dancing Bear. You’re a fugging Dumper.” Colin leaned back against the rotten tree, his back arching over it until he was staring at the cloudy sky. Betrayed by his vaunted memory! He had, indeed, remarked eighteen and snubbed the rest. How could he remember everything about her and not remember that he dumped her? And for that matter, what kind of asshole was he to have dumped a perfectly nice girl like Katherine Mutsensberger? “I feel like I’ve only ever been two things,” he said softly. “I’m a child prodigy, and I’m dumped by Katherines. But now I’m—” “Neither,” Hassan said. “And be grateful. You’re a Dumper and I’m making out with a ridiculously hot girl. The whole world is turned upside down. I love it. It’s like we’re in a snow globe and God decided he wanted to see a blizzard so he shook us all the fug up.” Just as almost no true sentence beginning with I could be spoken by Lindsey, Colin was watching all the things he’d thought were true about himself, all his I sentences, fall away. Suddenly, there was not just one missing piece, but thousands of them. Colin had to figure out what had gone wrong inside his brain, and fix it. He returned to the central question: how could he have completely forgotten dumping her? Or, almost completely, because Colin had experienced a dim flash of recognition when Katherine told him the story of his dumping her in front of her friends, a feeling vaguely like when a word is on the tip of your tongue and then someone says it. Above him, the interweaving branches seemed to split the sky into a million little pieces. He felt like he had vertigo. The one facility he’d always trusted—memory—was a fraud. And he might have gone on thinking about it for hours, or at least until Mr. Lyford returned, except at that very moment he heard a weird grunting noise and simultaneously felt Hassan’s hand tap his knee. “Dude,” said Hassan softly. “Khanzeer.” 69 Colin shot up. Perhaps fifty yards in front of them, a brown-gray creature was pushing his long snout into the ground and snorting like he had a sinus infection. It looked like a cross between a vampire pig and a black bear—an absolutely massive animal with thick, matted fur and teeth that extended below its mouth. “Matha, al-khanazeer la yatakalamoon araby?” 70 Colin asked. “That’s no pig,” answered Hassan in English. “That’s a goddamned monster.” The pig stopped its rooting and looked up at them. “I mean, Wilbur is a fugging pig. Babe is a fugging pig. That thing was birthed from the loins of Iblis.” 71 It was clear now the pig could see them. Colin could see the black in its eyes. “Stop cursing. The feral hog shows a remarkable understanding of human speech, especially profane speech,” he mumbled, quoting from the book. “That’s a bunch of bullshit,” Hassan said, and then the pig took two lumbering steps toward them, and Hassan said, “Okay. Or not. Fine. No cursing. Listen, Satan Pig. We’re cool. We don’t want to shoot you. The guns are for show, dude.” “Stand up so he knows we’re bigger than he is,” Colin said. “Did you read that in the book?” Hassan asked as he stood. “No, I read it in a book about grizzly bears.”“We’re gonna get gored to death by a feral fugging hog and your best strategy is to pretend it’s a grizzly bear?” Together, they stepped carefully backward, kicking their legs high to get over the fallen tree, which now offered their best protection against the hog. But Satan Pig didn’t seem to think much of their strategy, because right then it took off running at them. For a squat-legged beast that couldn’t have weighed less than four hundred pounds, the thing could run. “Shoot it,” Colin said, quite calmly. “I don’t know how,” Hassan pointed out. “Fug,” said Colin. He leveled the gun, planted it tight against his exceedingly sore shoulder, turned off the safety, and took aim at the running pig. It was perhaps fifty feet away. He inhaled deeply and then slowly exhaled. And then he pointed the gun up and to the right, because he just couldn’t bring himself to shoot at the pig. Calmly, he squeezed the trigger, just as Lindsey had taught him. The kick of the gun against his well-bruised shoulder hurt so badly that tears welled up in his eyes, and in the shock of the pain he couldn’t tell what had happened at first. But, amazingly, the pig stopped dead in its tracks, turned ninety degrees, and ran. “You sure shot the living hell out of that gray thing,” Hassan said. “What gray thing?” asked Colin. Hassan pointed, and Colin followed the trajectory of his finger to an oak tree about fifteen feet away. Crooked between the trunk and a branch, a sort of gray paper cyclone contained a circular hole about an inch in diameter. “What is that?” asked Hassan. “Something’s coming out of it,” Colin said. It doesn’t take long for a thought to get from your brain to your vocal cords and out of your mouth, but it does take a moment. And in that moment, between when Colin thought Hornets! and when he would have said “Hornets,” he felt a searing sting on the side of his neck. “Oh FUG!” shouted Colin, and then Hassan said, “AIEE! AH! AH! FU—FOOT—SHIT—HAND!” They took off running like a couple of spastic marathoners. Colin kicked his legs to the side with each step, like a heel-clicking leprechaun, trying to discourage the blood-thirsty hornets from attacking his legs. Simultaneously, he swatted around his face, which, as it happened, only indicated to the hornets that besides stinging his head and neck, they could also sting his hands. Waving his hands above his head crazily, Hassan ran considerably faster and with more agility than Colin had ever thought possible, weaving around trees and hurdling bushes in a vain attempt to discourage the hornets. They ran downhill, because that was easiest, but the hornets kept their pace, and Colin could hear their buzzing. For minutes, as they ran in random directions, the buzzing continued, Colin always following behind Hassan, because the only thing worse than getting stung to death in south-central Tennessee when your parents don’t even know you’re on a hog hunt is dying alone. “KAFIR (breath) I’M (breath) FADING.” “THEY’RE STILL ON ME. GO GO GO GO GO GO GO GO,” Colin answered. But just after that, the buzzing stopped. Having chased them for the better part of ten minutes, the hornets began the winding journey back to their decimated nest. Hassan fell face-first into a brambly bush and then slowly rolled over onto the forest floor. Colin bent over, hands on knees, sucking air. Hassan was hyperventilating. “Real (breath) fat (breath) kid (breath) asthma (breath) attack,” he finally said.
Colin pushed aside his fatigue and rushed up to his best friend. “No. No. Tell me you’re notallergic to bees. Oh, shit.” Colin pulled out his cell phone. He had reception, but what could he tell the 911 operator? “I’m somewhere in the woods. My friend’s trachea is closing. I don’t even have a knife to perform an emergency tracheotomy because stupid Mr. Lyford ran off with it into the woods to chase the same goddamned pig that started the whole fugging mess.” He desperately wished Lindsey were there; she could deal with this. She’d have her first-aid kit. But before he could even register the consequences of such thoughts, Hassan said, “I’m not allergic to (breath) bees, sitzpinkler. I’m just (breath) out of (breath) breath.” “Ohhhhh. Thank God.” “You don’t believe in God.” “Thank luck and DNA,” Colin corrected himself quickly, and only then, with Hassan not-dying, did Colin begin to feel the stings. There were eight in all, each of them like a little fire burning just inside his skin. Four on his neck, three on his hands, and one on his left earlobe. “How many do you have?” he asked Hassan. Hassan sat up and looked himself over. His hands were cut up from landing in the briar bush. He touched his stings, each in turn. “Three,” said Hassan. “T h ree?! I really took one for the team by staying behind you,” he noted. “Don’t give me that martyr shit,” said Hassan. “You shot the bees’ nest.” “Hornets’ nest,” Colin corrected. “They were hornets, not bees. That’s the kind of stuff you learn in college, you know.” “Dingleberries. Also, not interesting.” 72 Hassan paused for a moment, then started talking. “God, these stings HURT. You know what I hate? The outdoors. I mean, generally. I don’t like outside. I’m an inside person. I’m all about refrigeration and indoor plumbing and Judge Judy.” Colin laughed as he reached into his left pocket. He pulled out Mr. Lyford’s can of chewing tobacco. He pinched a bit of tobacco, and pressed it against his own earlobe. It felt instantly, if only marginally, better. “It works,” Colin said, surprised. “Remember, Mae Goodey told us about it when we interviewed her.” Hassan said, “Really?” and Colin nodded, and then Hassan took the can of dip. Soon their stings were covered with blobs of wet tobacco dripping brown, wintergreen-flavored juice. “Now see that’s interesting,” Hassan said. “You should focus less on who was prime minister of Canada in 1936 73 and focus more on shit that makes my life better.” Their idea was to walk downhill. They knew the camp was uphill, but Colin hadn’t been paying attention to which way they ran, and while the cloudy sky made it bearable to walk around in long sleeves and an orange vest, he couldn’t navigate by the sun. So they walked downhill, because (a) it was easier, and (b) they knew the gravel road was down there somewhere, and since it was longer than the camp, they figured they had a better chance of finding it. And maybe they did have a better chance of finding the road than the lodge, but they never found it, either. Instead, they walked through a forest that seemed endless, and their progress was slow, as they had to step through kudzu and over trees and hop the occasional dribbling creek. “If we just keep walking in one direction,” Colin said, “we’ll find civilization.” Meanwhile, Hassan was singing a song entitled: “We’re on a Trail / a Trail of Tears / There’s Dip on My Chin / and We’re Gonna Die Here.” Just after 6 P.M., tired and hornet-bitten and sweaty and generally in a poor mood, Colin spotted ahouse a short walk to their left. “I know that house,” Colin said. “What, we interviewed someone there?” “No, it’s one of the houses you can see when you walk to the grave of the Archduke,” Colin stated with great confidence. Colin gathered his last bit of energy and jogged up to the house. The place itself was windowless, weather-beaten, and abandoned. But from the front of the house, Colin could —yes—see the graveyard in the distance. In fact, there seemed to be some movement down there. Hassan came up behind him and whistled. “Wallahi, 74kafir, you’re lucky we’re unlost, because I was about ten minutes away from killing and eating you.” They hustled down an easy slope and then fast-walked toward the store, ready to bypass the cemetery. But then Colin caught sight of movement in the graveyard again, turned his head, and stopped dead. Hassan seemed to notice it at precisely the same moment. “Colin,” said Hassan. “Yeah,” Colin answered calmly. “Tell me if I’m mistaken, but isn’t that my girlfriend in the graveyard?” “You are not mistaken.” “And she’s straddling some guy.” “That’s correct,” said Colin. Hassan pursed his lips and nodded. “And—I just want to make sure we have our facts straight here —she’s naked.” “She certainly is.”
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