Page 122 of Everything Under the Sun

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.

“You didn’t shoot him,” she said.

“Not yet.” Steadily, I cut away at the fish meat. “Where’s your gun?”

She reached around and patted it behind her.

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