Total pages in book: 133
Estimated words: 124341 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 622(@200wpm)___ 497(@250wpm)___ 414(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 124341 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 622(@200wpm)___ 497(@250wpm)___ 414(@300wpm)
You are supposed to be dead, Sam.
The other workers there did look at Sam strangely, but only at first. They all had stories. The old man, apparently, liked to collect unwanted souls. Outcasts. Throwaways. Criminals and misfits. And now those who were supposed to be dead but weren’t.
Some of them robbed the old man or collected a paycheck without having done any work. He stood on his porch each Friday, grinning broadly and handing out money, even to those who didn’t deserve it. The old blind fool.
Sam did work though. Sam did the work of five men because it helped him forget his pain and kept his memories at bay.
He climbed ladders and picked bushels of apples. A bushel, he’d learned, was equal to sixty-four U.S. pints. Sam hadn’t known that before. His education was limited. He’d taken classes. He’d learned to read and write and do basic math. He’d studied some science and geography. But mostly, his education had been on fighting techniques, war tactics, and weaponry. He’d been taught only what he needed to know. Sam piled hay and mucked out stalls. He fed goats and cows and chickens and pigs. He repaired fencing, thinned brush, and did many other small chores.
He didn’t talk to anyone except the old blind man occasionally. The other workers all thought he was a big dumb idiot who could barely form words, and that was what Sam preferred.
Sometimes in the evenings, Sam sat perched on the fence at the edge of the yard, eating an apple and watching the sun as it fizzled, glittered, and faded to dust.
He could see in the old man’s window then, and he watched as his family, who visited often, sat down to dinner, laughing and talking and passing dishes of steaming food. He thought of her words.
If life were an apple, I’d sink my teeth into it and take a big bite. I’d let the juice drip down my chin and grin as the sweetness burst across my tongue.
And then I’d find someone and give them the other half.
She’d been sick and wanted to know what it was like to live. But she’d wanted to share it too.
Sam’s eyes moved around the table through the window. He wondered what it would feel like to meet someone’s eyes over a basket of rolls and have them smile at him and laugh at his joke. The whole concept seemed so alien that the wondering alone made him feel ludicrous. What kind of joke would you tell, Sam? You’re the joke. Even thinking about a scenario like that is the joke. And if he couldn’t even picture it—couldn’t begin to imagine—why did the vague notion bring him pain? He wanted it, he supposed, and he had no right to such a longing.
He was who he was. Some had been created to laugh with family around dinner tables, and some had been created to sit alone on fences, looking in. Always looking in.
He thought of her as he worked. He pictured her face and remembered the way her eyes had sparked with enough fire that he still felt the warmth. He’d taken that glow with him to Chennai and Lagos and other destinations he didn’t remember the names of.
He’d taken her with him to each and every forgotten place, and he’d carried her words, as much a part of him now as his organs or his skin but even more so. Because her words and her ideas were hidden away, tucked deeply into the only parts of him that had never been touched. Not muscle or bone but something deeper, something far more essential. Her words reminded him that despite it all, there were still parts of himself that were only his and could not be prodded or poked or sliced into.
And that very idea was his downfall, perhaps.
And his saving grace.
But again, he didn’t want to be saved. Yet he could not let her go. Would not. So he suffered. And he lived on.
Because to die would be to kill off a piece of her as well. And that, he realized, he could not yet do.
Soon, but not yet.
“Sam,” the old man, Adam, called.
Sam turned, grunting in response.
“I need you to pick up a new generator for the barn. It’s going to be a cold winter, and I can’t risk the power going off out there. I have an old friend in the city who gives me great deals.” When Sam didn’t answer, the man cocked his head as though listening for something Sam wasn’t saying. “You do drive, don’t you?”
“Yes. I drive,” he said. He didn’t have a license because he didn’t have an identity, but he knew how to drive.
Adam lifted his hand, and a pair of keys sailed through the air. Sam reached out and caught them easily.