Page 105 of Evil Hearts

Huk’s snout bowed into the slick gravel and dirt. “And I have wallowed in this river since.”

Lewis squinted against a pall of rain angling upon his face. He stood up. Huk slumped back into the water, the mud not of its body dissolving into the darkness. It turned its head, cleaving into the current, body following suit.

“Wait,” said Lewis, “are you leaving?”

Huk stilled, tail paddling idly behind to remain stationary.

“I appreciate what you’ve told me.” Lewis’ arms hung at his sides. His fingers dipped into the water slicked on his jacket. The sun had risen by now, masked by a sheet of clouds. Though the day crawled along, the man did not wish to meet it. “Do you want to come back to my room with me?”

Sunday

Despite the freshair, Lewis quickly fell into a rote of a cozy lull as he returned to his room. The bed no longer harbored the ghost of his body heat, but no matter, he would rekindle it soon. Huk reappeared through the window, slowly gliding over the sill onto the threadbare carpet. Lewis removed his clothes, leaving only his briefs, before climbing into bed again.

It was merely eight a.m. and he intended to capitalize upon his short vacation from responsibility by exerting as little of himself as he could and returning to the embrace of linen. Huk crept beside him, nestling its jaw over his shoulder. A comfortable silence cushioned them.

Lying in dry sheets of white, a dark wet creature beside him, Lewis blinked at the ceiling. The rain continued outside, casting a gray light over the room that the man declined to usher away with a switch of a lamp. In this twilight he felt safe, hidden away from the responsibilities drawing nearer with each passing minute. He exhaled.

“I remember when I’d play games with my brother and cousins. They would screen-cheat, come up from behind and shoot me in the head or knife me.”

Huk lifted its head in alarm.

“Oh, um, it’s a video game. A simulation. Fantasy.”

“Ah.” The creature rested again.

“When they kept persisting, I just threw the controller down and quit. I got up and left. I left to do other things, like help my uncles barbecue or shuck chestnuts with my aunts.” Lewis flexed his hands, gripping and releasing the sheets. “But I’m stuck here. There’s nowhere for me to go.”

Huk cocked its head.

“People say life’s unfair … well, sometimes I don’t want to play this game anymore. I want to quit … and just stop …”

Lewis chewed his lip. He didn’t know why he was baring himself to the creature like this, but after what transpired on the river, he wanted to offer something in return.

“I languished in these waters for so long, my existence in a limbo.” Huk’s snout skimmed the pillow, its lips cresting Lewis’ skin. “I wonder if I was withholding my own happiness by refusing to escape the furrow I carved.”

Lewis’ gaze flicked over the unknowable contours of the creature’s head. Shaped by centuries of mystery, its power, its grief, culminated to this point. The man could not fathom what Huk had endured all this time or what awaited ahead for it. Lewis extended his hand, shifting against the starched bedding, to alight on Huk’s skin. The smoothness of river-tumbled stones and the soft yet rough fuzz of driftwood exuded a quiet heat. Lewis pressed tighter as though grasping for a memory.

“I’ve amounted to nothing. I’veneveramounted to anything. Went to community college, transferred to a state school, and then I can’t even get a dead-end job! I’m separated from my wife and—I’m a failure of a son.”

“And I failed as a protector—as a guardian,” said Huk. It trailed its claws along Lewis’ cheek. “But—I suppose—even at our lowest, we’ve mattered.”

Lewis locked eyes with gold.

“If even for a brief few minutes, we’ve made fond impressions upon people we may not even be aware of.”

Lewis thought of all the passing kindnesses bestowed upon him by strangers in the past. The young man with cornrows who helped gather his spilled groceries when he swore himself to one trip lugging the bags from his car to his second-story apartment. The silver-haired hostess who chatted with him when he was stood up by a date at a restaurant. These people and others did not intentionally act to recall their deeds fondly in hindsight. They simply acted in the moment because they were moved to do so.

He had made silly faces at a fussing baby in a checkout line to calm them in the arms of their stressed mother. He had held the door open for a train of elders exiting a casino. He had stopped a man from leaving his phone on a table at a cafe. But Lewis was sure these things and more would have sorted themselves out without him.The care of his father, too. His parents could easily afford a nurse without stressing their retirement funds. They weren’t desperate for him. Lewis’ aid wasn’t needed. He wasn’t ever needed, he thought.

“How do you know?” Lewis asked.

“You’ve made your impression on me,” Huk answered. “You matter.”

Lewis’ eyes pinched.

“Without you, I may have lingered in the river for another century.”

“Huk …” The man inclined his head, his brow grazing the creature’s snout.

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