He was a strange kid, by any standard. Each night, whenever we determined it was night, he made a bed for himself in the same animal way, lying down in dirt or weeds or even prickling nettles, which he scarcely seemed to notice. First he would sniff (he could never explain why, except the spot had to smell “right”) then he would lie on his side, knees to his chin, and slide and roll around until he had made a little hollow of whatever was underneath him. Then he’d arrange himself back into the original chin-to-knees position, close his eyes, and fall asleep as quickly as it takes me to say it. Sometimes when Gob slept he made little animal sounds, wordless whimpers and choked squeals that in his dreams or memories might have been full-throated screams. I tried not to imagine what kind of things chased him in his sleep.

When he was awake he was pretty entertaining too, in a sad sort of way. He jumped at any noise as if he had heard a gunshot. When we stopped to rest during daylight hours (if you could dignify the sullen red light with that name) Gob didn’t really sit down or relax, but just perched on something or stood and waited impatiently for me to get moving again. He didn’t try to convince me not to rest, but he didn’t like pausing during the day. Always aware, always shifting his body in small ways to watch his surroundings, constantly ready to run away or fight, he reminded me of some of the things I’ve seen about African child soldiers, little boys who had gone pretty much from their mother’s breasts to committing random homicides.

Hell must be a lot like being born in the middle of a war, I decided: there was no chance for anything better to develop. I could almost imagine Gob as a little machine, a thing that had survived intact this long because it did exactly the right things and would keep doing those things even if it was miraculously transplanted into some other situation, like San Judas. I’d known a lot of street kids, but almost all of them had something that showed they were human, a shallow loyalty to each other if nothing else. Hell must grind that out of everyone, I decided. What relationship could survive being worn away over thousands of years of big and little torments?