Levi wiped away snot with the back of his hand. “That’s what Mr. Page said and then he brung me here. He a lie, and you a lie too, and you better git before I end your nigger life.” He picked up a very large rock, one he’d clearly been saving for a battle up close. He raised it high, beads of sweat forming on his forehead as he bore the weight of it, as he prepared his skinny arms to attack Darren, who didn’t flinch. “And then what, Levi?” he said. “Like it or not, besides Mr. Page, I’m the only other person who knows you’re out here. And he’s in a coma.” He watched Levi’s eyes go wide before he bit his lip, trying to figure what all this meant. “So no more sandwiches, no more clean clothes and water. No one else is coming for you, Levi. But Leroy, he wanted to get you out of here. I believe he was planning to before he got hurt.”

“What happened?”

“Someone shot him. Can’t have all the hate talk out there and it not end up in violence some kind of way. It’s just human nature. You talk it enough and it carves out a path of permission in your heart, starts to make crazy shit okay.”

“I ain’t mean nobody to get hurt,” Levi said. “It wasn’t Gil’s ass, was it?” He sounded suddenly like the oldest, world-weariest nine-year-old on the planet. The dark puffy circles under his eyes looked like twists of gray cotton candy.

“Naw, he’s in jail.”

And that’s when he broke wide open, tears and snot raining down his face. “Gil’s gone?” Darren nodded and Levi threw his body forward and fell into Darren’s arms, nearly knocking him backward. His warm body was almost feverish. He was racked with sobs, and Darren could feel the bones in his rib cage trembling against his hands. “I want Mama and Dana. I want to go home.”

Something about Gil Thomason out of the picture released the pain and anger and fear the kid had been holding in for who knew how long. He wiped his nose on Darren’s shirt, then looked down at Darren’s five-point-star Ranger badge, then back up at the dark skin on Darren’s face, then down again at the silver badge.

“Holy crap, is that thing real?”

Despite himself, Darren let out a low chuckle. The kid couldn’t even believe a savior who was sitting right there in front of him. Or maybe, Darren thought, maybe he was just a kid seeing a Texas Ranger badge for the first time.

“Yes,” he said. “It’s real.”

24.

24.