“I know where she is,” he says. “He will be heading there.” Then, with intense purpose: “Mother. She betrayed me. I can take you to her.”

“Can you walk?” the fat man asks.

The thing that was once a young man rises, stands slope-shouldered as though hanging from a nail.

“I can take you to her,” he says again. “To Mother. And to him. You and I, Trout. Just us two. Only make sure to bring a gun.”

The Smoke that spreads from him is almost liquid. It gathers in a film around his fancy boots.

The fat man considers the offer. But it is obvious he will agree. What else is he going to do — beat the truth out of this thing?

“I’ll need one of my men, Mr. Spencer. Just one. Any one of them will do. You can take your pick.”

It does not hesitate, raises one twisted arm and points to a man with a slight, wiry frame.

“That one. He broke Nótt’s legs, didn’t he? Bring him. And remember the gun.”

The fat man nods and orders another of the men to pass over the shotgun to their colleague. He is about to say more but it is already moving, heading for the door with surprising speed. The walk is like a marionette’s. The body is broken, but some other thing moves it along. It makes no sound as it scuttles down the stairs.

The man with the gun and the fat man follow, leaving the rest of his men behind. There are three of them, standing in my kitchen, at a loss. They have not received any orders. It takes them a full minute to even frame the problem in words; one man rifling through the cupboards, looking, he says, “for a bite to eat.” Then they begin to argue. One maintains that they must take me into custody; another declares that they are “duty-bound to return to our post.” The third man insists that they must follow the chief, “quickly, on the sly” and that they have “wasted too much time already.” They argue as though they are playing cards, each placing his argument neatly before his mates, at once friendly and competitive. In the end they have waited too long to follow anyone and are too lazy or too principled to arrest an old, beaten woman. They leave me without a word and forget to close the front door behind themselves.

They leave the dog, too, half lying, half sitting on its cart, its maw tied shut with a strap.

When I am sure they are gone, I slide off my chair and crouch down beside it. It growls, then whimpers, dangles drool from its jowls. We sit there, side by side, the broken-legged dog and me with my swollen eye. When the fear rises up in me again, hot like a fever, I drench us both in Smoke.

FACTORY

FACTORY