Past the church. Sounds of Mass. Body of Christ. Bringing his feet down harder and harder, as if to strike right through the earth. Through the skin of weeds into the woods. What does it matter, P. says. Leave them. Leave them what? Leave them alone? They just—they keep buying more, with our money, they think I’m going to laugh with them about. About frying animals on a fucking fire. Starting to sob, loud, helpless, They gas them, did you know that, they pack them into that barn, like fucking Nazis, and I’m the one who’s wrong? I’m the fucking psycho? Fuck it, I’m going back, I don’t care what happens, I’m going to blow their goddamn house the fuck up— and P.’s arm, from behind, around his neck, silver smooth across his throat, pressing. Down. Heart jumping against his ribs. Then shoved, hard, full sprawl into the ferns, his chin hitting a stone, hard click of teeth, the breath knocked free of his chest. Dull shock. Slow press of palms in the dirt and even slower to rise. In the trees now the tip of P.’s finger against his forehead. Xie moves his head but the finger follows. Insistent. Stop, Xie says. But P. won’t. Pushing so that the back of Xie’s head is pinned to a birch. Piercing the skin. Line of blood down his nose. Terror. Pure, crystalline. You don’t know what he can do. Imagines the finger touching through to his skull, bone to bone. Pain sparkling between his eyes. Blood in Xie’s mouth. Rubs it from his lips, to look; there it is, bright on the back of his hand. But no wound, the flesh on his forehead intact. Remember. Hitting the tree with the hammer. The cracks in the skin of the birch. Quick adrenaline pant, What is this. This is you. This is the violence inside you. But you’re the one who showed me. You were there in the woods. You put the nails in my hands. Yes, but not so you could raise it against them. Against who? Your fellows. They aren’t my fucking fellows! Xie turning his head, trying to stop crying. I don’t even know what you are. Thinking, P. didn’t spare the lamb because he loved it, but because he loved nothing. On earth. But you love the lamb, not as a god, not as a symbol, but as itself, why isn’t that enough? No one has the right. To make a life into a sign. P.’s hand on his chest, pressing. Xie pushes it away. As hard as he can. No. He says it aloud, again: No. The light flickers, or is it P., is he flickering, and what does it mean, the light flinching like that, like something. Snapped. Can you hurt him. Can you hurt something that is dead. Closes his eyes. I don’t want to see it leaving, if it leaves. It does. It vanishes completely. You told it to go and it went. He opens his eyes.