Free Reapers Are the Angels by Alden Bell

subdivision.
    He’s still standing where she told him to stay, pulling on the ends of his greasy hair and squinting in the sun.
    She pulls up next to him and rolls down the window.
    How long were you gonna stay there, dummy? she asked. What was your plan exactly, just wait until the slugs gave you a reason to move? I never seen such a fool as you—and I seen some foolishness without compare in my life.
    His sad thick eyes look into the car. She tries to follow the gaze, but what he’s really looking at is inside his own head. He has a skillet face and a frame like vegetal growth and sluggish eyes and a mind with no doors or windows.
    She reaches over and opens the passenger door and then tosses the duffel bag into the backseat.
    Well come on if you’re comin, she says. But I ain’t promising you’re gonna live.

    H E KEEPS tugging at his hair and scratching, and pretty soon she figures it out.
    You got head critters, dummy.
    In the next town, where the water lines are still pumping, she finds a house with a spigot in the side yard and a hose attached.
    Bare yourself, dummy, she says. He doesn’t understand, so she has to show him by unbuttoning two of his shirt buttons. His eyes watch her fingers intently. Go on, she says, don’t be shy. You got no luggage I ain’t seen before.
    He strips himself down and stands in the middle of the overgrown yard and shuts his eyes tight and holds on to the rag she gives him while she sprays him front and back with the hose.
    Now wash, she says, miming the action for him. He moves the rag around on his body, trying to mirror the gestures she makes. Harder, she says. That soot ain’t just gonna brush off.
    Finally she gets impatient and takes the rag from him and scrubs his back and his front above the waist and his arms.
    Now you gotta take care of yourself down there, she says, pointing to his crotch. This girl ain’t full service.
    He circles the rag lightly over his genitals a few times.
    Close enough, she says. We find a place to stow you, and someone else can teach you about personal hygienics.
    A few blocks away, in a commercial strip, she finds a hair salon and bashes in the window and takes him in the back where the sink is and shows him how to wash his hair. For along time he just sits in the chair with his neck leaning on a sink with a semicircular cutout, letting the water wash over his scalp.
    It can’t hurt him to have a good long soak, so she spends the time washing her own hair and combing it out and using the scissors to trim off the ragged ends.
    When he’s done in the sink, she puts him in one of the swirling chairs before a mirror and takes the electric clippers and cuts his hair down to the scalp. Then she shaves his face and finds some good-smelling cream to slather all over.
    Look at you now, Dapper Dan. Now you won’t befoul our ride.
    Across the street she spies a tall office building, higher than anything else in the area. They cross and find a way in and take the elevator as high as it will go. Then they walk through the empty corridors until she finds what she’s looking for: fire stairs leading to the roof.
    She climbs atop a large metal air-conditioning unit, and he sits next to her. Then she takes out her small spyglass and scans the horizon all around. The sun is low in the sky and the clouds are deep orange and look burnt at the edges.
    Let’s take in the view for a little bit. What do you say, dummy?
    She looks at him, a big man with a physical density to him, a thickness of body and shape. His eyes look like they are peering out of deep wells in the earth. The skin of his face is worn and leathery.
    How old are you anyway, dummy?
    He looks out at the sun descending behind the clouds.
    I’m guessin you’re a solid thirty-five. That means you were around before all this slug mess started happening.
    He puts his hand to his newly shaven face.
    I wonder if you remember it. Does that gone past still haunt up your dummy skull? Do you remember the