Free Bright's Passage: A Novel by Josh Ritter Page A

canteen as well. “Well, go on,” he said. “Git.”
    Bert looked from the empty canteens in his hands to the farmhouse waiting for him in the failing light. “Well, I ain’t going over there alone,” he said, and squatted back down again next to Bright. “And don’t you go orderin’ me to do nothin’ either. We do things together.”
    “We can’t leave him here alone,” Bright said, nodding at Carlson. “And we can’t carry him. And he needs water.”
    “You go, then,” Bert said, and pushed the canteens back at Bright. He unhooked his own canteen and placed it atop the other two. “I’ll wait here.”
    Bright peered through the darkness for signs of danger, but everything around him was a testament to that, so he climbed cautiously from the ditch and headed toward the farmhouse, crouching low as he hurried down the road with the empty canteens in his arms. He slowed as he approached the dwelling. The once-white paint gave off a muted glow against the fields, and the slate shingles were scruffy with lichen. The window-panes were mostly gone from their frames, save for a few stray shards that glinted viciously out at him from the gloom like fangs. He went to his knees and peered between them into the dwelling, but it was as dark in there as a crack in the earth. He got to his feet and began to search for water. On the far side of the house he found what he was looking for. He held one of the canteens under the spigot but the pump handle dangled uselessly on its hinge. After a minute of pumping, he abandoned it for the stone livestock trough that his eyes now madeout dimly, set flush against the house’s wall. In the shadow of the farmhouse, the rainwater that came up to the lip of the cistern looked like a sheet of black glass. He knelt down in the mud and quietly set the empty canteens next to one another at his knees before lifting the first one above the still surface of the water.
    “Wait.”
    At the sound of the voice, the world fell silent. There was no night breeze, no rifle fire. Even the large-caliber guns seemed to pause from their thundering and look around themselves, as if the unexpected word had wandered in like a small child and interrupted their supper conversation.
    Bright stopped as well, the canteen in his hand frozen above the trough. It was impossible to tell how distant the voice was or even if it had been speaking to him. It had seemed to come from all directions at once, a calm command without emotion. He lifted his eyes to the farmhouse window above the trough, expecting to see a face framed in it peering out at him, but the darkness there was just as still and solid as it had been before. Beneath his hand, the water’s obsidian surface reflected the shadow of the canteen against a cold backdrop of stars. He knew then that whoever was speaking must be behind him, training a rifle at the back of his head, a killer whose face he would never see.
    “I … I’m fetching water,” he stammered. “I got a shot man and I’m fetching him some water.”
    He took the silence that followed as incomprehension or consideration.
    “English?” he asked. “American? Water?” He waited for an answer, thinking of the rifle slung on his back. There would be no time. He put his hands in the air, one still clutching the empty canteen, and stood slowly. “Water?” he said again, turning to face the man who had snuck up behind him. There was nothing and no one there. He shifted to the right and left, then madea full circle in the darkness to show whoever had whispered that he was only holding a canteen in his hand. “Water?” Running was hopeless, the voice had been too close. He waited for a reply another minute at least, but the hidden man did not answer. Expecting at any moment to be killed, he stooped to the trough once more and put the canteen to the surface of the water.
    “Wait,” the voice commanded.
    He froze again. “Who are you?” he said, louder now. Compared to the hidden