Free Retribution by John Fulton

and they had finished eating and felt full and tired, the moon came out and its bone-colored light fell into the car and made the man’s face look chalky and dead. “Is he all right, Momma?” Benny asked.
    â€œDaddy’s a little tired. That’s all,” she said.
    Benny’s little brother was wide awake, alert, and holding the gun to the sleeping man’s head. “You can put your stupid gun away now,” Benny said.
    â€œNo way,” Bo said.
    Every now and then the man would twitch and begin dreaming again out loud in his sleep. He kept saying the name Wanda. He seemed to be calling her.
    Bo asked, “Momma, who’s Wanda?”
    Without answering, she pushed and nudged the man out of his dream. Once, she hit him hard enough on the shoulder to wake him. His eyes shot open and he began making frightened, whimpering sounds at the sight of his hands in the moonlight. The blood on them was dried and black and the broken fingers bent off in a way that made Benny’s stomach feel hot and sick. The man kept whining, until Benny got into the front seat and covered the wounds up in the pair of white tube socks that he had just taken off his own feet. The stranger’s hands looked like paws now—simplified by the stupid white socks. He was quiet and went back to sleep. When he woke again, he was shivering. His arms, his legs, his face wouldn’t stay still. He said, “Please, I’m cold.” Bo said he was cold, too. The moon had gone down and it was black and the world outside the car felt like winter. They stopped at a rest site, where Black and Bo got out to pee while Benny covered the man and his bloody shirt in piles of new sheets and blankets and a comforter he got from the trunk. The man’s head seemed orphaned and small above the bulky pile of blankets. He looked at Benny. His face was still trembling. He said, “Water, please. Water.”
    Benny slammed the door, cutting the man’s voice off, and walked into the parking lot, where he heard his mother talking to an old man in a cowboy hat who was looking at the stars and saying their names out. “That there’s the polestar. See it, lady? And there’s the Big and Little Dipper. Orion’s over there.” Benny began to feel dizzy with staring at the sky and trying to see names in the cold dust.
    His mother said, “Mister, could you tell me where I am?”
    He said, “Where you are?”
    â€œWhat state I’m in.”
    â€œYou’re in Utah, lady.”
    She said, “Oh. That’s not really where I wanted to be.”
    The man seemed offended. “Utah’s a beautiful state, lady.”
    There was silence between them.
    â€œMaybe you could help me,” Jeannie said. “I got to find a beauty parlor first thing in the morning.”
    The man asked her, “A what?” and she told him again. “Well,” he said, “there’s beauty parlors in Utah. You bet there is.” But he didn’t seem to want to talk to her anymore and returned to the stars.
    On the road again, Benny fed the stranger water from an empty Coke can he had filled in the rest room. He drank all the water and still said, “Thirsty, thirsty, thirsty.” The stranger woke up several times in the night, speaking odd words and phrases and names of people Benny had never met. Before morning, when the dark outside was hollow and blue, Bo woke and wanted his daddy to speak with him. He put the gun to the man’s head and said, “Say something to me, Daddy.” The man said something, repeating it several times. It was barely audible, and Benny and Bo at first thought he was saying, “I’m your friend. I’m your friend.” But it soon became clear to them that he was saying, “I’m afraid. I’m afraid.” Then it was morning and the sun burned at the desert’s edges until the cold yellow day was above them again. The man