Free Nothing in the World by Roy Kesey Page A

all of it, the
     viscous time and heat, his cheek fluttered like the broken wing of a small bird. He listened to the voice of the girl, and her singing grew distant at
     times, fading altogether now and then. Each time it faded he entreated it to come back, and sooner or later it always did.
    The lowlands rose into hills, and an hour later he was deep in the cleft of a valley. Here the river was brown with rancid mud, but the sun was raging
     overhead; he knelt in the shallows and drank until nausea welled up from his stomach and singed the back of his throat.
    He stood and looked at the bluffs to either side. They were so blue and beautiful he almost fell, and it had been so long since he’d eaten. He
     pushed on, the bank growing thinner and thinner until there was nowhere to walk. He picked his way along, jumping from boulder to boulder. Then a town
     of gray stone appeared above him.
    He fought his way up from the bank, stretching from handhold to handhold. At last he crossed a path with shallow stairs cut into the side-hill. He
     followed the switchbacks until he reached a road that led into town.
    The first person to see him was a fat young boy who sat on a bench spitting olive pits into his hand and sucking them back into his mouth. The boy
     squealed and gagged and ran toward his mother, who had emerged from a nearby house and stood hunchbacked and furious on the sidewalk.
    Joško crossed to the far side of the street. All around him he heard doors slamming and curtains being drawn. He didn’t understand why until
     he saw his reflection in a shop window: blood and mud and dried sweat, his torn shirt, his matted hair.
    Farther up the street, overlooking the town square was a strange round church, and the spike of its minaret punctured the low sky. In the center of the
     square was a well, and he drew a bucket of water. He took out his bandana and washed his face and neck, scrubbed his hands and arms, took off his shirt
     and washed his chest and what he could reach of his back.
    A small group of women gathered around him, and they were dressed in clothes Joško remembered having seen somewhere before—blouses that
     swirled with bright colors, loose pants tied with drawstrings. He put his shirt on and pushed his hair out of his eyes.
    - I’m very hungry, he said to the one who stood closest. Do you know where I can get something to eat?
    One by one the women walked away. Joško didn’t blame them. He filled his canteen, rinsed out his bandana, picked up his rifle and rucksack
     and continued through the town. Most of the buildings were skeletons. Shattered roof tiles covered the ground like shale. In the center of the block
     was a large gray hotel, its façade a labyrinth of bullet holes.
    Wooden shacks lined the sidewalk, and sitting inside them were old men selling postcards and trinkets. Light came through the holes in the roofs, and
     glittered around the heads of the old men. Joško stopped at one of the shacks. The old man had one postcard left. It was a beautiful picture of a
     long white bridge arcing over a river of dense blue-greens. Joško took it and asked its price. The man said nothing. Joško thanked him and
     put the postcard in his rucksack.
    In the middle of the next block he found a bakery. He wiped his boots on the mat and stepped inside. There was no one at the counter but the oven was
     lit. He stood and waited, and finally a tall white-haired woman came out from the back.
    - Hello, Joško said.
    The woman’s eyes went from fear to hatred to disgust.
    - What? she asked. You have taken everything, and still you want more?
    Joško was too tired and hungry to explain that he had never been to the town before.
    - Something to eat, he said. Anything.
    He opened his rucksack and took out his envelope of bloodstained bills. The woman reached for the envelope, looked inside, and threw it into the oven
     behind her.
    - You shell our village and kill our sons, and now you offer me money? What makes