Free Girl in Landscape by Jonathan Lethem Page A

across the rocks, pointing the way. Even as the girl felt like a household deer herself the actual deer massed behind the rocks along the path, watching. They knew to avoid Efram Nugent. They’d learned.
    She ran up the porch steps ahead of him, abruptly completing the dash for home that Efram’s appearance had interrupted. “Clement?” She went into the back, looked in all three bedrooms, called his name again. “Hello?”
    Nobody was there. The house was empty.
    She went back to find Efram. He’d stopped on the porch. “Well?” he said, and spread his big hands.
    “Clement’s not home,” she said. “Um, do you want something to drink?”
    “No thanks.” He paused. “You look like
you
need one, though. Why don’t you sit down?”
    She felt a strange panic that he might enter the house. “I’ll be right back,” she said. She went inside, and poured herself a glass of water from the well tap. As she took the first sip she closed her eyes. The water was cool and tasted a little of soil or rust. Her heart was stillpounding, her body still recalling waking on the hillside, jerking out of the dream. Efram had come along too soon. There hadn’t been time to consider what had happened, to keep it from playing on her face.
    When she went outside, Efram Nugent was just walking around the other side of the porch, assessing the house as if it had fallen from the sky.
    “Hello,” he said. “Feel better?”
    “Uh-huh.”
    “Something happen out there?” His smile was challenging and sympathetic at once.
    “No.”
    “What were you doing?”
    “Just walking around.”
    “I saw you run off that hill.” He indicated towers, and then a slope, with his hand. His gesture was so specific that Pella felt he still saw her route there, sketched in air.
    “I like to run,” she said, and drank her water, letting it dribble down her chin, not caring. Droplets rolled, coated by the dust at her feet.
    “You didn’t look like you were running for the pleasure of it.”
    “Hey, Pella!”
    David walked up, with Morris Grant. They were each carrying sticks, resting them on their shoulders. Morris had a fraying comic book curled into his back pocket.
    “That’s Efram,” said Morris to David.
    “Hello, boys,” said Efram.
    “What are you doing?” said Morris Grant.
    “Talking to this young lady here,” said Efram. He gestured elegantly. Pella felt a shiver of excitement.
    “That’s my sister,” piped David.
    Morris tapped David lightly with his stick. “He
knows
that.”
    “We’re hunting household deer,” said David.
    “David—” started Pella angrily.
    “That’s all right, they can’t catch them,” said Efram softly, to her alone. To them he said, “Mr. Wa giving you a bounty?”
    “Nope,” said Morris. “He doesn’t care about anything he can’t eat or sell, the dumb old Chinaman—”
    “Watch the talk, Morris,” said Efram. “That’s out of line, and you know it.”
    Morris’s unit of value was attention, unqualified, and he looked ecstatic to be rebuked so extensively by Efram. He writhed with pleasure as he corrected himself. “I just meant we’re not working for Wa, not like Bruce. He spends all his time digging up potatoes ’cause Wa gives him a nickel—”
    “Tell you what,” interrupted Efram. “You two want to work for me?”
    David widened his eyes and looked at Morris. Morris nodded at David and then at Efram.
    “You want to hunt household deer, go up to my place. Don’t kill them, just roust them out. Tell Ben I sent you. If I don’t see any around there before I go to bed tonight, I’ll give you each a dollar tomorrow. How’s that sound?”
    “Not kill them?” said Morris.
    “Nope.” Efram winked at Pella. “Just send them ontheir way. Herd them up west, where Diana Eastling lives, and Hugh Merrow. They
like
having those things around.”
    “I like it too,” volunteered David.
    “I’d like to kill one,” said Morris.
    “Well, I don’t want carnage all