Free Counting Stars by David Almond Page A

body, the meager grazes on its knees, the lack of scars. My easy breath. The easy beating of my heart. I shrugged.
    “Nothing.”
    His face was scornful.
    “Ungowa,” he said.
    He turned to the girl.
    “Show him,” he said.
    She pulled her hair back, showed a healed gash across her temple. She lifted her pullover, showed where an area of her lower back was distorted and discolored after burning. There were other burns, smaller, more recent, scattered on her skin.
    She glared with her blue eyes.
    “See,” he said.
    “What happened?” I said.
    He thrust his knife at me.
    “Too many questions. Touch,” he said.
    I laid my fingertip on the blade, felt the sharpness, how it would cut so easily.
    “See,” he said.
    “Yes.”
    “Much danger, boy. You think you safe, but always danger coming. Why you come?”
    “To look. To see.”
    “Ha. Ha.”
    He unfastened one of the rucksacks by the rocks. He took out a book,
The Boy’s Big Book of Indians.
On its cardboard cover was a young bare-chested warrior on a galloping pony. The pages inside were brittle and bleached. The faded print told of the tribes, the great plains, the freedom before the white man came. There were pictures of more warriors. There were herds of buffalo, villages of teepees, ferocious chiefs, beautiful women with babies.
    “Our people,” he said.
    I looked at the girl. She stuck out her tongue. He thrust the knife at me. I nodded.
    “You come look see here, boy.”
    He stood up, tugged my arm, took me to the final drop to the river. We squatted at the edge. Below us was the dark slowly moving water, its slimy surface, the waste it carried. The mud above the waterline was slick and shining, rainbows of oil shimmering upon it. The exposed earth higher up was cracked and crazed. He leaned over and tugged at the earth, lifted a thin splintered bone from it.
    “These the bones of our people. We keep watch on them. This holy place.”
    He stood up and held his hands toward the earth of Jonadab.
    “The bones of our people. Somewhere here our father, somewhere here our mother.” The girl on the stones sniggered, giggled. He held the bone in his palm. “Mebbe this a bit of mother, a bit of father. Mebbe from an older time. Mebbe from time way way back, boy.” He went to the fire, raised the bone over his head. He grunted several times, stamped his feet, muttered and wailed. His voice intensified. He howled and howled. Then was silent, sat by his sister. She stuck her tongue out.
    “Now you shove off back, boy,” he said.
    She nodded, formed the words with her lips: Shove off back.
    He dropped the bone. The dog crawled to it, started to lick.
    The boy and the girl leaned on each other. They faced away from me. He lit another cigarette stub and they smoked together.
    I sketched them. I stared toward the city, saw the huge construction cranes turning so slowly across the rooftops, saw the glint of traffic in the sunlight as it moved across the bridge, saw the world moment by moment being created on what was gone.
    “I knew somebody who died,” I said.
    They were lost in themselves. I imagined following them, entering their silence, moving through it step by step. Another little journey, another Jonadab.
    “I knew somebody that’s in the ground,” I said.
    The girl turned.
    “Where that?” said the boy.
    I pointed back up the hill. “There. Up there.”
    “Ha. Up there.”
    I moved to them. I sat on a stone at their side.
    “There’s ground up there filled with people, too,” I said.
    The boy nodded.
    “Places everywhere built on bones.”
    The girl held the cigarette to me. I smoked it and my head began to reel and I smoked again.
    I stood above the fire and stamped my feet and grunted. I muttered and wailed and the girl giggled. I put my hand flat to my mouth and hooted. The dog growled. The boy came to my side and stamped and hooted too. Then the girl at last. She circled the fire and held her face up to the sky. We circled the fire