The Deadheart Shelters by Forrest Armstrong

There was a slave named Clyde, whose eyes were once bright like suns almost-risen over hills; that indirect way. A perpetual dawn.
    Clyde used to say that Thomas was his brother and we all felt that way. Thomas was the one who said “Why” when we all thought “Okay” was enough. He never grinned. He loved Clyde and maybe nothing else. It was strange how it happened but that’s how it was.
    Thomas would always get lazy on the job, finding ways to circumvent it. He often involved Clyde in his dodge attempts. When asked to pick apples from trees you’d see them distantly, throwing the apples back and forth, or squeezing them above their mouths to get the juice. Things like that. Once in the alligator fields they hid curled up inside the bone cage, and then sprang out, covered in crushed berries, to surprise us.
    Of course they’d get punished. Clyde too, that wounded animal. I wonder if they said to each other after “But I’d do it again” or if it was something they just knew.
    Then Thomas went too far. We were asked to kill chickens with hatchets and he wouldn’t even touch them. The master was there—the coops are right by where we lived and didn’t require much walking to. Thomas’ refusal almost seemed weak, but maybe it only seemed that way. “That chicken hasn’t done shit to me,” he said. “And I ain’t the one eatin’ it. You want chicken so bad why don’t you chop it yourself? Afraid to lose your appetite?”
    The master struck him in the face. Thomas became utterly expressionless and turned his head back. They stared at each other, the master with a big grin and Thomas with nothing. “Kill the chicken, boy.”
    “Not your fucking boy, old man. I’m a child of the planet and I belong to no one.”
    The master hit him over and over again, getting him on his back so he’d spit up blood and teeth to his side and it’d stay there next to his mouth. “Think about it, boy! You belong to me!”
    “Fuck you.”
    I thought Thomas might die there, and thinking back, it would have been better.
    But he lived. Long enough to be blacked-out by punches and woken up with cold water from the hose. We were all watching, dumbfounded and silent out of self-protection.
    “Thomas,” the master said as the beaten man’s eyes shot open blinking. “You belong to me . I know exactly where you came from. I raped your fucking mother myself.”
    The hatchet Thomas had refused to hold was lying by his side, and he grabbed it. That was his suicide-decision. It doesn’t matter whether he would have swung it or not, the holding it was the mistake. He got shot in the arm. His hand twitched and let go.
    Then the master flipped him on his stomach and hit him in the back of his head with the pistol, so he’d black-out again. He was lifted by the arms in the mouths of the dogs; there was an imprint in red where his face was down on the ground. He was drooling through the holes made in his lips and one of us vomited. The master put a black sack over Thomas’ head, gave one quick glance to us, motioning to follow, then led with the dogs dragging Thomas between him and us.
    We watched all of this too.

We were walked through the city as usual, with Thomas draped and not waking up, until we got to the ocean. On the shore he was put back down and they tied stones to his ankles, and one around his neck. Then the master woke him up so he could know what happens before it does.
    “You ain’t never been no good,” the master said. “You get a little work done but mostly you just get in the way. No more. No more.”
    Thomas was looking around, trying to conceal his panic. He kept opening his mouth, wetting his lips, and closing it again. Swallow. Gasp as if it was a normal breath. I could tell he wanted to say something, but he was too afraid, and all he saw was the master’s face above his.
    “Lemme see that tongue.”
    Thomas swallowed and his eyes got big. He shook his head, jerking, barely turning it on the neck.