Yonder Stands Your Orphan by Barry Hannah

both of them, nephewand uncle, with the gun. But he couldn’t. He was not good enough to see God yet, and the old man was worse. An alternative had presented itself, but Egan was not ready to admit it.
    Feeney’s dogs were all over the trunk, and the boys had to kick them back. But the Lord smiled on them then. They heard the old man go back to his lodge, called loudly by his nephew, who had a new car in the drive. A big shiny luxury SUV.
    Harold always had the tools. He was from an old stripe, those who fixed everything broken in history. You do not understand how they carry the right tools in those thin white overalls, but they were there around the P-51s and C-47s in the Big One. Nobody cared about them but the fliers who knew. Such a mechanic was Harold.
    He popped the trunk and pulled up the lid, and the two boys and Sponce ran backwards like hares through tall grass and bushes. So fast they were out of sight, and Harold was left caught in a cloud of rot, so bad he thought these things in the trunk were huge dead catfish for a minute. They weren’t, and he got back quickly too. Missouri tag. Who would leave the tag? Only a drugged idiot, the man who was now walking swiftly through the four acres of trees and fronds, having heard noise. He held his uncle’s rifle.
    The mother and child were collapsed in soured meat. So vile they arose with smell and commenced being skeletons almost instantly. To Harold they seemed to sigh while doing it. The boys had come back to within fifty feet.
    â€œThis bitchin’ car’s older’n me,” said Harold. “Sorry for cursing, boys.”
    â€œRansom,” said Sponce.
    â€œHow you know their name?” the smaller boy asked.

    â€œRansom is a
thing
, dickweed. Somebody kidnapped these two and held them out for ransom but cheated and killed them or nobody paid.”
    â€œThese folks is ours,” said the older child.
    â€œWhat could you pissants do with them old folks?”
    The children began to behave as interns of science, walking and thinking, not too close to the trunk yet, but seeing the car might be saved.
    â€œThat is a mother and child. You could boil them bones so they not putrid and set them up with wires and it would be a family, him Jesus the baby and her Mary at Halloween, and you could have Christmas both.”
    â€œThey start Christmas the day after Halloween at Big Mart, anyway,” said Harold. “But what you mean, have? Where would you have them?”
    â€œLike on a float in a parade, or you could make that car into a convertible if the top’s not no good and ride them in the backseat.”
    â€œWhy? Who the hell would be looking?”
    â€œTo scare ’em.”
    â€œYou mean the man that did this, if it is a man?”
    â€œWell him too, but he’d be dead too, wouldn’t he? If he was older than this car, or you, Harold.”
    â€œYou boys ever hear of Sherlock Holmes?”
    â€œNo.”
    â€œWell you ain’t him. You got your detective work running around the barn to hump itself.” This speech by Sponce made Harold very uncomfortable. Despite the T-shirts, he was on a new program to stop using the little bad language he did. He wanted to be an influence on these children, in hopes of giving Dee another one someday.
    Egan looked on from the last strand of scrub pine and winter wheat.
My God. If I run them off and get that tag
.
If I can even make myself do that. You go through life asking when do I use the rifle. These boys aren’t even trespassing. The thing is, I could kill myself after I crawl in the trunk with that pair, if they would leave and give me enough time. What they want is that car. All the rest is my hell, not theirs
.
    It is this far I am now from my Christ
.
    Take me back
.
    Or forward
.
    There ain’t no standing here, Lord
.
    I just as much as slaughtered Mary and child seven years ago
.
    When Man Mortimer got out of the hospital, he