Never! Leeds says with regard to what, he’s already forgotten, but it’s the thought that counts to ten, nine, eight…then hesitates toward what would’ve been three — throws a grenade that soars up through the fire as if an expelled spark, a bomby wingless creature flying freely over the wall, lands…agents scatter, a smatter of suits and the flutter of ties like rare snakes, the grenade doesn’t — explode: goddamned clods, he says, pinecones, what, defective under battle conditions. A slash of tongues, a roaring, the roofing trees aflame and so they decamp westward behind the trash pilings that front the river further, cedarbrown beneath ice, a stilled running of rust. Our position still secure, Leeds yells into his fist, over, he hisses, a fiery crackle, a burning burr in his throat, the boozy dizziness and the womanly, weakening stress…remembers only then his Mwhatever the hell, remembers it’s all out of ammo. And has been for weeks. Three agents advance slow steady in lockstep, firing shots into twilight, downing stars to be culled for collection. They’ll be examined, byopsied by communists, Mexican migrant trash, aliens picking a new glowing fruit. Regroup, Leeds says, retreat, whatever; he rips off his helmet and punts it away, making contact with it at the brunt of its spike and so hurting his foot, which is bare and so, bleeding…the river’s our only hope, he says limping, gnawing his tongue — I’ll ready the vessel, you hold them off…but without saying with what He’ll defend, Himself and His host, his churchy compound and their Joysey land, besides, any better ideas, the chainsaw he shoves into Benjamin’s hands, Leeds scuttles scarce, into needly underbrush, the shorelining sparse, scurrying low, bareheaded balding and stooped: there to the stolen rental canoe loosely roped to a stump on the verge of the creek rearing his property — a vessel battered old, striped in white peeling paint, beat out of shape in aluminum.
