“When they left, the boys I mean, where do you think they were going?”
Michael chuckled, “Probably to the IGA in Saint Joe for Lucky Charms and Pabst.”
Up through the trees, the sky was no longer the crisp blue of late afternoon. Being down in the bottoms and looking up was like staring out from inside a shadow box. The trees were black cutouts against the sky and up there in that slate-gray ocean the buzzards soared, banking right and then left in great swooping patterns. The mosquitoes were heavy down in the bottoms. He’d taken his t-shirt off and scoured his back against a tree to get the maggots and muck off, and now he swung the shirt in front of him to get the bloodsuckers away like a horse might swish its tail to chase off flies. Micah’s ankle burned and throbbed but he kept walki
