The Devil’s Kingdom

Epilogue

He stopped what he was doing and paused, as though he had lost track of what his next action should be. Slowly turned his head and fixed his slack gaze on the area of dirt he had missed.

He thought dully to himself, ‘Ah.’

Then his hands tightened on the long shaft of the yard brush and he shuffled over a few steps and resumed sweeping. Clouds of dirt blew up and soiled the trouser legs of the torn denim dungarees that were his only clothing, but he did not notice and wouldn’t have cared anyway.

A chicken strutted across his path. He paused again and looked at it. Its beady eyes met his, and for a few moments they gazed at one another. The man smiled. He liked the chicken. It was his friend.

He did not know its name, however, just as he struggled to remember his own. Memory didn’t come easily to him.

The man went on sweeping. Then a harsh voice called across the yard to tell him that he had missed another bit over there, you stupid bastard. Placidly, he shuffled a few more steps and obeyed his master’s command.

It was very hot under the sun. He blinked the sweat out of his eyes and put the broom down for a moment as he rubbed his face, feeling the ridges and bumps that marked his features. He didn’t know why he had them. People said he was ugly, and sometimes that hurt his feelings, but most of the time he didn’t really take notice. He took off the ragged baseball cap and ran his fingers over his moist scalp. There was a bit on his head that still hurt, where the hair had been shaved away and a tender scar ran across his skull. He had mostly forgotten the doctors who used to come and see him in the hospital, and the bandages that used to cover his head until they were removed. That was before he came here, a distant and irretrievable past that no longer had any relevance.

The chicken strutted away. He smiled as he watched it go. Later, he would get back together with his friend, where they both slept on a bed of straw in the barn. Sometimes, it let him stroke it. Other times it pecked him, which made him sad.

The man cocked his head and put a finger to his mouth. A fresh thought had come to him. His name, remembered now as if appearing through a veil of cobwebs in his brain.

His name was Jean-Pierre.

But he supposed it didn’t matter, and so he went back to his sweeping.