In the Wolf's Mouth Read Free

them into his bag, then lay down in the shade and drifted into sleep. When he awoke he found his little prisoners crawling out again in laborious escape. Their long grey feet fully extended, their tiny eyes circling on their stalks, they strived forwards as quickly as they could. He laughed as he picked them up again, unsuckering them from the stones, and kept on laughing, finding it hilarious, and that laughter rinsed right through him, made him careless and light-hearted. He laughed at the thought of himself up in the hills, picturing the top of his head from above as God might see it and whatever, fuck it, whatever would happen would happen. He wiped tears from his cheeks.
    They came early so he’d only just fallen asleep. He saw their grey shapes moving in the moonlight. He shouted, ‘I have only thirteen sheep! The others were stolen! They’re not worth taking.’ There was a yellow flash, a jump in the dirt near his feet and he fell away onto his face, his hands over the back of his head. ‘Don’t shoot! I won’t do anything! Don’t shoot!’ They fired again. He could still see the ghost of the muzzle flash smeared across the darkness when heheard his mule growl and stagger and fall hard onto its knees. To the rhythm of its heart, blood was pumping out of the poor beast, masses of blood, a sound like a fountain or like a basin emptied over and over onto the ground. The mule wheezed, snarling and snoring, and struggled to stay upright. Angilù saw its head flail down onto one side as the blood continued to gush. ‘Why did you?’ he shouted and reached for his gun. Another shot thumped into the ground right by him. Angilù aimed at one of the hurrying grey shapes and fired. A twisting fall. He’d hit him. There were curses, two more shots from different places, running feet. Angilù fired again. He saw the men, heads low, arms half raised, racing down into the darkness and disappearing.
    Then Angilù was alone with the man he’d shot and had to listen to him dying. Angilù was cursed, forgotten, all his luck gone. His saint was painted tin. In the moonlight he could see the man lying on the ground by a dark irregular shape of blood, his loose legs and outflung arms like a dropped puppet’s. The man chattered to himself and cried. Angilù didn’t know what to do. He sang to drown out the sound. He thought of the man lying there, was suddenly himself inside the dark cave of his dying mind, hearing the man who’d killed him singing. It was terrible. But what else could he do? After a while he sensed silence beyond the sound of his voice and stopped. Stillness. The bandits gone. The shape of the mountains and the moon. His dead mule. A dead man.
    Everything had ended. It was all over. And there was nothing Angilù could do, no way to alter one thing. All the time there had been death, he’d heardgunshots and stories, but he’d always been apart, hidden in the hills, in his gleaming good fortune. Now he was himself forced to eat death. Now he was taking part. His life was over. He felt tiny sitting there in the dark, his head hanging forwards, the round bones of his neck exposed to the wind. The world had its huge thumb on the back of his neck. It pressed down. It would never release him.
    In the faint, frayed light of dawn, Angilù went over to look at the body to see if he recognised the man. He didn’t. The shape of the man’s skull was distinctive, tall and narrow and accented along the jaw with tufts of beard. His eyes had already sunk under the ridge of bone. His mouth was open showing yellow teeth, surprisingly long, like a sheep’s. Angilù crossed himself. The son of some mother, some woman who would beat her head with open hands when she knew, who would clasp her rosary and howl, held up by her daughters. Probably word had already reached her.
    Angilù had to go and tell someone. He had, at the very least, to be away from there so that the bandit’s people could climb up and collect the body. He