.

.

For a year he shies away from touching his new-born sister, afraid her small form will break in his fingers like a porcelain doll. Heath has sausage fingers and wears big boots, but when his sister smiles he feels less like a bull and more like a boy, and in one tremulous instant, reaches out to finger the cloth of her knitted sweater. Mum knits clumsily, the yarn looping erratically, but Heath has never minded. He wears the sweaters, even the pink one with the pichus that was meant for little Tessa. The class sniggered when he came in that day, so he'd cracked his fists and the laughter had swallowed itself up into a quiet "meep."

.

In the school hallways, a big bruiser type approaches him. "Wanta come to the store, hang out a bit with us, Heath? Yeah, you'll come, right, yeah?"

His mother had stared him down one night, eyes like graying bark, the broken window shards littering the floor. "It was broken by noisy, loud boys, Heath, big, bad boys. You're not loud or bad, Heath. Stay away from them. They have sticks and knives, Heath. I don't want to see you with them."

She tells it to him again, "Be good, Heath. Care for Tessa. Don't be a bad boy, be good, be my boy." Enfolding him in wiry arms, she had made a choking noise like a sobbing noise. Quickly Heath had disentangled himself and covered Tessa's ears like he was supposed to.

Tessa was nine, then. He was fifteen. Mum was fifty at least, but too young, so his Health book said, much too young for dying. He scoops her sagging body up and dumps it in the trashcan.

The important thing, she has always said, is that he take care of Tessa.

.

He finds works for a few coins, lifting timber and hunching over drilling tools. His back aches but he stays steady, gets his promotion. "You're a big lad," another worker comments."Big broad back." Slapping him on it, the man continues, "You're lucky. Muscles like that, you'll always get work. Say, you don't need all that cash, do you?"

Heath doesn't reply, but clenches his payment closer in broad fists and heads home, stopping on the way to pick up dinner.

Tessa is sketching a picture; she brightens up when she sees him."I dwew a prince! He's you!" At his silence, her face falls and she moodily crumples the paper. Accusingly, she sticks out her bottom lip. "You don't like it!"

"No! I do." He unfolds the paper, and carefully smooths out the wrinkles. His tongue feels strange, speaking. His teachers and his boss favor silence, but Tessa likes his voice.

"Because it's all deep," she tells him. "I sound like a mouse. I want to talk all deep." Tessa tries to imitate him, lowering her voice by an octave. Soon she collapses into a fit of giggling. He joins her hesitantly.

.

The street gang ambushes him one night. One boy steps forward, the leader, with ginger hair, cherub cheeks, and a twisted grimace like a scarred-over wound. "They're cheating you," he drawls. "Giving you half pay. You're unattached, you're dumb looking. They think they can get away with it." Now he advances further, invading Heath's space. "You join with us, they'll give you your pay. Got a family to support, huh?"

Heaths blinks down at him.

"Good Bull," says the boy.

.

It all becomes easier.

One night, tipsy off the charm of the evening, the leader tells him a secret. "Some of us meant to lead, others to follow. You're a follower, Bull, don't forget that." He smiles with a certain fondness and rests his shoulder against Heath's back.

.

Tessa is a star. She brings home little stickers of smiley-faces and papers that say "Excellent job, A" in sprawling teacher's writing. He buys her a dictionary when he has the money and she burrows into it, each day telling him about a new word over the dinner table.

(Heath likes writing numbers. His mathematics teacher once looked in his notebook, frowned and looked at him. Heath had stared back, blinking. "There's a math club that meets after school. You're welcome to come if you would prefer more advanced work." Heath doesn't go and he leaves his next math test blank. There's no point to being exceptional; all that matters is getting by.)

.

Time passes. To him the monotony is agreeable, but Tessa grows restless. She ducks into electronics stores to watch the news on the big TVs they sell there and rants loudly to her friends. When she is seventeen, she applies for a school in some big, far away city. She tells him the name, and he writes it down on a slip of paper and never loses it. "It's a law school," she tells him. "I could do something there, something big."

To Heath, the city seems big enough.

He is twenty-three and cooking some greens on the stove when she says, "I got in."

Slowly, he turns to face her. "You're leaving?"

She speaks in a rush, fluttering arms, just like when she was a child."At the end of next year. Heath, I don't want to leave you, but I have to get out of this place. This city is a gutter – all the trash ends up here eventually. There are better places. You don't have to stay either." When he says nothing, she gives a small sigh. "I love you. Brother, promise me you'll look for a job outside the city?"

At this he moves, turning down the heat before the food burns."If you want me to, then I will."

"Good." She stands there, not sure of what to say.

He thinks of saying "Tessa, baby sister, please don't leave" but she's already said that she's going. He can't change her mind.

.

A man approaches Heath as he lifts a heavy beam of wood. "I heard you were looking for a job," the man says. "I represent an organization that could use some strong men like you. We're situated in Almia and the pay will be good."

"What will I be doing?" Heath asks, slowly.

"Does it matter?"

"Not really."

"Good."

.

He stumbles over the words of the new language, but his fragmented speech is no drawback when his job is only to be strong and to be loyal. Both come easily. He sometimes thinks of what Tessa would do, were she here. Tessa would be angry. When Tessa got angry her cheeks got blotchy and her voice became very steady. Tessa was angry at all of his bosses ( – they're exploiting you, can't you see that? – ) but Heath had made money, and they had survived. There's no point in getting angry.

It seems to him that everyone has their own right and wrong. There are no absolutes, he thinks. Blake Hall says they are right, Kincaid says they are right. Since they pay him, they are probably right.

He sees the questions they don't want him to ask, and he doesn't ask them.

.

Heath stays until the very last because the alternative is running, and he has never done that. But he finds the paper with Tessa's school in his pocket, and knows he cannot go to jail, because it would upset Tessa.

When they come for him, he throws them into the wall and hears the crack of bones.

.

Heath goes home.

He wanders along the empty streets, kicks at a trash bin –

Heath waits to be told what to do.

.

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