Filthy Animals by Brandon Taylor

Author:Brandon Taylor [Taylor, Brandon]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2021-06-22T00:00:00+00:00

* * *

• • •

As kids, they had made a game of testing each other’s courage by seeing who could go farthest into the woods at night. They’d shut their eyes and dart ahead as if they could beat their fear with speed.

“Do you remember that game we used to play out here?” he asks.

“What game?”

Milton steps over a thick branch downed in his way, and Nolan scrapes up alongside him, almost tripping. “Jesus.”

“We used to go through here without looking,” Milton says. “Used to.”

“Funny.”

Their footsteps throw up a soft rustle as they move across the bed of leaves and sticks. Milton feels his way ahead with his feet, searching for hidden dangers. Nolan bumps against him occasionally, and Milton commits these nudges to memory along with the shape of the mountain pressing against the night sky.

“Who are you texting anyway? Abe?”

“No, not Abe. Nobody, really.”

“Somebody,” Milton teases. “Can’t be nobody, can it?”

“None of your business, anyway, is it?”

“None of my business,” Milton repeats. “Sure.”

“Do you really want to know? That’s weird, right? But I’ll tell you if you want to know.”

“If you wanted to tell me, you would have.” There is more meaning to Milton’s voice than he intends, but he cannot deny the truth of it or how much it bothers him. Perhaps it’s that soon he’ll be gone and whoever is on the other end of that phone will remain. That even when Milton’s gone, Nolan will be able to speak to this other person, and so this moment may be the last time he and Nolan will walk together through these woods, among the shadows of their history. He grins, pushes at Nolan’s shoulder. “Don’t be so sensitive.”

“We’re almost there,” Nolan says. Milton catches the tilt of the sky through the trees overhead. The incline underfoot pitches higher.

“Yeah.”

“Man, look. You got something to say, then say it. You hate me? What?”

“Hate you?”

“I mean, you know, if you’re sick of my shit, I get it. I don’t think it’s fair, but I get it.”

“I don’t even know what that means, Nolan.”

“It means if you’re sick of my shit, I get it. I would be.”

“I’m not sick of your shit,” Milton says, but Nolan isn’t looking at him. He’s back on his phone, scrolling.

“Sure, okay.”

“Because I didn’t jump up right away to go hang out with fucking Abe? Come on.”

“Why do you hate him so much?”

“I don’t hate him. I don’t hate anybody,” Milton says. They’re at the edge of the woods now. The park is a series of gentle green slopes, trees, paths, and farther on, a playground of sorts. In the distance, he sees a couple of people with dogs tossing colored disks in the low light of evening. The sound of traffic from the nearby road washes in like the sound of the ocean.

“Don’t cry, man,” Nolan says, and Milton almost screams.

“Shut up,” he says.

“Are you gonna cry about it?”

“Cry about what, Nolan?”

“Hell if I know, you won’t tell me anything.”

“Well, that should tell you

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