Read Hart & Boot & Other Stories for Free Online Page A

soul. It’s easier to do the awful things you have to do, when you know the true sensation and emotion will be forgotten in the aftermath.”
    Not for the first time, Zealand wondered if Grace could overhear his thoughts. “How does it feel?” he asked. “Putting your soul aside?” It was an important question, and one he hadn’t asked before.
    “It’s been so long since I had my soul, I don’t recall the difference.” Grace rolled away and sat on the edge of the bed. Zealand looked at the muscles in his unblemished back. “Fear is the first to go, which is liberating. Then other feelings fade. Your memories go, but it’s the bad memories first, so it seems a boon. Finally the conscious will to live erodes, and you become like a moss or a lichen, living for the sake of mere existence. But you retain your mind, and so there is some dissatisfaction, some sense of...” He grasped at the air. “Eventually, you long for death.”
    “Do you wish to die, even when you’re with me?” Zealand said.
    Grace shrugged. “Perhaps moss enjoys the sensation of falling rain, or the warmth of sunlight. But that’s not meaning. It’s just pleasure.” Without turning around, he said, “Do you still want your payment for killing me? Do you still want me to show you how to be immortal?”
    Zealand didn’t answer. It had seemed obvious, before. An immortal life, free from self-doubt, self-loathing, and fear—of course he wanted that. He touched Grace’s back. Despite their time embracing, Grace’s skin was cool, almost cold.
    Zealand didn’t answer Grace’s question, and after a while, Grace forgot he’d asked, and went into the kitchen to get a piece of fruit.
    ***
    After they made love a final time, after Grace taught Zealand the trick of putting his soul aside, they went out onto the deck that jutted over the cold blue vastness of Lake Tahoe. Here on the northern shore houses were fewer and farther apart than on the more tourist-friendly south shore, and they had a clear view of snowy mountains and evergreens. The brisk air made standing on the deck a bracing experience, and Zealand narrowed his eyes against the lake wind. He placed the spotted stone that held Grace’s life on the redwood deck railing. Grace didn’t seem interested in it; he just gazed, wide-eyed, at the mountains, as if seeing them for the first time. “Go ahead,” he said. “I’m ready.”
    Zealand raised the old stone axe with its unbreakable handle. He thought about touching Grace, or kissing him, but the time for that had passed, and hesitation would only make this harder. He brought down the axe, and shattered Grace’s life.
    The spotted rock burst apart, and light the color of Grace’s eyes shone forth, blazing so brightly that even when Zealand squeezed his eyes shut, he saw blue. After a moment the light faded, and Zealand opened his eyes.
    Grace sagged against the railing, his whole body trembling, and when he spoke, his words were choked by sobs. “I have a daughter,” he said, and then began pounding his head against the deck railing, slamming his forehead down so hard that the wood audibly cracked. Grace looked up at Zealand, his forehead gashed, blood running into his eyes, and screamed, “Finish it! Kill the body!”
    Zealand lifted the axe again and brought it down between Grace’s eyes. The man’s forehead caved in, and the axe stuck there, embedded in Grace’s skull, trapped fast in bone as old as the mountains. Grace fell back on the deck, dead.
    Zealand went inside for the tarps and the chains he’d need to sink Grace to the lake bottom. His hands trembled as he wrapped Grace in the heavy plastic. The dead man had shaped nations, seduced monsters, and lived to the outer extremes of experience, but he’d died like anyone, like so many others at Zealand’s hands—messily, and speaking only of regrets.
    Zealand sat by Grace’s corpse, holding the dead man’s hand for a while, and contemplated the nature of