A Sound Box

Down, unequal weight on his haunches and the rain driving his shirt sideways, his legs are as rigid as the stone and timber that props him up. Ears, half-opened lips slurred to bits; a head no longer able to troubleshoot the broken glass inside him. • Wiry treetops are blacker. The after-rain light diffused to near neon-gray. There was a boy seen by neighbors running the width of the field. One said he disappeared — as if he fell headlong into the horizon. Another said it wasn’t a boy, but a hart. Next to nothing left where Evans was found, but there was a sound box, some thing in which his soul made itself felt.