“Hey, executioner!” says a girl.
“Executioner” is not my official title. The branch of city government we work for is called the Department of Mercy, and we’re only ever called technicians. But that doesn’t matter to the child, who can’t be more than eight but has the authority of a judge as she holds up a finger to point me out to her friends.
HENRY HORENSTEIN
“Guys, look!” she says, then turns her attention to me. “You hunting something big?” I shake my head, slowly packing up my things. “Something small?” she asks. Then her eyes darken. “You’re not a cat killer, are you?” “No,” I say quickly. “I do horseflies.” I don’t know why I lied, but as the suspicion leaves her face and a smile returns, I’m glad I did. “You should come down by the docks. We’ve got flies! Make your quota in a day.” The girl tosses her hair, making the tinfoil charms she’s wrapped around her braids tinkle like wind chimes. “It’s my last day. But if I get flies again for next year, I’ll swing by.”
Another lie, because we both know the city would never send anyone to the docks for flies. Flies are killed because they are a nuisance, which means people only care about clearing them out of suburbs and financial districts. They’d only send a tech down to the docks to kill something that put the city proper at risk through disease, or by using up more resources than they wanted to spare.
LeeLee is expecting me home to sit through the reassignments with her and it’s already late, so I hand out a couple of the combination warming and light sticks I get for winter to the pack of children with nowhere to go. As I walk away, the children are laughing so loud it sounds like screaming. They toss the sticks in the air like signal flares, small bright cries for help that no one will see.
LeeLee’s anxiety takes the form of caretaking, and as soon as I’ve stepped through the door I can smell bread warming and soup on the stove. I take off my muffling boots. Another day, I’d leave them on and sneak up on her just to be irritating, and she’d turn and threaten me with whatever kitchen utensil was at hand. But she’ll be extra nervous today, so I remove the shoes that let me catch nervous birds, and step hard on my way in.
Sometimes it seems impossible that I can spend a year killing every fragile and defenseless thing I’ve encountered but still take such care with Lee. But I tell myself that the killing isn’t me—it’s just my sentence, and what I do when I have a choice is the only thing that really says anything about me. For the first six months and 400 birds, I believed it.