Page 523 - A Little Life: A Novel

chances were poor: he had no food, no money, and although it was only five
in the afternoon, it was already very cold. He could feel his back and legs
and palms, all the parts pressed against the stone, numbing themselves,

could feel his nerves turning to thousands of pinpricks. But he could also
feel, for the first time in months, his mind coming alert, could feel, for the
first time in years, the giddy thrill of being able to make a decision,
however poor or ill-conceived or unlikely. Suddenly, the pinpricks felt like
not a punishment but a celebration, like hundreds of miniature fireworks
exploding within him and for him, as if his body were reminding him of
who he was and of what he still owned: himself.

He lasted two hours before the security guard’s dog found him and he
was dragged out by his feet, his palms scraping against the cement blocks
he clung to even then, by this time so cold that he tripped as he walked, that
his fingers were too iced to open the car door, and as soon as he was inside,
Rodger had turned around and hit him in the face, and the blood from his
nose was thick and hot and reassuring and the taste of it on his lips oddly

nourishing, like soup, as if his body were something miraculous and self-
healing, determined to save itself.
That evening they had taken him to the barn, where they sometimes took
him at night, and beat him so badly that he had blacked out almost
immediately after it had begun. He had been hospitalized that night, and
then again a few weeks later, when the wounds had gotten infected. For
those weeks, he had been left alone, and although they had been told at the

hospital that he was a delinquent, that he was troubled, that he was a
problem and a liar, the nurses were kind to him: there was one, an older
woman, who had sat by his bed and held a glass of apple juice with a straw
in it so he could sip from it without lifting his head (he’d had to lie on his
side so they could clean his back and drain the wounds).
“I don’t care what you did,” she told him one night, after she had

changed his bandages. “No one deserves this. Do you hear me, young
man?”
Then help me, he wanted to say. Please help me. But he didn’t. He was
too ashamed.
She sat next to him again and put her hand on his forehead. “Try to
behave yourself, all right?” she had said, but her voice had been gentle. “I
don’t want to see you back here.”