Page 366 - A Little Life: A Novel

And then Brother Luke stopped again, because he had begun to cry again.
“Jude,” he said, surprised.
“Don’t,” he sobbed, “please, Brother Luke—don’t let them send me

away; I’ll be better, I promise, I promise. Don’t let them send me away.”
“Jude,” said the brother, and sat down next to him, pulling him into his
body. “No one’s sending you away. I promise; no one’s going to send you
away.” Finally he was able to calm himself again, and the two of them sat
silent for a long time. “All I meant to say was that you deserve to be with
someone who loves you. Like me. If you were with me, I’d never hurt you.
We’d have such a wonderful time.”

“What would we do?” he asked, finally.
“Well,” said Luke, slowly, “we could go camping. Have you ever been
camping?”
He hadn’t, of course, and Luke told him about it: the tent, the fire, the
smell and snap of burning pine, the marshmallows impaled on sticks, the
owls’ hoots.

The next day he returned to the greenhouse, and over the following
weeks and months, Luke would tell him about all the things they might do
together, on their own: they would go to the beach, and to the city, and to a
fair. He would have pizza, and hamburgers, and corn on the cob, and ice
cream. He would learn how to play baseball, and how to fish, and they
would live in a little cabin, just the two of them, like father and son, and all
morning long they would read, and all afternoon they would play. They

would have a garden where they would grow all their vegetables, and
flowers, too, and yes, maybe they’d have a greenhouse someday as well.
They would do everything together, go everywhere together, and they
would be like best friends, only better.
He was intoxicated by Luke’s stories, and when things were awful, he
thought of them: the garden where they’d grow pumpkins and squash, the

creek that ran behind the house where they’d catch perch, the cabin—a
larger version of the ones he built with his logs—where Luke promised him
he would have a real bed, and where even on the coldest of nights, they
would always be warm, and where they could bake muffins every week.
One afternoon—it was early January, and so cold that they had to wrap
all the greenhouse plants in burlap despite the heaters—they had been
working in silence. He could always tell when Luke wanted to talk about

their house and when he didn’t, and he knew that today was one of his quiet