Page 409 - A Little Life: A Novel

thousand clients.” He would retire when he was sixteen, Brother Luke said,
and he had cried then, quietly, because he had been counting the days until
he was twelve, when Brother Luke had promised he could stop.

Sometimes Luke apologized for what he had to do: when the client was
cruel, when he was in pain, when he bled or was bruised. And sometimes
Luke acted as if he enjoyed it. “Well, that was a good one,” he’d say, after
one of the men left. “I could tell you liked that one, am I right? Don’t deny
it, Jude! I heard you enjoying yourself. Well, it’s good. It’s good to enjoy
your work.”
He turned twelve. They were now in Oregon, working their way toward

California, Luke said. He had grown again; Brother Luke predicted he
would be six foot one, six foot two when he stopped—still shorter than
Brother Luke, but not by much. His voice was changing. He wasn’t a child
anymore, and this made finding clients more difficult. Now there were
fewer individual clients and more groups. He hated the groups, but Luke
said that was the best he could do. He looked too old for his age: clients

thought he was thirteen or fourteen, and at this age, Luke said, every year
counted.
It was fall; September twentieth. They were in Montana, because Luke
thought he would like to see the night sky there, the stars as bright as
electrical lights. There was nothing strange about that day. Two days earlier,
he’d had a large group, and it had been so awful that Luke had not only
canceled his clients for the day after but had let him sleep alone for both

nights, the bed completely his. That evening, though, life had returned to
normal. Luke joined him in bed, and began kissing him. And then, as they
were having sex, there was a banging at their door, so loud and insistent and
sudden that he had almost bitten down on Brother Luke’s tongue. “Police,”
he could hear, “open up. Open up right now.”
Brother Luke had clamped his hand over his mouth. “Don’t say a word,”

he hissed.
“Police,” shouted the voice again. “Edgar Wilmot, we have a warrant for
your arrest. Open the door right now.”
He was confused: Who was Edgar Wilmot? Was he a client? He was
about to tell Brother Luke that they had made a mistake when he looked up
and saw his face and realized that they were looking for Brother Luke.
Brother Luke pulled out of him and motioned for him to stay in the bed.

“Don’t move,” he whispered. “I’ll be right back.” And then he ran into the