How I Found Her Men

Henry

This one I found under a layer of moss out in the country, alongside one of those old falling-apart stone houses with the long driveways so overgrown you know nobody’s been there for years. I recognized his shape against the outer wall, amongst the green and gray. I pulled the moss off of him in strips that fell away like cleaning the underside of a lawnmower—the skin beneath, perfectly preserved.

I led him by the hand two miles back to the main road. His steps were unsteady and he had panic in his eyes, but he never let go.

I left him with the others.

Jacob

Jacob was more difficult, staked on top of a mountain like a flag, frozen solid from the cold so high up, despite the tropical weather at the mountain’s base.

The clues were misleading. I spent weeks climbing mountains in different climates. But I found him eventually.

He was shrimpiest of the men; I carried him down on my back like a mother gorilla. The tips of his hair snapped and broke off like icicles. After I pitched camp I laid him a safe distance from the fire to thaw out.

When I woke up the next morning he was shivering in a giant pool of water and asking me a million questions. I threw him a towel. It took a few minutes before I realized that his eyebrows had been singed off.

These other men, when they talk, if they talk at all, I don’t hear a word of it.

Anthony

Poor quivering Anthony was bound and gagged in the cellar of an abandoned cabin straight out of a horror movie. It was crowded down there, but I only saw what the flashlight showed me; I knew what I was looking for and didn’t linger. Only when I’d safely re-locked the trapdoor behind us did I take off the blindfold and ungag him.

I realized it had been there for good reason: he talked and talked and talked. His hands and feet still tied, I forced him out the front door into the moonlight, just to shut him up. He screamed at the brightness and fell to his knees, his head curled into his lap. I replaced the gag.

I put him in my trunk for the drive back.

Did I mention: he had the worst haircut of them all.

Ethan

I found Ethan in a hollowed-out tree in the same haunted forest as Anthony, about fifteen miles away. There was meaning in this; I don’t know the specifics, but they must have known each other beforehand.

I found him by being a woodpecker. I went from tree to tree, tapping each one with a little metal hammer, listening to see if they were hollow. I had a hunch I knew where he was.

Only after I’d started hacking away at the bark and spotted the greasy crown of his stringy brown hair did I look up and notice that the whole tree was entirely dead.

I thought, Of course: a tree can’t live without its guts.

When I finally broke him out, he came pouring forth and grabbed onto the front of my shirt with his two enormous hands, and below his white knuckles I wondered what it must have been like to be with someone who had hair just everywhere.

Jeremy

Jeremy was different. I was the one who rolled him out from under the dusty pew the same way I’d rolled him in. It was me who dragged him down the aisle by the collar of his threadbare jacket and dropped him outside on the church steps. And it was me, when he didn’t wake up immediately, who stood there stomping him like a jealous man, sending up a little cloud of dust with every impact.

Eventually, he opened his eyes and gathered enough strength to crawl to his feet. He stumbled down the rest of the steps with the bearing of someone holy. A crowd of strangers gathered as he lifted...