So Far Gone

by Jess Walter

Eventually, a caseworker from CPS showed up, took one look at the kid, and started signing with her hands. When they stood to leave, the deaf kid gave Chuck Littlefield a hug around the waist and wouldn’t let go. He smelled like sweat and shit and all the unfairness in the world. After they were gone, Chuck went to the bathroom and wept. The job was like that. You could see a family of five torn apart in a car accident—blood and body parts everywhere—and not so much as flinch. Make jokes about it later, even. Then some small, seemingly random thing would shiv you—like a deaf kid left alone at a homeless encampment—and you’d feel it pierce and scrape all the way to your bones.

“I was raised Catholic.” “Then I’m afraid you have been deceived by false prophets, and by the worst evil I can imagine—a false salvation.”