“I’m gonna kill that murdering son of a bitch! Shootins’ too good for that bastard! I say we lynch him!” Curley looked around for support.
Candy looked at his feet sorrowfully. “Shouldn’t he be given a fair trial? What do you say George?” George stared ahead blankly; all the light had left his eyes like the clouds across the moon. “Let me deal with him, he aint right, he didn’t mean no harm he-”
“NO HARM! You’d let him go. He’s like your pet cripple or something and there’s only one way to stop you” Before anyone could stop him Curleys' fist smashed into Georges pleading face, assigning him to a total eclipse.

Like a wounded animal lennie was lumbering through the brush, “I done a bad thing. George aint gonna let me tend the rabbits now. He’s gonna be mad, but I gonna wait in the brush like George said. Big guy like me shouldn’t blubber like some baby. I didn’t mean no harm but it was so soft her hair-Oh George aint gonna be happy with me!” Suddenly he heard a rustling nearby. “George?” An arm broke through the brush, the twigs scratching at the stub where a hand should have been. The familiar face of candy appeared, bright red and sweating.
“Candy, where’s George? I done a bad thing, I got-”
“Lennie get out, they know you did it so you gotta run and keep running!”
“George told me to wait and-”
“George aint coming lennie”
“Why sure he is George always comes”
“Lennie he’s out cold in the barn, curley-”
A gunshot rang through the brush and ricocheted off a nearby tree.
“Here he is, the scum. I’m gonna string him from the tallest tree like some god damn chicken stealing nigger!”
“Get out of here you fool” yelled candy frantically
“Not without George -”
Curley interrupted with a triumphant smirk “He’d be glad to be rid of you. Don’t you get it? He told me where you’d be, he wants you dead.” Lennie crumpled in a heap like he was dropping bone by bone as if his heart had taken a beating.

George staggered out of the barn into the unforgiving heat of the sun: the sound of flies buzzing in his ears. In front of him he saw the figure of a man with wide sloping shoulders and arms hanging loosely like two pendulums. George screwed up his eyes and smiled with relief, “hey you crazy bastard. I was worried about you, you aint to be trusted…” His voice trailed off as he realised Lennie’s feet were hanging above the high grass on which lay Lennie’s puppy, being devoured by flies. George looked up at the face more familiar then his own stared helplessly back, swollen and black, the tongue lolling to the side like some clichéd village idiot. George turned and walked.

The heat was so intense the air seemed to shimmer. Rabbits hurried for cover like moving stones. In the river a herring stood like an elderly old man with his trousers rolled up cooling one foot after the other. A water snake looked out of the river as if to say “what you standing there for in the burning sun not doin’ nothing? You must be some crazy bastard.” George was standing at the crossroads. He raised his shoulders with a shudder as if expecting a figure to knock into him, with a shadow you could feel safe in a shadow like a cave. He seemed shapeless, a complete lost and lonely figure. He looked ahead to the hazy mountains in the south. He looked along the red dusty road to the east. He looked beyond the river to the parched land to the west. He didn’t look back. A moment happened and remained much longer than a moment. He seemed to hear not see anything. A dry whisper came from his lips, and was swallowed up by the indifferent silence, “poor bastard.” And time did not move sluggishly on….