Rivers

by Michael Farris Smith

  “Yeah. I know it.” He pulled off his sock hat and shook the rain from it and then put it back on.

  “I see why you did it,” she said.

  “See why what?”

  “I see why you came looking for it.”

  Cohen shook his head in disagreement. “You didn’t see nothing last night.”

  She nodded. “I know, but I see now,” she said. “I can see that she really loved you. And you really loved her. I can see that in all those little things. I get it.”

  Cohen stopped looking at her. He looked over his shoulder at the shoe box behind the seat as if Elisa might be there in its place and then he looked out toward the burning trailers, across the flooded lowlands. He squeezed his hands together as if they belonged to two different people who missed each other. Behind him one of the trucks blew the horn but he didn’t pay attention. Didn’t move.

  She said quietly, “I’m not gonna hurt you.”

  He unclenched his hands. Moved his head around in a circle as if stretching his neck. Then he opened his coat and took out a cigarette. He lit it and put the Jeep in first gear, and he told her that it didn’t matter what she said she was gonna do or not do. Nobody really knows what they’re going to do until the moment they decide to do it.

  The three vehicles moved across the field, driving slowly across the rough, weather-beaten terrain. As they turned onto Himmel Road, the fires were beginning to lose against the rain.

  27

  IT WAS A SPECTACLE AND difficult not to watch. Out across the gulf the lightning storm snapped and delivered steady strikes against the darkening backdrop. A circus of lightning that seemed like it might be shooting straight from the fingertips of God. Those who weren’t driving watched. Those who were driving watched out of one eye and spied the road with the other.

  Once they stopped to change the baby’s diaper and once more for the pregnant woman to pee and soon they arrived at the ocean. The sights were almost new for Nadine and Kris as neither had been away from the compound since their capture. The washed-away chunks of beach. The water sitting where houses used to be. The buckled storefronts and uprooted ancient trees. They had almost forgotten.

  But not Mariposa. The sights and lightning strikes only triggered her memories of the old world and as she surveyed the landscape, she heard the voice of her grandmother warning anyone who would listen. Pack it up and go she had said from the start. We need to pack it up and forget all this. This is only the beginning. The crazy will go crazier and the wind will blow harder and the rain won’t stop. But none of them listened. Her father didn’t listen. Her mother didn’t listen and neither did her aunts or cousins or anyone in the neighborhood. No one listened until the men in uniforms with automatic weapons slung over their shoulders started making them get on the buses and even then it had been too much to believe. Too crazy. So much insanity with the National Guardsmen lined around Jackson Square, the last evacuation, herding people onto buses where locals once climbed into horse-drawn carriages, women and children and the young and the old in a fury of pushing and shoving, while maniacs shot at them from alleys and from behind cars and from rooftops under a gray lightning-infested sky. A war against itself. Something beyond hysteria. The buses finally filled and they drove away, the Guardsmen shooting from the windows, the buses escorted by tanks, bodies left behind to be cleansed by the coming storm.

  That had been the last time she had seen anybody from her family, the buses driving in different directions, and she had been pushed onto one, separated from anyone that she knew. The woman at the high school gym where they were delivered five hours later told her that it’d take some time but we’ll find them but Mariposa could tell by the sound of her voice that there were too many people asking the same question.

  She felt it again now. Heard the screams and the gunfire and the roar of a confused, desperate crowd.

  Cohen leaned on the steering wheel and interrupted her thoughts.

  “What?” she asked.

  “I ain’t real enthusiastic about Charlie with the rain and the sky looking the way they look.”

  They drove carefully, passing the fallen neighborhoods, navigating the telephone poles and roofs and debris scattered across the four-lane running parallel to the water. They moved on until they came to the Grand Casino parking lot, and when Cohen saw what was there, he stopped. He told Mariposa to get out and go and tell them to back up.

  “You see something?” she asked.

  “We’re not turning in here. Just go tell them.”

  She got out and did as he’d asked and returned to the Jeep. The vehicles backed up until Cohen waved and then he stopped. He got out and called for Evan.

  “What is it?” Evan asked.

  “Something your little brother doesn’t need to see. Something nobody needs to see. Keep everybody back here.”

  “But what is it?”

  “A bunch of bodies.”

  “Dammit. New ones?”

  “It looks like it from here. Keep everybody where they are.”

  Evan walked back to the trucks. Cohen took one of the pistols out of his coat pocket and he started walking toward the parking lot and Mariposa came up beside him.

  “Go on back there with them,” he said.

  “I don’t want to,” she answered.

  “You don’t want to come up here, either.”

  “I wanna see.”

  He stopped arguing and walked on and they crossed the front lawn of the Grand Casino. There were giant holes here and there in the lawn with big piles of dirt next to them. One palm tree stood though several had fallen and a thick black electrical wire weaved across the lawn like a sleeping snake. They walked to the circular driveway where limousines once delivered well-dressed patrons and then they came to the parking lot where the bodies lay in awkward positions like castaway dolls.

  It had been a massacre. Bodies scattered across asphalt. Mariposa gasped and Cohen said stand here and he moved out among them. He had seen some of them before at Charlie’s truck. There was the fat man with the poker chips. Next to him lay the old man with the sign, now splattered in dark red. Twenty or so bodies in all, some of them with closed eyes, others with open eyes staring at the sky and taking in the rain. The blood had washed from them and out into wide circles on the pavement, thin rain-mixed blood that spread in abstract, almost artful shapes. He noticed the holes in their chests and arms and heads. The bewildered looks on some of their faces as if they had posed for a sudden, brutal death. Then separated from these men were two of Charlie’s muscle, barrel-chested men in their black shirts and black pants, their strong arms and thick thighs no longer the sign of strength. Their weapons were gone and their laced black boots taken from their feet. Cohen stepped over them. Around them.

  He stopped and looked up and down the road. All gray and getting darker and the rain kept anything from appearing clearly.

  Thunder roared across the choppy Gulf waters and the lightning remained as the wind was beginning to push the waves. He looked again at the parking lot where the bodies lay and he realized that there were very willing and capable men out there. Probably not far away. Maybe even watching. Men who would take whatever they found from whoever had it and it seemed that everyone had already had enough of that.

  “You know any of them?” Mariposa asked.

  “I’ve seen most. Those two in the black over there are Charlie’s. Some of these others were Charlie’s customers.”

  “Rain makes it look like they’re still bleeding. Are they?”

  Cohen shook his head. “Nah. That part’s over.”

  “We better go,” she said and her eyes seemed nervous. “I don’t like this.”

  “I know.”

  There wasn’t enough gasoline to get to the Line. Maybe not enough gasoline to get halfway to the Line, depending on what roads and bridges were available. He looked across the street and counted one, two skeletons of gas stations. He looked back in the direction they had come from and he wonder
ed how many miles had been lost in the gasoline used to burn the trailers.

  Nadine and Evan walked up and Nadine said, “I told Kris to stay in the truck with the baby and Brisco. She’s a little freaked out over this shit.”

  “So am I,” Evan said.

  “How many is it?”

  “A lot,” Mariposa said. “I wouldn’t walk over there.”

  “I ain’t walking over there. I can see it from right here. Aggie and Ava are the only dead people I ever laid eyes on up close and that’s how I plan to keep it.”

  There was more thunder and more lightning and they were hunched underneath their hoods, looking at one another with bent necks. A truck door slammed and Kris came toward them.

  “Where’s the baby?” Nadine asked.

  “Asleep on the seat,” she said. “So I’m guessing no gas.”

  “No gas. No nothing. I’d siphon the gas for the trucks together if I had something to siphon with, but I don’t.”

  “Well, I don’t like standing here. It’s a goshdamn graveyard,” Kris said.

  “We better hide out,” Nadine said. “We got food and stuff. We can wait.”

  “Hide out and wait for what?” Evan asked.

  “Hell I don’t know but there’s plenty of vacancy. All we need is half a hotel. Not even half. A quarter.”

  “I ain’t waiting down here no longer,” said Kris. “My stomach hurts. My back hurts. My legs hurt.”

  “Hiding out doesn’t get us gasoline,” Cohen said and then he motioned toward the sky. “And you all know what’s coming.”

  “Hiding don’t get us gas but it don’t get us killed by whoever did that. And there ain’t been a storm yet to lift and carry this bunch.”

  “We didn’t leave out there to go hide somewhere else,” Kris said. “We left to get back to the world.”

  “Won’t do no good if we ain’t alive when we get there,” Nadine answered.

  “You don’t know we won’t be.”

  “You don’t, neither.”

  “Don’t nobody know,” said Evan. “But I got the keys to one truck and I ain’t hiding out and waiting on a miracle.”

  “Me neither,” said Kris.

  “You ain’t got the keys,” Nadine said and she reached into her pocket and pulled out the keys to the truck she and Kris were riding in.

  “That ain’t yours,” Kris said. “It’s ours.”

  “I know whose it is. But my half says we hole up for a little while.”

  “My half don’t want to have a baby in the middle of goddamn nowhere.” The two women had inched closer to one another as they spoke, Nadine a head taller than Kris and the fingers cut off from her gloves and she looked like something that might hide in an alley and jump on you. But Kris, in all her roundness, bellied up to the taller woman and she squeezed her hands in tight, hard fists.

  “I guess you forgot about the baby,” Mariposa said.

  “I ain’t forgot about nothing.”

  “It’s gotta see a doctor or somebody.”

  “I know what it needs.”

  “Not this,” Evan said.

  The thunder came again and momentarily silenced them. They all looked at one another. Looked around at the trucks. Looked around at the weather.

  “I ain’t staying here,” Evan said to everyone. “Simple as that.”

  “Me neither,” said Kris.

  “Fine.”

  “Thank God,” Cohen said as the thunder gave a long, bellowing roar.

  “There ain’t nothing to thank Him for yet,” Nadine said with a cautious air. “But we’d all better hope there is before it’s over with.”

  “Look down there,” Mariposa said and she pointed east along the highway. Far off in the distance, there was a white dot.

  “What is it?” Evan said.

  “A headlight. Gotta be,” said Kris. “Can we please get the hell outta here?”

  “Go get in,” Cohen said and the women hurried back to the vehicles, but Cohen grabbed Evan by the coat and said, “Come with me.” Across the highway were two gas stations and though there was likely no chance, Cohen didn’t want to leave without finding out.

  “Run over to that one and try every pump,” he said to Evan. Evan hurried across the road. The only things left standing at the stations were the pumps, as the buildings that once sold cold beer and lotto tickets and wooden-tipped cigars were long gone. Cohen had eight pumps to check and there was nothing. Evan had six and there was nothing. They ran back to the vehicles. Cohen looked east and the white dot remained. He told Evan to keep his headlights off. No way they can see us if we don’t show ourselves. Then he told Nadine the same thing and he hurried to the Jeep. Mariposa had it cranked and he put it into first gear.

  It was several miles east to Highway 49 and impossible to do anything but drive methodically against the weather and around the debris. The makeshift cover did little to protect Cohen and Mariposa and they were both drenched. She had brought her knees up to her chest and made herself a ball that her big coat could cover and Cohen leaned forward as if the slight difference in his posture might make things more visible. It’d be nice to have the damn windshield, he almost said to Mariposa but he’d already made one comment about their last ride together and decided to let that be. He had told her to keep watch on the white dot ahead, and sometimes it was there and sometimes not, and she reported when it came and went.

  At Highway 49 the entire intersection was underwater. The harbor, once home to a battleship that crawled with elementary school children and sightseers, had pushed inland, and a small lake covered the intersection and the highway had become a canal. They had to backtrack through the crumbled remains of downtown Gulfport, the fallen historical buildings and the landmarks and the bumpy stone-paved streets. They finally made their way back around to 49 and turned north.

  Away from the beachfront and old downtown were miles and miles of concrete. Vast, empty parking lots in front of superstores without their glass doors, busted by bricks or tire irons or crowbars. Strip malls and bank branches. Restaurants and gas stations. An abundance of pawnshops and liquor stores and video stores for adults only, the only kinds of stores that had prospered in the months leading up to the declaration of the Line. Here and there metal frames were exposed through roofs and telephone and electrical poles had crashed across storefronts and across the six lanes. Trash everywhere. Graffiti everywhere. Abandoned cars on the roadsides and in the parking lots. Giant steel poles that supported billboards stood straight without the advertisements. An abandoned National Guard outpost was situated in the parking lot between two strip malls, cinder-block painted black, thick glass riddled with bullet holes, a head-high chain-link fence with barbed wire wrapping the top. One of many like it that had been erected across the coastal region in the year before the declaration of the Line.

  It was vigilant driving. As if some elaborate obstacle course had been set up for a school of stunt drivers. Cohen led, weaving around bigger traps, bouncing over smaller ones, one eye on what was in the road and one eye everywhere else. He was expecting to see Charlie’s truck or the men who had apparently ambushed it, though he had no idea what to do if either appeared.

  It took over half an hour to reach the north side of Gulfport and the thunderstorm was heavy. Six lanes became four. Corporate concrete gave way to locally owned concrete. Fewer stores and more apartment buildings that stood like very old men with their third and fourth floors missing. Up ahead Cohen saw something broad and white blocking the road and it was two trailers of eighteen-wheelers, end to end, turned on their sides. Cohen pulled up to them. There was room to get around on either side but he noticed one of the back doors lying open. The trucks pulled up behind him and stopped.

  “What are you doing?” Mariposa yelled, no other way to communicate now.

  He couldn’t help but think of her, her splintered head in his lap, underneath a rig much like this one.

  “Cohen?” she said and she reached over and grabbed his arm.<
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  He shook his head and looked at her and said, “I gotta see what’s in there.”

  He climbed out and waved to the others to wait and he bent over and walked through the storm. He held his hand on the pistol inside his coat as he moved toward the back end of the trailer, where the open door was a rectangle of dark. But he didn’t go any farther. Even through the driving rain and wind, he could smell whatever was inside so he hurried back to the Jeep and they drove around. A half mile up the road, Mariposa pointed and said, “Look right there.”

  It was a truck on the roadside. The truck that the other women had driven away in as soon as Aggie had been tied up. The back window had been busted out and both doors were open and it sat on cinder blocks, the four tires gone. Cohen paused but didn’t fully stop and Mariposa said, “What do you think that smell was?”

  “Something that’s been in there a while,” he said.

  Evan honked and waved and Cohen stopped. Evan pulled up beside him and said, “We gotta get out of this storm. The damn truck is wobbling and I don’t wanna be sitting in it no more.”

  “All right,” Cohen answered. “We’ll find a spot to pull over. Backside of one of these buildings somewhere. Follow close.”

  Most of the superstores were behind them and there wasn’t room to hide behind the smaller buildings and gas stations leading out of town, but when they reached the outer limits of Gulfport, there remained, mostly intact, a larger than usual strip mall that had housed a supermarket on one end and a furniture outlet on the other end. In between was what looked like a kid’s store, with the faded face of a giraffe on the facade. Cohen pulled into the parking lot and they followed him. He told Evan and Nadine to wait a minute and then he drove up close to the storefronts, looking in the windows and doors. Then he moved behind and there were no other vehicles there. The metal door of a loading bay was raised at the back end of the grocery store and he stopped and climbed the steps and he looked in and around. Wooden pallets and animal droppings scattered across the concrete floor and little else. No sign of people. He came back out and drove the Jeep to the front and told them it was all right. They followed him to the back of the grocery store and parked close to the building.