Not a Drop to Drink

by Mindy McGinnis

  She broke off, unable to speak around the lump that had gotten bigger.

  “You don’t wanna what?”

  “I don’t want to shoot you by accident.”

  It began to rain. A lovely blessing for many reasons. Years ago, Mother had the insight to run a drainpipe from the roof down into the bathroom. The jagged edge of the rusty pipe was jammed with a piece of flannel that Lynn jerked free. A tide of rusted water and leaf debris came first, spilling into the bucket she’d brought. Once the rainwater ran clear she let it fall down into the tub to supplement the hot water she’d dragged up from the basement.

  “Wuzzat?” Lucy’s nose wrinkled at the smell of the rotted leaves in the bucket.

  “Just rotting stuff,” Lynn said, swirling her hand through the water to test the temperature. “This’ll even out in a second, and I’ll plug the pipe so it’s not dripping rainwater on your head.”

  The girl shrugged her indifference and continued to pick at a scab on her knee. “Why don’t you turn on the faucet?”

  Lynn sighed and rested her head on the side of the tub. “I told you, I don’t have running water. That’s why I was dragging buckets up from the basement.”

  The mundane task of boiling water had brought quizzical Lucy to the edge of the cookstove, climbing onto a chair to pinpoint the exact moment the bubbles started forming on the surface. “How do I know when it’s boiling?”

  The question had brought Lynn to an abrupt halt. “I don’t know, ’cause it’s . . . boiling.” The answer hadn’t satisfied Lucy, so Lynn had explained the concept of bubbles and steam. “Haven’t you ever boiled water?”

  “No,” Lucy had said defensively. “Why would I?”

  That response combined with the request to turn on the faucets caused Lynn’s own curiosity to flutter. “Where are you from anyway? What were you doing out in the woods?”

  “Entargo,” the girl answered, testing the water with her fingertips. Lynn stopped stirring the water. “Entargo,” she repeated. “The big city?”

  “Yeah,” Lucy said, blissfully unaware of the effect her answer had. “We lived there my whole life, ’til we had to leave.”

  “Why? What happened?”

  “Don’t know. We just did.”

  Lynn hadn’t known many people in her life, but the flat line of the girl’s mouth was familiar enough to her. There would be no more conversation along that line.

  Lynn stuffed the flannel rag back into the end of the drainpipe, ignoring the spray that spattered her as she fought against the flow. She dug into the linen cupboard for a thin washcloth and a bar of flat white soap, handing them to the girl.

  Lucy looked at the bar in her hand. “What’s this for?”

  “It’s soap. To wash with.”

  The girl looked dubiously at the bar, then sniffed it. “It doesn’t smell like the soap from home.”

  “It smells like clean,” Lynn said brusquely. “Mother and I made that ourselves. That’s hard work, so don’t you be wasting it.”

  Lucy closed her grip around the soap. “Where’s your mama?”

  “Dead.”

  The little girl nodded and stopped asking questions. Young as she was, she understood that the conversation ended there.

  Lynn cleared her throat. “All right then. You clean up good. Wash your hair with this.” She handed Lucy a bottle filled with a green gel. “Let it sit for a bit before your rinse off.”

  The girl bit down an objection when she saw the picture of a dog on the bottle, but took it meekly enough.

  “Toss your clothes out in the hall,” Lynn continued. “I’ll be burning them.” There was no response so she slid out the door.

  “Wait!” The anxious call brought her back.

  “What is it?”

  “I can’t do these,” the girl said, pointing to her shoelaces.

  Lynn sighed and plopped onto the floor next to the girl. “It’s not so hard,” she said. “You just pull on the loose end. Didn’t your mama teach you that?”

  “I can untie my shoe,” Lucy objected haughtily. “They just won’t come off.”

  Without asking for an explanation, Lynn tugged on the laces. The rotten ends fell off in her hands. “Sit still,” she ordered, and went to the kitchen for a knife. The rest of the laces split easily under the blade. She gripped the shoe and was about to tug it off when the girl cried out, digging her fingernails into the bar of soap.

  “What’s the problem?”

  The girl only shook her head, biting down on her lip as Lynn slid the sneaker off her tiny foot. The bloody, pus-encrusted sock answered her question.

  “Kid,” she said, covering her nose against the smell, “how long have you been out there?”

  The attic brought back memories that Lynn would have preferred to leave buried. It wasn’t a place they had used often, only when putting away the clothes Lynn had outgrown and finding the box that held her next size. Mother had always called it “going shopping,” and encouraged Lynn to try on everything as soon as she found the right box. It had been a game of sorts, one of the few times Mother would rest, reclining on an old chair propped in the corner as Lynn tossed clothes everywhere in her excitement. Clothes. Clothes and shoes.

  Lynn was guessing as she made her way through the antique trunks Mother had used for storage. Lucy couldn’t be nearly the size she had been when she was five. It might be best to go for a size lower. She popped the lid on the right trunk, glancing through the contents for something for the girl to put on when she was out of the tub.

  “Something warm, something warm,” Lynn muttered to herself as she tossed aside clothes. The rain continued to fall, pounding out a staccato beat on the roof of the attic. What little light there was came from a small circular window. A pair of shoes rolled out of the pile of clothes she was holding and rattled to the floor. She considered them briefly, but tossed them aside. Lucy’s feet had practically become a part of her shoes, the sides had burst long ago and water had seeped into them. Judging by the state of her feet, the little girl hadn’t complained, so no one had told her to take her socks off and dry them.

  She made a pile of warm clothes, choosing only two or three outfits. Lucy wasn’t moving in, she reminded herself firmly, she was only staying until . . . until when? The look the boy had shot her yesterday had said Lucy’s mother wasn’t going to make it. Once he was free, would the boy move on or stay to care for the little girl? Lynn hadn’t thought past the initial action of taking Lucy with her, when Eli’s gray eyes had begged her to. Suddenly angry with herself, Lynn snagged two pairs of warm socks out of the trunk and slammed the lid shut.

  A high-pitched singing filled the downstairs, along with splashing noises. Lynn paused before opening the door; the unencumbered sound of happiness was so odd to her that she allowed Lucy’s off-pitch, unfamiliar tune to fill her ears, like the rising sound of the filling water tanks. A massive splash and wasted water cresting over the edge of the tub made her crack the door to the bathroom.

  “Hey in there, you need to be getting out soon. Water’ll get cold and I don’t need you sick on top of everything. I gotta see to your feet as it is.”

  There was a long pause. “Will it hurt? My feet?”

  “Probably,” Lynn answered, thinking of the flaps of skin that had peeled off along with the socks.

  “I think I’ll stay in a little bit more.”

  “C’mon now,” Lynn said, pushing her way into the bathroom. “You’ve been in there long enough.”

  Lucy’s frail body floated on the surface of the tepid water. Her ribs stuck out so far that water had rushed into the valleys in between them. More dead skin had sloughed off her feet in the water; strips of it trailed from her heel. Lynn wrapped her in a towel, astonished at the lack of weight in her arms. The girl burrowed into her cotton fortress and admired her new outfits while Lynn picked through her hair for dead lice and nits. There had been a thriving civilization on Lucy’s head, and it took the better part of the afternoon to r
id her of them.

  Lynn saved the feet for last, once Lucy was happily snuggled into her basement cot and eating corn. The warm bath combined with food and the heat from the fire lulled her. Lynn waited until she had fallen asleep, her small hand still tightly gripping the spoon. Her feet were a mess. Dead skin hung in flaps from blisters long since burst, a fungal infection covered most of her left sole, and all her toenails had grown inward in response to the shoes that hadn’t left her feet. It was a miracle that the girl could still walk.

  The dead skin came off first, Lucy’s feet twitched in response but there was no real pain. The baking soda paste Lynn used on the fungus caused her to whimper a little, but she soon quieted. The toenails presented a real problem. Cutting them out was going to be painful. Three of her toes were inflamed with the pressure, two of them had pus-filled cysts under the skin. It would have to wait until Stebbs was there to hold her down.

  There was a small supply of painkillers hidden away with the guns, but Lynn could never remember using them. When she was about Lucy’s age one of her eardrums had burst from an infection. It had swollen so tightly that the eventual rupture had spewed pus, blood, and small pieces of her eardrum. She’d held her tongue tightly against the pain, knowing that Mother had been splinting her own broken ankle a week before without so much as a Tylenol.

  Lynn’s hand snuck to her ear as she remembered. Mother had been furious with her, even as she had sponged the stinking mess of pus from her face. “You should have told me,” she’d seethed. “I would have given you something.”

  But Lynn was partly deaf at the time, and Mother’s words had been muffled. They were both saving the pain medications for another day, a different, more horrible wound. The fever had passed, her eardrum had grown back, and the painkillers remained untouched. Lynn pressed one of Lucy’s infected toes experimentally, and the girl whimpered in her sleep. Lucy had done the same, hidden her pain to save others the worry.

  Lynn pulled the covers down over the small white feet, tucking them under her heels. “When it’s time, we’ll use the medicine, little one,” she said softly. “You don’t need to suffer more than you have.”

  Ten

  Stebbs appeared a few hours later, at dusk. The reverberations of his awkward footfall on the basement steps caused Lucy to stir but not wake. Lynn lifted the edge of the sheet that hung drying from the rafters. “Shhh,” she admonished, gesturing toward the small form humped underneath the blankets. “Don’t wake her.”

  “Sorry,” Stebbs whispered, then gestured for her to follow him.

  Lynn grabbed her rifle and tucked a pistol into her belt. Aboveground, the sun was leaving the last hint of a pink stripe in the sky. Stebbs considered it while talking to Lynn. “Think she’ll sleep long?”

  “Don’t know. Not around kids much.”

  He grunted in response.

  “She fell asleep right after her bath,” Lynn added. “I don’t imagine we’ll be long down at the stream anyway.”

  The implied question was not answered, and she glanced at him out of the corner of her eye. “Sorry about last night,” she finally muttered. “I shouldn’t have pushed you.”

  “I shouldn’t have pushed you either,” he said.

  It was her turn to grunt. They both watched the horizon for a few minutes, their gazes drawn to the south. “All right then.” She hoisted her rifle across her shoulder. “Let’s go and be done with it.”

  They made their way to the creek, conscious of the rustling of nocturnal wildlife all around them. A raccoon lumbered across their path. He stood on his hind feet and studied them closely, his black nose wiggling while he tried to place their scent.

  “Scat,” Stebbs hissed at him. The coon lowered himself and tumbled into the night, unconcerned by their presence. “Used to be we shot them that acted like that,” Stebbs said. “Meant they were sick with the distemper.”

  “And he’s not?”

  Stebbs shook his head. “Doubt it. Just doesn’t know what to think of people, is all. We’re not as common as we used to be.” They trudged on a few more minutes in silence.

  “Almost there,” Lynn said when she spotted her own boot prints in the wet bank. They stood out black and hollow even in the dying light of dusk. “This is where I spotted the girl.”

  “You should be the one to call to him,” Stebbs said. “Beings as he’ll know your voice.”

  “We didn’t talk all that much,” Lynn said, then cupped her hands to her mouth. “Hello, the camp!”

  The only answer was the rustle of falling beech leaves, and a frantic scurrying sound in the underbrush nearby. “Try again,” said Stebbs.

  She shouted again, this time adding a high-pitched whistle on the end of her call. No response.

  “How bad of shape were they in?” Stebbs asked.

  Lynn’s eyebrows drew together in concern. “Not as bad as all that,” she said. “Unless someone—”

  A piercing scream split the night air, dropping Stebbs and Lynn to the ground in an instant, their hands going to the pistols at their belts. It broke on a high note, followed by a screech and a howl of pain that dwindled into a racking sob.

  “The woman,” Stebbs said soberly. “That’d be labor.”

  “Labor?”

  “The baby’s being born.”

  Lynn’s hand tightened on her gun, for all the good that it would do her in that situation. “What do we do?”

  Stebbs got to his feet awkwardly and brushed the dead leaves from his flannel shirt. “I know a thing or two about it,” he said. “If that boy is as green as you say, I doubt he’s much help.”

  Lynn stayed on the ground, peering through the bracken as if for an enemy. “What do you want me to do?”

  “Get up, for one.” He hauled her to her feet.

  Lynn hallooed the camp when they were close enough to make out the feeble gray wisps of smoke climbing skyward from the fire. Eli burst out of the shelter, looking wildly in every direction. “Girl? Is that you?” He held a branch above his head in case it wasn’t her, but it didn’t look like he posed much of a threat. His weapon was thicker than his arm.

  “Christ, he’s skinny,” Stebbs muttered.

  “I’m coming in with a friend,” Lynn yelled toward the camp, pausing only slightly before using the word friend to describe Stebbs. They splashed across the stream to Eli, who lowered his club and squinted into the night.

  “Hello, son,” Stebbs said as he emerged from the darkness. “Name’s Stebbs.” He held out a hand, and Eli shook it.

  “Eli,” he said shortly.

  “The girl here is Lynn, somehow I doubt she introduced herself properly when you met.” Lynn nodded to Eli across the fire.

  “How’s Lucy?”

  “The girl’s fine,” she said. “That her mother screaming?”

  Eli nodded and gestured toward the shelter but came up with no words.

  “She trying to be mother to another?” Stebbs asked gently.

  “All day it’s been like this,” Eli said. “I don’t know what to do. The baby won’t come out, and Neva is exhausted.”

  A cautious silence had emanated from the shelter since they’d converged onto the camp. Lynn had stalked a bobcat through the woods once. Mother had sent her out to find a turkey, but the unfamiliar flash of a feline coat had caught her attention and she’d taken it as a challenge. Bobcats weren’t common, and Lynn had known she was out of her league when she’d emerged into a clearing where she knew the cat should have been, but was out of sight. The same feeling was with her on the bank, the idea that she was being watched by unfriendly eyes attached to a body that was ready to pounce if it made up its mind to do so.

  “We’re not here to bother,” she said loudly, hoping her voice carried to those perked ears. “Just wanted to let you know Lucy’s all right.”

  Eli’s face fell. “You’re not leaving, are you?”

  “Hold up now,” Stebbs said to Lynn. “If they need our help, we’re here to give it.” L
ynn’s eyes cut uneasily to the shelter Eli had constructed, but she kept her mouth shut. “First off, why are you down here on the stream? There’s plenty of empty houses to put her up in to bear the child.”

  “Neva says she won’t go. She’s heard too many stories, people’s faces turning black without water, their bodies shriveling up as they die slow.”

  “It happens.”

  “She won’t come away from the water. I set this up for a temporary camp, but she wouldn’t move from it.”

  “It’s not so bad,” Stebbs reassured him. “Probably leaks like a bastard though.”

  “It’s not waterproof, no,” Eli admitted.

  “Can’t hold any heat either, I reckon.”

  In the firelight, Lynn could make out a blush creeping up Eli’s sharp-boned cheeks. “No, it can’t.”

  “So here you’ve got a pregnant woman and a child living under a bunch of dead twigs next to a stream when winter’s coming on?”

  “I didn’t know what else to do,” Eli said tightly, desperation making him bite off each word.

  “How about not letting the most paranoid person in your bunch call the shots?” Lynn suggested, then fought down her own blush when Eli turned his angry glare on her.

  Stebbs cleared his throat. “Water can be hauled. You get her set up in some real shelter with some heat in it and bring the water to her. Staying next to the stream in the summer and fall’s fine. But in the spring, it’ll drown ya, in the summer it could disappear altogether. You stay by it in the winter, one morning you’ll wander out to your precious water source to find out you froze to death in the night.”

  Eli’s jawline was set tightly, and Lynn had lived long enough with a person who had a temper to know that the fuse was getting short. “I’m afraid your suggestions come a little late,” he said as another wrenching moan rose from the shelter behind him.

  She’d been fighting it. Lynn could tell by the stifled sound of the cry that the sufferer did not want them made party to her pain. Stebbs flicked on a flashlight and moved to the mouth of the shelter. “I’m here to help you. I’m no doctor, but I’ve seen my share of goats born and helped a few of them along.”