Hunger and Thirst

by Wightman, Wayne

  Jack did care. He didn't want to do this, but he couldn't see an alternative.

  He let her pull gradually further ahead. Finally, her cries were almost inaudible, their louder moments mixing with the occasional far-away bark or howl of other animals.

  She became indistinct and then vanished in the moonlit darkness. Jack scanned the desert. He thought he might be seeing the eerie beauty that Natalie saw. The desert was the color of blue ashes.

  ....

  Sun on his face, Jack stood out in the scrub, hands in his pockets, gazing at the snowy mountains. The snowpack had reached its maximum and was probably starting to thin. From nowhere, out of silence, Natalie's arms slipped under his and clasped him to her.

  “You look at the mountains a lot.”

  “I think about Artie. I miss him. Sometimes I think he might have gone on without me. He's probably dead. He walked with me through rain and mud and desert all the way from Colorado. And he took shorter steps than I did. He even swam part of the way when our boat fell apart and went under on some no-name river. I miss him.”

  “Maybe we could find another.”

  “What friends I've had I can count on one hand, and I'm counting Artie. Most of my friends had four legs.”

  “I suspect he stayed with you because you fed him. The only reason he didn't eat you is because you're bigger.”

  “I gave him permission to eat me.”

  “He could have stayed here with you, but Artie is a predator with certain necessities. He has to see to those.”

  “He offered to feed me when he didn't have to. He brought me rats he'd killed. A couple of times it was the only thing I'd had to eat in days. He didn't have to do that.”

  “Perhaps he was full. He fed you, kept you alive, and you protected him. Friendship doesn't fit all that well into the mechanics of survival. In the mouth of every living thing you find the remains of the dead. Sometimes one even has had affection for what's on one's plate. Some of the rabbits are very sweet.”

  “Right up to the moment you break their necks. Everything is eaten and nothing goes to waste. It's a terrific system, but still miss Artie. Could you ask your bones if he's still around?”

  She looked a bit embarrassed. “Actually, I already did. I got the equivalent of 'No comment.'”

  “He was a friend.” Jack pulled back enough to look into her face. “You tell me you're the queen predator of this place. Do you love me as much as you say, or am I a necessity?”

  “I love you so much you feel like a necessity. I don't want to think about going on without you, but don't hold it against me for being a part of the way the world goes. Kiss me. Let's go in.”

  He kissed her.

  “I'll be in in a few minutes. I want to think about Artie a little more.”

  “Don't be long.” She left him with a lingering drag of her hand across his shoulders.

  Jack kicked at the dirt and looked again at the mountains. Although it didn't show, he was thinking, the snowpack had probably started to thin.

  ....

  In their bedroom, in the middle of the night, they lay close, on their sides, their foreheads touching. Without opening his eyes, Jack whispered, “Did you kill Hewitt, a big guy in a plaid shirt, out by the highway?”

  “No, I didn't.”

  “I found his shirt. I'm pretty sure it was his shirt. It had blood around the collar.”

  Natalie said nothing.

  “Did you kill those two people, the man and the whatever?”

  “No. I did what you wanted to do. I sent them in opposite directions with dire threats. It would have been safer to kill them.”

  ....

  In their bedroom, past the middle of the night, Natalie lay spooned against Jack, her arm around his chest.

  “You don't believe me, do you.”

  In the darkness, Jack stared at nothing.

  “Of course I do.”

  ....

  Bright white morning sun poured through their windows. Jack stood idly at the counter watching Natalie with her bones and leather disk.

  “I hope I can get you more coffee. I know how much you like it.”

  “Don't trade too much for it. I can do without.”

  Natalie dropped the bones on the disk and stared at them, motionless. Her face tightened; she looked troubled.

  “What?”

  “Just calculating. A woman, coming along in about half an hour.”

  “A woman traveling alone. That's not everyday. She's either competent or crazy.”

  “I don't need my bones to tell me which. I'll go talk to her.”

  Jack noticed that she put the finger bones in her pocket. That was unusual.

  “Well.” Natalie put a few canned goods in a mesh bag. “Just in case. I'll go see what I see.”

  He kissed her and repeated his standard caution. At the instant the door latched between them, Jack realized that just an instant before he had glimpsed one of her hunting knives in the mesh bag. He hadn't seen her put it there, but that didn't mean anything. Natalie could have things in her hands, or out of her hands, in the middle of an eyeblink.

  He circled the room once, drained the coffee down his throat and got his jacket. Things had been just two degrees off all morning; he wanted to see what she was going to see.

  Out the front door, he automatically checked that the 8:00 PM food he put out for Artie was gone. It was. Natalie was already out of sight, around the hill and on the down-slope to the highway.

  Twenty yards from the house, behind a large stone and a cluster of green tumbleweeds, he saw Natalie's mesh bag. Without touching it, he craned his neck to see the backside of it. The canned foods were still there, but the hunting knife was not.

  He half-heartedly tried to disguise his off-trail footprints and continued on after her. He brought himself to a sudden stop. In the distance, on the highway, he saw the traveler coming from the west. Whoever it was was walking aimlessly, and her clothes seemed to be layers of long streaming rags.

  A few steps further on and he could see Natalie, now at the highway, waiting, now slowly walking toward the traveler.

  Within another half minute, Jack saw who it was — the blond woman that he had taken out and threatened away a few days before. She had returned. And she wasn't walking so much as shambling. Stooped a little forward at the waist, she let her arms hang among her hair and rags and shambled forward, toward Natalie.

  Jack could see the moment of recognition: the young blond woman stopped in her tracks. Then she seemed to gather her focus and her strength. She raised her wraith-like arms and did a staggering run toward Natalie. Jack heard her shrieking noises, but didn't understand her words, if there were words.

  Natalie waited quietly on the path beside the highway.

  He heard himself saying, “Don't do it... don't....”

  The woman began windmilling her arms, closer to Natalie, and now there was just screaming. When Jack expected to see the women fall together, he instead saw Natalie simply push woman on past her. She almost fell, turned and screamed, just animal noises. Out of her rags and hair, she held up her gaunt arms like a mantis.

  Passively stepping back, to one side then the other, Natalie seemed to be talking to the ragged woman who awkwardly stalked her one uneven step at a time.

  All in a single fluid motion, the woman raised her arms to full height to fall on Natalie, and Natalie made an underhand sweeping gesture with her right hand. Everything froze. Then Natalie went about stooping and picking up her finger bones.

  Jack's mouth had gone dry.

  Natalie put her shoulder to the woman's midsection and easily hoisted her up. Jack had no idea she was that strong. She walked perpendicular to the highway perhaps a hundred yards — Jack could only guess. He watched her shrug and the body dropped out of sight onto the desert floor.

  “Please...,” he said under his breath.

  He watched Natalie lean over the body. He could barely see her above the scrub. Then she stood up and
started back to the house. Jack moved out of her line of sight.

  When he came to the rock where she had put the mesh bag, he stopped, looked down at it, then snatched it up. Green tumbleweeds clung to it, leaving shredded bits stuck on it. Jack stalked back to the house, dropped the bag on the counter, and waited.

  ....

  Natalie entered grim-faced. Her eyes registered her bag on the counter and then focused on Jack, who stood in mid-room, his hands in his pockets. He didn't look at her.

  “I didn't have a choice,” she said.

  “You killed that woman with the hunting knife and she knew you were going to do it — like you kill the rabbits.”

  “She was out of her mind and she was coming back.”

  “Why was she coming back?”

  “I didn't ask. Perhaps to kill us. But whatever her answers, they would all lead me to the same conclusion.”

  “You killed her two friends. You didn't turn them loose.”

  “As long as they knew we were here, they were a danger. Now they're not.” Natalie's face became grief-stricken. “Jack... please don't....”

  “You lied to me.”

  “You knew I was lying.”

  Jack walked in a tight circle and pressed his hands against his face. “I did know.”

  “I'm not going to let bad things happen to us because I've extended kindness to psychopaths. We let that one live and she came back. She was too stupid to live.”

  “I watched you just lean over and... whatever you did, you did it easily. Do you kill everyone you meet out there and take their stuff? Is that why we have so much? How many people have you killed?”

  He hadn't seen this face before: she was grieved, nearly desperate: “I tried to talk to her, even though my bones told me it would be useless. She threatened us. I wasn't going let her go and see if she was bluffing.”

  “When all three of them were here, they had us cold, they had you bleeding — but I wasn't in any danger? Really?”

  “No, you weren't.”

  Jack let himself fall back on the sofa.

  “You weren't. You needed to see what you could do.”

  “That was for my benefit? We were nearly killed — I thought we were nearly killed — as an educational experience?”

  “We weren't nearly killed. Consider who you were before and who you were after.”

  As roiled as his thoughts were, he knew she was right. He was different afterwards; he felt stronger, more competent. He took a breath.

  “The woman out there today — your bones said it wouldn't do any good, but you talked to her anyway. Why? Because you knew I'd be watching? Because it would make a better impression?”

  Natalie said nothing.

  “If you knew I'd be watching, did you know we'd have this conversation? How does it turn out? How much do you know? Do you know if I'm going to leave? Do you know when? Tell me.”

  She was shaking her head.

  “How many people have you killed?” He didn't want to ask it but that was what he most wanted to know.

  “Don't ask me that.” Natalie turned away and held her face with her hands. “Don't ask me that.”

  He went over to her and turned her by her shoulders to face him. She was hot and smelled like the desert when it had just started to rain. He loved her. He didn't understand himself.

  ....

  In the night, they lay together on their backs. Moonlight turned the curtains white. Between the curtains, the window separated them from the stars.

  “My bones tell me a lot. Not everything. Big things I see right away, but everything else is glimmers and hints, some stronger, some weaker. Some things seem more likely. I don't know everything, but I knew today was going to be terrible and you were going to be disappointed with me, horrified even. I knew I wasn't going to give that woman a second chance with us, but what I didn't know was what else to do.” She was quiet.

  They may have dozed. Since they had been lying in bed, the stars had turned across half the window.

  “If I had to do it over, I’d do it again, exactly the same way. If I dispose of a crazy person to protect you, and you leave me for it, at least I’ll know you’ll leave me alive. I’ll never be a willing victim. I’ll never put my safety where it’s free for the taking. Except for you, Jack. Except for you. You've had my heart since the first day. Can you still love me?”

  “I can. I do. But when I think of that pathetic woman out there—” His mind locked up and wouldn't give him the words he needed.

  She took his hand and held it to her cheek.

  The stars turned.

  “Your mother wouldn't approve of me.”

  “You saved my life. She'd approve of that.”

  “Tomorrow I’ll gather up all the traps except one or two. If we don’t have anything to trade, we’ll go hungry like everyone else. But I will try as best as I can, just like you, like your mother would approve of, to be a nice guy.”

  “You'd do that?”

  “For you, yes. And I'll be creative about it.”

  She rolled on her side to face him. Behind her, stars faded and disappeared into her black hair. “This morning I wanted to stare at you and remember how you looked at me before any of this happened. Stay with me,” she said. “I'll try to be who you want me to be.”

  He believed she meant it. He wanted to believe it was possible. He couldn't believe it was possible.

  ....

  Jack wandered through the scrub, hands in his back pockets, turning his face to the sun to bathe in the mid-spring warmth. The snow had visibly drawn back up the mountainsides. Blue and yellow flowers speckled the desert.

  Yesterday, Natalie had come back from the highway with three ratty paperback books and a packet of flour. Today, after he did a patch on a windmill water pipe, he was going to sit down, like a gentleman of leisure, and read a book. He couldn't remember the last time.

  This morning Natalie told him she would be several miles east on the highway to meet two travelers; she wanted to barter with them before they met others.

  He turned to go back to the house when he heard the slightest snap. It had been carried on the wind or he wouldn't have heard it. He knew his desert sounds; it was a sound someone or something had caused.

  He waited and listened, scanned, and breathed in air for unusual smells. Finally, another snap,and he had the direction.

  A dozen paces and he heard a crackling noise. He went further, another dozen steps and he caught the smell of Natalie's cologne. She had picked it up a month earlier and used it every day. He went closer, more slowly.

  Twenty yards away, he saw Natalie squatting with her back to him. He could see her arms moving muscularly in front of her... skinning and gutting the animal, he thought. Then he realized he was hearing the sounds of chewing and snapping bones. She was eating.

  He could see only her arched back and the wilds of her black hair. He saw her drop a stripped bone to her side.

  Suddenly, she stopped, froze, then leaped to her feet, spun around, and faced him, eyes to eyes, set for full defense. Her hands were bloody past her wrists, her mouth and chin smeared red.

  Jack couldn't read her expression. Anger, threat, fear, surprise?

  He turned toward the house and walked back as though it were a normal day. He considered that it probably was. For two months, as far as he knew, she had killed only three rabbits for trading. They had rarely put dead things on the table for themselves.

  Nearing the house, Jack realized two things: First, he was no longer thinking, “If I leave....” It was “When I go....” And second, if he knew when he was going to leave, her bones would also know. The best he could do was nothing at all, and then, on a whim, without planning, run. It would be the best he could do.

  ....

  Same day, Jack sat on the upper deck with one of the paperbacks. Last Exit to Brooklyn, life in the 1960s. It wasn't anything he would want to go back to. He could understand the depravity, but there were so many references to th
ings that no longer existed that couldn't keep his focus on it. He kept looking up at the Sierra Nevada, at the snow pack.

  He heard Natalie come in behind him. She came out on the deck and pulled a chair around to face him.

  “I tried to be what you wanted me to be.”

  “For several months. I probably shouldn't have agreed.”

  “You never asked me to change. I wanted to try. I wanted to try to be a nice guy, so you would stay.”

  It was the closest he'd seen her come to tears. He put his hands on hers. The troubled sadness left her eyes.

  “The worst thing,” she said, “would be if you stayed only because I wanted you to.”

  “I wouldn't do that, to either of us.”

  “I love you as much as ever, if that counts.”

  “It counts for everything. Wherever we end up, whatever happens, I'd never, could never forget how much you count in my life.”

  “That almost sounds like goodbye.”

  “You keep waking up in the morning and I'll keep being there.”

  She kissed him like it was the last time.

  ....

  The sun had set clean and white behind the mountains. The air had started to cool.

  Jack sat at the counter, paging through a magazine she had brought in a few days earlier. Natalie came in carrying her jacket, already in her boots. She stuffed gloves in her back pocket.

  “There is a trap over in the ravine I need to bring in.”

  “That's quite a way to go this late in the day.”

  “Piece of cake,” she said with a confident smile. “And then I'll swing down to the highway and meet a traveler. I should be back in two or three hours.” She came over and kissed him. “Warm my side of the bed for me.”

  “It'll be warmed for two.”

  “Back before midnight.” And a dozen steps later, she was out the door, it was locked behind her, and she was gone.

  Jack turned another page. Hand lotion. Take a vacation to Disneyland.

  He'd been feeling slow and lazy all day and was looking forward to going to sleep, waking up in the morning and trying a new day. Another page. Bake special brownies for your kids. Take a cruise. The picture showed an immense liner on an even more immense blue ocean. He had never seen blue water, but pictures always showed the ocean as bluer than the sky. He couldn't imagine it.