Thirst

by Benjamin Warner

  “My wife was on the porch,” he said. “I could see her there last night.”

  He left Eddie sitting there and walked up the Davises’ steps with the jug of water swinging in his hand. The sunlight played inside of it like golden ropes. On the porch, he bent down in the corner. Eddie couldn’t see him from where he was.

  “Is she there?” he said.

  “Yes,” Steve McCarthy called.

  Eddie waited. “Is she okay?” he said.

  “She’s taking water.”

  He tried to stand but his legs still didn’t work. He held on to the fence behind himself and used his arms to push himself up, but that, too, required strength he didn’t have.

  “It takes a little while,” Steve McCarthy called. He was still bent down next to Laura; Eddie could see only the top of his head, the graying hair, the little curls at the base of his neck. “You’ll get some strength, but you have to wait,” he said.

  “There are more in the house.”

  “How many?”

  “Maybe two or three.”

  “You sit tight now,” Steve McCarthy said, but he said it gently, only to Laura. He knocked at the Davises’ door. While he waited, he stood with rigid arms, like a man uprighted in a coffin.

  “They’re in there,” Eddie said.

  “I can wait. For a while, at least.”

  “Eddie?” It was Laura’s voice.

  “I’m down here. Do what he says.” He slumped back against the fence. He was feeling better, though. The blood was coming back into his legs.

  Steve McCarthy knocked again. In the silence that followed, he took the slow deep breaths of a sickly fish.

  “We’re going to get out of here,” Eddie said to him. “Then we’ll come back and help. We’ll do what you’re doing.”

  “The roads are all blocked,” Steve McCarthy said.

  “Then we’ll walk.”

  “Not in this heat. Your systems will shut down. And there are people who would rob you.”

  “Then how are you doing it?”

  “I’m not going far. This is just my neighborhood. I move slow. See this? I breathe deeply. It helps.”

  “We’ll take it slow, then.”

  “If you want to make it, take it slow.”

  “We need to get out of here,” Eddie said.

  “My advice? Stay where you are. Wait for it to end.”

  When the door opened, Mike Sr. leaned against the jamb. He twisted his face at Steve McCarthy. One arm was hidden behind the door, and when he raised it, it held a gun. Steve McCarthy backed away.

  “He’s got water!” Eddie cried.

  “Water?” Mike Sr. asked. He was a full head taller than Steve McCarthy and had to point the gun down to level it at his face. “Where were you yesterday?” he shouted. His neck was wide with veins. His fury made him naked-looking.

  Steve McCarthy held up his hands. It was as if Mike Sr. had said Stick ’em up. “I wasn’t here yet,” Steve McCarthy said. His voice had the calm of someone not afraid of death by bullets. “I was doing something else.”

  The gun shook in Mike Sr.’s hand, and he lowered his arm to his side. He closed his eyes, breathed, and held it up again.

  “My son is gone. My son.”

  “Shooting me won’t bring him back,” Steve McCarthy said. He’d planted his feet at the end of the porch. “It won’t answer any of your questions.”

  “You will, though. Tell me. Tell me why my son is dead.”

  “It’s okay, Mike,” Eddie soothed. Mike Sr. jerked his arm toward Eddie. He fired, and a moment later, the air was filled with the absence of the bang.

  Eddie opened his mouth and exercised his jaw. He waited for pain, but the bullet had missed him by a mile. Mike Sr. slumped from the door to the railing of the porch. Laura was standing, steadying herself. Her mouth opened, but Eddie couldn’t hear the words.

  The water traveled up the sides of the jug as Steve McCarthy backed off the porch. Mike Sr. leaned forward on the top step but couldn’t get his legs to follow. His big chest was a weight held too far out, and he pitched and fell, stumbling down to lie flat on his stomach in the driveway. The gun was still in his hand. When he looked up at Eddie, his nose leaked blood.

  “Don’t,” Eddie said. The word was muffled, as if spoken underwater. He stood, but he couldn’t walk yet. He looked down at the back of Mike Sr.’s head. “He’s helping you.”

  “Helping me?” Mike Sr. said. “Why doesn’t he help me bury my son? You bastard.”

  The door opened wider, and Laura had a hand under Patty’s armpit to keep her standing up. Patty leaned her weight to one side and lifted up a foot. When it was down, she lifted up the other. In this way, she went forward, rocking back and forth.

  “Mike,” she croaked. “Drop it.”

  Mike Sr. was still splayed out on the asphalt, but he loosened his fingers off the grip.

  Laura steadied herself against Patty and got her to the steps. They teetered on the edge. Laura’s knees were shaking and then jutting forward, bending her in half. Patty reached out and caught the railing as Laura sat beside her in a heap.

  “Sorry, Patty,” she said.

  “You’re fine, hon.” Patty set her jaw and stepped. Then she stepped again, her whole body rocking. She was like a piano being lowered.

  “Come here,” she said to Steve McCarthy, who backed over into Eddie and Laura’s driveway.

  “Ma’am,” he said. “I don’t mean any harm. I’m sorry that you’ve lost someone. I’ve lost somebody, too.”

  “I didn’t lose someone.” Patty stepped finally onto the flat asphalt. Her face pinched as she bent her knees and retrieved the gun from Mike Sr.’s hand. “I lost the only thing I had.”

  Eddie tried to take a step forward, and this time his legs held him up. “Patty,” he said. “He has water. He’s helping.”

  “When you lose your family, nothing else matters,” she told Steve McCarthy.

  They were standing as if in a duel: Patty with the gun at her side, and Steve McCarthy with the jug of water.

  “You have your husband,” he said.

  “We’re not a family. We’re just two people. The family part’s gone.”

  Steve McCarthy looked at the ground and closed his eyes again. “Not if you have them in your heart.”

  “Bullshit!” Patty croaked.

  “There are people all over suffering,” he said. “Some have lost everything.”

  “Put the gun down, Patty,” Eddie said.

  “I lost everything.”

  “Put the gun down.” This time when Eddie said it, it served only to remind her she was holding something deadly. She raised it and pointed for the second time at Steve McCarthy.

  “Drop it,” she said.

  He placed the jug of water by his shoe. “If I give it to you, you might as well just shoot me in the head.”

  “Step away. Go on. Get outta here.”

  “I’ll die,” he pleaded. “I was helping you.”

  “You say another word, another fucking word, and I’ll pull the trigger. Answer my husband. I heard you. I heard what you said. Bullshit! Where were you yesterday? Where were you?”

  Steve McCarthy bent down and touched the top of the jug; Patty took a step closer and stood at the edge of Eddie and Laura’s driveway.

  “Can you do what I’m doing with this?” he said. He picked up the jug and hugged it to his chest. “Can you keep this from happening at every house? Do you believe you can?”

  Patty fired into the air. “Run,” she said, but Steve McCarthy froze. She fired again and his shoulder burst open. A flap of bloody fabric hung down. His hand went limp and the jug thumped onto the driveway. Eddie took two steps and fell on it like a fumble. He looked up to see Steve McCarthy running. It was freakish, the speed of his awkward stride; Eddie couldn’t imagine ever running like that again.

  Patty put the gun against the side of her head and fired, collapsing to the ground as though her bones had disappeared.<
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  “No!” Mike Sr. shouted. He lifted his forehead from the ground and bashed it against the pavement. “Baby!” he cried, bashing. “Baby, baby, baby.”

  Eddie called for Laura. She pushed on the rail and stood, coming down the steps. Mike Sr. was bashing his head just below her, and she had to time her steps to make it over him.

  She bent down and lifted Eddie by the arm. Eddie held on to the water.

  “Oh, God,” she said.

  They went inside their house and fell onto the carpet.

  “I have it,” Eddie was saying. He was triumphant, stroking the plastic jug. “I have it, Laur. I got it for us.”

  It was night, but they sat there by the door, leaning up against the side of the couch. Laura held the jug. Every hour or so, they took a little sip. It was like a tonic. Eddie felt bright and reflective. He felt that they would live. That they would leave here. There were maybe four cups of water left. It seemed enormous, but precious—the most precious thing.

  “Just don’t think about her,” Eddie said. “Put it out of your mind.”

  “I see her when I close my eyes.”

  “Concentrate on something else. We need time to let this settle.”

  “It was so fast,” she said. “I thought she was just going to walk back up her steps. I can see it with my eyes open, too. I was looking right at her when she did it.”

  “We’ll leave,” Eddie said. “We’ll get away from here and come back when the power’s back.”

  “Evacuate.”

  “Yeah, but not with the neighbors. Not into the city.”

  “We’ll go to my parents’ house,” Laura said.

  “Your dad will know what to do,” Eddie agreed. “We can take the trail. That will keep us off the road for a few miles at least. We’ll walk over the bridge.”

  “I’ve never done that.”

  “We’ll leave tonight.” He gathered himself as if to stand, but didn’t.

  “What about Mike Sr.?” she asked. “We’re leaving him here?”

  Eddie was silent. Then he said, “What are we supposed to do? It’s up to him. We’re not leaving him anywhere.”

  He watched Laura stand on shaky legs. She went into the kitchen and came back with an empty plastic water bottle. When she bent to take the jug from Eddie, he held on to it tightly.

  “What are you doing?” he said.

  She pressed down on the jug, locking her arms. She stared at him. “Don’t be cruel,” she said.

  Eddie stared back. “There’s no such thing as cruel right now. It’s just us. The only people you can be cruel to is us.”

  “He won’t make it.”

  “It’s thirty miles to your parents’ house. If we don’t take all the water, we won’t make it.”

  She nodded. “When the fire department comes, they’ll help him.”

  “Right.” Eddie looked at the black window. He couldn’t imagine anything good coming from out there anymore.

  “How fast can you walk right now?” he asked.

  “I don’t know.”

  “I’ll get the tent, then. We’ll need to camp out.”

  Downstairs, he found the tent in the furnace room, and stuffed it into his backpack.

  “You’re packing?” she said.

  There was dry ramen in its plastic bricks in the back of the cupboard and Eddie took those, too. He packed the flashlight and a tarp and rolled a kitchen knife in newspaper so that it wouldn’t cut the fabric. He took a raincoat. The pack was as tight as a beach ball when he zipped it, and the two canisters of wasp spray bulged from the side pockets.

  “Let’s go,” he said. “It’ll better to walk at night. We won’t need as much water in the cooler air.”

  They stood there in the middle of the living room. The starlight didn’t make it down to the ground outside their windows.

  “We could stay till morning,” she suggested, “and then go.”

  “The sooner we get there, the better.”

  “We’ll go twice as fast in the morning,” she said. “We’ll get lost in the dark.”

  “I have the flashlight.”

  She sat down on the sofa and touched the spot beside her. “Rest,” she said.

  “Come on,” he urged, but he sat down and she put her legs onto his lap. Eddie didn’t mind that they were hot. After a little while, he squeezed her thigh and woke her up.

  “We’re going to be okay,” she said.

  “Yes,” he said. He held the jug at his side. “This changes things.”

  “Yes.”

  Eddie looked at her. She’d lost the pleasant firmness in her features. Instead, her face was soft with daydream.

  “When this is over,” he said, “it won’t even feel like part of our lives. It’ll feel like a dream. Or a story we heard about someone somewhere else. What happened yesterday and the day before … I can barely remember it now. It’s like I didn’t do any of it, not me.”

  Laura remained silent.

  “I’ve been in a fog,” he said.

  “Okay,” she said. “But don’t keep talking about it.”

  “None of this counts against us. Whatever you did when you were walking home from your car, whatever you saw …”

  “It happened if you keep talking about it.”

  “Whatever happened to your little girl …”

  She swung her legs out of his lap and sat up straight. He could barely see her face in the dark but he could tell something had changed inside her.

  “It all happened,” she insisted. “All of it. You can’t turn it off. You can’t start over. Can’t you see that?”

  “We’ll get out of here. All that matters is right now.”

  “That’s a lie,” she said. “Don’t fool yourself. I’ve been fooling myself for years. It all happened. Everything that happened happened. I’m different now.”

  “Just try. Just try to do this with me.”

  “I know what it feels like—like you’re in a cloud, like your brain isn’t working. I’ve felt that way for a long time. Like nothing I did mattered. But it does. I’ve felt that way since Philadelphia, but I wouldn’t let myself feel it.”

  “You met me after Philadelphia,” he said. “That’s when we fell in love.”

  She looked at him, as if only then had he discovered the heart of it.

  “Do you regret that?” he asked. “That you were like that when we met?”

  “That part of me was clear.”

  “How can you know that for sure?”

  “It’s all so terrible, but I don’t regret it. It’s just my past. It all happened, but sometimes I can’t believe it happened.”

  “Like us. We happened.”

  “You didn’t know me when I was different. You didn’t know who I was when I was young. This is who you fell in love with.”

  “But who will you be after all of this is over?”

  “Who will you be?”

  He thought about that question. “I don’t know yet,” he said. “It’s impossible to tell.”

  “Just let it happen,” she said. “Then we’ll go from there.”

  She was staring out the kitchen window. Somehow, it was dawn. They’d fallen asleep. He looked at Laura—the set of her jaw, the way she pinched her eyebrows. He felt sure she was watching Bill Peters walking up the driveway. A panic leapt inside his stomach.

  “Mike Sr.’s out there digging,” she said.

  The jug was on the kitchen table. There was a glorious amount of it left. Eddie could see the pale waterline.

  “Digging?”

  “Graves, I think.”

  Eddie stood next to her. The panic was subsiding. Outside, the grass threw up a golden light. The sun seemed to be burning from below the horizon. Mike Sr. was pressed against a shovel. Digging wasn’t the word for it. He was leaning. If the shovel wasn’t there, he would have fallen.

  “Did you look in the driveway?” Eddie asked.

  “No.”

  “Don’t,” he told her.

>   They were quiet for a while, watching Mike Sr. lean on his shovel.

  “It’s not very big,” Eddie said.

  “What isn’t very big?”

  “The hole.”

  “It’s not a hole. He’s only scratching the ground a little.”

  “He has to decide how many holes to dig.”

  “I don’t want to talk about this,” she said.

  Mike Sr. lifted the shovel tip from the ground. When he placed it back, he put his hand to his forehead.

  “We could still help him,” Laura said. “We’re still here.”

  “We’re going to your parents’.”

  “We could give him water.”

  “Look,” Eddie said. He poked the jug so that the water rocked. “We talked about this last night. We need it. We’re leaving.”

  “How do you feel now, though? You feel good, right? I feel pretty good. Not normal, but not as bad as yesterday.”

  “And how long will that last? Not long. Not in this heat. Maybe we can go ten miles today. That’s three days it will take us. Look at this.” He tapped the jug again. “That’s not enough for three days.”

  “But right now we’re feeling fresh.”

  “The fire department will be back soon,” he said. “Remember? They’ll help him. Like you said.”

  “You don’t know that.”

  “They’ll bring a water truck.”

  “Then where are they?”

  “They’re in the city now.”

  Laura looked back at Mike Sr. in the yard. “I’ll help him, then,” she said. “I’m feeling okay.”

  “No.” He reached out and held her wrist. “We’re going. Mike can take care of himself.”

  “You can’t stop me from trying.”

  Anger squeezed through him like water through a crack in a dam—a dam he hadn’t known existed, nor what it held at bay inside of him. His hand was in a fist.

  “Stay here,” he said. He made himself relax. “I’ll do it if you stay.”

  The sofa was still buttressed against the back door, and the bean-can alarm balanced precariously on the knob. Eddie used the front door so as not to disturb it. The heat outside was ovenish and thick. The leaves on the azalea bush were gone. Blood from Patty’s head had dried in a potato-shaped puddle. Eddie tried not to look as he passed her, but he looked. She’d already bloated a little.