The women and the baby and Brisco got out of the weather and Evan and Cohen unloaded the gas stove and pots and cans of food. Cohen grabbed a bag of clothes as he and Mariposa were soaked through.
“Why don’t you leave that Jeep and get in with us?” Evan asked as they stood in the stockroom of the grocery store. Their voices echoed some in the big empty space.
“Because me and that Jeep been through it and wherever I go, it goes.”
“You’re gonna drown driving it.”
“Not so far.”
“She might,” Evan said, pointing at Mariposa. Her wet clothes hung on her and her hair was limp and dripping.
“She can ride where she wants,” Cohen said.
Mariposa shook her head like a wet dog and then she took off the heavy coat and dropped it on the concrete. She grabbed the bag of clothes and went off looking for a quiet corner, dragging the bag behind.
They found boxes to sit on and in half an hour they were eating. The wind sprayed the rain through the open bay and whistled through the random wind tunnels of the beat-up building. They were silent as they ate, worn out from the anxiety of what already seemed like a long trip.
Cohen had found some dry jeans and a shirt and he had changed in the manager’s office. Kris mixed a bottle and she carried the baby over to Cohen and asked if he wanted to give it to him.
“I don’t know how,” he said.
“That’s the point,” she said. “You might need to one day.” She held the baby out to him. Cohen looked at her sideways, but then he held out his arms and she gave him the child. He was fussing from being hungry and Kris showed Cohen how to tilt him so the milk would go down.
“Is that it?” he asked.
She shrugged and handed him the bottle. “If you figure out something different, let me know.”
He stuck the nipple in the baby’s mouth and the child fought it at first but then took the nipple and went quiet and started sucking. Cohen moved over to a stack of pallets and sat down. He watched the busy cheeks, the tightly closed eyes. Felt the rhythm of the tiny body as it sucked and breathed. He leaned close to the child and whispered, “I buried your momma. I just want you to know she’s not laying out there for the animals.”
“Gotta burp when he’s done,” Kris said to Cohen.
“Him, not you,” Nadine said. She lay stretched across the concrete, her elbow on the floor and her head propped in her hand, picking at her food lackadaisically like someone who had never been without. Evan and Brisco counted Vienna sausages, adding one and counting again or subtracting two and counting again.
Mariposa ate from a can of sweet potatoes and she came over and sat down next to Cohen. She reached over and touched the baby’s hands, pink and shriveled.
“My dad used to have a store,” she said. “Not big, like this one.”
“Where at?”
“The Quarter. Ursuline and Dauphine.”
“Sounds like a good enough spot.”
“It was. I guess.”
“Get flooded?”
She paused. Tossed the can on the ground and it rolled with the wind. “Eventually. Like everything else. But he got shot before that happened. When everything started going crazy. When people started running around taking whatever they wanted to take. But he didn’t want to let them so he and my uncle locked the doors and stood there with shotguns until they busted out the doors and came on in anyway and that was it.”
Cohen adjusted the baby and the bottle. “Reach in my shirt pocket,” he said. She did and she took out a pack of cigarettes and he asked if she wanted one. She shook her head and held the pack and then he asked how she had ended up down here.
“Hitched some rides,” she said and shrugged. “Don’t really know where I thought I was going.”
“It’s hard to know what to do.”
She nodded. “Like you,” she said, looking up at him.
He nodded slightly, as if surprised by what she had said. “Like everybody,” he answered.
Evan came over to them and said that maybe they should look around. See if there was anything worth having.
Cohen got up and gave the baby and bottle to Kris. “How was it?” she asked.
“Different.”
Mariposa looked at him like she wasn’t done talking, but she sat down with Kris and Nadine. Brisco walked over and took hold of Evan’s hand and said, “I wanna go.”
“You want these?” Mariposa asked and she held out the cigarette pack. When Cohen grabbed it, she squeezed tight, kept his hand there an instant. Then she let go. Cohen took out a cigarette and lit it and he and the boys walked away.
Nadine said, “I can’t stop thinking about all them dead people. How many you think it was?”
“At least fifteen or so,” Kris said.
Nadine sat up, shook her head. “I’m beginning to wonder if this was such a good idea.”
“We don’t have a choice,” Mariposa said.
Nadine stood, suddenly unable to be still. She marched around them, rubbed her hands together. “We ain’t had a choice for a long time and now we got one and there don’t seem to be any good ones.”
“We left,” Kris said. “That was a good one.”
“We got to get somewhere,” Mariposa said.
“I know, but damn.”
“We got Cohen to help,” Mariposa said. “We got rides.”
“We ain’t got gas. And Cohen ain’t bulletproof.”
“We’ll find some,” Kris said.
“Where?” Nadine asked.
“I don’t know. Somewhere. Sit down.”
The baby had fallen asleep sucking on the bottle.
“Lay something down over there,” Kris said, nodding toward an empty corner of the storage room. Mariposa got up and pulled a few shirts from the garbage bag. In the shadowy corner she folded them and then she came back and took the baby from Kris. She walked over to the corner but she didn’t put the baby down right away. She held him. Admired him.
Nadine leaned over to Kris and said quietly, “She’s in trouble.”
Kris nodded.
“She better watch it. About twelve seconds after we get over the Line, he’s gonna drop us all like a bag of dirt.”
Kris looked at Nadine and grinned. “You and me both know it ain’t nothing you can help.”
Nadine sat up again. Made a frown.
The rain beat against the building. Against everything.
Mariposa stood in the corner and held the baby, swaying gently.
“You got somewhere to go when we get there?” Nadine asked Kris.
“The hospital. If there is one.”
“Not that. You know what I mean.”
Kris folded her arms. Looked at the floor. “Not really.”
Nadine lay down again and propped her hand under her head. “Me, neither. I used to have some cousins around Aberdeen but probably not no more. I got brothers somewhere.”
“I figured you had some brothers.”
“Why’s that?”
“ ’Cause you’re sitting on go with them hands of yours. You act like you’d fight a wildcat.”
“Shit. You don’t know the half of it. Three brothers, all older. Cousins all boys. And me the youngest. Brought up on a damn chicken farm. And on top of that my momma was the toughest son of a bitch you ever met.”
Kris laughed. Stretched her legs out and leaned back on her elbows. “I don’t know nothing about all that. Only child right here.”
“That’s about what I’d call paradise.”
Nadine’s last word hung in the air between them. Paradise. They were so far removed from anything of the sort that it was difficult to put an image with the word.
“I wanted to tell you I’m sorry,” Nadine said.
“About what?”
Nadine pointed at her stomach. “I’m sorry that happened.”
Kris put her hand on her stomach. Rubbed her hand around in a circle. “I’m more sorry for Lorna than me,” she said.
“Maybe I’m wrong about all these bad feelings I got,” Nadine said. “Maybe we’re gonna get somewhere. Maybe it’s gonna be okay. But I swear to God, I’m almost as scared of getting to the Line as not getting to it. Don’t none of us have nothing.”
Kris lay flat on the concrete and stared at the exposed metal beams of the ceiling. Nadine turned over and put her head facedown in her arms.
“Where’s your brothers?” Kris asked.
“Wherever Aggie left them,” Nadine said, her voice muffled. “We hunkered down to guard what was left of our place and equipment and Aggie and Joe came wandering up like they was about to starve to death or something. Played us real good. I went to sleep one night in the cab of Eddie’s truck. Woke up the next morning and they was all gone. Aggie was sitting on the tailgate, smoking a cigarette.” Nadine then rolled over on her back. “I don’t have nowhere to go. And if I did, I wouldn’t have nobody when I got there.”
Kris pushed herself up. Scooted over to Nadine and touched her elbow. “Listen to me. All I want is somewhere to have this baby. That’s it. If God don’t give me but one thing the rest of my life, that’s all I want. And when it comes and when I’m laying there and they give it to me, I’m gonna need somebody.”
Nadine sat up and looked at Kris. “Then I’m gonna be there,” she said.
“And then we’ll figure it all out.”
Nadine nodded. “Okay.”
They touched hands, and then they each lay back down. They didn’t talk anymore. They rested and listened to the rain. Mariposa sang softly to the sleeping baby, but when the thunder roared they were reminded that no matter what kind of tomorrow they dreamed of, they were all very lost.
28
THERE WAS NOTHING LEFT IN the storage area of the grocery and Cohen didn’t expect to find anything in the front of the store and he was right. The aisles remained and there were shopping carts up and down but the shelves and coolers had been cleared. At the checkout, the cash registers had been removed.
“Looks like somebody planned ahead,” Cohen said.
“Looks like it,” said Evan.
“Come on. Let’s see what’s next door.”
They walked back through the grocery and out into the rain and they hurried along the alley until they came to the kids’ store and the lock was busted and the door was open. Cohen opened it wide to let in some light and the storage room was much different here. Boxes opened and pilfered and shelves turned over and the office door off its hinges and lying on the floor. In the small office the desk drawers were pulled out and several file cabinets were open and their papers and files strewn across the floor. They moved on through the mess and went into the store area and it was much the same. Some clothes racks standing and some knocked over. Plundered shelves. But scattered about were kids’ clothes, baby clothes. Toys in unopened boxes. Evan picked up a toy truck and said, “Look here.” Brisco took it excitedly and ripped it from its box and started making truck sounds as he ran it up and down the length of the shelf.
“Go get the others,” Cohen said and Evan went back to the grocery store and called for them. In a minute they were all in the kids’ store, sorting through the leftovers. Mariposa laid the baby down on a pile of blankets and he woke and started to cry. They ignored him as she and Nadine took a box and went around filling it up with baby shirts and pants and rattles. They found random pieces of clothing for boys or girls, for kids and infants, and they put it all in the box, taking the time to hold up each piece and show it to one another and oooh and aaah when something was particularly sweet. When one box was filled they found another and Kris said this one is for the baby to keep. They filled it with only boy things. And when the baby’s box was just about full, and with his crying at its highest pitch, Nadine shrieked and raised her hand in the air and she was clutching a pack of pacifiers.
“Thank you, dear Jesus,” she said and she opened up the package and walked over to the baby. She knelt down and said, “Here you go, little madman.” She touched the pacifier to the edge of his open mouth and he took it in and his eyes opened wide. He sucked on it and the tension left his face and the tears slowed and soon he was sucking and quiet and in another minute he had returned to sleep.
“Do not lose these,” Nadine said and she handed the remaining pacifiers to Kris and picked up the two boxes and walked out back.
On the other side of the store, Mariposa was helping Evan with his own box of toys for Brisco. A couple more trucks and a Frisbee and some coloring books. A dinosaur and a robot and a checkerboard and checkers. Brisco circled them with the first truck he had found, treating it as an airplane now, his arm extended and moving the truck in a rising and falling motion, landing it and lifting it again and lost in his own world.
Cohen sat in a chair next to the cash register. He smoked a cigarette and watched. He looked out the storefront where windows used to be, and the wind came in and the thunder was on them and the lightning flashed around them now, brilliant shards of white interrupting the gray. The rain seemed to have eased some but remained constant. He finished the cigarette and stomped it out on the carpeted floor and then he slumped a little in the chair. Leaned his head back against the wall. Closed his eyes.
As he drifted, he found himself thinking about Mariposa. Thinking of her in Elisa’s black dress, believing she was doing something that he wanted her to do.
He opened his eyes and saw her sitting on the floor, trying to piece together an arm onto the body of something shiny and blue. She had pushed up the sleeves of her shirt. Her forearms were girlish but she seemed more of a woman in her shoulders and chest and she bit her lip as she worked the arm into place. Her hair was blacker than a clear night and he noticed how soft her eyes could be when her mind was taken off this thing surrounding her. He wondered if she was even twenty but he didn’t think so. He wondered if she might lie against him again tonight, wherever it was that they would lie down to sleep. The arm popped into place and she held the toy out in front of her and she caught Cohen looking at her. Her eyes went down in embarrassment, then back up with satisfaction.
He stood up and walked to the storefront and tried to light a cigarette but couldn’t in the gust. He stepped through the doorway and he walked along the covered sidewalk to the furniture store. Like the grocery store, it had been cleared out by the people who were supposed to clear it out, not looters and animals. The front windows remained and he stepped back and looked at his reflection. It was the first time he had seen his full figure in a long time. He noticed that he was thin. His beard was uneven. He leaned to one side because he kept his weight on his good leg. He noticed that the hand that wasn’t holding the unlit cigarette was in his coat pocket and he was unconsciously grasping the pistol.
He let go of the pistol and took his hand out of his pocket and he made a peace sign. Then he shot the bird. Then he turned his hand sideways and made a dog. When he was out of tricks, he posed as if holding the baby, imagined what he looked like with a child in his arms. He thought of that baby boy and how out of place he seemed down here, this child of thunder. How out of place they all seemed. For so long, staying below had made sense to him but no more. He was sick of the rain and had been sick of the rain for months and he was sick of the cold and sick of the wind and sick of trying to build that goddamn room that he swore to God that he would build. He knew that whenever he was above the Line, a day from now or a week from now or a year or five years from now, that he would feel a guilt in having left. He knew that some part of him would want to come back. Want to return to the place and want to imagine her there and want to go and sit out by their tombstones and talk to them. He didn’t expect that there would ever be a time when he would be free of his desire to be there, with them. But he realized that he had started something new and he wanted to finish it.
He let his hands fall to his sides and stared at his
reflection. He looked at himself as if he had seen someone from across a room and knew that he knew the person from somewhere but couldn’t remember exactly who it was. And the stranger stared back with the same curious expression.
They looked at each other, but their curiosity was interrupted when he heard a strange thunder. When he turned to look out, it wasn’t thunder but the murmur of an engine and along the four-lane, a camouflage-colored lifted truck with tires as big as small people was rolling in their direction, a spotlight above the truck cab slicing through the storm.
“Shit,” he said and he ran back to the kids’ store and ducked inside and he told them to get to the back, get to the back. They’re coming this way.
Kris scooped up the baby and Nadine helped her along and Evan grabbed Brisco by the arm and lifted and carried him. Mariposa followed and Cohen was behind them all. They ran into the storage room and Cohen ran outside and to the back of the grocery store. He jumped off the loading bay into the back of the truck that held the guns and ammo. He reached under the tarp and grabbed three rifles and ammo and hurried back up and he shoved one in Evan’s chest as the boy put Brisco down and he told Evan to come with him and everybody else to find a dark corner to hide in. And keep that damn pacifier in that kid’s mouth.
“Get down,” Cohen said in a whisper as he and Evan crept back into the storefront. They made their way behind the counter and knelt. He set one rifle on the floor with the boxes of shells and then he propped the other rifle on the countertop and told Evan to do the same. Steady yourself. Use the counter. Don’t jerk. Keep your head down as far as you can but still see. Don’t move.
They listened and the hum of the big truck grew a little louder as the seconds ticked away. “They’re going slow,” Cohen whispered.
“Did they see you?” Evan asked.
“Don’t know.”
From where they were back inside the store, they wouldn’t be able to see the truck until it was almost directly in front of the strip mall and it was not visible yet but almost there. Cohen took his hand from the trigger and flexed his fingers and hand. Evan saw him and did the same thing.
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