Hunger and Thirst

by Wightman, Wayne

  Jack listened to the silence.

  The ravine was a good five miles east.

  Jack tore through the house, digging his old pack and his canteen out of the closet and then put on his walking boots. He put three days' worth of food in his pack, filled the canteen, and strapped it on.

  On a piece of paper, he wrote, “I love you but it's time for me to go. Maybe someday”

  He was stuck.

  Then he wrote, “Forgive me.” He stared at it, considering what else to add, whether he should throw it away...

  “My god,” he said, slumping. “What am I doing?” The idea of leaving Natalie was unthinkable.

  Five seconds later, he went to the front door, almost at a run.

  “Artie!” he called from the front step. In front of him was the row of flowers he had planted. They were a foot tall and had two early blossoms. With his pocket knife, he cut the stems, hurried them back inside and left them across the note.

  “Artie!” he called again from the step. “Artie! If you're out there, we're moving on.”

  He pulled his ragged knit cap down over his ears. Except for being shaved, he now looked like the old Jack. Just before he rounded the hill he stopped and took a long last look at the house where he had been brought back to life. Now it was goodbye.

  “Artie!” He listened carefully. Nothing.

  Then he moved on into the gathering dark, toward the highway, then toward the west, to the fading horizon of the Sierra Nevada. After ten minutes, he slowed to catch his breath — and then he stopped. He cocked his head and listened.

  “Artie?” He walked across the ruined highway and back. “Artie?” And then he heard what he'd only thought he'd heard.

  “Meah.” That was Artie. He never put much effort behind his meows.

  Jack sat down on the ground the instant he saw Artie, not much more than a shadow, coming up the highway behind him. First thing, Jack put his face next to his, asked him where he'd been and raked trash out of his fur.

  “You were there all the time, hiding out from us and the dogs. I can see how you might have been nervous around the queen predator.”

  Artie managed a slight purr.

  Jack lit a small candle between his knees to check him over better. Fur was rough. No scabs, no lumps. Most of his front left paw was gone. The biggest pad was there, but the toes were gone and the wound was healed.

  “Snagging food out of her god damned traps cost you, didn't it.”

  Jack took a towel out of his pack and knotted it in a loop. “Here's the deal, pal. We’re going to California, to the ocean, and you’re not going to have to walk one foot of the way unless you want to... the least I can do.”

  Artie understood the drill and let himself be placed in the sling. Then Jack was off at the fastest pace he thought he could maintain for the next ten hours.

  The moon rose behind him and gave him good light. The conditions were better than he'd expected.

  “Palm trees, Artie. Beaches. You're going to love the size of the sandbox. Babes in bikinis. Lady cats in skimpy fur coats. Just over the next couple of mountain ranges.”

  Jack realized he had slackened his pace and picked it up again. Distance. He pumped on. He needed distance.

  “Jack.”

  He screamed, spun, and leaped backward.

  Natalie stood quietly beside the highway, as she had stood beside the highway when he opened his crusty eyes so many months ago. In that liquid green silk sheath, the impossible high heels, her hair its perfect absorbing black... right out here in the middle of the night. The moon was behind her — she should have been silhouetted, but she stood there as though in early twilight with her mona lisa smile, holding some shapeless thing in one of her hands.

  “I didn't mean to frighten you.”

  Jack staggered back. This couldn't be... again.

  Artie hissed viciously from the sling.

  “I'm not here to stop you. I knew it was time, and the night would be fair. I didn't want to make it hard for you. Here. This is the coat I've kept for you, and the extra canteen, filled. Think of me when you're thirsty. When the coat keeps you warm, think of me.”

  His heart ached.

  Jack hesitantly stepped close enough to take the things. He wanted to say Thank you but he couldn't get his air and voice to work together.

  The instant he had the two things, Artie launched himself at Natalie and seized her hand, gutturally yowling and with claws and teeth ripped and chewed at her hand. Natalie appeared undisturbed. She held her arm unnaturally straight out in front of her, with the ten-pound animal savaging her. She observed it with unexcited interest.

  Jack recoiled, unsure what to do — to grab at Artie? But Natalie stood there without particular expression.

  After a quarter of a minute, Artie dropped to the ground and Natalie moved her bloody hand behind her back.

  “Goodbye, Jack. I've done my best to never let bad things overwhelm you. In my own way, I'll always be with you, and you with me.” She placed her uninjured hand under the lower swell of her abdomen. “Thank you. If you come back this way, stop for tea and we can share memories. Goodbye, Jack. I'll miss you terribly. But goodbye.”

  Without turning around, she glided backward, away from him, into the dark, and was gone faster than he could realize she was no longer there.

  After a stunned half-minute, Jack refocused his attention on Artie, who was still growling mauling something on the ground.

  “She's gone, Artie! Give it a break. Artie!”

  He knelt down and saw that Artie had several of her fingers, bloody, chewed and dirty. He recognized her nails, even ripped half off. He moaned.

  “Come on, Arthur.” He tried pushing the cat away, but it wasn't working. “Let's go.” He tried picking him up by the scruff, but Artie went berserk and had to be dropped. He went back to the fingers and growled over them.

  “California's this way, Artie. Come on, pal.” Jack walked till he couldn't see Artie. “Artie! God damn it!”

  In the pale moon light, he saw Artie dutifully coming toward him holding one of her fingers in his mouth. He dropped it near Jack's feet and then trotted back out of sight. Momentarily he returned with another finger, dropped it, pawed at it, picked it up again and dropped it a closer to the other one. He glanced up at Jack and disappeared again.

  “Artie! Leave that stuff behind. Artie!”

  The cat almost bounded up to him and dropped the third blood- and dirt-crusted finger at his feet.

  Jack let his pack slide off and sat on it. Artie also sat. Artie looked at the fingers and then he looked at Jack. Back and forth.

  “You know it, don't you, beast that you are. She's got us. She got us both.”

  Artie seemed to either agree or not care or both.

  “All right, Arthur.” Jack took a rag out of his pack and flicked the bloody, sand-crusted fingers onto it with a twig. Then he stopped.

  He picked each one up and lightly brushed the dirt off it. “I've kissed these fingers a hundred times. I've loved this woman's hands. I've held these fingers over my heart.” He cleaned them, wrapped them carefully, and put them alone in a separate pocket. “ Between the two of you, I never had a prayer, did I.” He lifted the cat into the sling. “Let's go. We can get another five or six hours closer to the Pacific.”

  Artie looked up at him out of the sling. He yawned.

  “Just another day in the animal world.”

  He put one foot in front of the other, heading west.

  After a few minutes, he had enough of his marbles in a row that he could give a thought to what she had said, that he would always be with her — and where she had placed her hand. It hit him.

  She was pregnant.

  He stopped in his tracks. Go back? Go on? He trudged on. Maybe someday he would go back. But Natalie had expected him to travel on. She had needed him, and now he could leave.

  It was part of the plan.

  ....

  Four days later, Jack cou
ld look behind him, look below him, and see the deceptive wastes of Nevada spread to the east. The upslope into the Sierra was sudden and unsubtle and his legs ached, so he had stopped at a flat area and built a small fire to heat water for a packet of rice.

  He was aimlessly stirring it with a small stick when he first heard the dogs — and they were already close. Artie was on his feet, had scanned the area, and had undoubtedly selected the nearest tree.

  Jack was on his feet, but there was nothing to do, nowhere to run. There was roadside rubble on both sides and any nearby trees had no branches for thirty feet up. Artie had already vanished when Jack saw the first one, a blunt-nosed labrador-hound.

  All he thought he might have going for him was his human authority. Perhaps they remembered being ordered around by animals like him. And he had the finger bones. He dug them out of their pocket. They were clean, fleshless bones now. He had stripped them and in doing so had horrified himself beyond his imagination. But he did it and he lived with it and now he held them in his hands without the slightest idea of what to do next.

  A pack of six or eight swarmed up the highway from the east. They all panted and looked tired. Jack prepared to sling the bones at them if they lunged at him to tear him apart, but it looked very quickly like that wasn't going to happen.

  The dogs gathered, seemed to look around at each other for some kind of agreement, then one sat down; then another; another. Several rolled onto their sides and panted. They noted Jack, but they didn't pay him much attention.

  And they had settled themselves exactly between Jack and the highway.

  He watched them carefully for a while, finished with his rice — one eye on the dogs, an occasional look-around for Artie — ate half of it and stashed the other half. Natalie hadn't said much about the dogs, other than that they didn't come close enough to be a problem, even with the rabbit hutches. That was frail hope.

  Jack stood up. What else was there to do? He could stay where he was or see if he could get past them.

  Although they didn't seem to be watching him, most of the dogs stood up when he did.

  By the time he'd got his pack on, all the dogs were afoot and looked ready — for what, he didn't want to guess. A single canine whim to take down the human, and they'd all follow. Once they got him, he figured he'd probably have under a minute left. It would be a bad under-a-minute. Whatever happened next, it was their choice, not his. So — as long as he wasn't dead, he'd keep going west.

  First thing was to collect Artie. He wasn't going without Arthur, he decided, even if he got killed protecting him.

  Artie was terrified enough to let himself be found, and he didn't object when Jack folded the towel-sling around him to both conceal him and to keep him from seeing potential assassins.

  “Okay, Arthur. I got my bones in my throwing hand and you in my holding hand. Let's see if we're alive in five minutes.”

  He didn't move quickly and he didn't look directly at the dogs. He aimed himself upslope, toward the side of the pack, and expected them to converge on him there... but they didn't. They moved back away from him, giving him wide room to pass.

  Jack slowed a little and veered more toward them... and yes, they did move back away from him, leaving a twenty-yard margin. Jack headed on up the road. The dogs lagged behind, slowly dropping further back till he didn't see them anymore. When he ate, later that day, there were no dogs to be seen in any direction, none could be heard.

  “Whatever.”

  It was another mystery until that night. He awakened to hear something tearing through the brush followed by frenzied barking dogs tearing past him. There were some distant scuffles, a few barks, and all was again quiet.

  Jack put his head back down the top of his pack. “We have an escort,” he whispered to Artie. “I'm sorry they're dogs.”

  ....

  He had heard there were permanent thieving stations along the pass highways, but he only encountered one. A man ambled out of the woods, rifle in hand, smile on his face. Two other men and a woman hung back. They all seemed cheerful. The woman even gave him a little finger-wave.

  “Howdy,” the man said. He was in his fifties, craggy, and a bit shorter than Jack; his down jacket made him look top-heavy. “I'm here to take your stuff. Whanchew put it down there so I don't have to work at gettin' it off your corpse.”

  Jack dropped his pack. “I got my cat in this sling.”

  “Oh, goody. Dinner. Put it down and let me shoot it. Or I shoot you first and then it.”

  Behind the man, Jack saw one of the other men laughing and grabbing the woman's butt. She shrieked and danced away to the other man.

  Jack had one of the finger bones in his hand. He held it up between his thumb and forefinger. “This is the only valuable thing I've got. Here.” He held it in his palm, offering to toss it over.

  The man nodded and Jack tossed it to him. He caught it.

  The man's eyes went wide and wild. Jack took the finger bone out of his hand and the rifle from under his arm. The cartridges he pocketed and the rifle he leaned against the man's body; he'd take it with him and throw it off the road somewhere.

  The two men and the woman off in the back stopped laughing and approached at angles to see what was going on. One of the men now had a rifle in his hands.

  “I don't know how long you'll be that way,” Jack said to the man in the down jacket. He hoisted his pack. “Nor do I care. But do tell your friends, if you get the chance, that I was a nice guy about this. I didn't cut your throat. I think most people would have, don't you?”

  Jack saw the dogs as he was shrugging into the pack. They were coming up behind him and they didn't look like they were out for exercise. Their heads hung low and they focused on the three on the hillside. The people didn't run at first — they hesitated, knowing that if they ran, the dogs would follow. They hesitated till one dog just couldn't wait and broke for them. The rest of the pack lunged forward.

  There was one gunshot. The humans didn't get up to speed, or out of Jack's sight, before they were brought down. It was noisy. It was all dog noise.

  Three dogs from the back of the back of the pack apparently decided the competition was too heavy and broke off, circling back toward Jack and standing, pacing, just outside the personal limit they sensed that he had.

  Jack stepped up and said into the man's face, “I don't know if you had any friends before, but you don't now.” Jack snapped shut the last strap on his pack; he was ready to travel.

  The man still quivered, straining to move, like he might split out of his skin.

  “If our positions were reversed, you'd probably find this humorous — power of life and death over a helpless person. I don't find this humorous. You're like a dirty job that stepped out of the woods and needed doing.”

  The man stared at him, his eyes huge. Steam rolled off his pants where he peed.

  Jack started to leave but stopped. “One last thing. Do you suppose this is what your victims felt? Bad feeling, isn't it.” Jack walked away.

  The three dogs moved in as Jack moved out. In thirty seconds the dogs had quieted and settled into feeding from their proprietary areas.

  Jack didn't look back. The day continued.

  ....

  There was a three-foot-wide path of packed snow where animals and other travelers had passed. The day had barely brightened to a gray glow and it stayed that way till nightfall. Then it repeated, with drizzle.

  Jack trudged on, tired, dirty and wet — forward... forward to the Pacific. With the poncho hooded over him he almost missed the sign, and he was glad he hadn't.

  It was almost billboard size, at least fifty years old, barely legible, with a hundred bullet holes in it:

  WELCOME TO CALIFORNIA

  THE GOLDEN STATE

  Littering Punishable by $450 Fine

  “We made it, Arthur. Don't drop any of your litter. Next stop, the blue Pacific and palm trees. Those babes better be in bikinis. Lotta sand on those beaches for you. Cat
paradise.”

  Artie stuck his nose out of the sling, saw the rain and pulled his head back.

  “I share your excitement.”

  Jack trudged on. He felt like his Hope Meter had moved from one to two. But it moved.

  ....

  In full sun, using his jacket as a pillow, Jack dozed on a stretch of shaggy grass. Gulls wheeled and called overhead. Near him, Artie batted at a leaf with his toeless paw, bit it, and rolled onto his back, like Jack. The Pacific Ocean lay at their feet, stretched across half the world, and it was bluer than the sky.

  He had arrived in this place a month before. He had found a decent abandoned cottage, had started a garden, and accumulated some food. But today, sunning himself here, now — this was exactly the place he wanted to be.

  “Hey, you fuck.”

  Jack opened his eyes.

  Hewitt. Squatting at the edge of the clearing. With a machete poised on his shoulder.

  “Hi, Hewitt.”

  “Two months ago, around Sonora, I heard about this dipshit travelin' with a cat. It was worth a look, you know? Where's my shoes, Jack?”

  “Just like old times, hey Hewitt?”

  “Ever wake up, Jack, and wonder if today was gonna be your big day? Well, today is your big one. Just to clarify, because I want you to think about it, I'm gonna chop you up a little bit with this, and then I'm gonna gut your pussy over there and eat it while you watch, so don't you pass out on me now. Roast pussy and beans, a complete protein, don't you know. You don't have my shoes, do you. What'd you do with my shoes?”

  “I traded them for a can of corn. It was the water I wanted.”

  “You made me walk barefoot for a can of corn?”

  “You lived. Back in Nevada, I found your red plaid shirt with blood on it. I thought you were dead.”

  “I traded it, then whacked the assholes I traded it to because they got smart with me. I got to doodle with him for a while but he bled on it, so I left it and took his.” Hewitt chuckled. “Sorry to disappoint.”

  “Do you like being such a vicious bastard?”

  “I do, Jack. I really do. It's got me everything I have, and it got me here where I get to punch your ticket. Say hello to Jesus.” He stood up and raised the machete overhead at the same time.