Thirst

by Benjamin Warner

  In the late afternoon, Eddie and Laura stood in their doorway and watched a group of their neighbors set off from across the street. They were outfitted as if for an expedition, with packs and visors and hiking shoes. An hour later, another group gathered, but this one was smaller, only three. Eddie thought he recognized the man with the beard who’d organized the evacuation.

  “How many signed up?” he called from the doorway. Two of the evacuees were bent over, pressing clothes into unzipped packs; the organizer was doing some final stretches. He whipped his head around, trying to place the origin of Eddie’s voice. He held his hand up to shade his eyes.

  “Are you coming?” he called. “Is that what you’re asking me?”

  “No,” Eddie said. He laughed one short, derisive laugh. “I think we’re going to stay right here.”

  “There are more groups leaving later. If you want to join them, of course, you can. They’re prepared to pick up others from the neighborhood. They think it’s best to travel at night. I disagreed, but they insisted. There are pros and cons.”

  “Well, break a leg, then,” Eddie said.

  “Ha!” he exclaimed. “A dramaturge.”

  They looked like a sorry lot, walking down the street turtled beneath their bulbous packs, their naked calves flexing with the weight. The packs were ill-fitting and rattled at each step, making them look like a derelict Boy Scout troop.

  When they were gone, the street was silent. The neighborhood looked cleared out and deserted.

  In the evening, Eddie took the mattress from where it leaned against the basement wall and laid it on a section of the floor that was bare cement. It was maybe a degree or two cooler there. Lying down, he could almost feel a current of air flow just above the floor.

  “You’re okay with this?” he said to Laura.

  “With what?”

  “Staying.”

  “Well, I don’t want to go with them.”

  “But you do want to go?”

  “What do you think?” she said.

  “I don’t want to overreact accidentally.”

  “But what’s a reaction and what’s an overreaction? We won’t be able to tell until this is over.”

  “At least we know who we can trust here. When this is over, I want to be around people who know our reputation.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I mean,” he explained, “we can all vouch for each other. People here know us.”

  “Who?” she said. “Who are you talking about besides the Davises?”

  “Whoever,” he said. “All of our neighbors.”

  “Our neighbors are the ones who’re leaving.”

  “Not all of them,” Eddie said, but he felt it, too. The weight of being left behind.

  In the middle of the night, she stirred and sat up cross-legged at the edge of the mattress. She clicked on the flashlight.

  “Nothing’s going to make it any different,” she said. “I can say it all day and it doesn’t matter.” Her words came out with almost no space between them—a stream of syllables—and she swung the beam of the flashlight against the walls. “Tell me I can’t press charges? Tell me? I’ll get the courts here thirty years later.”

  “Laura,” Eddie said.

  “I’ll get them. He’s going to jail.”

  He shook her shoulder and the flashlight fell to the floor and rolled against the mattress so that there was only a small disk of light glowing.

  She lay back down, but crooked, her legs up where her head had been. Her forehead was sticky and hot and her hair was plastered there.

  Eddie went upstairs and fumbled through the cabinet, pulling the handle of the faucet up and down without even looking. When he opened the refrigerator door, the air was as warm as the air in the room. He poured the bottle of lemon juice into a glass and took a gulp that made him shudder.

  There was still a can of mushrooms and the can of black beans, and he opened them and held a colander over a glass. The liquid poured through like syrup, and in the darkness, the glass was almost invisible. He stirred it and brought it down to her, kneeling on her side of the mattress.

  “Laur,” he said, shaking her shoulder. “Come on, Laura.”

  “Oh,” she said.

  He put the light down against the mattress so that there would only be the slightest glow.

  “Eddie. I feel bad.”

  “What hurts?”

  “My hands are tingling.”

  “Give me,” he said, and he took her hands in his and massaged down her knuckles with his thumb.

  “Drink this,” he said, lifting the glass from the floor.

  “What is it?”

  “Just drink. It’s okay.”

  He held her head up and took the glass to her lips.

  “Uhn,” she said, and wrinkled her face.

  “You have to,” Eddie said. “You’ve got to get it down.”

  He could feel her heat against his skin, slightly hotter than the heat in the room.

  She drank and Eddie watched her feet flex. She got through half of it.

  Then he lay still on the mattress, listening to her breathing. It was steady, but every so often, she rasped. When she coughed, Eddie’s stomach tightened.

  Upstairs, her phone was turned off, and when he tried to press it on, nothing happened. The moon lit up the street through the picture window. He heard voices coming from the Mathiases’ and looked across into their yard.

  It was kids again. He’d watched Mr. Mathias before—large and stiff-necked—silence the innocuous street chatter of stroller-moms by merely opening his door. Now these kids were in his yard and his door remained closed. Eddie checked the lock. The can on the back door knob was balanced where it was—the sofa beneath it, unmoved.

  When the voices died out, he went downstairs and felt Laura’s forehead. It had cooled, but the commotion he’d made hadn’t roused her.

  She was still asleep when the light turned gray. There was one stippled window at ground level, and the light that came through made the liquid in her glass look like thin dark milk. She was breathing okay. Eddie tipped the glass to his mouth and held it there until he could muster the courage to swallow. He felt clammy all over, but his skin was dry. Laura’s was, too.

  While she slept, he walked down the street to the abandoned house. It was still early, but he checked the perimeter of the yard and looked for anyone across the street. The big sycamores, he saw, were as bare as in winter. A spray of leaves had collected on the eastern side of the house, where before it had been overgrown in weeds. The stalkier growth was as limp as rope on the ground. He could still see the top of the hedge around back, but it had wilted. The leaves hung like flags on a windless day.

  Nothing was moving across the street. The air was quiet.

  In the backyard, Bill Peters’s arm had flopped out from the bush, and it rested on the burnt grass. Eddie felt the nausea again, but controlled it from coming up. The hand was grotesque—the fingers as pink and swollen as Vienna sausages. Eddie walked to him quickly, not looking at his face. With the toe of his shoe, he tried flipping the arm back up over the body, but it only fell back where it was. He had to stoop down and grab it and fold it over onto Bill Peters’s chest. Even then, whatever it had bloated with made the arm difficult to place. It slid slowly back out away from the body.

  Eddie whined to himself softly through gritted teeth. “What can I do? What can I do?” he said. He squeezed his fingernails into his palms and looked over his shoulder at the empty yard.

  By the back of the house were chunks of cinder block, and he took a piece and weighted the arm back on the outside of the elbow. It stayed where it was. Some of the trees had been shedding branches, and Eddie collected them and propped them against Bill Peters’s side in camouflage.

  Eddie looked back into the yard. If someone had seen him, at any point, they would have moved the body. People would have been here already. The cops would have come.

  He stood in front
yard and called “Hey!” over toward the evacuation leader’s house.

  There was only silence in response.

  “Hello!” he called again. The street was as empty as a canyon. How many of them had cleared out in the night? How many had tottered off with backpacks and flashlights and street maps held in front of their faces?

  He left the body and stood on the sidewalk. He looked up and down the street.

  The sound of Mike Sr. banging down the steps of his deck roused him. Mike Sr.’s face was red and his hair as dry as the yellow grass. He got into the minivan and Eddie watched his shoulder twitch as he turned the key. He watched him pound the steering wheel with his fist.

  By the time Eddie reached him, he was standing in front of the gas flap.

  “Look at this,” he said, though he’d not yet acknowledged Eddie was there. “They drained it. What kind of animals do a thing like this?”

  Eddie looked. The gas cap was gone. He backed up and stepped on it in the driveway.

  “Here,” he said, handing it back to him.

  Mike Sr. screwed the cap in place. “I need to get to a doctor,” he said. His voice was close to breaking.

  “He’s that bad?”

  “I can’t get him cool. He’s in pain. It’s something serious, I can tell.”

  “What’s he drinking?”

  “What are any of us drinking? Nothing.”

  “There might still be people evacuating.”

  “Don’t start with that. A nine-mile walk in this heat? Those idiots. It would kill him. And how do you think Patty would handle it? Where’re the fucking power people, is what I want to know.”

  He banged his fist hard into the hood of the car. Then he banged again and again. His fist was heavy and finally left a dent.

  “Hold on,” Eddie said. “I have something.”

  He went back into his house and soaked a washcloth in apple cider vinegar. Mike Sr. had gone back inside, and Eddie had to knock when he returned.

  Patty opened up, but didn’t speak.

  “Here,” Eddie said, holding up the washcloth.

  She walked through the kitchen, and Eddie followed her down the basement stairs. With each step down, she pulled the railing, until Eddie thought she’d wrench it free.

  They had Mike Jr. lying down in an old bathtub liner, a pillow under his head. His naked body was pink.

  “Look who’s here,” Patty said. Mike Sr. stood above the boy, gently fanning with a towel.

  Mike Jr. looked at Eddie and managed a smile. “Eddie,” he said.

  “Yeah,” said Mike Sr.

  “Here you go, slugger,” Eddie said. He laid the washcloth on his forehead and Mike Jr. let it rest there.

  After a while, he said, “It stings.”

  Patty reached down and folded the washcloth over once so that it wasn’t so close to his eyes. “Probably the fumes,” she said. “Vinegar?”

  Eddie nodded.

  “We’ve got some wine somewhere upstairs. I’ll use that next. We sure as shit ain’t drinking it,” Patty said.

  “Alcohol. No way,” said Mike Sr.

  “You’ll be celebrating with it soon,” Eddie said. “I bet the work crews are here this afternoon.”

  “They have to be,” Patty said. “There was just a rate hike. They’re all crooks down there.”

  “Look, Eddie, we’ve been talking,” Mike Sr. said. “That wheelbarrow full of goodies that Paul was rolling around … it couldn’t have gone very far.”

  “You know Paul?” Eddie said.

  “Yeah, I know Paul. He’s lived here for years. He’s a royal pain in the ass. Probably out on the highway now trying not to melt.”

  “You know the man he was with?”

  “Who was he with?”

  “Another guy.”

  “I didn’t see another guy.”

  Mike Jr. whined in a way that otherwise would have brought a scolding. It was the whine of a spoiled child, but equally, Eddie realized, of pain.

  Mike Sr. looked at Eddie and said nothing about his son. Instead, he said, “I know where he would’ve taken it. Down to Mrs. Kasolos. He treats that woman like his mother.”

  Eddie couldn’t keep the heat from spreading up his neck, and he covered it with his hand. It was too late, though. He was hot all the way up to his ears.

  “Which one is she?” he said.

  “Little old lady at the end of the street.”

  “That’s who they were collecting water for,” Patty said.

  “They probably gave it out to people all over,” Eddie said.

  Mike Sr. touched his thumb to the side of his nose. “And some of it to her,” he said.

  “You want to ask her for it?”

  “Nope,” Mike Sr. said “Tried that already. They must’ve gotten her outta town. She’s not answering her door. I want to go in there and take it.”

  “Who would have taken her out of town?” Eddie said.

  “She’s got family nearby. A daughter up in Burtonsville.”

  “So, you want to break in. What happens when the cops show up?”

  “There aren’t any cops. If they show up, then we saved the neighborhood. Second, I’m not going to break in.” He held Eddie with the sharpness of his gaze. “You are.”

  Eddie felt a further weakness travel up his legs. “I don’t know,” he said.

  “I’m too big. I need your skinny ass. You go in, check the fridge, come out. I need to get some liquids in my son. It’s as simple as that right now.”

  “I’m not breaking into her house,” Eddie said, flatly. “That’s like looting. I’m not starting in on that.”

  “Looting,” Mike Sr. said. “Listen to yourself. My son is sick. There could be water a block away that no one’s drinking. You’re my neighbor, Ed. I shouldn’t have to even ask you like this. You should have already volunteered.”

  Eddie had never seen Mike Sr. angry, but it was coming now. He was a big man with the thick arms of his trade. His breath was making little huffing noises in his nostrils.

  “Okay,” Eddie said.

  “Okay,” Mike Sr. repeated. “Okay. Let’s go there, then.”

  They walked up from the basement and back out onto the street. Mrs. Kasolos had bushes with leaves as dry as pencil shavings. Eddie knocked on the door while Mike Sr. waited on the walk with his arms crossed. When she didn’t answer, they went to the side of the house and Mike Sr. took a knee so that Eddie could stand on it and reach up to the window. He leaned both his palms into the screen and pushed. The window behind it was unlocked, and it budged.

  “I’ve got to break the screen,” Eddie said.

  “Break it, then.”

  He dragged his fingernails across the corner of the screen and pressed until it tore. Then he got a hold under the window and pushed up to open it. Mike Sr. laced his fingers into a stirrup and Eddie stepped into it. When he said, “Okay,” Mike Sr. hoisted him up and Eddie bent his body over the sill until he could touch the floor inside with his fingertips. The blood rushed to his face, and he fell and banged his knee across the sill as he went over. He lay on the floor in a heap.

  “Mrs. Kasolos!” he called, not yet getting up. He was afraid he’d faint. “It’s Ed Gardner. Don’t be alarmed. I’m just checking up on you.”

  He lay there and listened to the silence.

  “You okay in there?” Mike Sr. called.

  Eddie stood up and steadied himself. The room had blurred a little.

  “Hold on,” he called, and was surprised by the rasp in his voice. He swallowed and got a little saliva in his mouth. He held on to the edge of the wooden breakfront, the plate with the two Bush presidents staring him in the face. On the table, the bunch of bananas had gone black. Against the wall, the watercooler was headless; only the white plastic stand with its triangular spigot remained upright. The jug was on the floor—on its side. Eddie could see the stain where it had spilled onto the hardwood.

  He turned and saw Mrs. Kasolos sitting behind him i
n an armchair by the door. Her face was as wide across as a pumpkin. Purple veins piped through the insides of her elbows.

  He stumbled forward and grabbed for the doorknob, not looking over at her. When he opened it to the hot air outside, it was as if he’d broken through a surface of water and could breathe again.

  “She’s in here,” he said, gasping.

  Mike Sr. walked past him. In a few minutes, he came out and said, “She’s gone.” He had a brown cylinder of prune juice in his hand that he held by the plastic lid. He jiggled it to demonstrate the slosh of liquid.

  “A little left,” he said.

  “What are we gonna do?”

  “Got any bright ideas? I’m not digging a grave. Not in this heat.”

  “She’s swollen.”

  Mike Sr. pulled the door shut behind him. “She was old, Ed. Don’t get too worked up.”

  “I know.”

  “Old people die when the power goes out.”

  Eddie had trouble moving. The air seemed to have congealed around him.

  “We’ll call it in when the power’s back,” Mike Sr. said.

  They walked back to their yards, and Eddie went inside his house. He took a steak knife from out of the block. He held it very still and very close to his side. Whatever death gasses were inside Mrs. Kasolos were expanding. It was their nature to expand.

  He walked down the street holding the knife very still.

  Bill Peters’s arm had moved the piece of cinder block a little, but it hadn’t gotten free. His wrist had swollen like a baby’s, and his shirt strained against his chest and belly. Eddie let his gaze travel up: the cheeks, ballooned, a bee-stung forehead. His eyes were lost in it.

  Eddie placed the tip of the knife just below the sternum, and looked away. Then he leaned into it. The knife hit something hard—maybe bone—and he pulled it back and aimed a few inches lower into a softer spot. There was a faint sound, almost the rumble of indigestion. Eddie’s arms were weak, and when he flexed his hands into fists, he couldn’t squeeze them hard. He walked to the opposite side of the yard and held on to the chain-link fence. With his eyes closed, he could imagine that he was dreaming.