by J. L. Esplin
We aerate it one last time. It’s still early twilight.
“What do you think?” Will asks hopefully. His lips are cracked and dry, but he stops short of licking them—taking my advice from earlier, which kind of makes me feel proud of him.
I test the water again with my pinkie. The water will get cooler if we wait, give the air temperature a chance to drop more. But I say, “It’s cool enough,” and he lets out a relieved breath.
We spot a large rock a little farther ahead on the highway, where we can sit and wait for Cleverly and Stew to catch up. They aren’t too far back now.
Cleverly is feeling the weight of the pack—I can tell by the heaviness in her walk, the way she pulls the straps away from her shoulders every so often, like she’s trying to ease the burden on her back. Stew looks all right, considering. Definitely not dead. But I’ve also decided he’s not going to carry that pack again. If Cleverly can manage it for one more day, then we’ll ditch it when we set out on the last day.
“Ready for a drink?” Will calls out to them, holding up the canteen.
Cleverly nudges Stewart and they actually pick up their pace, Stew grinning at whatever Cleverly’s said to him.
Will and I have the first mug of water already poured when they reach us.
“I think John should take the first drink,” Cleverly says. She pulls off the pack awkwardly, one strap at a time, and collapses onto the rock beside me, her back soaked with sweat.
Stew squats down on his heels in the dirt, streaks of dried sweat down his temples. “You found it, John,” he says, hanging his head as he works to catch his breath. “You go first.”
“I agree,” Will says. He holds out the mug for me.
I look down at my brother, watch his back rise and fall with each heavy breath. I take the water. I don’t think too hard about where it came from. Just raise the mug to them and say, “To the Battle Born.”
“To the Battle Born,” they repeat, lifting invisible mugs of their own.
Then I down the first cup of toilet water.
10
“CAN YOU SHINE that down here for a minute?” I say to Cleverly.
“Sorry!” She jumps and points the flashlight back to the ground, where I’m clearing an area for our tarp.
It’s not completely dark, but we’re down to the last few minutes of dusk—the sky deep blue against the black silhouette of distant mountains, a blanket of stars just beginning to appear. Bugs and other desert critters are already out in full force. We hear them all around us, a nighttime chorus of clicks and chirps that I find both familiar and calming. But it makes Cleverly nervous. She’s got the flashlight going everywhere, jumping at the slightest sound.
“Over here,” Stew calls to Will from a few yards away, gathering up whatever they can find to make a fire—mostly sticks. Just to give us more light. Scare away snakes and small animals.
“It’s a good thing we won’t need a fire to keep warm through the night,” I say to Cleverly, looking out at the sparse brush. “There’s not much out here.”
“Do you often make fires to keep warm in the desert?” she asks.
“It gets below freezing in the winter,” I say. “But not this time of year. It might get down to sixty degrees tonight. Good conditions for sleeping in the open.” I kick aside a few loose rocks, pry loose a few more with my hands, and chuck them out in the desert. The sound of tiny scurrying feet follow, and Cleverly’s light shoots out there again.
“Those are probably just kangaroo rats,” I say. “They aren’t going to bother you.”
“I’m not a fan of rats,” she says.
“Trust me, they’re probably more terrified of you right now.”
She shines the light at her face so I can see what she thinks of that.
I shake my head, holding back a laugh. “They don’t look like the big scary sewer rats you’re imagining. They’re kind of cute.”
“I’ll take your word for it,” she says, then looks down at the flashlight’s fading beam. “Hang on.” She flips out the crank on the handle and starts winding it up as fast as she can.
I sigh, slapping the dirt from my palms onto my pants. “These flashlights suck.”
“At least we don’t have to worry about batteries dying,” she says, which is a good point, considering dead batteries are the reason the flashlight in her backpack is completely worthless right now.
Both Stew’s flashlight and mine are self-powered. They don’t need batteries, but you have to wind them up every ten minutes or so when they start to dim. Even at full power, they don’t offer much in the way of light.
Which is part of the reason I agreed to stop at dusk, two miles short of our goal, about a mile from the turnoff to the reservoir.
The other reason being that I’ve decided to choose my battles carefully. At least for tonight.
Cleverly’s still winding the flashlight when I drop the tarp, spreading it flat on the dirt. I don’t bother to hammer stakes in at the corners, not worth the energy, just toss Stewart’s and my rolled-up sleeping bags on top. I’ve been thinking about the different ways our sleeping arrangement could go. The obvious being that Stew and I squeeze into one sleeping bag, and Cleverly and Will take the other. But sharing a sleeping bag with Stew will complicate things. He’d definitely feel me getting up to sneak off to the reservoir.
“My feet are killing me,” Cleverly says, sitting on the tarp, propping the fully charged flashlight against a sleeping bag.
I glance over my shoulder and see Stew and Will crouching on the ground not far away, getting that fire ready. “Hey,” I say quietly, getting down on my heels beside her. She’s gotten her shoes off, and is pushing her knuckles into the arch of one foot. “I’ve got to go get the water tonight,” I tell her.
She stops rubbing her foot. “Tonight?”
“After everyone is asleep. I was thinking, I’ll suggest we unzip the sleeping bags and lay them out the long way, like blankets.”
“John—”
“One under the four of us, and the other on top. Then I was thinking, you could say something about not wanting to sleep on either end, because of snakes, and I’d volunteer to take one end, and Stew would have to take the other end. Then he won’t feel me getting up—”
“And when are you planning to sleep?”
“I’m pulling an all-nighter.”
“Really?” she says. “Without any Red Bull?”
“That’s right.” I smile at her sarcasm.
“I don’t think Stew is going to be happy when he finds out you went to the reservoir on your own.”
“Well, yeah.” I shrug.
“Will is going to be upset too.”
I feel guilty enough about lying to my own brother, without throwing in Will. He was getting pretty amped about it earlier. I say to Cleverly, “It makes sense for me to go on my own. You know that, right?”
“But in the middle of the night? And then walk all day tomorrow on no sleep?”
“This is the only way to keep us on schedule.” She starts to say something else, so I quickly add, “It’s just one night. It’s not like I’ve never stayed up all night before.”
She rolls her eyes. “This isn’t the same as staying up all night in your room playing video games, John. Have you even thought this through?”
“Well, I’m trying not to think about it too much.” I say it jokingly, but it’s actually the truth.
“Stew is right,” she says in a sharp whisper. “Just like when you wouldn’t drink that cup of water in the tarp shelter. You think you’re stronger than everybody else!”
“What?” I say, confused by her sudden anger. “No, I don’t.”
“Yes, you do!” she insists, her voice rising. “You’re full of yourself. That’s why you think you can go an entire night without sleep, and then walk thirty more miles the next day! Which is just crazy—”
I put my hand on her knee to quiet her, glance over my shoulder at the silhouettes of our brothers,
hunched together and talking low, smoke already rising between them. “Just listen to me for a second, all right?”
She presses her lips into a hard line, glares down at my hand on her knee, so I quickly take it off.
“I don’t want to do this,” I admit, the words coming out in a desperate whisper. “My feet hurt, my legs are sore, I’m tired. All I want to do is shut my eyes and forget about how hungry I am, forget about—” I stop myself, pushing thoughts of failure from my head.
I sit back on my heels and say with resolve, “But I’m doing it. I’m walking to that reservoir and back again tonight. All I’m asking you to do is help me sneak off without my brother waking up.”
“Hey,” Stew calls out, the smell of burning sagebrush wafting through the air, the soft crackle of a growing campfire.
“Come see what we created!” Will says, pounding his fist on his chest.
“We’re coming!” I call back, still looking to Cleverly for an answer.
“I’ll think about it,” she finally says. She grabs her shoes, wincing as she pulls them back onto her feet.
I get the food pouches from our packs, the last canteen of water, watching Cleverly out of the corner of my eye, trying to decide if she would actually sabotage my plan. But maybe her “thinking about it” is a good thing. Deep down, she has to know that my going to the reservoir tonight is our best option, crazy or not.
Will’s found a good rock to sit on—flat, not too close to the warmth of the campfire. He moves over to make room for Cleverly. “It’s a tepee structure on top,” he says, talking about the fire. “But first we made a platform, crisscrossing sticks on the bottom like this.” He shows Cleverly with his fingers. “That lets oxygen creep in from below.”
“How did you know that, Will?” she says.
“I didn’t. Turns out, I don’t know anything about building a fire. Stew just showed me.”
Stew stares into the flames, as if he doesn’t hear Will say his name. He’s got his ankles crossed with his knees up, his folded arms resting on top.
It hasn’t escaped my notice that Stewart’s mood has changed again. Eyes dull and emotionless. I’m just trying to ignore it. Trying to get this night over with as soon as I can.
“Don’t feel too bad,” I say to Will, squatting down beside my brother. “Stew’s been building fires with my dad since he was five years old.”
“So, to make a fire, you don’t just throw down a pile of wood and light a match?” Cleverly says, joking.
At least, I think she’s joking.
But then Will nods seriously. “That’s what I thought too.”
Stew makes a noise that almost sounds like a laugh.
I smile. “If you hold a match up to a pile of wood, the only things that are gonna burn are your fingers.”
“You need tinder to light the kindling,” Will says to Cleverly. “I’ll show you next time we build a fire. When we boil water at the reservoir.”
I feel myself tense up, unsure of what Cleverly will say. But she just presses her lips together tight, like she’s annoyed.
So maybe she doesn’t love what I’m planning to do tonight, but she’s had a chance to think about it, and she knows I’m right.
I roll onto my knees toward the waning fire, grab a few of the bigger sticks, and carefully place them upright against the crumbling tepee, building it up again. Then I sit back and take the meal for tonight from my pouch—four sticks of generic beef jerky. I give one to Stew, hold out two pieces to Cleverly, and she passes one to Will.
“Is this the same jerky we had earlier?” she asks.
“Yep. It’s the last of it.”
Cleverly tears off a small piece with her fingers and examines it thoughtfully. “Best jerky I’ve ever had in my life,” she says before putting it in her mouth.
“It’s delicious,” Will agrees.
I gnaw off a bite of the plain jerky, my stomach grumbling—a loud, slow grumble that seems to go on forever, no matter how hard I press down on my hollow stomach.
“John,” Cleverly says, “will tonight’s dinner have a second course? You know. To keep us from sleeping all night on an empty stomach?”
I shake my head. “It’s better to save food for the morning, for the middle of the day when we need it most.” But then I notice the way she’s looking at me, her eyebrows raised like I’m missing her point.
She’s not really talking about some of us sleeping on an empty stomach. She’s talking about one of us walking to the reservoir on an empty stomach.
“We can split a couple of my protein bars,” Stew says, as if I didn’t just make a good argument for saving our food for tomorrow. He pulls them out of his pouch.
“Perfect,” Cleverly says.
My stomach rumbles again.
I think about whether to let her win this one, and then give her a small shrug. At least she’s accepted the fact that I am going to the reservoir tonight.
“My last one with no nuts,” Stew says, breaking a protein bar in half for me.
It’s chewy, sticks to the roof of my dry mouth, and has the weird aftertaste of artificial sweetener.
I savor every bite.
“I gotta pee,” Stew announces.
“I gotta go too,” Cleverly says. She shines the flashlight into the dark with a shiver. “I’m dreading it.”
I stop my brother, picking up the canteen. “Let’s drink this first, all right?”
He sits back down with an indifferent shrug.
“The whole canteen?” Will asks as I pour, like he’s surprised.
“Yep.” I don’t explain to him that I’ll need it empty so I can refill it tonight.
We drink just as slowly as we ate, the water barely cooler than it was before, slightly more refreshing.
Then we all relieve ourselves in the desert.
Cleverly goes last, takes the toilet paper, and makes Will go with her to hold the flashlight and watch out for snakes. When they get back, Stew and I have gotten the sleeping bags unzipped and laid out like I suggested.
“I don’t need to sleep under a blanket,” Stew says. “I’d rather have the extra padding beneath me.”
I start to agree with him—it’s still pretty warm—but then I think about Stew changing his mind in the middle of the night, waking up to pry the covers out from underneath him, and finding me gone.…
“The ground’s not that hard, Stew,” I say, which is kind of a dumb thing to say.
Stew gives me a look like I’m crazy, but then Will says, “I’ve got an idea of how we can have extra padding. It’s called ‘the human pillow chain.’”
“The human pillow chain?” Stew repeats.
“We’ll sleep in a square formation,” Will says, speaking over him, “with each person resting their head on the stomach of the person next to them.”
“There is no way I could sleep with someone’s head on my stomach,” Stew says.
“Let’s just try it,” I say, mostly because Will looks like he’s getting ready to dig in and insist we try it, and I’m anxious to hurry things along.
We form a square, with my head on Will’s flat stomach, and I can tell the weight of it is crushing him.
“How’s that feel, Will? Comfortable?” I say.
“Yes,” he groans, and I bite back a laugh.
Cleverly’s got her head on my stomach, and I lift mine to look down at her. “It’s probably very hard, as far as pillows go.”
“It’s not that hard,” she says. Then she props herself up on her elbow and punches my stomach a few times like she’s fluffing a pillow.
My laugh comes out like a grunt, and it starts a chain reaction of laughing and bouncing heads. Will concedes failure, and we all sit up.
“Okay, it’s been fun, but I’m going to sleep,” Stew says. He pulls up his knee and starts untying his shoe.
“I’m not sleeping on the end,” Cleverly blurts out self-consciously.
I have to look down to hide the smile tugging at the co
rner of my mouth.
“Seriously?” Stew says. I can almost hear his eyes rolling. “Snakes can crawl over people, you know.”
“Thanks for informing me. I’m still not sleeping on the end.”
I get up to stomp out the last of the dying embers, because it’s not safe to keep them burning without a pit, and also because I can’t seem to wipe the smile off my face. I’m so relieved that Cleverly is taking my plan to heart. I go back to the tarp cautiously, my eyes still adjusting to the darkness after kicking out the fire. In the moonlight, I can make out the silhouettes of Stew, Will, and Cleverly laid out like sardines in a row, their heads and feet at opposite ends. Stew has his end of the covers thrown off, but if he gets cold, I guess he could easily pull it back on without really waking up. Will and Cleverly are both under the top sleeping bag.
I pull off my shoes, putting them in line on the edge of the tarp next to the others. They’re good running shoes, but still. That spot right where my arch meets the ball of my foot is so sore, like a stabbing ache. Especially on my right foot. I’ve got more walking to do, so I spend some time working my thumb into the muscle before lying down beside Cleverly, my head opposite hers.
The ground is hard, the tarp and sleeping bag beneath me not offering much padding, but I could be asleep in an instant if I wanted to. I crook one arm behind my head, the top cover bunched up between me and Cleverly, and stare up at the stars.
This is what zero light pollution looks like, I think, remembering the first night of the blackout. Sitting on that porch swing next to Mrs. Yardley.
All those stars are enough to make you feel like the last person on earth. Or at least one of four.
I squeeze my eyes shut, take in a deep breath, and let it out slowly.
Will’s small voice cuts through the hum of desert insects. “We could do a foot-massage chain.”
