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I buckled the work belt around my waist and strung four empty milk jugs from it, two on each hip. It had been months since we’d collected water from the streams in the neighborhood. I had no idea where to start looking, or how far out of our area I’d have to go.
“I’ll be back as soon as I can,” I yelled toward the garage as I swung open the front door. The screen door squeaked slowly as it closed behind me and I added WD40 to my mental list of things to get on our—my—next outing.
An intense pain shot across my chest and I stood motionless on the front porch, unable to breathe. There was no ‘our’ anymore. I wanted so much to chip Howie, to make sure he was alright, but it was too dangerous. He was in that place... I refused to call it jail, even inside my own head.
Flashes of last night hit me all at once. Howie rocking back and forth, wailing like a child. The scanners pointing right at us, waiting for one of us to slip up and transmit something. That cop’s hairy knuckles as he tossed the pictures of Howie’s family in front of us. And those awful pictures. Mrs. Anderson’s blanket was wadded up and shoved into the front grate of the space heater. The smoking gun that convinced the cops of Howie’s guilt, also told us the truth.
She’d done it herself. Unable to take one more day, Mrs. Anderson had taken her own life, not knowing that Marcus and Evelyn were in the house with her.
I shuddered. I wouldn’t allow myself to see those images again. I locked them away in a part of my mind I knew I’d never visit. With everything else I refused to think about again.
Worst of all, if that’s possible, was those same hairy knuckles wrapped around Howie’s arm, escorting him out of the station to the... place... he was now. Where he’d probably stay.
And on top of all that; the memory of my body pulling itself toward Howie, like intense gravity, made me glad there was an emergency to deal with right now. I locked that feeling away too, and forced myself to move.
As I stepped off the porch I surveyed the rest of the yard. Six plastic barrels lined the fence to my right. Wood and metal fragments piled waist high in various places. My pink scooter leaned against the far tree, unmoved since winter. I’d had to make the choice between easier travel and the generator. In the end, there hadn’t been enough fuel for either.
Satisfied that nothing looked out of place, I went out the gate and made sure to lock it behind me.
When I got to Fairview, something told me to turn right instead of the usual left. I’m not sure what it was. Nothing tangible. Probably just the memory of dragging myself through sludge for hours with only two jugs of mud to show for it. Not much chance of a better outcome now.
The haze clung to my clothes and nostrils, dampening the former and burning the latter. In my haste, I’d forgotten my shirt-mask—a faded yellow t-shirt with Dayne’s billion dollar grin and sparkling brown eyes that shined just for me printed across the front. Oh how Howie had laughed with faux amazement at my choice of using Dayne’s pretty face to filter the muck out of the air. I believe he’d likened it to ‘the most natural looking tan’ Dayne would ever get.
Just thinking of Howie for that one moment sent a sharp pain through my chest. I knew I’d never get through the day if I allowed myself to wallow in missing him, so I pushed his grinning face out of my mind and trudged on.
I needed to focus anyway. I had no idea where I was going. We had never come this way before. Everything looked ominous. I was heading toward nothing. But that seemed like the best option. Anything in town would be ransacked and run over by undesirables.
Mom had made me stop going to town after that Truther nearly killed me, all because I refused to download his sketchy patch. Not the same one as before either. A different one, because I only learn my lessons the hard way. Even if I did believe his mumbo jumbo about the Sister Nations conspiring to get rid of the poor—which now doesn’t seem as far-fetched as it used to—he wasn’t getting anywhere near my port!
Fueled all of a sudden by the adrenaline rush that memory provided, I soon found myself far off the main road and heading toward what probably used to be a heavily wooded area. All I saw was gray, leafless trees and white sand piled up along the edge of the cracking pavement. It looked as if a snow plow had just cleared the streets after a freak blizzard, except there hadn’t been snow in Florida for over a hundred years. And it wasn’t likely that these roads would feel the touch of a tire ever again.
I waded through sand dunes, some of which hugged my calves like quicksand. I knew where there were trees, or what passed as trees those days, there should also be water. But it quickly exhausted me. There was no stepping over them; they were too close together. And walking directly into them made each step an exaggerated slow high-stepping march. It made me wonder if I looked like one of those cat videos that Dad always thought were so funny; the orange tabby with socks on his feet, which he picked up way over his head with every step.
I had to rest.
Sliding down the side of a thin tree, I removed my utility belt and held one of the clear milk jugs behind my head as a poor man’s pillow. Fingering the fallen pieces of bark, which quickly dissolved into ash in my hand, I closed my burning eyes for just one second.
I jerked awake, startled by some sensation out in the periphery of my consciousness. I didn’t know what it was, but I knew it was bad. My hand quickly wrapped around the machete that took up permanent residence on my utility belt. There hadn’t been vegetation to whack through in over a year, but I never could bring myself to untie the foot-long blade from its pocket. I was quite glad for that fact when the sensation, a noise I now knew, pricked the hairs on the back of my neck. My personal space, in this vast open network of dying trees, had been invaded.
I pushed onto my feet and spun around, brandishing the rusted machete like a sword. Startled, a man—barely—stumbled toward me. Watching him take the last step over a particularly large sandhill, I noted with some embarrassment that yes, one did look like a cat with socks when trying to traverse the forest floor.
Hands shaking, I swung the machete in the young man’s general direction, which he promptly ignored. He fell against the tree and looked up at me; his sunken brown eyes threatened to water. There was something in those eyes that sparked a faint recognition, but I couldn’t place him. Or maybe it was just the fact that everyone everywhere had the same brown eyes. Still, I gripped the handle of my knife tighter. Familiar or not, people these days weren’t exactly honorable with their fellow man. Not to mention the fact that I’m not a man.
Straightening to my full height, five-seven on a good hair day, I closed the flaps of my flannel shirt with my non-machete hand. “What are you doing out here?” I asked, trying my best to sound badass.
He didn’t seem to much care about that either. Lowering the machete only slightly, I eyed his thin frame as he hunched over retching beside my tree. His curls looked gray, although I could tell he wasn’t much over twenty. I chalked that up to the dust in the air. His skin, however, seemed almost the same shade of ash of its own accord. He wore a smudged white t-shirt, tucked into a loose pair of blue work pants. The belt connecting the two was pulled to the last notch and stuck out in front of him like an unflattering floppy appendage. Another of the things he didn’t seem to give much credence.
Then my gaze fell to his shoes. Scuffed and falling apart, they were both held together by a generous amount of duct tape. Still, those black and red Southerland sneakers were what I recognized... not the frail sick man in them.
I gasped and my hand instinctively flew to my mouth; the one with the machete. I quickly put it away and bent over to help him up. He didn’t budge. Instead he looked up at me again with those vacant eyes and pointed at his open flaky lips.
I frowned. “I... I don’t have any water. That’s why I’m out here. Someone stole ours.”
He stared at me, blinked once, and pointed at his mouth again.
Not knowing what else to do, I waved my hands in the ‘gone-gone’ motion that we used to do with Brooks when he was a baby. That appeared to work, because the man groaned and slunk further down the tree.
“Don’t move,” I said, not that he was going to anyway. “There has to be water nearby. We’re in the woods for Stone’s sake.” I was so out of sorts that I practically yelled that last line at him, throwing up my arms in exasperation.
He raised his bony fingers toward a spot in the woods behind me. I tried hard not to notice the various sets of scratches on his arm, all set uniformly apart like claw marks from something much bigger than I wanted to come across.
I motioned for him to sit tight and untied the machete from my belt.
The stream wasn’t far from where I’d stopped. Under normal circumstances I would have made it there with no trouble. But after the night at the police station with Howie—well, let’s just say I wasn’t feeling myself.
Getting there wasn’t the issue, though.
As I approached the edge of the stream, alternately high stepping into sand piles and crunching dead tree limbs beneath my feet, I could see straight through the thin film of water to the mud below. When I untied the first jug and bent to the stream, a strong odor of decay almost made me add a layer of vomit to the dead leaves and slick film floating by. Taking two cleansing breaths I held a third one in and bent lower to fill the jug.
The water wasn’t moving, as much as undulating with the mud below it. The process of swirling the jug in the muck, stepping back to breathe, and returning to the stream, took an immense amount of time. My arms and legs ached by the time I finished. I staggered far enough away from the mud river to breathe normally, and weighed my options.
I found a sturdy enough looking crooked tree just off the embankment and crouched next to it. After a few minutes, my breath restored, I still didn’t move, paralyzed by indecision. I had to get the water back to Brooks. My brain screamed this to me over and over like an alarm that wouldn’t snooze. He was probably so worried by now. I’d promised to hurry, and yet there I sat watching the sun stretch long orange arms over the treetops.
My fingers stroked the rough plastic water jug, dried mud flaking away with each pass. I wanted desperately to jump up and run straight home to Brooks. Yet I didn’t.
That man, someone I’d met before, someone I couldn’t call a total stranger, was only a few yards away. If I strained, craned my sore neck an inch in his direction, I’d be haunted by his moaning for water as he lay dying.
Or maybe that was Howie’s moans from last night still echoing in my ears. Either way I sighed loudly to push the sound away, replace it with my own deep hum.
I knew if I didn’t go back to help him, he’d surely die. The last time I’d seen the man, his uniform barely covered his pudgy midsection and now... Now that belt pulled to the last notch and hung limp in front of him. He wasn’t long for this world.
So, I rationalized, did that mean I would be wasting our precious water on a doomed man? If I gave him our water, our only water, and he died anyway, would I be any better than the thieves who had stolen water right out of our mouths? Brooks’s tiny parched lips?
But if I walked away? Left him to die? Could my conscience bear that weight? Stone, I wanted my mom.
A minute... or thirty... later, I knew what I had to do. The only thing my conscience would allow.
I walked farther up the embankment, feeling my way through the dried-out husks of trees. The orange haze of sunset had long since morphed into ink black shadows. One by one I clung to the crumbling gray bark, my fingertips shredding. But I knew if I loosened my grip in the slightest I’d run back to him, lay all our water at his feet, and beg for forgiveness.
When I reached the clearing, so thankful to be back on mostly solid ground, I paused. I stared at my tattered shoes—not the same ones I’d been wearing when I first met the volunteer cop I’d just sentenced to die. Despite the Glitch’s best efforts, I had outgrown those and needed a new pair. These dark gray running shoes had appeared at my doorstep a few months after Mom died with a note pinned to the laces. An anonymous gift from someone whose handwriting I did not recognize.
Remembering that time, the thankless show of humanity from some stranger, made my decision to leave... I searched for his name in my memory and came up empty handed. My decision to leave him felt all the more unjust and selfish. But then I remembered the other pair of shoes on the porch that morning, much smaller than my own, and the smile that had spread across Brooks’s sallow face when he first saw them.
That face was the reason I had to walk home now, my utility belt weighted by four gallons of mud.
Steeling myself, I slowly raised my head, then a bit higher, and headed home. Toward the only person who truly mattered.