Thirst (6 page)

Eddie’s eyes adjusted to the dim light. There was a watercooler there.

“Oh,” he said.

“That’s five gallons. I have a man who comes to replace it every three weeks. They brought me an extra in the beginning, so I have one in the basement, too.”

He stood there, silently, until she said, “Well?”

“If you need any help … my wife and I are right down the street.”

“I have my daughter coming down. She lives in Burtonsville, but she checks on me.”

“When is she supposed to come?”

“She’s never on time. She works a job with the government and they run her to the ground.”

“There’s a lot of traffic. She might be held up.”

“Tell your wife not to worry. I’ve survived worse. You don’t get to be my age without being able to make it.”

“I’ll be back to check on you.”

“Don’t bother,” she said.

“I’ll be back.”

Bill Peters had been right. The grocery store was picked over. Sections of shelves were hollowed out where the sodas and sports drinks had been. There was still cereal. One of the aisles had suffered a fracturing of tomato sauce jars. Laura put an arm against his chest to hold him back.

“Glass,” she pointed.

They each wore a backpack. “There’s no milk?”

Laura shook her head.

It was like before a hurricane, but there wasn’t any music. No children. Men and women moved through the aisles, staring up and down the shelves, pulling items based on private calculations, stuffing them into bags.

“Here,” Eddie said. “Let’s get these.”

She helped him load some jars of pickled peppers. He took Spanish olives, too, and a glass bottle of apple cider vinegar.

“It doesn’t seem like it’s been long enough for this,” she said.

“People are just being cautious.”

“Or they know something. We should have tried the radio.”

“I tried the radio. There’s not even static.”

“We should keep it on anyway. They have that emergency-broadcast thing.”

“It’s dead, Laura. How are we going to get an emergency-broadcast thing?”

She looked at him crossly. “Just forget it,” she said.

There were still a few green bottles of lemon juice and Eddie took one of those. Beneath the water filters, the shelves were empty where the bottles of water should have been.

“Let’s split up,” he said.

There was meat in plastic wrap in the back, but when Eddie reached for it, there was nothing cool coming out of the refrigerating vents, and he left it where it was. A cardboard box sat just in front of the plastic flaps that led into the stockroom. It looked like someone had forgotten about it there. Eddie pulled off the clear tape and counted eighteen red juices in plastic bottles molded to look like little barrels. They had foil caps. He knelt beside the box and placed them one by one into his pack, stacking them so they wouldn’t burst.

Laura was in the freezer aisle. The doors were hanging open.

“You think these will keep?” She held up a couple of pizza boxes.

“Maybe,” Eddie said. “For a little while, anyway.”

She put them in her pack, and he followed her to where she took a box of cheese crackers.

He gave her a can of whole mushrooms and a couple cans of beans. “Here, put these in,” he said. There was a woman standing just behind them, staring at the empty space in the shelf where the beans had been. She wore a long nylon trench coat,
and held on to the handle of a metal cart—a low wire basket on wheels—to support herself. Eddie took one of the cans of beans from Laura’s pack and extended it to her. He assumed she spoke no English. He made a
Go on
motion with his chin.

The woman shook her head, and Eddie put the beans back on the shelf. When the woman didn’t move, Laura took them and put them back into her pack.

“I’m running out of room,” she said.

“We’ve got enough. I’ll take one more lap.”

He walked toward the hardware aisle and stopped in front of an endcap of insect products. The cans of wasp poison read:
SPRAYS UP TO 22 FT
. The nozzles looked like little megaphones. A gray-haired man the shape of a bell dropped four of them—one at a time—down his shirtfront. His midsection bulged in geometric shapes from all his shopping.

“What do you need all those for?” Eddie asked, but the man only stared at him, spooked, and scurried away.

Eddie put a can in each of the water bottle pouches at the side of his pack.

At the registers, Laura was leafing through a
Cosmo
. When she saw Eddie, she put it back in the rack.

“So, we’re just taking all of this,” she said.

“There’s no one here to pay.”

“They must have insurance.”

“Everyone has insurance.”

Outside, people walked across the lines in the parking lot. There were only a few cars and they looked abandoned.

Eddie took a bag of charcoal briquettes that had been stacked in a pile on top of a wooden pallet. He held it in both arms across his chest.

“To cook the pizzas,” he said.

“We’re going to feel ridiculous with all this junk when the power comes back on.”

“It’s not ridiculous to be prepared,” Eddie said.

They crossed an empty street and walked along the sidewalk.

“You’re limping,” Laura said.

“I twisted my knee a little.”

A couple rode a tandem bicycle down the center lane without their helmets on. The woman’s blond hair streamed back behind her.

“Like they’re on vacation,” Laura said.

In their neighborhood, the sky was eggy-white and the heat was rising. Eddie saw a man standing down the hill, arms akimbo. He was tall in the way Bill Peters had been tall.

“Let’s go this way,” he said to Laura. He nudged her with the bag of briquettes and they made a left onto a side street. It was a longer way to go.

“Why?”

Thinking of the cyclists, Eddie said, “It’s nice out, anyway.”

They were in front of the Davises’ when Eddie saw the boy. He was stumbling through the street like a drunk, as gray as an early shadow. Eddie put the charcoal down.

It was like remembering a dream so clearly, it turned real.

“Who’s this now?” Laura said.

Eddie flinched. He looked hard at Laura to see what she was seeing. That the boy
was
real. That he was standing right in front of them.

She went to him and Eddie followed. The boy’s chest and shoulders were stained with ash. Laura touched his arm and then removed her fingers quickly, rubbing them together. The boy’s hair looked spiky, Eddie saw, but it wasn’t. It was singed.

“What are you doing out here, sweetheart?” Laura asked.

The boy looked at Eddie.

“Was there a fire?” Laura said.

The boy nodded his head.

“Where was it?”

“Laura—” Eddie said.

She turned to him so that the boy couldn’t see her lips and whispered, “What are we going to do with him?”

“What do you mean?”

“We can’t let him wander.”

“He didn’t get here without knowing his way back home. Were you playing in the woods by yourself?” Eddie said, sternly. “You need to stay with adults. Listen when they call you.”

Laura kept her back to the boy, her face hard with concern. She said, “We can’t just let him go.”

Behind them, Mike Jr. came out and stood mutely against the end post of the Davises’ chain-link fence. His little round face was white, and he stared at the boy as if into a tinted mirror. Mike Jr. was six. He held on to a five iron like it was a walking stick.

Eddie nodded at him. “You look after this guy for a minute,” he said. “Teach him your golf swing.”

Mike Jr. continued his vacant staring, and Eddie pulled Laura up their steps.

“What are we going to
do
?” she asked.

“Laura. He
belongs
to someone. We can’t take him inside our house. We’ll put the groceries away, and then I’ll come out and help him find his parents.”

“And what if his parents aren’t back?” She set her jaw in a way that suggested the horrible consequences of Eddie’s nearsightedness.

“What else can we do?” he said. “I’ll walk him around the neighborhood.”

“Turn around,” she said, rummaging in his backpack. She pulled out one of the plastic barrels of juice and peeled the aluminum circle off the top, going back down to the sidewalk.

“Here,” she said, handing it to the boy. “Drink this. It’s okay. I’m not a stranger.”

The boy took it in both hands and tipped it to his mouth. When he let up and breathed, his lip was red and the ash there was muddy.

They went inside and put the backpacks down on the kitchen table. Laura started putting things away.

Eddie reached to help, but she caught his wrist.

“I’ll go around with him,” she said.

“It’s okay,” he said. “I want to.”

But when he went outside, the boy was gone.

Mike Jr. was still standing at the edge of the fence.

“What happened?” Eddie said.

“What?”

“You were supposed to be watching him.”

“Who?”

“The other boy.” In his mind, the other boy was Wemmick—his dimensions unknowable by anything but the most impenetrable vaults of his imagination—but, no, the boy had been standing right there. Laura had seen him, too. “Which way did he go?”

Mike Jr. pointed down the street, holding his hand outstretched, and Eddie went in that direction. The day was still quiet—the streets in the neighborhood bright and wide. He was halfway down the block before he turned around and hurried back.

“Mike Jr.,” he said. “Let me borrow that.”

Mike Jr. scowled and wrapped his arms around the golf club. “It’s mine,” he said.

“I’ll bring it back. Promise.”

Eddie grabbed the sticky black grip and struggled to tug it from the child’s grasp. When he did, Mike Jr. said, “
Hey
!”

“I’ll bring it back, all right?” he said. “Just be cool. Okay? Sit tight.”

He walked and held the club by his side like a weapon, hot blood beating in his ears. He’d have been no less discreet dangling a shotgun.

The neighborhood was empty, and Eddie’s mind was addled by the silence, the aloneness of the streets. It was useless. He wasn’t looking for the boy, he realized. He was waiting for Bill Peters.

Hedges guarded yards from the street and threw long shadows. Even in this sun, there were blind corners. It wouldn’t be hard for Bill Peters to conceal himself. Eddie could imagine him squatting with his jug, and gripped the golf club tighter.

Down another street, he saw a man standing behind a car with the hatchback open. He was making room inside the trunk.

Eddie rested the club on his shoulder like a Sunday morning golfer, and went to the man as if he’d been called, catching his attention. The man stood up straight.

He was loading camping equipment: a frame pack and a sleeping bag cinched tightly with webbing.

“You got power?” Eddie asked.

The man slammed the trunk, and when he turned back around, there was a Buck knife in his hand.

Eddie laid the club on the street and backed away from it. He held up his hands. “I was just walking by,” he said. “I’m going.”

“No,” the man said. “No—ha—it’s not for that.” He rolled the knife over in his hand and considered the blade. “I’ve got knives I haven’t opened in years. They’re rusty. I’m just checking.” He had a gray mustache and the kind of fat muscles developed with protein shakes. He folded the knife and pressed it behind him into his back pocket.

“No power, then?” Eddie said.

“No power here or anywhere. I came up from the city. That’s where all the crews are.” His face began to exert itself a little around the edges. “It’s hell down there already,” he said.

“I imagine they’ll be up here soon.”

“You hear any sirens? Let me know if you do. They’re all in the city. People here are in a state of emergency, too—trust me—but what do we get? Nothing. They leave all the good folks out here to rot. What kind of America is this where you buy a house and pay your taxes and no one comes to help?”

“I heard a helicopter.”

“Yeah? Which way was it heading?”

“South.”

“Into the city.”

“They’ll come back,” Eddie said. “The electric people will be here soon.”

“Shit they will.”

“Where are you going?”

“My brother lives up in Shepherdstown.”

“You won’t make it north,” Eddie said. “The roads are blocked.”

“I’ll hike it if I have to,” he said. “I’m not waiting around.”

“He’s got power up there, you think?”

“He’s got a bunker. He’s prepared. I’m too damn stupid to have one myself.”

“But you were here in oh-eight? I heard it was out six days. It’ll come back on.”

“In oh-eight nothing blew up. We had water.”

Eddie felt the quiver in the man’s face enter his own lips and arms and knees. “What blew up?” he said.

The man smiled in a patronizing way. “Nothing, kid,” he said. “Just wait here for everything to be okay.”

“I saw the stream,” Eddie said. “That’s what you mean, right? There was a fire.”

“Where were you?” the man asked, his mouth tightening.

“Right up the street. At the spillway. And underneath the Beltway bridge.”

“That makes sense.” He folded his arms behind his back and Eddie flinched. But the knife stayed in his pocket. “I got a call from my brother right before we lost the signal. He’s got his pilot’s license; he calls me from the plane. He saw the whole Potomac do it, the whole river go up.” He smiled again, relaying this news.

“It isn’t funny,” Eddie said, keeping his voice under control.

“No. It’s not.”

“Did you see it in the city?”

“What?”

“The water burn.”

“I didn’t see it there, no.”

“Then you don’t know what really happened.”

“
You
saw it.
You
saw beneath the bridge. Just pack a bag and get out. Don’t you know anyone?”

“The electric people will come here when they’re finished in the city.”

The man closed the trunk of his car, locked it, and turned to go back inside his house. “If you say so,” he said.