Drink for the Thirst to Come (32 page)

The car folks stayed put; they screamed, but stayed.

Earl wore his new plastic suit onto the porch. He’d tied bricks to his feet with the yellow plastic rope. He whisked the wind-borne sand mouths off the porch with a flail of frayed tether.

The car’s windows were near gone, pitted, holed.

“Glass turns to sand!” Earl yelled.

Shreds of nylon tent covered the holes where the windows had “gone over.” “Guess you found that out, too,” Earl said.

The car, the people screamed.

Earl couldn’t see who was left. “Where to go? What to do, what, for God’s sake, to do?” They all screamed.

“Give us gas?” someone yelled. “Pour us some gas, we’ll take you too!” someone else yelled. Earl thought it was the man but who knew? The yelling was shrill.

“Sure!” Earl yelled. “Gotta charge you, though!” He laughed at that.

“For God’s sake, help us out of here!” a woman maybe, maybe the girl. He couldn’t see with his one eye, the fading light, the pitted plastic lens of the goggles.

“Where’s ‘outta here’?” he called across the sand. “Where’re we going when the whole world’s going over?”

“Please?” A squeaky voice. The squeak rose to “Pleeeease!”

“Gas is there, son.” Earl pointed to the drum. It sat where it had yesterday and for fifty years, on its stone base. “Hep yourselves. Day-after holiday special!” He felt a needle-sting as a hungry mouth nibbled his nose. He swatted the bite and left a smear of blood inside the plastic suit. “Fill ’er up!” he yelled and couldn’t help laughing at the thought.

He laughed again.

The family danced inside the dying car. They shouted at him, themselves, the world. What was going on, being decided behind those tent flaps? Who’d sacrifice? “That’s it,” he said aloud to himself. “Bet you’re figuring, ‘Now how far can we get on this tank and no tires?’ or thinking, ‘How much gas can I dip till they eat me to the knees?’”

He didn’t figure the man with the pretty nails to give himself for eating. The woman? Not likely. “Send the boy!” Earl yelled. He was wondering how damn desperate the folks were.

He stood to watch.

Earlier, he calculated why he was uneaten.

Back in the Great Depression, he’d built this shack just right, kept his sill beams off the ground on stacks of flat rocks, old granite. Even so, the sand was eating the cabin now. He couldn’t miss that. It was at the wood. He heard. The mouths were at rest now, but when wind stirred, sand flew. Where each grain nested on something living or once alive—log, blade of grass, or critter—the sand ate; it ate and didn’t fill. A grain here, a grain there, it nibbled, gobbled, roof, wall, floor and, sooner or later…

He wrote down:
Nik, nik, nik a billyun times all ready. Billyuns to go before.

Earl watched through the day. When the sun sat on the western sawtooth ridge of trees, the sand began to stir again.
Waking for nite
, he wrote. The frozen wave began to murmur.

Not a bird, a bee, nor critter moved that Earl could see, just the ground itself, crawling on its mouths. Earl dozed, downing Jim Beam to kill the pain. His eye, his nose, his head. He slept not well, but hard. He woke alone.
Dog gone,
he wrote. Then laughed.

Brick shoes were smart, he reckoned. Keeping wind-drift sand off his floor, out of the way, became impossible. Too much, too damn much wind and the sand, too small, too much. The plastic tarp he wrapped himself in got worn as he walked. Some of the mouths wriggled in. When they came, they ate.
Nik-nik-nik
at his shoes. Finally, he put something between him and the floor. Something sand didn’t eat.
Brick
, he figured, brick would work. Knocked a couple off the base of his kerosene heater. That was that. Fine as frog fur.

From then to the end of the world, Earl clumped,
thud, thud, thud
. Made him laugh.

In sundown light, Earl kept watch from his porch. The damn folk never drove off. Never tried. No one tried to fill the tank. They sat, revving now and then. Now and then the inside screamed. Sometimes the screams were at him. Every so often the car shimmied, someone inside dancing, fighting, humping.

Sundown, the car went still. The engine chugged through last light. When the crawl of shadows touched it, it coughed twice, raced again, then shuddered still.

Earl listened. A voice inside. One. Crying.

Earl took a last sip of Beam. “Go on home, now,” he told the bottle and tossed it. Not light enough now to see, but he heard the whisper of the sand, the urgent chatter of the glass as it shivered into a billion parts, the parts making friends with the sand.

The voice from the car still cried. An hour after dark, it screamed. The scream lasted a minute, two. Maybe three; Earl’s clock had stopped. Then the car went quiet.

Later, he gave attention to the trees, their noises as they fell. After he was gone, Earl figured, pretty soon after, he figured, the trees would be gone too.
Fuck ’em
, he figured. Damn trees. All his life. The mother of splinters, burns and broken chairs. Tried to put his eyes out, to trip him all the years of wandering the forest, wanted to crush him when he felled them. Trees might outlive him now, but not by much Goddamn them.

Grass and cranberry, sphagnum moss and fern, other living shit, they’d all go down the mouths.

Fuck trees and the horse they rode in on
, he wrote down. Almost the last thing.

For a second he thought about being proper buried. Then he laughed.
World swallows you anyway. Might as well lik this
, he wrote.

That was the last.

The wind freshened, blew through the empty windows. Earl looked up. The grains scoured the wood.
Nik, nik, nik.
Earl gathered the plastic tarp around him. Keep them out long as he could. He looked to the noise above, the roof beams crackling like small arms fire. Pieces of rafter fell, dissolving as they dropped. Through the holes, the stars shone bright.

At last, he pictured the world, the whole damn thing spread below. Like he was one of them astronauts, a real for Christ sake traveler in the outer space. He and the sand were real astronauts. In his mind’s eye Earl saw the world. He looked down on it like the papers said the astronauts in space had done.
Ha, ha.
In his mind’s eye Earl watched Earth shrivel, all the living, all that was growing green and climbing, all critters, people. He watched it shiver and go down, rolling in sand like that dumb young dog. He watched it all go down the tiny mouths. How many grains of sand was there? All around the world, how many tiny mouths?

From where Earl stood—wrapped in plastic, tethered to his shack, peering through his goggles, breathing slow—his mind’s eye saw the world reshape and flatten... in his mind’s eye, looking down.

Damnation.
He hoped that would be the way. Everyone gone when he was gone. Buster Leek. Cap Hainey, the pickers in the harvest. Folks in Filthydelphia. Folk everywhere. All gone soon after him he hoped.

When it came, the pain was pure lousy. Soon it ended. In just a minute. Maybe two.

JEREMY TAKES HIS TEXT FROM THE LIVES OF THE SPIDERS

The door shoved Robideaux back inside where was whiskey warmth. Blues, like a bad tooth, shook his soul; the pretty noise made him wish,
save-me-Lord
, for a night of temptation not resisted. Still, Robideaux shoved back. On the street, cold, night, and sleet drove him against that fearsome door.
Drunk out again
, he figured.
Who care?

Preach’ Robideaux, jangling among the lowdown dives of wherever this sure’nough town was. Somewhere lights burned bright. Not here. Somewhere his barge rode Mississippi swells, tied, tight, and taking on.
Amen to all that till morning.
Robideaux, nothing to do except make his witness to the bottle and the bottle’s folk—
Lord’s work.
Amen to that too. Preach’ Robideaux, taking his text from the lives of working folk, talking the Lord and drinking long, showing himself no better than they, no sir, none.

Guitar Blues behind him died. Whispering sleet shivered Robideaux. Looking, he could not certify his way to the tow. He sucked night, drew creosote and old oil from the railhead across the way. The river’d be a silence on one corner of his compass. He turned, turned around and around. From the hiss and chill, a sliver of warmth oozed from the south. Robideaux licked his lips. Head, like radar, top of Cap’n StDenis’s bridge, turned that…

…way, and…

…there was the guy. Death for sure.

“Evening, sir,” said Robideaux.

“Whoo-eee
,” said Red-eyed Death, chattering, about to fall, guitar sack slung on one shoulder. Dead eyes leaned close, went wide. The dead mouth worked pale gums. The eyes leaped Robideaux like wolf spiders, swallowed, ate his head, his whole self, and Robideaux figured…

Bad ride
, Jeremy figured.
The world couldn’t shake so, fuck no.

He opened the eyes. Dark poured in. He took a breath. The world stunk like something for sure gonna blow the fuck up: diesel fuel, gasoline. Smell made his lips go dry, his tongue tasted… The tongue was named Robideaux. He remembered that. So was the rest of him, Robideaux too. Robideaux was wrapped in a greasy sheet and scratchy blanket and there was, fuck, what? A push from behind, a load of power making the whole damn place go rumbling somewhere Jeremy didn’t know where. His teeth chattered. Robideaux’s teeth. How the fuck he sleep through that? He did not, purely did not know, but sure enough, everything moved, Robideaux, the bed he was on, the room he was in. First fucking impressions.

Through Robideaux’s eyes, dark gave way to dirty light. Crusted windows, other bunks stacked along the wall, mess everywhere. Another stink lay inside the gassy reek, a stink of bodies, sweat, unwashed clothes. Nobody in those clothes. No, he was alone. He was it.
What the fuck?

Second thoughts.

Number three was “Where the Old Lady?” He groped floor by the bunk and there she was, dear old thing. The guitar lay safe, her bag wrapped around, soft rope held her snug, the rope Jeremy slung over whosoever’s shoulder he had at whatever time. Jeremy had walked earth with that guitar, the last, what, hundred-some years? Long for a Traveler to carry any one damn thing. Travelers took whatever body, left what was left behind.

That,
fuck him Jesus
, was the extent of his fucking memory,
God be praised
. That, and he knew how to play her, that old she-box of a wood guitar. He knew
that
fact all the way to Robideaux’s balls. Another couple seconds and he had the guitar out of her sack, hugged to this belly and cheek. He touched up her strings, made her quiver so-pretty. He whispered with her for a little. By and by she reminded him where was this dirty thumping room and who was this Robideaux he’s walking ’round, traveling inside.

Jeremy remembered, finally, a bar, a bar someplace. He remembered this Robideaux, a rouster, a rouster in a bar. A bar where? Bar in Cairo. Say it right, like they say: KAY-ro. Cairo, what? Cairo, Illinois. Fuck yeah. Felt more better now he’s talking through the old girl; guitar made him easy.

And where they were, was in some boat, some big boat.

Robideaux’s voice sat by Jeremy’s heart. It said, “The Lord defend.” A whimper. “I take my text from the lives of the saints and dem marted souls.”

“Shut the fuck up,” Jeremy said with Robideaux’s mouth. Baritone. “
Hhmmmmm
,” he hummed. “Nice,” he said. He touched greasy linoleum with Robideaux’s bare feet. A throb climbed the legs, settled in the balls.

RmmmmHmmmHmmmHmmm
, the throb said. Big. The tow, the boat, was talking. That’s where they at: on the tow. Robideaux, Jeremy aboard, barging on the Mississippi.

Traveling,
his Jeremy brain said…

“…home,” Robideaux’s body said.

RmmmHmmmHmmm
, the room said. Two thousand horses of Cadillac Marine shoving downwater. Where to?

Robideaux knew.

Christ All the Mighty, they’re going home to the Easy. New Oy-uns and Fat Tuesday coming sure.

RmmmHmmmmHmmm
, Engine growled, quivered his dick, Cadillac engine, stuff of song. Jeremy sang, “
Cadillac’s drivin’ deep waterdown... shovin’ long twa’ed Easy Town…”

“Fuck your saints,” Jeremy said to Robideaux. “Take my text from the sweated bits of pretty ladies.” Robideaux’s calloused pads brushed a cathouse roadsong in the left hand. The right gave the tune a delta-driving Cadillac shove.

Before the first eight rounded, a square of light opened across the room. A breath of swamp and fish washed in. Above the smell—good by Robideaux’s lights—a cut of blue sky sang out:
Hello Robideaux! Who you got witchoo, Robideaux?

Jeremy laughed.

A shadow in the doorframe said, “Fuck, Preach’? You playing wit’ music, and we bahgin’? Get you black ass topside, see Cap StDenis, wha’ say?”

The door cracked shut on the voice.

Jeremy’s first day, traveling Robideaux: When Robideaux wasn’t bucking so to toss Jeremy from his flesh into Nowhere-Nowhen, the man was working, in a sulky way, hauling ratchet on the web of cables and couplings kept the tow laced tight, a quarter-mile of steel barges, fifteen stinking holes in the water. They carried grain this trip. Their tow-mule, a pusher boat, a little home with big engines, pilot house above it all.

Preach’, his body, knew barging. So Jeremy gives Robideaux his head, just a little, takes walking-round lessons from the Preacher: Robideaux works, Jeremy tastes the life. Suited a Traveler way-fucking fine.

The world smelled older, further south they towed. Day and night, Robideaux’s nose worked like an old blind tickhound dreaming long-gone hunts. Warmer, wetter, the days never give up the stink of barge. Jeremy, his soul, tasted living things everywhere. He itched at the universe of cells in the barges beneath them, each grain a tiny life dying in ferment. Dark vermin, fattening in the steel bellies, crawled so lovely in Jeremy’s dreams.