Drink for the Thirst to Come (6 page)

“Señor Temoco,” Chris said.

“
Jefe
,” the Señor said, little sharp gleams behind the eye fat.

“
Jefe
,” Chris said, “I’m here from the Boss, my Daley from the Center, to pick up a thing he says you got. A box he says. This big.” He showed.

“This is arranged, yes,”
Jefe
said.

From behind Señor Temoco’s chair came a guy. The guy carried a small wooden box. A box like the Boss had said. The box buzzed a long drawn-out humm that never drew breath.

Chris smiled and made his trade. The smile was not deep.

“’Spected you yesterday.” The Boss looked at him like he’d forgotten something. “What’s your name?”

“Harp. Chris Harp.”

“Harp.” The boss looked him up and down. At the mud, the blood, the pipe-smacked face, gone to shit. “Fun out there, Angel?”

“Some.”

“And?”

“Box.” Chris handed the buzzing thing to the Boss. He’d kept it clean all the way back.

“Yeah.” He handed it to Lenny. “Leonard?”

“Yeah,” Lenny said.

“Something for our Angel Harp here.”

Lenny tucked the box under his arm. Passed Chris a hand of smoke, a full pack of suck.
Marlboro.
Cellophane, tab and all. Twenty weeds sealed. A week of suck.

“Lenny,” Boss said.

“Right,” and he was off with the box.

“Wonder what that is, do you?”

Chris looked after Lenny. The old kicker was gimping toward the old United stadium half-a-mile ’burbward, No-one’s place.

“The future, Boss?”

The Boss smiled. Put his hand on Chris’s shoulder. “Hell, probably not. Just bees. Some say they’re necessary. Well, you gotta try, right? You’re wondering, ‘Was it a good trade?’”

Chris kept eyes on Lenny until he disappeared into the dark and pulver mist. “Not so much.”

“Stop by my table tomorrow. Have a bite.” Boss said. “Fresh meat.”

The Icehouse was dark and stinking. He’d missed night thistle.
Better grunts coming, anyway!

He’d missed TV Johnny. That hurt.

He climbed his tier. Second from the top. His muscles ached. Near fifty. Still looked forty. Good. He still could climb but fifty’s coming.
Me, an old guy! Imagine that!
Still. Climbing was… nothing to it. He stepped on the Mex’s meaty paw. Guy grunted like he’s gut-kicked. Fuck him. This might could be his last night of being too, too high on this particular shitpile. Boss’d hinted; Boss said: good trade. And he touched him, gave him a name. Cripes. Luck. Maybe he was lucky.

He eased into the sack, slipped off boots, slipped off socks—tucked them in his pockets, one each side. Careful. Jacket off, shirt, there he was, not looking forward but here he was with a night to go, facing them: the living of his dreams.

The bunk above was empty, the One-Eyed Kid from Nowhere was nowhere. That’s the way. No point thinking about. Whitey’d been his name.

It had been?

He thought about darkness for a little. Darkness was close. From the walls around came the chatter of the ’pedes, the roaches’ crackle. At least his bunk wasn’t by the wall.

It hadn’t been a bad couple days! Been to the Wet and back. Seen the
bong-bongs
. He’d met that girl and did what he had to, his job. She said her name, but it did not bother him. No. Had a job and he’d done it: brought the box. She’d not be in his living nights, there to kick his dreams. No. Let someone in, that’s someone there to lose. He’d told her all, given his hiddens.
Now she’s gone,
and the Boss had touched him! Invited him to grunts tomorrow! Cripes, worth-up. And smokes! Holy Cripes, that’s how Goddamn good the days had been: he scored suck and hadn’t remembered. Luck. Still, he wished:
Wish I could have gotten that
tick-tock
watch.
Would have been…

Wouldn’t have been right. Señor Temoco’s by rights.
Shit,
he’d wanted to tell her about the jack stamp on the Walk; always wanted to tell someone but hell that was just an old folk’s tale. Sometimes you had to step back a little, see how much one thing or another… something to think on later when you couldn’t do nothing else. And maybe someday when he was old, he’d find that hole, the Big Hole where were lights and movies and…

He was slipping, now. In his sleep, he fingered the cell. Keyed the number,
the
number. Home. What would he ask? If someone answered? What should… He almost couldn’t keep the days, the times he’d had, in mind—and he wanted to! No! Christ. That’s the thing. Close it all!
Pray, maybe.
The dead cell, the silence of home filled him. He held on. If he could remember something else about how he’d spent… He’d seen the Wet. Seen the Hollows… Seen Walkin’ Will… No, no. He jHeHust told of him. And he’d had a choice? Not so good that… He’d had a job. He’d said what? Old Will’d said, “Drink! Drink for the thirst to come!”
What the hey?
There was something else that could’ve meant!
No,
he thought,
no. Don’t sleep. You sleep, you’ll dream.
Those dreams of the living, of Dolph Station and Jaycee Dogton, Tex, Marty, the others, the living. By then, day had bled away and Chris Harp of Johnny’s Icehouse slept. The dream-day was bright blue and gold and went on, oh God, forever, a summer day and mild, mild weather, a day like no other…

ROOT SOUP, WINTER SOUP

Cordelia and trees. She saw in the still water of the pond her silly old face and no one else. That funny old face smiled up. She wiggled her finger in the cold water and Cordelia was alone, excepting the trees. Leaves floated lazy, half on top, half under the water, hardly drifting. Afternoon air was cool, heading to cold. Cold nights were coming.

Soon them leaves’ll be cotched up and froze-in,
she knew.
Cotched good.
The pond would be an ice sheet, then covered with fallen things, leaves, acorns and little branches, more leaves and other goods as fell.
A person don’t know it’s there might could fall right in
, she thought
.
Well, she knew it was there. The critters that wandered there for a drink knew it too. They would have to
tap, tap
by hoof or claw on the icy shell to water there. Soon after they’d eat snow or perish to the thirst. She knew that.

The pond water stilled and there was that old Cordelia face again, minnows swimming through. Why, there she was. Couldn’t see the scars, not like when she looked in a peering glass. No. Could see how one eye was a little sagged, could see her funny crookback nose, could see…

“Oh fuss!” she said.
What’s the point? His season’s over. He is gone and done with and good riddance to him.
He who’d given her that eye, that nose, that curly lip.

She stirred the water again, chased the face away. Her minnies scattered. She laughed.

Walking, Cordelia gathered the wooly hunting jacket around herself.
Real cold coming
. Time, indeed, for her root soup, her winter soup. She looked forward to the good smells as filled her cabin, winters. She wanted to run and do it quick, hug the comfort, the wonder of the forever pot, the pot going down with eating, the pot filled up again with bits added, an essence from the stock pot, more chopped roots and other pieces from the cellar. The forever pot of root soup, God’s good winter warmth.

Another year and no one found her morel patch, where it lay sprouting. The season’s ’shrooms had been fine and plentiful, big headed, tender and clean-grown through the rot. And all hers for taking. A time gone, someone had felled a stand of tree where the morels sprouted now. Someone building, maybe.
Someone who give up and moved on,
she figured. Maybe a long time gone. New growth had sprouted since and filled around the wasted logs.

Good.
This season hundreds more morels had spread across the moldering stumps, between old cut-and-fallen logs. A thousand more had spread onto the damp forest floor where decay made a wet and fragrant bed.

She’d shown that hunter, but none had found the place on their own, not a one. None would.

The season was over.
Cold come, picking done,
she thought. Even these last smelled good as she added them to her sack. Long things, they were, thick-brained and heavy with wet.

The roadway parsnips she’d cultivated another place back in the deep woods. They, too, had a good season. Each fat root had burrowed way down. Rich they were within the earth, their long finger-ends reached deep; deep hairy roots spread wide, held place in the ground. They didn’t want to come up and out, but up and out they’d come and she’d stocked her cellar.

Cordelia loved the burlap’s prickle on her shoulder, like a game bag swinging with her walk, heavy with her potatoes, onions, her carrots and ’snips. Near home, now, with the last of the season’s sweet things heavy in her bag, Cordelia couldn’t wait to make a start. The chopping was first, a long part of it, but the heart of winter soup. Scrubbing, making it clean for the stock. The careful scraping, paring and cutting, the pieces shaped just right for the pot, the broth, the savor of the thing, each thickness, just right to release its flavor.

God loved good soup and Cordelia made a good, good winter soup.

At home, now, she stoked the stove with seasoned logs, last year’s cut. She built sweet, laid the bed for slow, steady heat. She watched as the old logs, the large ones that had lain in porchway shade through summer and early fall, caught flame by their ends and barks. Daddy-leggers scampered into the fire’s winking hell, spiders twitched and ran, old cocoons opened wiggling. Not nice, maybe, but all those little lives, she figured, added to the savor, gave favor to the scent, the earthy scent of God’s good soup.

She chopped into the dark of night; she scraped and parboiled, shaved, halved and quartered. The scrapings, the bits, heads and tails, thin parsnip fingers, she added to the stock pot. She crushed the herbs to free the essence and added them to the mix. Then one more thing.

The black iron shears hung heavy on her apron tie. She held her lantern ahead. The picnic basket swung free, crooked in her other arm, the busted-withered one. A bottle of whiskey sloshed, safely nested in a mess of torn rag and sphagnum. Fall leaves hushed in the dark; the
shush, shush, shush
of her footsweeps spread among the trees. Night critters went quiet as she passed. She stepped off a hundred paces up the hill and counted a little more to pass the pond. Another count took her beyond her ’shrooming patch. Except for her, the forest was still.

She didn’t need light for the walk. Light was needed for the work. Down the cellar, in the dark of the cellar, the root cellar, was where light was wanted.

The oak plank door lay across the hole in the hillock. A Civil War lock hung cold against the boards and hasp. Covered with leaves, it was, and near invisible, days, part of the world at night.

The lock snapped open. As she raised the door the earth smell from below breathed over her. Earth and more. She descended the four steps. The light led her, then came the noise. Iron against rock. The clatter cut the silence, a body moaned and rattled his iron bonds against his rock, his earthbound rock.

She hadn’t known him, just a huntsman as came walking through the woods. Lost. Asking. She offered a drink of whiskey and pointed a way. He came back, still lost. She said she’d lead, then asked his help,
A little thing, please. So good to be a help.
God gave to those who helped. Some more whiskey and he was in chains. Like that!

Those chains and more held him now to that rock below the world in her cellar.

No man she knew. Her light caught him, now. He was white like a grub. And naked. She’d left him blankets, but no clothes to wear. He hung naked, hugging his rock. He looked up. He cried.

Why, yes, oh Lord. Yes.
He did live underground like one of them things as wiggled under the rotted logs that fed her morels. She had to chuckle.

His head was long and thin. Not much face to him, narrow hook nose, a thin yellow beard she hardly could see in the yellow of her lantern. His head was flat on top. His teeth were busted, crooked. He cried and tried to stand. He stood and dangled. She laughed again. Up top on the world, he wouldn’t have cried.

But she had things to do. She rolled the whiskey jar to him then sat to watch. It took a time. He yelled. He cried. He made to throw the jar at her head.

She laughed. Sweetly. Cordelia had a pretty laugh. Funny face, but a pretty laugh.

The man blubbered. He shouted, “Why...?” Other things, but the heart of it was, “Why?”

“Drink,” she said, “an’ it won’t hurt.”

By and by, he drank. Long pulls, tears coming between gulps and runny-nosed blubbers.

In less than an hour the screams were only hoarse bubbles. She clipped three fingers and some hand meat from him; a couple toes from his left foot. He screamed and bled. She caught the blood in a Mason jar and capped it. She wrapped his hand and foot with sphagnum and left more rags.

She almost left, then returned and scissored off a rasher of fat from his gut, the flabby place. He screamed and bubbled but by then it was over.
Leave the man-oysters for later
, she figured.
Take them now, he’ll lose spirit. Men, so silly and so sweet
, she thought,
believe in their hearts—way down—their lives, their God Spirit comes from there, down the root and sack between their legs.

She left a few more rags and the bottle.

The blood smelled rich. The thick warmth pillowed the earthy scent of the cellar. She hoped he’d be all right. She liked the blood-aroma of this one.

Later that night the cries came all the way to her cabin. Sobs and curses. She heard even as the pot came boiling, even later, so much later, the screams. Long far’way echoes, as from a mountain across a valley, all the world’s trees between.

Must hurt
, she thought, stirring soup.
Aww, hurt don’t last.
She knew that.