The Rain (24 page)

            Good to meet folk without the devil eyes, says Clint. Devil eyes? asks Russell. Ernest chimes in that those are the face eaters, as most of them look anyway, especially with their drug. So that’s all true then? asks Russell. And Ernest just points to a wooden crate in the corner of the softly glowing room. Against the wood planking of the hull rests several crates together, all marked with a giant Y. That’s the stuff right there, he says. The drug? asks Russell. Sure enough, Ernest says. And it might come in handy. I don’t know how. And you know, the ones that don’t use it—they’re the ones I really fear. Once they slip into that stuff, and it takes away their hunger or distorts it to something else, they’re sloppier. Pain doesn’t deter them any longer. At least, it’s been that way through Montana and Wyoming.

The sight of the drug gives Russell pause, like he doesn’t know what to make of it. I think he’s deciding if it moves the captain down a notch in his notion of the man’s humanity. Wondering if the captain’s ever used it. I’m good enough to know Russell’s thinking that clear, because in the next moment he asks: Have you taken it? Of course, says Ernest. Russell’s scowl forms fast, and he studies the eyes of the captain and his mate. Ernest laughs, knowing well the look of judgment. I’ll never touch it again. Unless it comes to the time before I have to eat a body to survive. Not sure which I’ll do first. But there’s no sense figuring on that until the time comes, right? Russell still doesn’t reply. He’s unsure. And so am I. Part of me is curious what the drug does. What it feels like. If it really takes away hunger and pain. I’ve never taken any kind of drug other than antibiotics and Tylenol. Nothing with this kind of reputation. But it is, after all,
their
drug. The ones who are completely stripped. No vestige left. To take it can only mean taking a step closer to them. 

If you haven’t figured it out yet, I’m not one of them. You can relax a bit, if you have a mind to. Although I know you won’t. And I don’t blame you. If you hadn’t had that dog on board, says Ernest, looking to Voley with love in his voice, we’d have opened fire on you. Yes, we do have weapons on board. God’s honest truth. But God’s been with this ship since it sailed, and that’s no coincidence your dog was on deck and in plain sight.

            Russell recoils at the mentioning of God. I know when he thinks of it he remembers his daughter. He used to tell me he believed in the bullshit. The great lie that something invisible is taking care of you. Survival is what we make through our own stubborn effort, and our deaths through nature’s, he says. That’s how he sees it now. But he doesn’t criticize Ernest for his belief, not out loud anyway. This man is carrying too much of the veneer in him, most of its weight in honesty, and it’s overwhelming all of us. Except for Dusty. I look at him, and his eyes are stuck on Clint. I trace his line of sight to Clint’s, and I look away immediately, because Clint’s blue eyes are still on me. Just watching me. I can’t help but look back, but there he is again, still looking at me. The fact that he knows I see him watching me doesn’t break his stare, and it’s angering Dusty. I feel the anger. And then, finally, Ernest tells us what we really want to know. He tells us what happened in Montana.

We left Cooke City when the supplies ran dry. Used to be relatively dry there, and warm. Rain was lighter. I swear to hell it was. And a hell of a lot warmer. Things really took a turn last year.

            More and more of the people we knew, some of them loved, started to turn to people for food. What else could they do? There’s no more fish there. The sea’s too brown now. So the talk started, all of it based on some old broadcast. Broadcast? Russell cuts in. Yea, something coming over the radio. My eyes glue to Ernest’s face. The idea of a radio signal triggers the thought that we have a radio, taken from the face eater boats we just passed. I don’t butt in though, I wait. He goes on: It was a looped recording, and it was about the Rainless Land. Russell is fidgeting and he coughs. Ernest pauses and looks him over. He’s making an assessment of his health, I know. I’ve been doing the same thing for weeks. Maybe he needs to know how easily he could take us out, if he has to. How weak we’ve really become. That our guns are just props holding us up so the wind and rain doesn’t blow us away. But he’s made it clear that face eaters would have eaten a dog before taking it on a sea voyage. Long before doing that. So he’s made up his mind that we’re not the enemy. And maybe we’re the same. 

            What did the recording say? Dusty asks, finally his attention shifting from Clint. Ernest explains that it was just a broken voice, in and out of static, claiming that there was a safe haven, somewhere in Colorado. It wasn’t raining there, said the radio voice, Ernest goes on. Russell can’t contain it any longer and he says Leadville. Ernest doesn’t seem to know the name, or at least it doesn’t mean anything to him. That’s your Rainless Land, Russell fills in. We don’t know, says Ernest. That recording had been going for years. But a lot of us there, in Cooke City, got to talking. Talking about our options. There’s nothing left of the law in all of America, you know? he says. So the idea for a grand expedition started to eat at everyone. It took us about two years to get the boats together. And all the supplies. We had—what did we have when we first set out, Clint? All eyes turn to him, whose silent gaze is finally upset as he looks up in thought. Finally he retrieves a number. Fourteen I think, he says. Ernest tells us that fourteen ships left, staggered some of them, together some of them.
Resilience
had five other ships with her. Resilience? Russell asks. Our ship, says Ernest. A good crew of men. Ernest rocks back again and starts to fidget under his plastic suit. You all left in a hurry without suits? he asks us. We’re not ready to answer though, because we don’t know what he’s looking for under his shirt. But it’s just a tiny wooden tube, a pipe. He waits for us to answer, as if he wants us to now tell our own story before he’s finished with his. He takes out a small bag and a box of matches and puts them on the table. His eyes fall down to stuff his pipe with tobacco. He lights his pipe and then he looks again at Russell, waiting.

            Where are all the other ships? Russell asks. Ernest draws from his pipe and then tells us about a gale. A waterspout gale. We lost them, he says. Monster seas. It was black as night, and the swells were crashing. Couldn’t see them by the next morning. They might have reached the Rainless Land for all we know. More likely they’re on the bottom.

            I want to press him because I can’t believe that all those ships could disappear in a storm. One or two makes sense, but not that many. Ernest is reeling in thought, like a sadness of thought, as he smokes. Russell understands and waits. I look back at Clint, expecting his blue eyes to be on me again, but they’re not. His eyes are closed now. There is something painful in his mind, but I can’t tell what. Memories. The bane of people with hope. At least if they’re not stored properly, out of the imagination where they can return as real as the day they happened. I’ve learned to ignore most memories when they come up, because all of mine are about the East, where it was better. Where we should have stayed. Finally, Ernest goes on.

            So we couldn’t do anything else but sail on, right? We’re making a go of it anyway. The three of us. Keep her flying south. See what we find. Ernest is done, even I can tell. He won’t tell us anymore. And he makes it clear that it’s our turn with a fixed and blank look. He grunts as if to say that that’s the reason we’re all sitting here anyway—to exchange information. What we know. So that some kind of hope can be kept alive, despite how painful such a thing is.

Russell summarizes our journey. Dusty listens intently, learning about us for the first time. Russell only spends a moment on each city. How the water rose, the flash floods started coming all the time. The chaos of panicking millions. He just tells about how much worse it got: Philadelphia, Pittsburg, Indianapolis, the
Sea Queen Marie
, Sioux Falls, Rapid City, Wyoming, and he stops at Blue City. He doesn’t talk about Blue City. He knows Dusty is hanging on every word. Russell tells our entire lives in the span of five minutes, and he comes to the point of Leadville. It’s the same as your Rainless Land, he says.

“So you’ve come all this way for the same thing?” Ernest says. “And come a much greater distance than we have.” Ernest asks about the law in the East. He asks if there was any. Russell tells him there hasn’t been law since two years after the rain started. Ernest tells him it’s the same everywhere then. Then a great silence comes into the room, because all the information that we were hoping for, and that they were hoping for, seems like dead weight. It all amounts to nothing. Nothing more concrete than what we’d each already known. And all of the sudden the thought seems as obvious to everyone else as it is to me—that we’re completely useless to each other. But Ernest says something that knocks me back, and I’m hit harder even by Russell’s reply to it.

            Ernest just leans back in his chair, like he has been doing every few minutes, takes another smoke, and looks at each of us. So then it’s settled, isn’t it? You won’t get far in that little boat. The seas are rising. It’s getting colder. His meaning is clear to me, and I see Clint react in surprise, as if the underlying suggestion is as unexpected to him as it is to us. Dusty misunderstands, and thinks that Ernest means to gut us too, clean out our insides and throw it in a barrel for fish bait. He moves toward the rifle. Join us, Ernest clarifies. Dusty stops and realizes. It all sounds like a trap still, in part of my mind, but I haven’t heard a man talk the way Ernest talks in a long time. He sounds like Russell used to sound on board the
Sea Queen Marie.
Filled with optimism despite the rain, the exposure, the cold, the face eaters. More than just gnawing pressure. More real than anyone had sounded in Blue City except for Dusty. He means what he says. And Russell understands this immediately. He says we have things on our boat. Gas, food, medicine, a stove. He forgets what else we have—what they missed on the face eater boats—the map, the radio.

Ernest tells Clint to help us get everything that can’t be lost on board the
Resilience
. We should keep both of the boats, he says. We don’t know what we’re up against in the South do we? A man from the North and a man from the East.

            I want to ask about the strong currents, waterspout alley, and the fact we’re heading right for it. But there’s no time. Russell is up right away, following Clint back up into the rain. Hold on a moment, says Ernest. He stands at last from his chair and walks to the corner of the room where shelves are lined with gear and barrels. He fetches a rain suit and tosses it to Russell. Standing at the stairs, Russell looks at him and just nods. He can’t say thanks. We haven’t shown them our worth yet. And that’s the way of things. Nothing comes for free. But he puts on the plastic suit anyway and heads out into the rain. Come on, Russell calls, and I know he’s saying it to me. There’re more here, hold on, Ernest says, and he walks back over and tosses Dusty and me dirty plastic rain suits of our own. They’ll be too big I think, but they’ll keep the saltwater welts off. Then he disappears up into the rain, leaving us alone. Complete trust. Dusty and I look at each other, and Voley stands at attention, ready to chase after everyone who went up the stairs.  

My body screams at me that it’s starving, and I wonder if Dusty is thinking about food too, with how worn his face looks. But it’s something else. I can get that radio to work. If he has batteries, I can get it to work, he says as he pulls on his plastic suit. I believe him for some reason. Ernest’s optimism is contagious. He’d acted sure we’re going to be okay without ever saying it. It was just the tone of his voice. And I saw it filling Russell up. We’re so close to Leadville. And it’s starting to infect me too. Do you think that recording is still going? I ask. Dusty tells me that in Utah there was never anything coming over the radio. I spent days listening, he says. But nothing ever came on. But who knows he says? And then he gets up and leads Voley up into the rain.

I pause and look around the room. The warmth is with me again, against all odds. We’re still going. I pull over my plastic suit and I’m struck blind by a memory. My mom. I feel like I can remember her for a second. It’s strange, because I know I don’t have any memories of her. I was too little when she died. It’s like the flooding memory is just a feeling. Family. But it’s produced a face I feel like I recognize. It’s still there, deep in my mind. The idea of her love. That I had a mom once.

            I see her there very plainly. She’s warm and right next to me and gently touching my hair. I love you, she says. And then I shut it off, or it shuts down on its own, because it’s all made up. Delirium from hunger and fatigue. You have to stop cracking, I tell myself. I climb the stairs into the cold again. I know I’ve been slipping, ever since I met Dusty. I haven’t told Russell, but he’s guessed it. I know he has. And the problem is that he’s cracking too. We’re both getting too soft when there’s nothing to prove we’re any closer to hope than we’ve been in years. It’s all an illusion, I have to remind myself. And then I help get what’s needed off the boat and we tie it up nice and strong and Ernest calls the other member of his crew in from the wheelhouse and we eat more fish than I thought were even alive in the great brown sea.

Days start to slip by, nearly a week. It’s the longest time we’ve had company since the
Sea Queen.

Russell is up in the wheelhouse as usual with Ernest and his men. Dusty and I are under the deck tinkering with radio again. It’s the same thing—no life, when all of a sudden, static erupts out of a speaker. I got it! shouts Dusty. Voley chases his tail in a circle and barks, like he’s congratulating him, kicking bad batteries that roll across the planking. No one above hears us and no one comes down.