Michael Smith - Rivers

With the help of Cohen and Evan they had tied him to the back end of a cattle trailer in the field. His arms were stretched out wide, and he was sitting on the ground, and he was bound at the wrists, elbows, around his neck, and around his chest. The baby was taken out of Ava’s arms and they made clear to her that she had a choice, die with Aggie or live with us. She decided she’d rather keep on living. No sooner had her decision been made than two of the women who weren’t pregnant began to dig through the pile of keys they had taken from Aggie. They found the keys to one of the trucks that they knew would run and without another word, without packing a change of clothes or any food or water, they went for the truck and the engine dragged a few times but then it cranked. Before they could get turned around and headed toward the road, three more women had run and gotten into the back of the truck and they were gone.

That left the pregnant woman and two not pregnant and Evan and Mariposa and Brisco. And the less-than-a-day-old child. Cohen rubbed at his beard and looked around and then he knelt on the ground and began looking through the keys for the Jeep key. He picked it out and stood and put it in his pocket and then he walked out to where Aggie was tied and he reached into Aggie’s shirt pocket and took his cigarettes and lighter. The rain beat against the rusted iron trailer like some random back-alley drumbeat outside a late-night Royal Street blues bar.

“You could be my brother,” Aggie said to him in a humbled voice.

Cohen looked at him and shook his head and covered and lit a cigarette. When he walked back to them, they were standing in a circle, holding hands, and the pregnant woman was crying. They were wet and worn but it didn’t seem to matter. Seemed like they had accepted that they were part of what came from the sky. He looked around for Mariposa but didn’t see her. Cohen let them be, not wanting to intrude on the things that they had suffered together, and he went into the trailer that had belonged to Joe. Clothes were scattered about and there were empty plastic bottles and empty beer and whiskey bottles on the counter and a bowl filled with cigarette butts on the floor next to the bed. Cohen found a pair of jeans that looked about right and he tossed them over his shoulder and walked out of Joe’s trailer and over to the trailer where the woman had given birth to the child.

He opened the door and was greeted with the smell of the sick and the dead and he stepped back. There wasn’t much light now but he leaned his head inside and he looked at the woman, covered in crimson, her legs spread and her arms at her side and her head fallen over with an open mouth. He looked at her and then he stepped in and stood at the foot of the bed.

There was dried blood underneath his feet. The sheet across her legs had stuck to her and her naked breasts were smeared dark red. Her bare feet were sticking out of the end of the sheet. Her hands so still against her, never having held her own. The moment replayed in his mind like some memory of a horrific dream and he shook his head to rid himself of it and then he looked around and found the black bag. It was open on a short table next to the bed along with a stack of towels and a gallon of water. He looked inside and found the spray and gauze that Aggie had used on him. He took off his pants, unwrapped the bandage from his leg and washed it with the water. Then he sprayed the wound, front and back, and he wrapped a fresh bandage around his thigh. When he was satisfied with his work, he put on the jeans he had taken from Joe’s trailer, then he looked at the woman again. She seemed almost otherworldly, an apparition from the underworld sent to warn them.

He bowed his head and whispered an unfinished sentence. He listened to the rain. And then there came a great boom of thunder that echoed across the night. He wondered if something of his had been lost. Or maybe something had been found.

When he came out they had broken from their circle and begun to plunder through the trailers that Aggie always kept them from. All of them but Mariposa, who stood alone, staring at Cohen, as if waiting for him.

Cohen limped over to her. He held out a cigarette but she shook her head. “You don’t look like you’d be much in a fight,” he said. “But my neck still hurts some.”

Mariposa folded her arms. “You gonna lead us out of here?” she asked.

Cohen smoked. Thought about it. “That sounds kinda biblical. I’m guessing y’all have had enough of that.”

“Yeah. I guess.”

“I’m about like everybody else here.”

She let her arms fall to her sides. “Not really,” she said. She looked away from him, at the others plundering through the stockpile of food, water, clothes. Cohen watched her and what he noticed now was her youth. Half my age, he thought. At least.

Aggie hollered out something that Cohen didn’t make out. He then called out very clearly for Ava. She was crossing the compound and she stopped and looked in his direction. He called her again. Ava looked around and saw Cohen and Mariposa and she shook her head and moved on to her trailer.

Mariposa said, “Somewhere I got somebody.” She looked at Cohen again. What he noticed now wasn’t her youth but in her expression, in her deep-set eyes and the bend of her thin lips, he saw something contradicting that youth, far removed from innocence by no fault of her own.

“I got family,” she continued. “Somewhere.”

Cohen nodded.

“Like you,” she said.

He felt like there was something he wanted to say, but he didn’t know what it was. He didn’t know who she was. Didn’t know if he wanted to find out. Didn’t want to care. Didn’t want to talk to her about her life or his life or anything that mattered. He thought of simply walking away but didn’t have to when Brisco came bounding out of a trailer with an armful of Coke cans. He dropped one and kicked it over toward Cohen and Mariposa and then he walked to them and handed them each a can. “There’s a whole bunch,” he said.

Cohen looked down at Brisco and said, “How old are you?”

The boy set the other cans on the ground, lifted his arm, and slid his jacket sleeve under his nose, and then he only shrugged.

“You don’t know how old you are?”

“I know.”

“Okay.” He waited on the child to continue but he didn’t and then Cohen didn’t have to worry about walking away from Mariposa because she turned and walked away from him. Brisco headed back toward the trailer. The women had finished their plunder and gone in from the rain.

There was a murmur of thunder and a flash off to the west. Cohen looked down at the ground and watched the rain splatter in the red mud.

Then he walked over to Mariposa’s trailer. A low glow of light leaked behind a shirt or sheet or something hung across the window. A concrete block below the door. He stepped up onto the block and stood close to the door, so close that if he leaned forward, his nose would bump it. He heard her moving inside. He lifted his hand and touched his wet fingertips to the wet door and he wondered what she was doing. He wondered why she had come to him like she had, in the middle of the night, no words, no want, only coming to him quietly and almost reverently and lying there with him. He wondered how he had known it was her, how when he woke in the dark and felt the body that he had known it was the girl with the black hair. He wondered why it hadn’t startled him and he wondered why he hadn’t moved away from her. He wondered why it felt like it had and he wondered what it might feel like again, if it would be the same, tranquil and assuring, or if it would cause disgust and guilt and cause him to run. Inside the trailer, her movement stopped and he wondered what she was doing. He wondered what he was doing. His head tilted forward and he rested his forehead on the door.