Michael Smith - Rivers

“Not so far.”

“She might,” Evan said, pointing at Mariposa. Her wet clothes hung on her and her hair was limp and dripping.

“She can ride where she wants,” Cohen said.

Mariposa shook her head like a wet dog and then she took off the heavy coat and dropped it on the concrete. She grabbed the bag of clothes and went off looking for a quiet corner, dragging the bag behind.

They found boxes to sit on and in half an hour they were eating. The wind sprayed the rain through the open bay and whistled through the random wind tunnels of the beat-up building. They were silent as they ate, worn out from the anxiety of what already seemed like a long trip.

Cohen had found some dry jeans and a shirt and he had changed in the manager’s office. Kris mixed a bottle and she carried the baby over to Cohen and asked if he wanted to give it to him.

“I don’t know how,” he said.

“That’s the point,” she said. “You might need to one day.” She held the baby out to him. Cohen looked at her sideways, but then he held out his arms and she gave him the child. He was fussing from being hungry and Kris showed Cohen how to tilt him so the milk would go down.

“Is that it?” he asked.

She shrugged and handed him the bottle. “If you figure out something different, let me know.”

He stuck the nipple in the baby’s mouth and the child fought it at first but then took the nipple and went quiet and started sucking. Cohen moved over to a stack of pallets and sat down. He watched the busy cheeks, the tightly closed eyes. Felt the rhythm of the tiny body as it sucked and breathed. He leaned close to the child and whispered, “I buried your momma. I just want you to know she’s not laying out there for the animals.”

“Gotta burp when he’s done,” Kris said to Cohen.

“Him, not you,” Nadine said. She lay stretched across the concrete, her elbow on the floor and her head propped in her hand, picking at her food lackadaisically like someone who had never been without. Evan and Brisco counted Vienna sausages, adding one and counting again or subtracting two and counting again.

Mariposa ate from a can of sweet potatoes and she came over and sat down next to Cohen. She reached over and touched the baby’s hands, pink and shriveled.

“My dad used to have a store,” she said. “Not big, like this one.”

“Where at?”

“The Quarter. Ursuline and Dauphine.”

“Sounds like a good enough spot.”

“It was. I guess.”

“Get flooded?”

She paused. Tossed the can on the ground and it rolled with the wind. “Eventually. Like everything else. But he got shot before that happened. When everything started going crazy. When people started running around taking whatever they wanted to take. But he didn’t want to let them so he and my uncle locked the doors and stood there with shotguns until they busted out the doors and came on in anyway and that was it.”

Cohen adjusted the baby and the bottle. “Reach in my shirt pocket,” he said. She did and she took out a pack of cigarettes and he asked if she wanted one. She shook her head and held the pack and then he asked how she had ended up down here.

“Hitched some rides,” she said and shrugged. “Don’t really know where I thought I was going.”

“It’s hard to know what to do.”

She nodded. “Like you,” she said, looking up at him.

He nodded slightly, as if surprised by what she had said. “Like everybody,” he answered.

Evan came over to them and said that maybe they should look around. See if there was anything worth having.

Cohen got up and gave the baby and bottle to Kris. “How was it?” she asked.

“Different.”

Mariposa looked at him like she wasn’t done talking, but she sat down with Kris and Nadine. Brisco walked over and took hold of Evan’s hand and said, “I wanna go.”

“You want these?” Mariposa asked and she held out the cigarette pack. When Cohen grabbed it, she squeezed tight, kept his hand there an instant. Then she let go. Cohen took out a cigarette and lit it and he and the boys walked away.

Nadine said, “I can’t stop thinking about all them dead people. How many you think it was?”

“At least fifteen or so,” Kris said.

Nadine sat up, shook her head. “I’m beginning to wonder if this was such a good idea.”

“We don’t have a choice,” Mariposa said.

Nadine stood, suddenly unable to be still. She marched around them, rubbed her hands together. “We ain’t had a choice for a long time and now we got one and there don’t seem to be any good ones.”

“We left,” Kris said. “That was a good one.”

“We got to get somewhere,” Mariposa said.

“I know, but damn.”

“We got Cohen to help,” Mariposa said. “We got rides.”

“We ain’t got gas. And Cohen ain’t bulletproof.”

“We’ll find some,” Kris said.

“Where?” Nadine asked.

“I don’t know. Somewhere. Sit down.”

The baby had fallen asleep sucking on the bottle.

“Lay something down over there,” Kris said, nodding toward an empty corner of the storage room. Mariposa got up and pulled a few shirts from the garbage bag. In the shadowy corner she folded them and then she came back and took the baby from Kris. She walked over to the corner but she didn’t put the baby down right away. She held him. Admired him.

Nadine leaned over to Kris and said quietly, “She’s in trouble.”

Kris nodded.

“She better watch it. About twelve seconds after we get over the Line, he’s gonna drop us all like a bag of dirt.”

Kris looked at Nadine and grinned. “You and me both know it ain’t nothing you can help.”

Nadine sat up again. Made a frown.

The rain beat against the building. Against everything.

Mariposa stood in the corner and held the baby, swaying gently.

“You got somewhere to go when we get there?” Nadine asked Kris.

“The hospital. If there is one.”

“Not that. You know what I mean.”

Kris folded her arms. Looked at the floor. “Not really.”

Nadine lay down again and propped her hand under her head. “Me, neither. I used to have some cousins around Aberdeen but probably not no more. I got brothers somewhere.”

“I figured you had some brothers.”

“Why’s that?”

“ ’Cause you’re sitting on go with them hands of yours. You act like you’d fight a wildcat.”

“Shit. You don’t know the half of it. Three brothers, all older. Cousins all boys. And me the youngest. Brought up on a damn chicken farm. And on top of that my momma was the toughest son of a bitch you ever met.”

Kris laughed. Stretched her legs out and leaned back on her elbows. “I don’t know nothing about all that. Only child right here.”

“That’s about what I’d call paradise.”

Nadine’s last word hung in the air between them. Paradise. They were so far removed from anything of the sort that it was difficult to put an image with the word.

“I wanted to tell you I’m sorry,” Nadine said.

“About what?”

Nadine pointed at her stomach. “I’m sorry that happened.”

Kris put her hand on her stomach. Rubbed her hand around in a circle. “I’m more sorry for Lorna than me,” she said.

Nadine nodded. Then she turned on her stomach and lay her head on her folded arms with her face toward Kris.

“Maybe I’m wrong about all these bad feelings I got,” Nadine said. “Maybe we’re gonna get somewhere. Maybe it’s gonna be okay. But I swear to God, I’m almost as scared of getting to the Line as not getting to it. Don’t none of us have nothing.”

Kris lay flat on the concrete and stared at the exposed metal beams of the ceiling. Nadine turned over and put her head facedown in her arms.