Michael Smith - Rivers

“Where’s your brothers?” Kris asked.

“Wherever Aggie left them,” Nadine said, her voice muffled. “We hunkered down to guard what was left of our place and equipment and Aggie and Joe came wandering up like they was about to starve to death or something. Played us real good. I went to sleep one night in the cab of Eddie’s truck. Woke up the next morning and they was all gone. Aggie was sitting on the tailgate, smoking a cigarette.” Nadine then rolled over on her back. “I don’t have nowhere to go. And if I did, I wouldn’t have nobody when I got there.”

Kris pushed herself up. Scooted over to Nadine and touched her elbow. “Listen to me. All I want is somewhere to have this baby. That’s it. If God don’t give me but one thing the rest of my life, that’s all I want. And when it comes and when I’m laying there and they give it to me, I’m gonna need somebody.”

Nadine sat up and looked at Kris. “Then I’m gonna be there,” she said.

“And then we’ll figure it all out.”

Nadine nodded. “Okay.”

They touched hands, and then they each lay back down. They didn’t talk anymore. They rested and listened to the rain. Mariposa sang softly to the sleeping baby, but when the thunder roared they were reminded that no matter what kind of tomorrow they dreamed of, they were all very lost.

THERE WAS NOTHING LEFT IN the storage area of the grocery and Cohen didn’t expect to find anything in the front of the store and he was right. The aisles remained and there were shopping carts up and down but the shelves and coolers had been cleared. At the checkout, the cash registers had been removed.

“Looks like somebody planned ahead,” Cohen said.

“Looks like it,” said Evan.

“Come on. Let’s see what’s next door.”

They walked back through the grocery and out into the rain and they hurried along the alley until they came to the kids’ store and the lock was busted and the door was open. Cohen opened it wide to let in some light and the storage room was much different here. Boxes opened and pilfered and shelves turned over and the office door off its hinges and lying on the floor. In the small office the desk drawers were pulled out and several file cabinets were open and their papers and files strewn across the floor. They moved on through the mess and went into the store area and it was much the same. Some clothes racks standing and some knocked over. Plundered shelves. But scattered about were kids’ clothes, baby clothes. Toys in unopened boxes. Evan picked up a toy truck and said, “Look here.” Brisco took it excitedly and ripped it from its box and started making truck sounds as he ran it up and down the length of the shelf.

“Go get the others,” Cohen said and Evan went back to the grocery store and called for them. In a minute they were all in the kids’ store, sorting through the leftovers. Mariposa laid the baby down on a pile of blankets and he woke and started to cry. They ignored him as she and Nadine took a box and went around filling it up with baby shirts and pants and rattles. They found random pieces of clothing for boys or girls, for kids and infants, and they put it all in the box, taking the time to hold up each piece and show it to one another and oooh and aaah when something was particularly sweet. When one box was filled they found another and Kris said this one is for the baby to keep. They filled it with only boy things. And when the baby’s box was just about full, and with his crying at its highest pitch, Nadine shrieked and raised her hand in the air and she was clutching a pack of pacifiers.

“Thank you, dear Jesus,” she said and she opened up the package and walked over to the baby. She knelt down and said, “Here you go, little madman.” She touched the pacifier to the edge of his open mouth and he took it in and his eyes opened wide. He sucked on it and the tension left his face and the tears slowed and soon he was sucking and quiet and in another minute he had returned to sleep.

“Do not lose these,” Nadine said and she handed the remaining pacifiers to Kris and picked up the two boxes and walked out back.

On the other side of the store, Mariposa was helping Evan with his own box of toys for Brisco. A couple more trucks and a Frisbee and some coloring books. A dinosaur and a robot and a checkerboard and checkers. Brisco circled them with the first truck he had found, treating it as an airplane now, his arm extended and moving the truck in a rising and falling motion, landing it and lifting it again and lost in his own world.

Cohen sat in a chair next to the cash register. He smoked a cigarette and watched. He looked out the storefront where windows used to be, and the wind came in and the thunder was on them and the lightning flashed around them now, brilliant shards of white interrupting the gray. The rain seemed to have eased some but remained constant. He finished the cigarette and stomped it out on the carpeted floor and then he slumped a little in the chair. Leaned his head back against the wall. Closed his eyes.

As he drifted, he found himself thinking about Mariposa. Thinking of her in Elisa’s black dress, believing she was doing something that he wanted her to do.

He opened his eyes and saw her sitting on the floor, trying to piece together an arm onto the body of something shiny and blue. She had pushed up the sleeves of her shirt. Her forearms were girlish but she seemed more of a woman in her shoulders and chest and she bit her lip as she worked the arm into place. Her hair was blacker than a clear night and he noticed how soft her eyes could be when her mind was taken off this thing surrounding her. He wondered if she was even twenty but he didn’t think so. He wondered if she might lie against him again tonight, wherever it was that they would lie down to sleep. The arm popped into place and she held the toy out in front of her and she caught Cohen looking at her. Her eyes went down in embarrassment, then back up with satisfaction.

He stood up and walked to the storefront and tried to light a cigarette but couldn’t in the gust. He stepped through the doorway and he walked along the covered sidewalk to the furniture store. Like the grocery store, it had been cleared out by the people who were supposed to clear it out, not looters and animals. The front windows remained and he stepped back and looked at his reflection. It was the first time he had seen his full figure in a long time. He noticed that he was thin. His beard was uneven. He leaned to one side because he kept his weight on his good leg. He noticed that the hand that wasn’t holding the unlit cigarette was in his coat pocket and he was unconsciously grasping the pistol.

He let go of the pistol and took his hand out of his pocket and he made a peace sign. Then he shot the bird. Then he turned his hand sideways and made a dog. When he was out of tricks, he posed as if holding the baby, imagined what he looked like with a child in his arms. He thought of that baby boy and how out of place he seemed down here, this child of thunder. How out of place they all seemed. For so long, staying below had made sense to him but no more. He was sick of the rain and had been sick of the rain for months and he was sick of the cold and sick of the wind and sick of trying to build that goddamn room that he swore to God that he would build. He knew that whenever he was above the Line, a day from now or a week from now or a year or five years from now, that he would feel a guilt in having left. He knew that some part of him would want to come back. Want to return to the place and want to imagine her there and want to go and sit out by their tombstones and talk to them. He didn’t expect that there would ever be a time when he would be free of his desire to be there, with them. But he realized that he had started something new and he wanted to finish it.