Michael Smith: Rivers

“I got a radio,” Cohen said and he set the bags on top of the cases of water and picked it all up. Charlie slapped him on the back as he headed down the ramp.

“Come on up, old fellow,” Charlie said to the man with the sign.

“ ’Bout time,” he answered.

“Really? You want to move to the back?”

Cohen nodded to the muscle as he walked over to the Jeep. He set the water and bags in the backseat next to the two gas tanks and then he put his sock hat on. One more look back at the ocean and then he got in the Jeep and turned around and headed back in the other direction. The rain, for now, was tolerable, soft and steady, but the southeastern clouds seemed to be turning into great black mountains. When it was time to turn off the highway, he stopped and opened a bag of the beef jerky and drove on with it between his legs. A couple of miles along the highway, before he got back to where the water covered the road, he saw the boy and the girl again. Her arm draped around his neck like before. Her limping along and him helping. The sound of the Jeep stopped them and they turned around to see what was coming and Cohen stopped again. He put the jerky on the floorboard and he took the shotgun from beneath the seat and then he drove on toward them. He knew they would wave him down and he knew better than to stop. As he approached, the boy moved the girl’s arm from around his neck and began waving and the girl doubled over.

Keep on going, he thought. Keep on going. Then the look on the face of the big man in the flannel shirt crossed his mind. I ain’t got no money this time. I ain’t got nothing.

He slowed down. Rolled to a stop several car lengths from them. “Stay right there,” he called out.

The boy reached back out to the girl and she leaned on him. Her baseball hat was gone and her long black hair fell across her face and shoulders in a wet, tangled mess.

Cohen raised himself up to where he could talk to them over the windshield. Before he spoke, he gave them a careful look and they didn’t appear to have anything other than what they were wearing. The wind blew cold and the girl folded her arms and held herself.

“What you doing out here?”

“Walking,” said the boy.

“Where to? I don’t see nowhere you could be going.”

“We’re going to Louisiana,” the girl said, throwing her hair back off her face with a toss of her head.

“You got a good long ways to go,” Cohen said. He pointed out toward the water covering the road ahead and the land on either side of the road for as far as they could see. “That right there is good as a swamp.”

“We know it,” the boy said.

Cohen leaned over and spit on the ground. Then he sat back up and said, “You got something in Louisiana?”

“They got power over there, we heard,” the boy said. He couldn’t have been more than sixteen, and his shoulders were narrow even in the bulky letterman jacket.

“So,” Cohen said.

“So what do you care?” the girl snapped and she stood up straight.

“Hush,” the boy told her.

“You hush.”

“Y’all both hush. What’s wrong with her?”

“What you mean?” the boy asked.

“Why you dragging her along?”

“She got snakebit on her leg.”

Cohen rubbed at his rough beard. Watched their faces for any kind of strange look or movement. “Too cold for snakes. Has been for a while,” he said.

“It’s been a while. Back before it got cold. Look,” the boy said and he bent down and pushed the overcoat away from her leg and raised her pant leg. She was wearing tennis shoes with no socks and the area around her ankle looked like it had been poked with the tip of a knife.

“That ain’t a snakebite,” Cohen said.

“Hell it ain’t,” she answered and she pushed her pant leg back down. “It swelled up and won’t quit.”

“It ain’t swelled. And if it was, walking don’t help it,” Cohen said.

“Don’t nothing help it,” said the boy. “Nothing but a doctor. You seen one?”

Cohen shook his head. The three of them stared at each other. Cohen looked behind him to the east and those deep clouds were beginning to creep across the late-afternoon sky. Lightning flashed beneath them, a crooked sharp line that touched the horizon. There was maybe an hour of daylight left and it was getting colder.

Let them be, he thought.

Then the boy said, “I don’t guess you’d take us over the water.”

“If I take you over the water, I’ll have to keep on taking you.”

“No you won’t. Swear it.”

“Don’t beg him,” the girl said.

“I ain’t begging. I’m asking. What the hell.”

Cohen raised the sawed-off shotgun and showed it to them. “You see this?”

They nodded.

“You understand?”

“Yes sir,” the boy said. The girl didn’t answer.

“What about you, snakebite?” Cohen asked. “You understand?”

“I get it.”

“Across the water,” he said. “Across the water and then you get out.”

“That’s fine,” said the boy. “That’s all I’m asking. We just got to get to Louisiana.”

“Stop saying that,” Cohen said. “Don’t know who you been talking to. That water over there you’re wanting to get across is about half as deep as the same water all of Louisiana is under. Now wait right there.”

He climbed down out of the Jeep and rearranged the gas cans and plastic bags and cases of water so that one of them could sit in back. He then took the boxes of shells and the chain-saw blades out of the bag and slid them way up under the driver’s seat. When he was done, he waved them over and the girl limped alongside the boy without his help. Cohen pointed at the boy and told him to sit up front and put her in the backseat. The boy helped her up over the side of the Jeep and she shifted around in the seat to unwind the coat and then he got in the passenger seat. When Cohen was happy with the way they were sitting, he climbed behind the wheel. He now had to shift gears with the same hand that held the shotgun and he didn’t like the loose grip but the decision had been made and they moved on.

He turned his head and told the girl to get them some water and she tore the plastic wrapping off the bottles and handed one up to the boy. They drank like thirsty animals and had each killed a bottle before they got to the water’s edge. Cohen told her to take a couple out and put them in the pockets of that coat and she did.

The Jeep crept through the pondlike water. He had to watch the road ahead and maintain a grip on the shotgun and keep an eye on them. The boy reached down and took the bag of jerky off the floorboard and asked if he could have some and Cohen told him to take it. The boy handed a few strips to the girl and they chewed and chewed as the Jeep made small waves across the flooded land. Halfway across, the boy turned and seemed to say something to the girl and Cohen told him to face the front and don’t look back there no more. He then told the girl to keep her eyes ahead, too. The gearshift shook some in the steady low gear and knocked against the barrel of the gun and he had to squeeze his thumb and forefinger tightly to keep from dropping it. They moved on, the deepest part behind them, and they were beginning to climb when the boy turned and looked at the girl again and Cohen slammed on the brakes and the jerk caused the water to splash into the floor of the Jeep. He stuck the shotgun under the boy’s chin.

“You hear me?” he said. “You hear me now? Do you goddamn hear me?”

The boy’s chin was toward the sky. Without moving his mouth, he said, “Yeah.”

“Face forward or get out.”

“Yeah.”

Cohen lowered the shotgun and shifted into first gear and moved on.