Michael Smith - Rivers

“What is it?” Evan whispered.

“Why are you whispering? It ain’t more rats, is it?” Nadine asked.

“Hold on,” Cohen said. He held the light on the tub and walked over to it. When he got there, he reached down and touched his fingertips to the end of the faucet and it was wet. Then he shined the light down to the drain and he touched it and it was also wet. He then turned the handle for the cold water and there was a delay, and a groan, and then water sputtered out of the faucet, copper-colored and filled with little specks of something. It kept on sputtering and spitting but Cohen left it running and soon the line had cleared and a stream of water ran from the faucet.

Cohen stood back and smiled and said, “I’ll be damned.”

“I got it. I got it first,” Nadine was yelling as she turned and gave the baby to Kris. She ran out of the room and back down the stairs and then they heard her running through the house, yelling, “We got a tub and water. We got a tub and water, a tub and water.” Kris and the baby and Mariposa and Brisco followed her back down the stairs.

“Hadn’t seen one of those in a while,” Evan said. “Gotta say I wouldn’t mind a bath myself.”

“Gonna be a cold one,” Cohen said.

“No colder than these birdbaths we been taking since forever.”

“That’s true.”

Evan walked around the tub, moved around the dark room. “Sorry about that back there,” he said.

Cohen shook his head. “Don’t worry about it.”

“I was curious.”

“No shit.”

“I didn’t think it’d be a thousand rats.”

Cohen moved across the room and shined the flashlight out of the window. He thought about the look on the boy’s face after they had gotten away from the men in the parking lot. He turned back to Evan and said, “I hate I had to ask you to shoot.”

Evan didn’t answer.

“You all right?”

He nodded. “I’m all right.”

“Just so you know, Evan, there is one thing in this world I won’t worry about,” Cohen said. “And that one thing is you.”

Evan was about to speak again but the footsteps of the others were on the stairs and into the upstairs hallway and they came in the bathroom with lanterns and bars of soap and towels and clothes. Mariposa came in behind them, holding the baby.

“Get out, get on out,” Nadine said and she and Kris ushered the men out of the room.

“Come on, Mariposa,” Kris said. “Let’s get the baby first.”

“Where’s Brisco?” Evan asked.

“He said he didn’t want a bath,” Mariposa said.

Cohen said, “Go ahead and run the water but don’t get undressed. I got an idea.”

He and Evan headed downstairs and outside to the trucks. Evan held the flashlight while Cohen raised the tarp covering the truck bed and stuck his head under. He found the propane burner for the stove and he went back into the house and up to the bathroom. He took the legs off the stove and the tub sat just high enough to slide the stovetop underneath. Cohen took a lighter from his pocket and lit the stove and the blue flames wrapped the bottom of the tub. “That’ll help knock off the chill,” he said.

“That’s plumb genius,” Nadine said. “Now get on.”

Cohen and Evan went back to the trucks and worked against the storm but were able to get out what they needed for the night. Food and drink and some blankets. They took it all into the kitchen. Then Cohen went out one more time and he came back with a shotgun and shells.

COHEN AND EVAN AND BRISCO had taken off their coats and they sat on the floor in the kitchen. Cohen drinking a beer. Evan and Brisco sharing a bottle of water and eating from a can of green beans. The voices of the women upstairs and the rain coming down and the wind shoving at the house and Brisco trying to explain why he did not need to take a bath and Evan trying to explain why he did.

And then Evan said, “You know that girl likes you.”

Cohen didn’t answer.

“I said you know that girl likes you.”

“I heard you.”

“Don’t you know it?”

Cohen shook his head. He started to make some crack about he-said-she-said up and down the high school hallway, but then he realized Evan wouldn’t know anything about that. That he had never been up and down a high school hallway, had never passed notes, been to ball practice, skipped out on class in the afternoon, climbed into the backseat with the girl from history class and felt around for things. Never been to a movie with a girl or gone riding with the windows down and the music loud on a spring afternoon. That he was the perfect age for such things but he would not know them and he seemed to be so far beyond them anyway. And it was then that Cohen began to feel the weight of the others in this house on this dot on the map below the Line. He had always been aware that he wasn’t the only one who had lost, but the losses for others seemed different to him, more true and exact, now that the losses of others had eyes and faces and arms and legs.

“I think she’s just lonely. Like everybody else,” Cohen said.

“Nah. I think it’s more than that.”

“You remember she wanted to kill me. You remember that?”

Evan laughed. “I remember. She didn’t mean it, though. I told you we didn’t mean nothing. We had to.”

“You told me you didn’t mean nothing. You didn’t say we .”

“Yeah, but you know it. Anyway, you’re probably twice as old as her.”

“I wouldn’t go that far.”

“You might be.”

“How old is she?”

Evan shrugged. “Eighteen? Nineteen?”

“But you don’t know.”

“I never asked.”

“How old you think I am?”

“About twice whatever she is.”

Cohen shook his head. “Got me there.”

Brisco got up from the floor and started playing with his shadow on the wall, his arms out and gliding like a hawk.

“You like her?” Evan asked.

“No. Not really.”

“Why not?”

“Because.”

“That ain’t no answer.” Evan huffed. Wiped his mouth on his sleeve and set the can of green beans on the floor. “Just seems like—” he started, then stopped.

“Seems like what?”

“Nothing.”

“What is it?”

“Seems like a miracle that anybody down here would find anybody else. Especially you.”

Cohen drank his beer. Tried to figure out how to answer. “Nobody’s found nobody. Nobody’s looking for nobody. I’m guessing about forty more miles and the road splits us all.”

“You think?” Evan asked.

“Which part?”

“That we’ll all split up.”

On the floor next to Cohen were two more beers and he took one and handed it to Evan. “Here,” he said.

Evan took it. Nodded. “What’d you used to do?”

“Do?”

“Yeah. Like work or whatever.”

“I framed houses. Built a bunch of these houses that are nothing but litter now.”

“How’d you learn all that?”

“My dad did the same. Started working with him in the summers when I was, I guess about your age. Kept on from there.”

Evan thought a minute. Sipped from the beer. “I think I’d like that. Be outside and stuff. See something happening every day. You like it?”

“Yeah,” Cohen said. “I liked it. Even kept on for a while after all this mess started.”

“You mean that thing on the back of your house.”

Cohen nodded. “That thing.” He felt so stupid now, thinking he could finish that room. “Let’s talk about the weather instead.”

“Okay. I think it’s gonna rain.”

“It’s already raining,” Brisco said, making an alligator chomp with his shadow.

“Then it’s a good thing we own a farmhouse,” Cohen said. “Complete with a tub and running water and a kitchen.”