Michael Smith - Rivers

“Damn,” said Evan.

“Damn like good or damn like bad?” asked Cohen.

“Damn like good. Right?”

Cohen shook his head. “Damn like bad. We got this and we got the truck and everything in it, though. But we’re back in the real world now where it costs money to breathe.”

“Not me. Watch this,” Brisco said and he huffed and puffed as if trying to put out a fire.

“It’s enough,” Mariposa said.

“Not really. It’s more than nothing. But less than something,” Cohen said. I could fix that, he started to add, but he stopped.

At the doorway, two men holding bottles in brown paper bags tried to come in but the man told them to go on and he poked at them with the stick. They backed off and walked on by, looking longingly into the café as if the mere sight of food might ease their hunger.

It wasn’t long before the food arrived. Plates of eggs and grits and bacon and sausage. Toast with butter and jelly and biscuits with gravy and sliced tomatoes. There was no more talking for some time.

When Cohen was done, he stood up and walked to the doorway and lit a cigarette. He asked the man if he wanted one but he said no and then Cohen asked if there was such a thing as a hotel around here.

“Where you coming here from, anyway?” the man asked.

“Down there. Kinda expected something different at the Line.”

“The Line?” the man said and huffed. “That’s turning into an old wives’ tale.”

“That’s what I keep hearing.”

“You better keep on going then,” the man said. “That Line is bullshit. See those cop cars over there?” He pointed the pool stick. “Been sitting there for about a year. Go look at ’em. Windows busted out. Gutted. Same way with anything else that was supposed to mean something. Been more than a year since we had anything to hold on to.”

“How much farther to where it all starts?”

The man shrugged. “I got no idea. Everywhere I know about is like this. Probably as far up as Tennessee, I guess. On the east side. West side is washed out.”

“What you mean, washed out?”

“Damn, man. You need to get educated if you plan on getting anywhere with that crew. Go look over there at the end of the counter. There’s a newspaper about two months old but it’ll do.”

Cohen crossed the café and sat down on a bar stool at the end of the counter. He picked up the newspaper and unfolded it. It was a national newspaper, and the front-page articles spoke to the weather, boundary issues, relief issues, banking issues. The legend at the bottom said WEATHER 16A. It also said BOUNDARIES 16A.

Cohen found 16A to be the back page. Across the top half of the page was a map of the United States that provided regional weather information. Across the bottom half of the page was another United States map, the boundary map. “Good Lord,” he said.

A blue-shaded area split the country and covered all the states bordering the east and west sides of the Mississippi River. Across the blue-shaded area was written THE FLOODLANDS. Texas and the southeast region, above the Line, were red, up to Tennessee and North Carolina. SERVICES AND SECURITY LIMITED covered the red region. The Line was a thick black line that appeared to be in its original place ninety miles inland. Maroon covered the region below the Line and read ACCESS FORBIDDEN. On either side of THE FLOODLANDS, the northeast and the west, the map was green, and across both of these regions was written SERVICES AND SECURITY UNLIMITED.

Cohen laid the newspaper on the counter. His mouth was open some as he turned and looked blankly at the man in the doorway, at the riffraff milling about on the sidewalk.

He had no idea what to do.

“Don’t look too spiffy, does it,” said the black woman working the grill.

He didn’t register her.

“Hey,” she said loudly.

Cohen shook his head some and turned to her.

“I said it don’t look too spiffy,” she said again and she pointed her spatula at the newspaper.

Cohen closed his mouth. Shook his head.

Then he got up and walked back over to the big man in the doorway.

A woman with a blanket draped over her head and shoulders came along. She held out a shaking hand and said, “Got dollar? Got dollar?”

“No dollar. Go on,” the man said. “Can’t buy a damn stick of gum with a dollar.”

She went on. There was a clap of thunder and a snap of lightning and some of them out on the sidewalk applauded and cheered. The man turned and saw Cohen behind him and said, “You educated now?”

“Yeah. More than I’d like.”

The thunder roared again and again they cheered.

“They do this all day, I’m guessing,” Cohen said.

“All day and all night. Sidewalks never get still. They crawl in and out of these building like goddamn rats. Starting to grow little rats now. It’s a crying damn shame. Used to sit right here in this spot every morning and read the paper. Drink my coffee. Say hey to whoever. By the way, I’m Big Jim.”

The two men shook hands and Cohen lit a cigarette. They stood there watching the rain, watching the others. When Cohen was done, he tossed the butt out on the sidewalk. A bent-over old man reached down and picked it up and tried to smoke it.

“Get the hell out of here,” Big Jim yelled and the old man looked at him without care but shuffled away.

Big Jim folded his arms and looked at Cohen. Then he looked over at their table. “I got two rooms upstairs. Second floor. I live up on the third so you probably don’t have nothing to worry about. Best you’re gonna get.”

“How much?”

“Hundred.”

“A hundred what?”

“Dollars.”

“For both?”

“For one.”

“Jesus.”

“Fine. Both. How long you planning on being here?”

Cohen looked out at the rain. Imagined someplace where the sun was shining on the sidewalk. “At a hundred dollars a night not very damn long.”

Cohen walked back to the table and sat down. The plates were empty and they sat slumped in the booth. The three of them seemed to have changed color with their full bellies as if they had ingested some magical potion for happiness.

“We’re gonna stay upstairs tonight,” Cohen said. “Got two rooms. The café man lives up on top so everything will be fine.”

“And we go tomorrow?” Mariposa asked.

Cohen heard her but didn’t answer. He repeated the question in his head with the emphasis on the word “we.” And we go tomorrow? Yes, he thought. We.

“Won’t be going nowhere tomorrow, by the looks of it,” Evan said.

“We’ll see what the storms do first.”

The woman came over and refilled their coffee mugs.

Evan said, “You think the others made it to the hospital?”

“They will. Eventually. Gonna take a while,” Cohen said. “They seemed serious about getting them there.” He thought about Kris getting into the black vehicle, about the guard telling him it was a hundred miles to a safe place. He wondered what that meant for the Line. Or if there was such a thing anymore.

“Think that baby is okay?” Evan asked.

“I bet he’s fine,” Cohen said. “I hope so.”

Evan sat up straight. Put his elbows on the table. “Only seems fair that he would be,” he said.

The others nodded. And then they sat quietly for a while. Brisco laid his head in his brother’s lap, his feet hanging out of the end of the booth. Mariposa leaned against Cohen’s shoulder and closed her eyes.

Outside they moved along the sidewalks, looking in at those lucky enough to have a seat in a dry café and money to spend once they were inside. Big Jim shooed them away like flies. The man with the tattooed neck walked by, stopped when he noticed Cohen in the window. He grinned and pointed at him and he pointed at Mariposa and then he clapped his hands softly and nodded. Cohen, trying not to wake the girl, slowly stuck his hand into his coat that lay on the seat, took hold of a pistol, and he raised it and showed it to the man. The man threw back his head and laughed, and then he grabbed at his crotch and walked on.