Michael Smith - Rivers

Then Charlie walked into the café.

“DAMN. I FIGURED YOU WERE dead,” Cohen said as he met him inside the doorway. He shook hands with his old friend.

Charlie’s face and eyes looked tired and he smelled like a wet dog. “Pretty damn close. Looks like you finally wised up,” he answered. “Where you sitting?”

Cohen pointed at the booth where Mariposa and Evan and Brisco napped.

“Where’d you find them?” Charlie asked.

“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you. I wouldn’t believe it neither if I didn’t see it all myself.”

“That’s a lot of mouths to feed.”

“Come on,” Cohen said. “Let’s sit down.”

Charlie took a chair and slid it to the end of the table and sat down. Cohen touched shoulders and woke the others and introduced everybody. Charlie shook Evan’s hand. He looked curiously at Mariposa, and then at Cohen, and then at Mariposa again.

“What the hell happened?” Cohen said.

Charlie waved to the girl waiting tables and told her to bring him some coffee. His hands were dirty and there was a scrape across his cheek and mud on the elbows of his coat. “I tell you what happened. Ever since that backhoe got spotted, every time I rode it out of the back of the U-Haul, the damn Indians started popping out from everywhere. Especially them crazy-ass army boys or Line patrol or whatever they are. They came from everywhere but me and another boy somehow managed to drive that backhoe back up in the truck and haul ass while they were busy killing each other. Shot my U-Haul full of holes.”

“I still can’t believe you’re running around digging blind on a ten-mile stretch of beach.”

“I ain’t no more. Lost damn near all my boys. All but one laying up there waiting to die.”

“Up where?”

“Across the square over there. I got a top floor where I come and go.”

The girl brought Charlie’s coffee and set it on the table.

“Looks like y’all are trying to get fat,” Charlie said as he took in the empty plates and cups on the table.

“It’s been a while,” Cohen said. “You want something?”

Charlie sipped his coffee, then he stood up. “Come over here, Cohen. Let’s me and you talk.” Cohen got up from the booth and Charlie nodded to the others. Cohen followed Charlie over to the counter and they sat on bar stools.

“What you got going on?” Charlie asked.

“I got nothing going on. We had to haul ass out of there, too. Think the same boys that got after you got after us. We hit a couple of them and then ran out of Gulfport. Ended up here just a little while ago but it wasn’t easy.”

“It never is. You staying?”

“No longer than we have to.”

The girl passed with the coffeepot and refilled Charlie’s cup.

“We?”

Cohen nodded.

“You know about this storm coming, huh?” Charlie asked.

“Like I know about all the rest.”

“Nah. Not like the rest. That’s what the word is.”

“We’ve been down here too long to get worried.”

“Maybe. But I was listening to the radio and they kept on like this one is bigger than hell. A real monster.” Charlie took another sip of coffee, then said, “You’re right. I ain’t worried. I gotta go see about that boy up there. Where you gonna be?”

“Staying here. Man said he’s got rooms upstairs.”

“That’s good. Don’t run off. I might need some help.”

“I might, too.”

Charlie set down the cup and he reached into his coat pocket and pulled out a wad of cash. “Here. Let me pay for that food.” He held the money out, but Cohen pushed his hand away.

“Save your favors for helping me out with supplies and gas. I don’t plan on being here but for a day or two.”

Charlie put the money back into his coat and he stood up. “I’m right across there,” he said, pointing out of the café door. “Top floor, middle building. Stairway is in back. But don’t sneak up on me.” He took out a cigarette and turned up the collar of his coat, then he walked out of the café and onto the crowded sidewalk. Cohen watched him walk, thought he had a limp. Thought he looked old and worn. More than usual.

He moved from the counter back over to the booth and asked if they were ready to go upstairs. Outside there was thunder and then more thunder. More lightning. More applause from the crowds on the sidewalk in their satisfaction of the storm. As if it gave them what they desired.

THE TWO ROOMS WERE MUCH the same. Off-white walls with mismatched furniture, end tables and dressers and headboards that looked as if they had been gathered at yard sales. Scratched hardwood floors, discolored here and there, and windows that looked across the square. In each room, a chair and small table sat next to the windows, and on each table was a short stack of several-year-old magazines. A small glass chandelier hung from each ceiling. The bathroom separated the rooms, with its claw-foot tub and its sink that had streaked orange from the years of the dripping faucet and its diamond-shaped ceramic tile. A bookshelf next to the sink, with candles and matches on the top shelf and toilet paper and towels on the bottom.

Brisco ran to a bed and jumped up and down and Mariposa headed into the bathroom and turned on the faucet. The water came out copper-colored but after a minute ran clear and she washed her face. She walked into the other bedroom, took off her coat, and fell back on the bed.

Cohen and Evan went out to the truck and they took what was important and returned to the rooms, staying off the square and sneaking around and behind buildings and knocking on the back door of the café until the big man let them in. They brought the guns and ammunition and bags of clothes and the big man only nodded at the rifles and shotgun when Cohen said I gotta keep them somewhere. Once they were all upstairs again, Cohen slid the rifles and shotgun underneath the bed in the room that he and Mariposa would share. He stashed the boxes of shells in the bottom drawer of the dresser and then he handed one of the two pistols to Evan.

“I don’t want it,” Evan said.

“You need to keep it. Hide it somewhere.”

“What for?”

“Jesus, Evan. You know what for. For whatever the hell comes along.”

“Unload it,” Evan said.

“It don’t work if it’s not loaded. You don’t have to sleep with it, just hide it in there somewhere. Take it,” Cohen said and he pushed it on the boy. Evan took it and went into the other room where Brisco had discovered the television.

“Go hide it for him,” Mariposa said when Evan was gone.

“If I hide it for him, he won’t know where it is.” Cohen put the other pistol in the top drawer of the dresser. “You see where this is?” he asked her. She nodded.

He walked to the window and pushed back the curtain. He looked out at the rain, at the people across the square. He thought about the guard at the Line warning about the monster that was coming, thought about Charlie’s mention of the same thing. Maybe we haven’t seen it all.

“What do you think?” Mariposa said.

Cohen closed the curtain. Sat down in the chair next to the window. “I think we’re dry. We’re safe. I think we won’t be here long.”

Mariposa walked into the bathroom and closed the door to the adjoining room. Then she came back into their room and began to undress.

“What do you think?” he asked.

She let the dirty, damp clothes fall in a pile and said, “I think I’m going to be clean. And then I think I’m going to sleep in a bed.”

THE FIRST NIGHT HE DREAMED of children. He dreamed of babies on their backs, their mouths open and bodies relaxed in innocent slumber. He dreamed of early walkers, wobbly and unsure, knocking against coffee tables and doorways and dropping flat on their bottoms and then getting up and going again. He dreamed of big kids riding horses and playing freeze tag and fishing from the bank and he dreamed of teaching a girl to ride a bicycle without the training wheels and the trust she put in him to make sure that she didn’t fall. The children of his dreams were both girls and boys, sometimes blond and sometimes dark-haired, sometimes loud and rambunctious and sometimes tender and mild. The children of his dreams were never wet and never cold and they had shadows because they had sunshine. He woke several times in the night and each time he hurried back to sleep, trying to catch up with the little bodies and voices running through his mind.