Michael Smith - Rivers

She fell asleep quickly then, as if what she had to say emptied her, and afterward he would lie there and listen to the music and the voices coming from the square below, the yelling and the breaking bottles and the wild laughter, and he wondered if this was what we would all become if given the opportunity. If what they had seen below would ultimately win when it was all broken down. He imagined a world where there was nothing to rule but man’s own instinct and desire and wondered would that make us better or worse. Cohen had seen the worst and it seemed to be standing at attention, ready to strike, but then he would remember Evan and his almost inexplicable goodness and the image of Evan and Brisco walking together, holding hands, would be enough to ease his mind and allow him to sleep.

Each time he woke she was talking and later, when they were both awake, he did not mention it and neither did she. He didn’t say anything about the Jeep for two days, as the monster in the Gulf crept closer, grew stronger, prepared itself to teach them all a lesson in true power.

During other moments in the night, when he wasn’t listening to her whispers, he thought of Nadine and Kris and the baby and the other baby that was to come. He regretted the haste with which they had all been separated. He regretted the quick ending because he had suffered his share of quick endings. Elisa and his unborn child. The ambush and the house being ransacked. Habana disappearing in the storm. The dog being shot by Aggie. It seemed as if each ending came and went like a pulse of lightning and he wished now that he had told the men at the station to hold on, I need to talk to them a second. And he wished he had gotten out in the storm and gone back to them and climbed in the truck and held the baby once more and he wished that he had told Kris and Nadine that he thought they were braver than hell and he wished that he could have been with them for a moment. To see them before they were gone. He believed they were safe. He believed they were going to be taken to a place that would help them all. But he knew that though there was a quick ending, it also meant that there was a quick beginning. And this time their beginning seemed hopeful.

For two days, he had been clean. He had been dry. He had thoughts of others. He had touched and been touched. Sometime during the second night, as he lay still next to her, as he thought of the others, as he replayed his dreams filled with voices and sunshine, he decided that the Jeep and the shoe box could stay right where they were. The road was out in front.

MARIPOSA STOOD IN THE WINDOW looking down across the square. It Was the evening and the lights had gone out in most of the buildings but the lights had now come on in the few places that stayed open until whenever. The music had started, the clunky sound of an electric guitar accompanied by clunky drums, sounding out into the early night, through the rain that had not stopped. Cohen sat on the bed watching television, trying to figure out when the lull would come, those handful of hours when the rain stopped and the wind fell still, before the next storm poured onto the coast. The sound of another television came from the other room, as Evan and Brisco had been for days hypnotized by the bluish glow from the nineten-inch screen that picked up two random channels from somewhere, one of them in Spanish.

The bedsheet was wrapped around Mariposa and it had been this way for most of the two days, as they only got fully dressed to go down to the café to eat. She turned from the window and slid herself down onto the bed and leaned against him, her hand across his bare stomach.

He raised the remote and turned off the television. “It’s coming. Tonight. The lull is after midnight. Before dawn,” he said. “And that’s our best chance to make a move.”

She raised up from his chest and sat with her back against the headboard. He stood and put on his shirt and jeans. She crossed her legs Indian-style and pressed her fingertips on her knees. “What about the Jeep?” she said.

“I don’t care about the Jeep,” he said.

“What about the other stuff?” she asked.

“What other stuff?”

“Her stuff. And your stuff. The box.” She uncrossed her legs. Held her hands together.

He sat down on the edge of the bed. “It’s gone.”

“It might not be.”

“No. It’s gone,” he said.

“It’s okay if you want it.”

“I know it is. And I do want it. But I don’t want to die because of it. Not now.”

He stood from the bed and walked across the room. Looked out of the window. It was almost dark, gray turning black. A neon light glowed from the corner building down to the right. He shoved his hands in his pockets, thinking about Elisa. He wondered if there was such a thing as rising and living in another world where there was only light and no rain and no pain.

He turned and looked at Mariposa. “There’s more than one reason I wanted to go back to the Jeep. And one day I’m gonna tell you what that reason is, but not tonight.”

“I’ve been dreaming about you,” she said quickly, almost interrupting him. “You leave and you don’t come back.” It seemed to leap out of her mouth as if it were something she’d had to fight to hold in.

He sat down on the bed next to her. Outside the voices howled. The music howled. The storm howled. He could see that she had resigned her fate to him. And he thought that maybe he was doing the same.

She crawled off the bed and began to get dressed. He moved across the room and stopped her. “I’m not leaving,” he said.

She wouldn’t look up at him.

“Mariposa,” he said and he waited on her to look at his face. He held her shoulders and waited and then she turned to him. “I’m not leaving. Not without you. Not without Evan and Brisco. Tonight when it calms, we’re all getting in that truck and we’re all driving out of here and we’ll go as far as we can. And whenever we get to where we’re going, I’m not leaving you there. But you gotta promise me something.”

Her anxious expression relented. “What?”

“I said you gotta promise.”

“Okay, okay. Promise what?”

He moved his hands from her shoulders down to her arms and held them carefully. “You won’t leave me.”

She moved her hands to his. “I won’t.”

It seemed as if a window had been opened in the room. He moved back from her and she continued to dress. She pulled on her jeans and buttoned up the shirt and pulled a hooded sweatshirt over her head. She sat down on the edge of the bed.

He put on his socks and boots and said that he was going to go out and try and find Charlie and if he couldn’t find Charlie then find some gas from somewhere else. Maybe the man in the café can help us out. He put on another shirt and a coat. He stepped through the bathroom and knocked on Evan’s door. Evan said come in and he and Brisco were in the bed, the covers over them, watching a cartoon cat chase a cartoon mouse.

“I’m going out for a minute,” Cohen said. Neither Evan nor Brisco acknowledged him. So he walked over and stood in front of the television. “I said I’m going out,” he repeated. “I gotta find some gas. See if I can find Charlie. After we get back, I need you to help me take some stuff to the truck.”

“What for?” Evan asked.

“ ’Cause we’re leaving tonight. Should be a lull sometime and we’re gonna get going.”

“You want me to go out with you?”

Cohen shook his head. “No. You stay with him.”

“You sure?”

“I’m sure. Relax. Mariposa is in the other room. If y’all want something to eat, go get it. I’d hate for you to miss five seconds of television, though.”

But Evan didn’t hear the last part as he stared at the light. Cohen shook his head, then closed the door and went out of the room and down the stairs, imagining how good it was going to feel to be somewhere else.