L Akers - Shoot Like a Girl

Sarah took her baby back and sat down. She tried once again to feed her child. Tears streamed down her face as the baby vomited up anything that went down.

Tucker looked at Grayson and Jake in concern.

“Did you check the date on the cans?” Grayson asked.

Tucker hurried into the kitchen alone. A moment later, he cussed. “Sarah, stop feeding her. This stuff is two years out of date!” he said, as he came back, holding the can up in the air, looking at the bottom of it. “They’re all out of date. Dammit!”

“Oh no!” Sarah flipped Sammi over on her knees, gently patting her back. A stream of formula shot out of her mouth, hitting the carpet with a wet sound.

Once again, Sammi’s stomach was empty. Softly, barely more than a whisper, the baby heartbreakingly cried. Sarah stood up, pacing the floor and patting her child’s back.

Tucker paced. “I’m sorry. I didn’t even think to look. The guy that gave it to me has two grandkids that are still babies. That couldn’t have been theirs; they’re not even a year old.”

Grayson harrumphed. “Probably bought it on the black-market. Can’t trust nobody nowadays…” he grumbled.

The room erupted in the sound of a waterfall, bringing Sarah’s pacing to a standstill. All eyes turned to her. A long, greenish stream of liquid shot out of the diaper onto the low-pile carpet.

The men physically cringed, their lips curling as one, and Grayson shuffled toward the door. “I’ll meet you fellows outside.”

Jake turned to go, too. “I’m with you.”

Grayson beat him to the door handle, Jake following closely behind. “There’s a bag of diapers right there on the table, ma’am…” he said to Sarah before walking out and closing the door behind them.

Tucker slowly shook his head and held his hands up, palms toward the ceiling. “I’m so sorry, Sarah. I’ll figure something else out.”

Sarah held Sammi close to her. She began to hum a lullaby while she rocked the child in her arms, pacing a small path through the soiled carpet, seemingly unconcerned about the trail of liquid now running down her own clothes and being smeared across her living room floor. She looked past Tucker with tired, vacant eyes.

“Go clean her up, Sarah. I’ll be back.”

Tucker hurried through the door, on Grayson and Jake’s heels.

The three men—scared by a bit of baby poop—rushed across the lawns to Tucker’s house, shoulder to shoulder. A tremor ran through Grayson and he shook it off. “That baby was shitting like a cow pissing on a flat-rock,” he mumbled under his breath.

Tucker unholstered his sidearm. “Shut up, Grayson.”

Grayson scoffed at the threat. “ Pfft . I was just sayin’. Put your pea-shooter away, cowboy.”

Jake sighed. “Hey guys… enough.”

“This ain’t for him,” Tucker snapped, as he checked his gun and then re-holstered it. “I’m going to talk to Curt again. I think he’s lying. He’s got some formula. I could see it on his face. He’s going to give it to me, so help me God.”

Tucker loudly beat on Curt’s door again, any presence of niceties now gone. They’d been standing there for ten minutes waiting for Curt to come to the door.

Grayson looked at Jake, standing beside him at the bottom of the stoop, and shook his head. He turned to go. “Hey man, he’s not here. We’ve got to get back to the farm. The ladies are all alone.”

Stubbornly, Tucker ignored him, and waited for the door to be answered.

Grayson meandered through the yard, looking at the rough new stumps sticking out like sore thumbs from what must have previously been manicured landscaping. “This fool does know these trees won’t burn, right? They’re too green. They need to season.”

Tucker shrugged, and finally gave up on knocking. “Let’s check the backyard.”

Jake and Grayson followed him as he stomped behind the house.

Tucker pointed to a neighbor’s back yard three houses away. “There he is.”

Curt stood over a group of people, watching as they dipped water from the only other swimming pool in the neighborhood. A line of folks stood waiting for their turn holding old milk jugs, tea pitchers and buckets, waiting to fill up their containers. His sidekick, Joe, stood on the steps of the pool, in water past his knees, nearly getting his gun wet where it hung on his side.

Tucker made his way over, with Jake and Grayson beside him. They stepped up to the edge of the pool and looked down into a nasty brew of green, stagnant water.

Grayson wrinkled his nose. The water was filthy. A film of algae covered the pool, and the number of sticks, leaves and other debris made it difficult to scoop up just water. It was obvious the water had basically been standing since the power went out. No one had done a thing to it. And worse, there were no pots hanging over fires anywhere around, and no filter system to be seen. “Y’all doing the filtering and boiling somewhere, I hope?” Grayson asked.

Curt looked over his shoulder at the guys, then dismissed them with a wave of his hand. “Don’t listen to him. That guy doesn’t even live here. He doesn’t know what he’s talking about.”

Tucker staggered back a bit at Curt’s rudeness to a stranger—he had never even met Grayson—and shook his head at Curt’s dismissal of Grayson’s advice. His snub to Jake—whom he did know—didn’t go unnoticed either.

He bit his tongue. Not my circus. Not my monkeys.

Grayson shrugged. “Okay. But mark my words… y’all drink that water and you’ll probably be running like a scalded dog and shitting through a screen door from thirty paces, without hitting a wire.”

For once, Tucker was in agreement with Grayson. He’d already talked to the entire neighborhood as a whole—before they’d voted for a leader—about the dangers of drinking the pool water. It was the most controversial subject they’d discussed… many thinking the chlorine and chemicals had made it safe to drink.

He had no idea if they were right or wrong, but Curt and his crowd were there for that conversation.

A few of the guys, who supposedly had first-hand knowledge of the chemicals that went into pools, disagreed, saying first the water needed to be filtered, and then boiled, before using it for drinking or cooking. These folks said boiling it first would just concentrate any chemicals, making it toxic.

Yet others argued for boiling it first, and then filtering.

No one knew the answer for sure… so majority ruled that the safest route was to filter it first—several ways—and then boil it. He agreed with that plan. He didn’t want the responsibility of people getting sick.

In addition, they’d assigned teams of older kids and teenagers the chore of keeping the pool clean and moving the water around as much as possible.

They took turns with paddles and nets, every hour on the hour during daylight. First they skimmed the pool for bugs and debris, then spent the rest of their assigned time walking around the edge of the pool with their paddles in the water, creating movement.

He had no clue if keeping the water moving helped anything, but it sure didn’t hurt, and it kept the kids busy too.

They’d also assigned a water-filter team that rotated every hour. At one end of his swimming pool, they had a filter station set up.

The first filter was home-made, and it was huge. Several people had extra bags of sand they hadn’t used for their kids’ small sandboxes or play areas. Using the sand and wood that they made into charcoal, they created a five-layer gravity-fed filter system.