Thirst (4 page)

Then he was going down before he’d made up his mind that he wanted to. The land sloped quickly and his heart caught in his chest. He was sliding. He felt rocks and sharp sticks dig at his legs. His hands flailed at his sides until he caught a root and stopped himself. There was more noise above him—the
quick, rhythmic swishing of pant legs. There were voices, too, but both the voices and the swishing stopped abruptly. Eddie could tell they had paused right above him, and he let go of the root and peddled with his feet and used his hands to brake behind him.

In this way, he arrived at the bottom. The light was dim there, and he thought that maybe dawn was breaking. But half the sky was still starry above him, the other half black. It was the underside of the Beltway.

His raised his palms and saw that they were black, too.

There were shrubs where the trees ended, and when he touched one, it disappeared. Eddie froze where he was. His heart was still racing. When he touched another shrub with his toe, it, too, crumbled into ash. Beyond the shrubs was a wide stretch of sand. Its emptiness brightened the night. He walked out onto it and knelt down and shoved his hands in, bringing them up so that the sand poured through his fingers. Hard pieces that felt like glass were in there, too. He held one up against the sky and saw it twisting like an icicle. The other pieces he pulled up were smaller. Eddie felt exhaustion rise over him as though the streambed had been full of a current he’d waded into.

The noise from the Beltway above him was only the faintest sound. Whoever had been mucking around in the woods hadn’t followed him down there.

He walked back to the bank and the skeletons of undergrowth dissolved against his legs. Beneath the shadow of the Beltway, he lay down between the trunks of some trees that were close together. The ground was soft with a thick layer of ash, just as it had been around the spillway. He would rest here, and
when the sun rose, he would go back up and look for Laura. He felt sure it was almost light, and that he wouldn’t rest for long.

He could feel his blood pulsing, his own temperature seeming to flood the plane where the water had once been.

It was important not to resist sleep entirely; that was his strategy. He would indulge it quickly and then be on his way. But soon, the mosquitoes were on him. The way they struck all at once, they seemed to have only just found their way down the hill, or the scent of his body was the only animal scent remaining. He had to bury himself—heaping the ash over his legs, then his chest, then spreading it on his face using his fingers to mush into the creases of his ears—to keep from being eaten.

He felt the light before he opened his eyes, and then he saw a blur of orange above him. There was a man squatting just beside his head. He was close enough for Eddie to grab the corner of his shirt, and when he did, the man stepped back and Eddie pitched forward, sending the pile of ash from his body into the air around them.

“Whoa!” the man said as Eddie clung to him. His head was throbbing; the ache arrived together with the memory of the day before. He used the handful of shirt to pull himself to standing. The man strained backward and beat his own thigh with an open hand. Then he held it up it by his face in a way that meant “Just stop.” Eddie could smell his licorice breath. There was nothing violent in his eyes. He released his hold on the shirt, and the man coughed and rubbed both sides of his throat with his index and middle fingers. He left black streaks of ash there.

“Jesus,” he said. “All I saw was a head. I thought maybe you were down here when it happened.”

“When what happened?”

“When it went up. I saw it. I was under the bridge up there, I’m not ashamed to say. A man’s got to get out of the heat.”

He had gray hair that looked gelled back but was probably slick with grime. He wore a green flannel shirt beneath his orange one. His pants were a mess—they might have been khakis once, but now they were blackened. Eddie let his eyes adjust. He was at the edge of the streambed; the sand was tawny and cut through a landscape of trees that were foreshortened to charred sticks.

“What happened?” he said.

“This whole thing was on fire.”

“The whole valley?”

“It started on the river. I couldn’t believe it. But I heard about it happening once in Cleveland.”

“And you were under the bridge? How come you’re alive?”

“I was all wedged back where the concrete meets the ground. There were flames all around me, man.”

“Are there still people up there?” Eddie bobbed his head up toward the Beltway.

“I suppose there are.”

“The medics come?”

“You need a medic?”

“No.”

Eddie started climbing back up the hill. When it got steep, his legs went out from under him, and he had to use both hands to break his fall. He grabbed at trees, and they came away in cinders.

“Get around under the bridge,” the man called out from beneath him. “It’s easier over there.”

Eddie bent down and used his hands to half-crawl to the bridge. The pain in his knee reached into his hip. Under the bridge, the ash was thin and there was dirt and trash and he could grip and stand up fully. Near the road, he saw where the man must have been when the flames came up. He imagined that slope of cement, how tightly he must have pressed his back into it as the air raged red around him, how it must have felt like it would never end or that he’d died and ended up in hell.

He pulled himself over the guardrail and had to squint against the light.

He looked for the Civic and saw a few, but no dark blue ones. People were still asleep in their cars. Or else they were sitting in them with the seats dropped back, resigned to stillness. He needed to get home. Laura would have headed home. She’d have been there by now if she’d kept a steady pace.

Eddie made it to the far lane and saw on the asphalt the green diamonds of shattered glass. A minivan had its windshield spiderwebbed from a blow to the passenger’s side. He understood that the world could mirror the inside of his mind—that there were enough broken pieces and enough whole pieces to exhaust his racing thoughts.

He took the highway exit back to University Avenue and then crossed through the cars parked there and over into the empty lanes. There was a two-story thrift shop with words painted in Spanish that people were coming out of with hangers of clothing. Eddie went in. No one was working the cash registers, and he watched as men and women walked down the dingy rows of dresses and pants and took what they wanted and left without paying. He had never been in this store before, and the air smelled of dust and cedar. Near the
checkout, a refrigerated case had been emptied and its door hung open.

On the next block was a 7-Eleven gas station. In front of the glass doors, a group of men were arguing. Eddie looked at the images of giant sodas printed on plastic signs above the windows. There were other men with tools standing around. One had a shovel, which he held with the tip up, and one stood with both fists just beneath the metal head of a sledgehammer. When Eddie tried to go in, the man with the shovel sidestepped in front of him and lowered it diagonally with one hand. With the other hand, he tapped Eddie in the chest and shook his head. “
Usted no puede entrar
,” he said.

“I have money. Look.” Eddie took out his wallet and edged some bills up to the surface.

“No,” said the man, shaking his head. “No.”

Eddie tried to walk in past him, but he moved again and used the edge of the shovel head to press him away. They were making a small disturbance away from the other men, and the man with the sledgehammer came up next to Eddie, too. He said something and used the sledgehammer to point down the road.

Eddie moved on, limping, his tongue not yet resigned to sticking inside his mouth. He rolled it around, feeling the residue that clicked when he passed it over his upper palate.

At the dead traffic light, he watched a teenager wearing an old Bulls jersey and low jean shorts surveying the line of cars sitting in the eastbound lanes.

Eddie had seen kids hanging out on this street before, selling bottles of water at red lights.

He hustled closer before he caught the kid’s eye.

“What do you have?” Eddie said.

The kid waved him over to the sidewalk. He lifted a bottle of water from where he’d stuck it in the waist of his pants.

“How much?” Eddie said.

“This my last one.”

“How much you want for it?”

“Thirty.”

The kid was tall and had the long veined biceps of a high school athlete.

Eddie took out his wallet.

“I’ve got twenty-six,” he said, handing the cash over.

The kid gave him the bottle and nodded beyond Eddie to another kid down the street whom Eddie hadn’t seen. The other kid carried a crate with both hands, his arms straining beneath the weight. Eddie could see the white plastic tops of all the “last ones” lined up within it.

He tipped the bottle to his mouth and drank. The water hit his stomach like he’d poured it into a metal bucket. He had to squat and put his head between his knees to keep from throwing up. Even then, the world went swimmy. A woman walked by him and stopped. Eddie was forced to stare at her feet. She wore parsimonious shoes. When he looked up at her, the sun blacked out her face.

“Here,” he said, and thrust the half-full bottle at her. She took it without speaking and put it in her purse.

When he had the strength, he got up and started to walk again. The house wasn’t too far off. Maybe another mile and a half.

From the sky behind him came the distant rhythmic thumping of helicopter blades. Eddie watched as the heads on
the street all lifted in the same direction. The sound died away and in its absence he heard crying. Someone said, “They’ll be here soon, anyway. They’ve got to get to everyone.”

Eddie tried to jog, but jogging wasn’t possible. His knee was kinked, even when he walked.

He watched a man go up to a house and knock on its door. He was carrying an empty gallon jug. When no one answered, he went down the walkway and over to the next house and tried again. He saw Eddie, and his face broadened in a way that made Eddie stop. The man came up and stuck out his hand, and Eddie shook it. The jug hung from his other hand like a bubble of thought not yet raised.

“I’m Bill Peters,” the man said. “You live around here?”

“No,” Eddie said. “Not right around here.”

“I can follow you,” Bill Peters said. He smiled like a salesman.

“What do you need?”

“Our water’s still out. I just need to fill up this jug.”

“Mine was out when I left, too.”

“When was that?”

“Last night.”

“Maybe you can check again.”

“Everybody’s is out.”

“Yeah, but when it comes back on, it won’t all be at once.”

“I’d help,” Eddie said, “but I’m out here looking for my wife right now.”

“I’ve got a little boy with a congenital heart defect. I don’t mean to give you a sob story, trust me, but I need to get some liquid in him. It’s not for me, understand?”

“It’s for your boy.”

“He’s got to be hydrated. I don’t have a car.”

“Let me check on my wife.”

“I can follow you,” he said again.

“Let me check on her first.”

“What’s the address?”

Eddie looked at the man’s dopey collared shirt, which he’d tucked into his pants. The skin on his hands had sunken spots between the bones in a way that made him appear desperate.

“Give me a little while, and then you can come by,” Eddie said.

“I can just follow you now and wait outside.”

“Just give me a while, okay? Don’t follow me now.”

“What’s the address?”

“It’s up on Greenbriar.”

“What’s the number?”

“You don’t need the number.”

“I won’t know where to go.”

“Sixteen twenty-seven.”

“Okay, then. Sixteen twenty-seven.” He closed his eyes, committing it to memory. “And what’s your name?” he said.

“Ed Gardner.”

“Okay, then, Mr. Gardner. I’ll see you soon. Good luck with your wife.”

Eddie walked the streets of his neighborhood. When he looked over his shoulder, he could see that Bill Peters was following at a distance. He stopped and waved him away. At the next block, he turned and saw he was still coming.

“Come back later!” Eddie shouted, but Bill Peters just stood straight where he was. He was far enough away that Eddie could barely see the milk jug.

There was a path behind one of these houses that he and Laura sometimes used on their walks. It went by a garden full
of tomato plants that an elderly couple started from seed each spring. In the summer, if the old man was out tending them, he’d hand Laura one of the cherry types. Eddie cut through that path. The tomato plants were about a foot tall, and since he’d last seen them, the old man had filled the bed with straw. Eddie limped up the short block ahead and then cut down another street, up another. He walked a block beyond the turn to his house, and didn’t see Bill Peters behind him any longer. To be safe, he went in a circle—four right turns past his neighbors’ houses. There was a woman unloading groceries from the trunk of her car there. Eddie had seen her before.

“Get to the market while you can,” she said, smiling.

“You haven’t seen my wife, have you?” Eddie said. “Her name is Laura. She’s, like, this tall and has black hair.”

The smile left the woman’s face, and she put the bag back into the trunk and walked to Eddie to touch his arm.

“Where did you come from?” she said.

“I was stuck out in the mess for a while.”

“And your wife’s still out there? The side streets are cleared up. She’ll make it back soon.”

“Yeah,” Eddie said. “She’s probably out here looking for
me.
”

The woman looked down briefly at her driveway, then raised her eyes with a pained expression. “Maybe she’s already waiting for you back home. My family made it back, too. There are others not so lucky. You can see the jam if you’re driving on Randolph. It’s backed up for miles still.”

Eddie didn’t say anything.

She clutched her hands behind her back and her nose and lips began to quiver. Her face flushed red.