Sip Read online

  Along the shore, there were figures. Drummond spotted some cattails and breaststroked toward them. He moved as near silent as he could. Tucked himself amongst the weeds and hid there.

  From that vantage, he considered those across the body from him. They lowered their faces to the water and drank. Their drinking made Drummond jealous. It was his water. He thought. All of it.

  Across the water, near the shore, several huts of grass and tree limbs stood caked with mud that must have come from the pond bottom. In and out of these huts, people hobbled. Drummond watched them build a pit fire. Watched them cooking beasts in the flames, smoke belching up toward the sun. If he was hungry for the flesh of the things, he didn’t sense it, but he did gulp water, wallow in the weeds, piss when the need took him.

  There he stayed sprawled and offended at his own mind’s ineptitude. He marveled at nothing, and the day did its doing. The sun wilted toward evening.

  The syrupy conditions that took hold were made wicked by his confusion. He hated his own shadow for being in him and promised himself he’d never drink the thing again.

  Drummond watched the sun as it set. Watched it so hard it seemed to dance toward him, a circle of fire, swimming in rhythms at its edges.

  He whispered, “Fuck you,” at it.

  It slowly slipped off.

  Time passed.

  The sky went dark again.

  The Searching Platoon

  For Mole, Jilly, and Baby Boo the redhead’s trail dried up.

  “Let’s just end this business,” said Jilly. She was rubbing Mole’s salve on her cheeks. “We go back and say, ‘Ma’am, your son got himself dead somehow and we weren’t there to see it. Terribly sorry for your loss,’ and if she takes it too hard we can blame it on Baby Boo.”

  “I imagine she’d know it’s a lie,” said Mole. “And let’s not call him that.”

  “Call him what? Her son? What else you call him? I’m not calling him Huck Finn. I heard that book read to me once and I liked that character more than to bless his name on some runt like that boy, and she’s not a deity as far as I can tell, or she’d have had better offspring, and you can tell her I said it if you want, and if I’m wrong she can strike me down with lightning bolts or whatever awesome power she possesses.”

  “We don’t know he’s hers for sure. It’s speculation, sort of. I mean, she doesn’t call him her son. Not that anyone’s heard anyhow.”

  “Well what the hell else would he be? Her cousin? I had a cousin when I was young and I pushed him off a rooftop just to hear the sound of him against the ground, and I’ve met her and she’s meaner than me. Shit, she makes me look like I got angel wings on my pussy.”

  “I don’t want Baby Boo to hear you talking like that.”

  Jilly ordered Baby Boo to go get a campfire lit. Jilly sort of whispered to Mole, “Ain’t like I’m inciting here. Founder tells me to die for the cause, I’ll take a flaming arrow through each titty, but this ain’t the cause. This is babysitting. And I coulda stayed babysitting where I was. It’ve been safe. Just hauling shadow spits for my momma and helping to make sure my brothers didn’t fuck the family goats.” She tossed Mole’s salve to her.

  “Fine,” said Mole. “It’s not the best, but our time will come.”

  “Our time for what? In a few minutes Baby Boo will come back with a low-hung head cause she’s too stupid to light a fire and I’ll have to go fix the situation by rubbing goddamned sticks together, and I’m not supposed to have to rub sticks no more and then we’ll lie around by the fire at night, just you and me telling each other the same bullshit stories.”

  “You don’t like my stories?”

  “And then we’ll wake up and walk in God knows whatever direction hoping to chance across the little peg-legger’s tracks only to, with the fucking help from heaven, track his little cuss mouth down so he can call us all bull dykes again and spit at our faces as we drag him back to his momma who never even says good job at us for our troubles.”

  “What’s wrong with my stories?”

  Jilly looked at her. “It’s your delivery more than anything else. Christ, think about who’s listening to ya. Would it kill ya to make ’em funny a bit?”

  “Nothing’s been funny about my whole life.”

  “Then lie, Mole. Every bitch under the sun has had it hard, but whining about it round a campfire ain’t gonna earn you gold stars in the godforsaken afterlife. I pushed my cousin off that roof ’cause he raped my sister, but shit, it just sounds better the other way, and if I tell it the rape way you miss the most important part of it which is the sound he made when he hit the ground.”

  “You didn’t say what sound he made.”

  “Sometimes it’s what you leave out that makes it the best.”

  Baby Boo tiptoed up with sour eyes.

  “Let me fucking guess,” Jilly said, “your dumb cunt ass can’t light the fucking fire.”

  Drummond Alone

  The poisonous poetry of Drummond’s shadow intoxication thinned to whispers as the hours passed. He wasn’t quite in focus, but certain things did come to him. Hunger, for instance. His belly felt scratched dry. He tarried from the pond, puked water, and worked his way up the crater wall to the crown of the formation. In the distance, green-leaved trees rolled with the breeze. He went that way, loping confusedly, led on by his hunger.

  As he neared, he saw pale-orange fruits that bobbed from the branches.

  He picked up speed, reached out and grabbed one. He didn’t know it, but they were grapefruit. He bit the rind and bitterness shocked him. The sweet, acidic juice of the thing stung his lips, and he tore open the fruit at the spot he’d bit it, smashed his face into the ruby-red flesh, smeared the sticky thing against his cheeks, nose, and chin. Satisfyingly painful. Burning in some good way.

  He made quick work of that one, set to some others, gorged on the grapefruits until his throat stung. The fruits didn’t quite quell his hunger, but they dampened it, held it off at some distance to be observed.

  He then realized that his skin stung with sunburn. He wished for clothing. He went to lie beneath one of the trees, but there were dropped, dried limbs thick with malicious thorns, and he decided that the area was against him.

  He clutched up as many grapefruit as he could gather and retreated to the pond, ambled up over the crater bluff, back down to the water. If he was spotted by those who dwelt on the opposite side from him, he didn’t care, wasn’t certain.

  He made his way back to the cattails and rested again in the mess of them, letting the fruit he’d harvested bob in the water. His haunches sunk into the mud, as did his hands. He lifted a fistful of the stuff, and he figured he’d found an answer. He took the mud and began to run it over his face and shoulders. It was cool against his weathered skin. He smeared his whole body. It felt pleasant. When the sun dried it to a crunchy texture, he washed the earth off him and smeared himself again.

  He passed the whole day that way, but the next morning, while hunkering in the reeds, a face gazed toward him from across the pond. He saw it stay on him. A few folks amassed and stayed focused on his position. Drummond threw into anxiety. Queer vibrations beset him. A constriction of his heart transpired.

  A few of those across the pond began to round the perimeter of the water toward him. He stepped back, slipped, landed ass down in the mud. The splash must’ve echoed out. His audience moved toward him with speed—from far away, but he could see.

  Drummond plucked his frame from the muck, raced up the embankment, ran on his bare feet in whatever direction he happened to be moving.

  He dashed through tall grasses, low branches, dancing around cacti paddles, their yellow needles catching his thighs, drawing blood. He upped and overed fallen trees, rutted rock formations. Pounced across planes of dirt and pebbles. Hobbled into strands of huizache thorns that pierced the soles of his feet and came ou
t his toes. Anxious, pretend drums thumping some soundtrack for him to escape to.

  Tears streaked his face and fear thickened his throat. He never looked back, only raced on. For hours he bolted, moving in some unintentional direction, hoping merely to luck into something to drink, something to eat. Fear and hunger erased the ache of his legs and feet bottoms. Drummond headed east, though he had no idea of his course.

  In the gray evening, just before dark, he spotted a quaint house with light in its windows. It rested at the bottom of a slight elevation drop, and he picked up speed as he sank toward it, wild with the idea of being by a fire inside.

  “Wait a minute,” a woman’s voice called from the porch to him.

  Drummond slowed, his joy drained. He stood paralyzed, jittery.

  “What is ya?”

  How long had it been since he spoke? “A Drummond,” he answered awkwardly. His jaw tightened, his words sour.

  A gun was cocked. A metallic click called out into the pre-dusk. “Don’t know what a drummond is.”

  “I’m naked,” said Drummond.

  “What’s that to me?”

  Drummond stood stupid. His eyes bewildered toward nothing. Several moments passed.

  “There’s a clothesline off there,” the woman said, pointing with her gun. She had to motion several times before Drummond noticed. “Get yourself decent off it and come in closer.”

  Drummond moved that way, found a few things to wrap up in. A shirt that swam on him. Well-worn jeans he had to hold the waist of or they’d slink off.

  He went then to the woman who kept the shotgun on him. “You’re a filthy thing ain’t ya?”

  Drummond didn’t know, but his face was streaked with mud and he had leaves in his hair.

  “Hungry?”

  Drummond tried to intimate that he was.

  “There’s a comet coming,” the woman said. “But it won’t do nothing to help your kind. And there’s no egg pure enough to pluck that dark from your heart. Stay put and I’ll get something together, but if you move a muscle I’ll shoot you through. My son’s one of you, or was last I saw him. I’m sympathetic,” the woman said, “but only to a point.”

  Drummond didn’t rightly understand a thing of this. He jittered confusedly, his neck muscles tense. He could hear some banging around taking place in the house.

  When she returned, the woman had a pack and some shoes, a length of rope. She held up the sack, spoke loud in Drummond’s direction. “In this,” she hollered slow, “you’ll find some things to eat on. Some biscuits and dried meat. Dried tomatoes. Cheese.” She threw the sack out toward him, then held up the shoes. “I don’t know your size,” she yelped. “And if I did wouldn’t matter. This is what I got.” She lobbed them out. “I see you’re struggling to keep those up, but I can’t find a belt.” She wrapped the bit of rope up around itself and tossed it out toward Drummond. He picked it off the ground, uncoiled it. His black eyes glanced frantically over it. She motioned around herself, yelled, “Tie it round your waist.” And she continued to motion.

  Drummond ferreted the rope through the belt holes of his blue jeans, his hands trembling with starvation and shock, and he achieved some awkward knot at the front of himself. He plunged his feet into the shoes easily enough, them being several sizes too big, and he picked up the pack.

  “Can you understand me?”

  Drummond nodded.

  She aimed the gun barrel at him. “I’ll count to ten,” she said.

  Drummond didn’t even hear her get to five. He ran until he couldn’t.

  Then he walked on in his loose shoes, a new kind of confidence to him, for no longer being naked.

  After some hours, the air changed. He couldn’t quite define it. The world seemed more moist, briny. In the distance, he heard a sort of echo reverberating.

  His ears filled with some kind of crashing.

  He stood and saw a bit of shadow below him. Paused at the thing. Told himself to leave it alone. Watched it move as he moved. Watched it get nearer to him. Screamed at himself, from somewhere inside to not drink it, but he was closer still. Nothing could be done. He was down on the thing, gulping it up.

  He picked up his pack and continued.

  The dirt turned to sand beneath him, his steps loose in the softness of it.

  He climbed a dune.

  If he had once known what the ocean was, that knowledge was lost to him now, and he merely stood in awe at the immensity of it. White waves crashed in rhythms indecipherable and birds ran willy-nilly over the water-packed sand.

  He didn’t know what to do.

  He dropped to his knees.

  The noise and the smell engulfed him. Salted static. Brackish hissing.

  He gazed out at the infinity of water.

  He thought maybe he was in heaven.

  He made his way forward.

  Waded out.

  It warmed his skin. Stung his sores. Pushed him over and dragged him across the sand.

  Further.

  Deeper.

  Further still.

  It felt so fucking good his being in it. All the glinting sunlight of the spume and barm about him.

  He wanted more of that, it was his now, the whole thing.

  He moved out.

  Deeper still.

  Deep enough that he could taste it.

  But even that didn’t stop him.

  four

  The patterns of society’s demise played out in different sequences, but in that region, where there was open land to retreat to, dwellings sprung up at the center of vast, forgotten acreages. Families crept off to long-neglected landholdings that had been handed down for generations, to forge life anew in the wake of the world’s falling apart. These little tribes of relatives beat their bodies against the earth, dug wells in the old way—with hand shovels over days and days, sending candles down in baskets to check the air for bad gasses—walked plows behind mule power to break up the land into farmable rows. Neo-pioneers, and they existed in the not-too-distant proximity of the falling-away world, watching as fires spat smoke plumes from the dilapidating townships, sitting on stores of fuel and ammunition, arms and provisions accumulated by those fortunate enough to have seen some bad thing coming.

  Mostly these holdings of humans clung deep to religious rituals, saw themselves as steadfast refugees the Lord himself had selected to retain his message in, and they’d scrape pews out of tree trunks and sit making new music from old chord changes, taking ancient hymns and retooling their words.

  “Be Thou my vision, O Lord of my heart;

  Naught be all else to me, save that Thou art;

  Thou my best thought, by day or by night;

  I won’t drink my shadow forged from thy light.”

  Prophets, seers, revelators: whatever you wanted to call them, they thought themselves that. They let their hair grow wild and clucked bits of scripture at the dizzying enormity of their solitude.

  Trains ran. Trains stopped. Trains ran. Trains stopped.

  Domes were built and domes were filled. Domes were emptied, domes were filled.

  Vast efforts were undertaken, abandoned.

  Little wars and tiny treaties.

  If they were Christian, they turned to the laws of Leviticus. Never ate rabbits. A single seed. Single fabric.

  Muslims held hard to Sharia. No yellow. Untamed eyebrows. No alcohol at all.

  Others found meaning in texts non-ordained: “a personal God quaquaquaqua with white beard quaquaquaqua outside time without extension who from the heights of divine apathia divine athambia divine aphasia loves us dearly with some exceptions for reasons unknown but time will tell.”

  Time told this: there was more time.

  Each new unfurling, every coming rapture, all supposed terminations—the return of God or the undoing of reality
—failed to materialize, and these strange clans begot bizarre progeny who they filled with their insane notions to carry off toward the future.

  The Hermit

  Let us meet an odd fellow who lives alone, his home fashioned from loose tree limbs he wrestled free from a river’s snag, palm fronds slathered with gray clay hoisted out the earth, a sort of grisly hut sunk back in the discarded skeletal remains of animals he’d made meals of. The whole of his denomination lost to him. “Partaking in glory,” he’d say of them, their outpost taken by blaze as they slept.

  He has a passion for grass fires. His teeth are like oyster gravel. You can smell the funny look in his eyes.

  He dawdles the countryside collecting lost bits he might someday find useful, discarded items he feels his destiny will give purpose to, rubbish of note that catches his attention from afar.

  He pushes a wheelbarrow across the land, circling his dwelling concentrically, with each pass furthering his circumference, hunting forgotten treasures.

  It is on one of these outings he chances upon an elder man with a loose leg over his shoulder, the bloody end of it stuffed into a brown paper bag.

  “What you got there?”

  The leg-holding man jostled his leg. “A leg.”

  “For what?”

  “Taking it to town for trade.”

  “What they trade you for it?”

  “Things I want, obviously.”

  He thought about that. “Where’s the town at?”

  The leg-holding man pointed. “North a ways from here. Not too far off. The Town of Lost Souls.”

  “Okay,” says the hermit, and he pushes his wheelbarrow on, the two going their separate ways.

  Much later. Days or weeks. Maybe months even. Our wheelbarrow pusher follows a black-eyed man to the coast. The hermit doesn’t know it, but this is Drummond. And he walks about aimless. His clothes don’t fit him, and he seems lost. He is sickly. He is low. He strolls across the beach and into the surf and is capsized by waves, tossed by breakers, held down by undertow, and the wheelbarrow pusher stays back, just witnessing.