Hunger and Thirst (20 page)

His face was alive with needles and pins. His face felt as though a horde of invisible ants hot-footed it over his flesh.

His fingers closed over the glass again. He dragged it a little, just a quarter of an inch. Fine, fine, he thought. He pulled it a little more.

The surface of the water rocked maddeningly. The bubbly meniscus dipped and bobbed. Water. Cool, cool water. The song began, sung by a choir in the loft of his mind. In four part harmony.

Cool, coooooool water
.

His throat kept trying to dislodge the lump that rose up. Water. He drew the glass on further, a little closer to the edge of the table.

The rose blocked its way.

His pinkie swung down vengefully and poked it aside. Out of the way, idiot!

He pulled the glass still farther, his eyes wide and staring. The irises were green planets floating in a milky universe. The pupils were black dots floating in the green iris circles. Water. A drink of water. Just to get a sip, a taste, a little drink of water, water.

He was so hot and thirsty.

Now his arm was wracked with cramps. The fingers were beginning to feel numb. Oh God help you if you drop that glass! You can’t stop now.

Courage!

A little more effort and the cool, wet water will trickle down your dusty throat in blessing, your terrible thirst will be healed, your need assuaged …

Now the glass was at the edge of the table.

One push and it’ll topple, said the torturer in his brain. He wanted to tear him out of the hidden recesses, from behind his screen and wrench the life from him.

Never mind, he told himself. Take it easy, you’ve got it. Just be careful. Be strong. Be very strong.

His chest heaved with excited, nervous breaths. He had to be strong.

Water.

He clamped his hand on the glass until he thought it would shatter under his grip and drive barbs of glass into his numbed flesh and let the water soak into the towel and run and drip down to the floor.

He saw that scene and knew that he’d die in a second if it happened. Hold on tight!! The order trumpeted in his mind.
Tight
now!

He took the greatest risk of his life.

He held the glass suspended over the floor, supported only by the knotted muscles of his fingers and wrist and arm.

He drew it over the pit, the chasm, the grand canyon of the floor.

He drew it closer with a wild, half-crazed look on his face, like a conqueror drawing a struggling captive woman to his body. He kept swallowing the lump in his throat. The membranes of his mouth and his tongue drew tight with expectancy. Give me to drink, begged his mind. A little water. Just to drink, water, water, water …

He rested the glass on his chest.

And his chest shuddered with relieved breath. Last lap, he thought. Now to drink. To drink the cool, refreshing water.

Oh God damn every bubble that had evaporated!

He watched the green frond slide into the water. It was a forest bough in the glass lake, weaving in the slight movement of the waters.

He slid the glass across his chest. Over the depression in his bone structure, up the slope to his throat. His face was down, the chin point gouging into his chest.

The glass touched his lips, cool and smooth.

He sobbed without even noticing it. Water! He could almost taste it already. His throat moved with convulsive expectation.

He had to raise his head.

A pang of terror ran through him. It couldn’t possibly be that he was to be thwarted now. Now that the glass was at the very portals of his mouth, actually touching his lips.

But he couldn’t afford to tilt the glass all the way. It would spill. It would run over his face.

You heard me! the cream rose up inside. I said I’d kill you if you spilled so much as one drop!

He threatened himself with every violence imaginable with the small portion of his brain that was not concerned only with the sight and taste of water.

He lifted his head. No other way to do it, it had to rise up.

Barbs of pain drove into his neck and upper back. He grimaced in pain and gasped as a package of needles exploded in his neck.

Why not pull the pillow under your head further, he heard a bland voice suggest. Why yes, that’s a good …

Look Out!!

He grabbed the glass again suddenly, his heart threatening to burst through the tissues and bone of his chest. He couldn’t catch his breath. He was never so frightened in his life. Even in the trenches with shells bursting around him, it hadn’t been so bad. He thought he couldn’t hold himself together he was so frightened.

He had to wait a little while.

It agonized him to stare at the glass. But he knew he couldn’t take chance on dropping it. He made up his mind to deal with his inner brain for having made him almost drop the glass. I’ll get
you
, later! he threatened half-consciously.

Finally he felt strong enough.

He had to have some water to drink. It was too much to lie there without trying to get at the water that was at his very lips.

He tilted the glass. His heart rattled like a dry rock shaken in a hollow gourd. His chest rose and fell like an earthquaked land.

He touched the rim edge of the glass with his lips.

His eyes started down lustfully into the bubbly depths of the water.

The frond touched his lips. He blew it away.

The water touched his lips.

Wet
.

Cool
.

It dribbled and ran into his parched mouth.

The hot dry flesh sucked it in thirstily. More water ran into his mouth and throat. He couldn’t taste it. He could only feel it, cool and wet and wonderful. He tilted the glass more.

Don’t drink it all! his brain demanded but he couldn’t listen to it yet. Impelled, he drew up the glass and let the water pour into his mouth, every drop a cool wet benefaction.

He couldn’t swallow first.

He had to let it run unguided down his throat. Some of it went down the wrong way and made him gag. A burst of the choking water came spraying up and out of his mouth, soaking his shirt with tiny drops. He almost cried aloud with horror. The glass jerked in his hand, water spouting up the walls of it. He fought to stop coughing. I mustn’t waste any! he thought in utter terror.

There was still no taste. As the coughing eased, he drank again and it was more like someone running a cool, wet finger around the inside of his mouth, down his throat, into his chest and stomach. A thin line of wet coolness running through the hot, dry chambers of his body.

Still he drank. It seemed miraculous that the water would last so long. But only a few drops at a time were going down.

At last he could swallow. The lump left his throat and saliva began working again. The tightened mucous membranes loosened and the oppressive cloud of heat departed.

He tasted the water.

It was brackish and stale. It was magnificent.

It was water.

Before he realized it the glass was almost empty.

All that remained was about a quarter of an inch. He held the glass away from his lips. His tongue licked greedily, wanting more.

But he had to leave it. He knew that.

He put the glass back on the table quickly before his thirst overwhelmed his impulse to conserve. His fingers unwrapped from the glass, caressing it lovingly. Then pulled away.

He drew back his arm, held it up a moment. Then rested it at his side. His head sagged back.

He sighed, ran his rejuvenated tongue around his mouth. Oh my God, but thirst is a hideous thing, he thought.

He almost felt human again.

The dryness was alleviated. Almost gone. His thirsty body was sucking gratefully at the liquid, drawing it in, making good use of it, embracing it. I have watered the garden, he thought, and closed his eyes.

Then his stomach, as if cued, contracted and he opened his eyes suddenly.

The candy bar.

He extends his hand.

His hands shakes badly. No food. A man is hardly noteworthy when he is starving.

His hand closes over the candy bar. The wrapper crackles invitingly. His trembling, grimy fingers curl over the bar. Clutch it, the thumb and pinkie pushing it at each end.

It is small, the bar is small.

But it is precious. To the poor, hungry man, it is a nugget of gold, a landslide in securities, inflation to the speculator, war to the maker of bombs.

He drags it over the table.

The wrapper continues to crackle, how very invitingly. He runs a tongue over his lips. The taste of stale water still clings to his throat.

He reaches the end of the table.

Again he must be careful. He must not, he
dare
not let the candy bar slip from his grasp and tumble to the rug. That would be catastrophe.

That must not happen.

He tightens his palsied hand on the wrapper. He counts.

One. Two.

Three!

He jerks the bar over the chasm. It thumbs down on his heaving chest.

He looks with fierce love at the candy bar.

It says
Oh Henry

His lips form the beloved words.
Oh Henry
. Wonder of wonders is
Oh Henry
.

He drags it closer to his mouth. He sees maddening words.

Covered With Genuine Milk Chocolate
.

The words incite him to revolution.

His fingers tear at the wrapper, the black nails trying to pierce the pierce the paper. He wants to rip away the concealing robes. Reveal to light all the naked glory of
Oh Henry
. His hands shake as he attempts it.

His fingers fumble at the bottom of the wrapper as though he were stroking a woman’s hair with sensual affection.

Upside down, his eyes drink in the words that are politics and philosophy and all.

Wt. 1 1/3 OZ. MFD. BY WILLIAMSON CANDY CO. CHICAGO.

Oh Henry! (Ingredients of) Bless them. Oh, God bless them. Bless the milk chocolate, the lecithin, the number of Spanish peanuts, the corn syrup, the sugar, the divine evaporated milk, the glorious sweetened, skimmed, condensed milk, the honorable vegetable oil, the salt, the just soya protein, the patriotic imitation vanilla flavor.

God love them!

His eyes are glittering. His tongue, a feverish impatient lump that keeps poking out through his lips to see what the hell is holding things up.

His fingers tear, rip, pull, disrobe.

There!

He sees it. Beautiful thing. Like a lumpy cigar, like a knob on a Scotchman’s cane, like a faceless miniature totem pole. Like a lump of … his nose curls up.

His breath is faster.

In a moment the delicious ambrosia will pass his lips. His teeth will click together. His mouth opens and closes like that of a suffocating fish. His fingers close over the lumpy chocolate beauty and bear it slowly, surely, to his eagerly awaiting mouth.

His lips close over the end.

He sucks on it.

His mouth trembles on it. His jaws feel watery weak. He tries to bite. He cannot. A moan of irate fury echoes in the empty amphitheater of his chest. His stomach growls a last truculent warning.

His teeth clamp together.

He bites off the end of the bar. His jaws chomp chomp.

He sucks and gasps and pops his excited lips. The chocolate melts in the tropic heat of his mouth. It clings to his teeth and to the roof of his mouth. The fragments of nut and dried com syrup lodge in the spaces between his teeth. His active tongue darts around the black room picking out little pieces, drips of chocolate, coatings of syrup.

His eyes are intent animal eyes.

He never takes his beady gaze from the candy bar.
Oh Henry
, he is thinking,
Oh God Henry
. His mind, which if it chose, could think of the four freedoms and the Australian ballot, thinks instead of the next mouthful coming up. The glorious mouthful, throatful, stomachful of nuts and syrup and sugar and genuine milk chocolate.

He pokes the bar into his mouth, bites it off. Savagely now, master of the situation.

He bites the nuts into tiny pieces. He keeps his tongue running around his mouth.

A piece of nut almost tumbles out and down his chin.

Whoa there!

His tongue leaps out and falls across his lower lip. Saved! He plucks in the elusive nut particle and hurls it down his throat for safekeeping.

Another bite, another, less violent. More in gratitude and slit-eyed bodily pleasure.

He savors each mouthful. He sniffs it before he bites it. The sweet fragrance of the chocolate and the nuts and the syrup is more wonderful, more glorious than the essence of a million roses. It tantalizes him, excites him. Food. Wonderful food.

Food, the only four letter word that counts.

He frowns sadly. Moodily Offended.

The bar is half gone, more than half.

He eats it more slowly, gazing blissfully at the ceiling, adamantly refusing to swallow before each morsel is chewed to a pulp. Absolutely declining to take a new bite until the old one is done away with for good.

In all details. He searches his mouth with tongue like a prospector panning for nuggets of gold in a stream. He licks his lips over and over on the vague possibility that some bit of chocolate has eluded him.

Two more bites. With moderation, three.

He bites smaller.

He closes his eyes, loathe to share the ecstasy of eating with the drab shabbiness of the room.

In darkness, he eats and sucks and gobbles and swallows and licks, dreaming a vision of mountains made of genuine milk chocolate, of temples erected with
Oh Henry
bars, the pillars thick, huge,
Oh Henry
bars towering over his head as he eats them down.

One more bite.

He looks at it unhappily. Like a cannibal popping down the one remaining finger of his best friend.

He chews it carefully, swallows, licks his lips.

Sighs.

He looks down at the empty wrapper. There is a small piece of nut, syrup coated, on the paper. He places it gently into his mouth and masticates it to a powder.

He looks again at the wrapper. There are some tiny spots of chocolate left on it.