Hunger and Thirst (4 page)

He took her one hand and placed his other on the small of her back, on the low curve over her spine. His heart drummed in his ears. When she touched the side of her forehead to his temple, Jack no longer heard the music.

They danced, they bumped toes and knees, but they danced.

“I thought today I might die,” he whispered to her. “I never thought I'd hear music again... or dance... or eat till I was full.... Thank you for my life.”

She put both arms around him. Her face suddenly appeared out of the blackness of her hair. Her breath bathed his face. He kissed her in a rush, and lingered.

“Today was our lucky day,” she said. “But I need to tell you, it's eight o'clock and Artie is waiting for you.”

He held to her.

She gave him the look he was starting to recognize — sly, slightly amused, and sure of herself. “You should check. It's my credibility, you know.”

He held to her and whispered, “I just want you to know — if I wake up chewing the asphalt, you've been a wonderful hallucination. And if I'm already dead and I'm in heaven, those Baptists in Missouri really sold this place short.”

Natalie gave him a slow kiss.

“Did that feel like you were dead?”

“No, it didn't.”

“I'm not finished convincing you, either.” She separated herself. “When you check for Artie, you should take this.” She had already put several pieces of rabbit on a small plate on the bar. She handed it to him. “I'm sure he's hungry.”

He opened the front door.

Artie looked up at him, wide-eyed and expectant.

“Hey, pal.” He put the dish under his nose. “It's getting cold out. Want to come in, sleep with a roof over your head? Maybe we could work out a warm breakfast for you.”

Natalie came up behind Jack.

Artie dropped his head and ears and hissed fiercely.

“Artie—”

But he wasn't there anymore.

“He doesn't like strangers,” Natalie said.

“Usually with good reason. Artie! I worry about coyotes getting him.
Artie!
”

“You'll have to trust him to take care of himself tonight.”

“I guess.” After a final hesitation, he closed the door.

“One advantage he'll have is that predators tend to avoid my little outpost. Do you believe my bones now?”

One look into her face and he would have believed anything she said. “You have wonderful bones.” He felt them under his hands. “And eyes. And hair.”

“Stay with me tonight. Tomorrow, you can leave, or stay a few days, or as long as you want, Jack. But stay with me tonight. Then you can go anytime you want.”

“I'll stay.”

She circled the room and blew out the candles. She took his hand when she came back to him and led him down the short hall to her darker bedroom. Moonlight from the windows showed him a neat, stark room with only a white sheet covering the bed.

“I'm so glad you're finally here, Jack. I've been waiting for you a long time.”

Kneeling on the bed, facing each other, she pulled his shirt open, popping off the buttons. In the moonlight-marked room, buttons clicked on the floor and rolled away. Jack caught his breath.

....

The next day, Jack and Natalie walked through the desert scrub, taking their time. He sometimes held her hand or touched her hair. She sometimes affectionately bumped him with her hip. He told her about Hewitt.

“There are too many people like that.”

“How long have you lived here?”

“Quite a while. Long enough to know all my neighbors.”

“Every single one of them?”

“I may have missed a few.” She pointed. “Over there, under those rocks is a family of rattlesnakes. They sun themselves on warm days like this. They’re very civilized rattlesnakes, unlike your friend Hewitt. If we don't bother them, they’ll pretend we don't exist. How did you annoy Hewitt?”

“I had something he wanted.”

“And to think, human beings used to be insulted by their relationship to apes. I imagine a lot of the people you've met would gladly trade places with monkeys.”

“Yesterday, I would have.”

“My rattlesnakes live their quiet lives and are not concerned about you or what you have unless you bother them. In the old days, they were hated and brave men killed them in competitions. When the overlords arrive, let's hope they're a bit more humane.”

Natalie bent down and pushed aside a tiny cluster of blue flowers. There was a mouse hole beneath it.

“My little family of kangaroo rats live here. She has four pups. Look at this.” She took two steps to the side. Beside a string of pea-sized yellow flowers lay a flat stone. She carefully tilted it. Beneath were two pale green translucent scorpions. She slowly replaced it and took his arm and they strolled on. “People always think the desert is a dead ugly place.”

He could only see her.

Very faint, carried lightly on the air, they heard barking... dogs barking... and coming closer.

“Wild dogs,” she said. “They hunt coyotes and other dogs — and anything else they want.”

“I hadn't heard anything about wild dogs out here.”

“They could be local. They rarely come close.”

“Do they hunt people?”

“It's happened.” She casually scanned the south. “It's a beautiful place, isn't it.”

“If one doesn't get killed or eaten alive.”

“Most of us will have a final unpleasantness. It's part of the deal, isn't it. But aside from that momentary, personal event, all this remains the same. Even in our absence. Sometimes out here, I stand and hold my breath and see what the world will look like after I'm dead.”

“I never thought of doing that.”

She looked at him a moment and then by his hand pulled him closer. “You're cute.”

....

He sat on a wooden folding chair in her bathroom. Six candles had been lit and placed around, high and low. She had him turned with his head tilted back over the sink. He had already shaved and she had trimmed his hair to a civilized appearance. Now she massaged shampoo into his scalp.

“I never felt.... I love this,” he mumbled. Talking was useless. She stood in front of him, her shirt brushing his face. Her smell enveloped him. Jack could barely talk. “I had... no.... idea.”

When she finished toweling his hair dry, she combed it back with her fingers.

“Are you finished?” he said. His voice was almost a croak.

“I'm just starting.”

....

Jack stood on the upstairs deck, alone, drinking coffee and gazing at the Sierra Nevada. After a few days of cool weather in the desert, the mountains had streaks of snow down their peaks. It was cool, bordering on cold, but Jack was wearing an undershirt, shirt, and sweater. He almost felt civilized.

Whenever he went outside, he always looked for Artie and called to him. He never saw him. But food was left by the front door at eight every evening. By morning it was gone. Whether Artie or some other animal had eaten it was unknown. He missed Artie. When he thought about it, he really missed Artie. He had once been all set to die with him.

He went back inside, found his old backpack, which he now realized had a distinctly used odor, and pulled out his dogeared packet of flower seeds. California poppies. He was going to plant them someday, hadn't known when, but he knew now.

Near the front door, he found a stick and cut a shallow furrow in the dirt. While pressing the seed into the soil, it occured to him that this didn't look like typical desert soil. It seemed to have peat in it. He wondered how she did that. Where did she get peat in the middle of Nevada?

“I've always wanted flowers,” Natalie said.

Jack jumped and spun to face her. He closed his mouth. “Sorry. Survival reflexes. I didn't hear you.”

“I'm the quiet type.”

“Usually.”

She knelt beside him and patted soil over the seeds. “You didn't tell me you fixed the leak in the water tank. Or did our aliens from Area 51 creep up in the night and fix it?”

“Had to be aliens.”

“You know, you don't have to fix things, or plant flowers, to earn your keep. Your just being here is enough. These will be beautiful in the spring. Maybe you'll want to see them come up.”

“I think I will.”

....

 In the evening, cold wind blew around the house. Jack worried about Artie and often walked around the house calling him, but he never appeared.

Inside, in front of the fire, he fanned the cold out of his clothes and waited for the heat soak in. He remembered too many nights going to sleep shivering, waking up cold, walking all day cold....

Natalie stood on the other side of the counter, in the kitchen, putting together something to eat.

“You haven't told me,” he said, “how you got your finger bones. Whose fingers?”

“If you knew, you might like me less.”

“We were all different people in the past. I'd like to know. I'd like to understand better what it is that you do with them.”

She came around the counter and stood next to him, to warm herself before the fire.

“My mother had finger bones. It was a family secret, but it seemed normal to me. Like a kid, I kept asking for my own, and when I was eight or nine, she explained how I would have to get them, if I wanted them. At eight or nine, it was a bit shocking and took a while to sink in.”

The fire had started to burn low. She placed several pieces of an old board on the coals.

“My mother already knew that a man... a stranger... was going to try to hurt me while I was away from the house, while I was out hunting. She told me that I should think about him as I would another animal, like a coyote or bear. If he tried to harm me, that was how I was to treat him.”

“She let you go out, knowing someone was going to hurt you?”

“Someone would
try
to hurt me. When it came time, I wanted to go.”

“You wanted to go?”

“The exuberance of youth.” She smiled. “He surprised me. He came out of nowhere, ran into me with his shoulder, and when I was down, he tried to smother me with his hands. He had both hands over my mouth and nose, trying to keep me from screaming or to smother me — and I bit him, a lot. He stood over me screaming that he was going to kill me. He reached for his knife, as my mother said he would, and then I used his fingers—”

“Which you had bitten off.”

She pressed her lips together. “Yes,” she said. “That is what I did. It was a bit of a mess. I spit one out, grabbed the other one and threw them at him. I'd seen my mother do that once when she was about to be crushed by a three-hundred-pound sow. I threw them at him and he froze where he stood. He could move only his eyes.”

The fire now burned hot. The pause lingered.

“And then you killed him.”

She said nothing.

She looked at him solemnly. “Jack, I'll tell you this in short words and you can rethink how long you want to stay. I took three more fingers. My mother boiled the flesh off them and put them in a bag for me. I slept well that night.” She was looking down and her hair hid her face. “That's your Natalie. Those are his bones over there. Make your plans accordingly.” She sounded like she was talking about disease.

“You're the same person you were ten minutes ago. I loved you then, I love you now. Ask your bones if you've changed my mind.” He decided to say what she had probably guessed. “Someday I'd like to see the Pacific. Maybe we could both go and see the ocean, live somewhere green, with trees.”

She put her arms around him. “My place is here, in the desert. With you here, it's the best place on earth. Everything is better. I like getting up in the morning. I like the hunting and collecting and fixing. I love going to bed at night. Before, those were just things I did. Since you've been here, my bones work better than before, and....” She almost looked embarrassed. “I confess I have asked about you. It wasn't polite to intrude on your privacy, but I did ask if you loved me.” She nuzzled him. “I'm just afraid if you know too much about me you'd not trust me, or be afraid of me.”

“We've both done things it'd be best the other didn't know. Everyone's like that. And I have no interest in leaving. If did, I'd tell you.”

“You'd be a nice guy, like your mother taught you.”

“I try.”

“I wish I could thank her.”

....

On the counter were five apples, a grapefruit, and two bottles of wine, lined up like trophies.

Natalie passed by Jack and let her fingers drag across his shoulder. Today, typically, she was in a white shirt and jeans. She went out to her utility room where he heard her moving things around, getting ready to go meet a traveler. Jack sat reading one of twenty-year-old magazines she had. He knew she would return, sit by him—

She sat and positioned the leather disk on her lap.

“I can't believe the luck we've been having. The pantry's nearly full. And today....” She let the finger bones fall from her hands onto the intricate patterns on the disk.

“The weather's changing,” Jack said. “They're desperate. I remember what that was like. I saw a guy trade his coat for a hot meal. That evening he froze to death.” By now he was accustomed to her finger bone readings. He didn't have a guess how it worked, but he was convinced that it did.

Natalie studied the bones.

“The traps will be empty today. But two travelers are coming in about half an hour — with a bag of sugar, two sweet potatoes, and a few other things he might be willing to part with. Luckily we still have those two rabbits from last week. I'll gut one out for him. And my bones tell me I should be very good to you, which I plan to do.”

“I worry about you, out there by yourself, dealing with those people. Hewitt wasn't the only psychopath on the road.”

She patted his hand, stood up, then leaned down and gave him biting kisses on the neck. She whispered, “They wouldn't have a chance.” She pulled back from him enough that out of her black hair, her face suddenly appeared. “I'm not one you have to worry about.” Then, “I saw you working on the south end of roof. You don't need to do that.”

“I have a lot of time.”

“I promise we'll eat well tonight.” She headed for the back door. “I have to hurry to get the rabbit cleaned out.”

Through the wide windows, he watched her cross the desert scrub to the rabbit hutches twenty or thirty yards away. He watched her pull a struggling rabbit from its cage and strike it behind its head. The rabbit slumped like a rag in her hand.