Hunger and Thirst (3 page)

He thought about that for a moment. Then he turned around.

With her thumbs, she held the shoulders of the shirt against his. “This should fit.” She smiled. “I'll let you pick out your own pants.” And she was gone.

He stood there holding the shirt against his white skin and looking at the foot-high stack of men's clothes. Four other shirts and five pairs of pants. That was a lot of men's clothing for a single woman to have on hand. Men didn't usually give their clothing away.

On the other hand, he was more and more sure he wasn't going to come to his senses in a ditch with rocks in his mouth. He dressed as fast as possible.

....

  The sun was on the other side of the house, now dropping toward the horizon. Through the wide windows, the shadow of the house stretched bullet-shaped across the desert floor. Before these windows, Jack and Natalie stood in front of her prepared table. Butter-sheened potatoes surrounded the golden-roasted rabbit, with tufts of parsley and cherry tomatoes adding green and red. Beside this, a platter of four ears of roasted corn.

As he looked on this, Jack felt something other than hunger, but it was complicated. He was awestruck—everything was wonderful, but everything was too strangely wonderful for him to let his guard down. He didn't know if he should weep or go blind.

“Why don't we sit?”

He sat. “Napkins. I haven't seen a cloth napkin in years. And they're clean.”

“I prefer them that way.” She gave him a knife for the rabbit. “This is for you. Roasted with garlic, lime, and green onions. Take what you'd like.”

He cut and pried a few pieces off it, took two, and then began spooning the other foods onto his plate. He tried to be modest, but when he looked at his plate and at hers, he wanted to put some of it back.

“Jack,” she said seriously, quietly, “it's important now you should just eat.”

He did. The food going down his throat was like air after being held under water. It was joy, it was what his body loved, and it meant he would live a little longer.

“How long has it been since you had a full stomach?”

“I've had something to eat every day,” he said around his food, “sometimes just bugs and peeled cactus, but a meal? Maybe a couple of months. I had a good melon a week ago. At least it had recently been a good melon. Could I give Artie some of this?”

“Of course. You like Artie a lot.”

“The most. He adopted me. We've been through it together. He's my only family.” He peeled off some meat and took it outside and laid it next to the water, which had been diminished. “Artie! Hot lunch!” He closed the door and went back to the table.

“How long have you had him?”

“I don’t exactly
have
him. We travel together. But I do like him a lot. Artie found me in Colorado. It was raining and I was sleeping in an old barn. Very old barn — lot of leaks. When I got dripped on, I woke up and there was Artie, watching me from about ten feet away. And about a foot in front of my face was a dead rat he’d brought me.”

“Artie's a good predator. He knows to enough befriend the bigger predator.”

“It was a peace offering, I guess. I let him have the rat that time. There’ve been other times though.... I’m talking too much. When you’ve been traveling, it's best people don't know about all you did.”

“Tell me anything you like. I want to listen. I haven't talked with anyone in weeks. Where have you come from?”

“Indiana, Illinois, Iowa. No place in particular. I lived in Missouri for a while, but the people were too strange. I'm on my way to California. I've heard there may be a few settlements getting organized out there, maybe someplace where the guy next to you isn't going to rob you down to your skin.”

Jack had finished his first heaping plate of food. He spooned more potatoes and onions onto his plate.

“I don't believe this,” he said. After swallowing a few bites, he asked her, “Do you have any pets, a dog, a cat?”

“No. No pets. At the moment I have several rabbits, outside in cages, but they're not pets. I keep them for food and to trade.”

“Guy I was traveling with wanted to eat Artie. Probably would have eaten me if Artie didn't fill him up. Every place between here and Missouri, it seems, everybody's killing everything, sometimes to eat it, sometimes just because it's not dead yet. I used to think if I made the right moves, life would turn out to be on my side, but somewhere along the line, I got over that. I don't want to add to the problem, like my mom said.”

“Which was—?”

“Something like 'There'll be plenty of times you won't be able to be a nice guy, so when you get the chance, be one.' So one way I try to be a nice guy is to not have something dead for every meal, when I have the choice.”

“These days don't seem to be good times for selective eating.”

“They're not. It could kill me. Last year I helped a couple of guys corner a calf and cut its throat. That did it for me. I felt like I was killing a child. It was the wild eyes looking at us, like it wondered why we would ever do this. And the way it called or cried or begged or whatever. It was a bad deal, even after the other stuff we've all seen.”

“Have you ever tried to feed Artie carrots?”

“I know he's part of the system. Since he's my friend, I try to overlook his carnivorous tastes.”

“They're built into his design, just like they're built into yours. We're all predators.”

“The rabbit was exquisite. I loved every bite, as you could see. But if there's any kind of choice, I prefer to predate peas. You said you watched me for half an hour? Were you on the roof? With binoculars?”

“No binoculars. I watched you from here.”

“From where here?” A row of rolling hills separated the house from the highway.

She pointed to a chair. “Actually, from right over there.”

“All I see out the windows is hillsides.”

“My bones told me you would be coming, that you had a cat, and that you would be a man whose company I would enjoy.” She seemed to be relishing the mystery. “But I didn't know Artie's name.”

“Your bones told you that.”

“Yes they did.”

“Did they tell you in English or in Morse code or wiggle around inside you a little bit?”

“Not my interior bones. Bones I own. Over there.” She pointed to a small table off to the side.

Jack craned his neck. On a leather disk a foot or so in diameter lay what could have been half a dozen brown twigs. Or small bones.

“Those are my finger bones. Sometimes they tell me what's going to happen.”

Jack looked at her, the finger bones, and back at her. “Finger bones. Not yours.”

“Correct, yes. Finger bones as found in the human hand. Not mine.” She held up her hands. They were clean and perfect.

Jack wiped his mouth and hands with the cloth napkin. He took his time.

“I guess it's my move,” he said.

“Correct. You can say goodbye — I'll pack you extra food and water and I have a better coat for you. Or you can ask what we're having for dessert.”

Jack wanted to take a closer look at the alleged finger bones. Maybe they were sticks. Maybe they weren't. Maybe she was just another psychopath.

“You feed me, give me shelter — what do you want from me?”

“Your company — until you decide to leave.”

“Did your bones tell you I'd stay for dessert?”

“I didn't ask. I didn't think it would be polite.”

“Can I think about this for a minute?”

“Sure.” She put her elbows on the table, laced her fingers, and rested her chin on them. The look she gave him, an open innocent smile, almost made the decision. This woman was not standard issue. She oozed charm. And very likely she had someone's finger bones. On the other hand, he was clean and well-fed for the first time in a year. And her face....

“What's for dessert?”

“All I have is iced gooseberries and a very small cake. I made it.”

“Iced gooseberries,” he said. “That just happens to be my absolute favorite of all desserts, and the last cake I had, I was turning thirteen. Fond memory.”

When she spooned the berries over the slice of cake, he watched the casually precise movements of her hands. They were as perfectly beautiful as her face.

....

On the upstairs deck, Natalie had two chairs facing west. In front of them, the sun had just set behind the Sierra and burned the mountain edges white hot. Piano music, Chopin again, he thought, drifted out through the opened doors.

When they talked, Jack felt more at ease, but in the conversation's pauses, he would startle himself by looking anew at this woman out of nowhere and thinking, “This can't be...” or he'd feel the fullness of his belly and think, “No....” Then the conversation would resume and everything would feel completely normal.

The air had started to cool and there was a good moon out — it was traveling time.

Jack nodded at the mountains. “That's where I'll be in a week, somewhere around the crest. Then, over to the coast.”

“And after you get there, where will you be?”

“That's always the question. It may be a same old place because it'll be the same old me. But it might not be.”

“It's already October. The weather will be unpredictable.”

“I thought it was still September. Well, I can't say I've kept close track. Your offer of a coat sounds even better.”

“I've heard from travelers that there are gangs up there. 'Nations' they grandly call themselves. Gangs of halfwit rednecks who smoke datura. You’d have to travel at night, and be lucky.”

“People like that are everyplace. My last fellow traveler, for example. But if it's October, I need to be on the other side before November.”

“Excuse me a moment.” Natalie stood and went inside. Jack heard her go downstairs and return a half minute later, carrying the leather disk with the finger bones on it. “I wanted to ask if it's too late for you to cross the mountains — if you don't mind. I mean, it's your future I'd be asking about.”

“Go ahead. What do those things do?”

“Sometimes they can tell me what's going to happen. Sometimes they protect me this way.”

“Mysterious.”

“Indeed.”

“Handy to have around.”

“You can't imagine. There are two things I wanted to ask. First, is it too late for you to start for the mountains. Okay?”

“Do it.”

Natalie settled the disk on her lap. Closer up, Jack could see it was marked with lines and symbols that were unfamiliar to him. She clasped the bones between her hands, held them still a moment, then dropped them on the disk.

To Jack, it looked like a random scatter of the six pieces.

“It's unequivocal,” she said. “Yes, it is too late. There will be snow before you cross the summit. A lot of snow.”

“Are those ever wrong?”

“Never, but sometimes they don't tell me everything. I know there'll be a lot of snow, but I don't know if there might be a path cut through it—but I wouldn't count on that. I'll forgive you for not believing what they do.”

“I'm willing to be convinced.”

“All right. This wasn't my second question, but to convince you....” She scooped up the bones, held them a moment, and dropped them again. “Artie is over in that direction and he'll come up to the house a few minutes before or after eight this evening.”

“We'll see.”

“You'll see.”

“He and I should be back on the road at eight. There's a good moon tonight.”  

“Thus we return to my original second question. Should I open my bottle of brandy?” She scooped and dropped them again.

Again, to Jack, it looked like another random drop.

She put the leather disk and bones aside. “I haven't used the brandy glasses in so long. I hope they're clean.”

“Actual brandy?”

“Afterward you can decide if you want me to pack up some food and water for you — and the coat — or if you would like stay here for the evening.”

The flat offer stunned him. All his words went wobbly. After a few seconds, he got his voice to say, “Well, I have to see if Artie shows up... at eight.”

“By then it will be dark and starting to get cold. Jack, can I remind you that you could've died today. I would imagine that takes a lot out of a person. If you start out this evening, you know you'll have to find a place to rest within a couple of hours.”

“Probably in a ditch.”

“I suppose some ditches may be comfortable. Or you could stay here and sleep in a bed. With a pillow, one of those puffy white things you put your head on. Not often found in ditches.”

“I haven't slept in a bed in a couple of years. I've slept on mattresses a few times since then, but I usually had to put my tarp over them.”

“My mattress is very clean.” She went back into the house for the brandy.

Sitting alone for a minute on her second floor deck, facing west, Jack made his decision. If she was a psychopath, she was a very good one. If he awakened in the middle of the night, netted and tied down, he would try not to complain.

....

It was excellent brandy, as far as Jack could tell.

The mountain horizon was still outlined against the deep blue sky, and the stars were coming out. Natalie's hair was like a black aura around her head.

Jack said, “I had a small bottle of bourbon about six months ago,” he said. “Still sealed. I traded it for a bag of cat food.”

“Bourbon for cat food?”

“It was very good cat food. We both liked it.” He looked across at her. He thought he could spend a lot of time looking at her. “Have your bones told you I would stay?”

“I want your bones to tell me.”

He got up and followed after her back downstairs. There, the music was louder, fuller.

“I haven't heard music like this since I had a home... whenever ago.”

In the orange light of the several candles around the room, she stopped in the middle of the floor. She held her arms toward him. “Will you dance with me? I haven't danced in years.”

“My mother taught me some steps when I was thirteen. She said it would impress girls if I knew how to dance.”

“It will impress me,” she said quietly. She stood near him. Nearer.

“I'll step on you.”

“I'll tell you if it hurts.” He felt her breath across his face when she spoke. Her hair blacked out everything but her face. Her face.