There was no such thing as clean water anymore. There was only water that was more or less filthy. When you managed to find less filthy water you stopped whatever you were doing, got naked, and bathed in it. That’s what I was doing this morning. “Look honey,” I said. “Don’t you keep telling me I need a bath?” I said it with a British accent and she laughed. I talk in a British accent sometimes to make her laugh. There’s not a lot to laugh about these days. It’s the little things that keep you going. I walked out into the cold, slightly filthy water and closed my eyes. She sat down under a tree and smiled at me. It’s the little things.
You need the little things. Anymore they’re about the only things there are. Walking is the only other thing there is. We walk all the time. All we’ve done is walk for years and years. Sometimes I try to remember other modes of movement besides walking. Didn’t there used to be skipping? And jogging? Now it’s just walking. Walking on abandoned roads, through forests on dirt paths, and through dry river beds. If it goes south, we walk on it. I don’t know what’s south and neither does she. Probably nothing. It’s probably no different than the nothing that’s everywhere else but we might as well walk south and find out for sure.
One day we were walking through an abandoned small town. The shops on main street were all smashed and gutted. Not a whole window or door was in sight. Inside the darkened shops were just broken bits of wood. Anything that could be of any use to anyone had long since been taken. I cleared away the debris from a dumpster behind a long-since burnt Mexican restaurant and inside we found some dusty old cans of beans and a pair of boots. They weren’t in good condition but were far better than the ones that she had been wearing. I pulled them out of the dumpster and handed them to her. “Here you are, my love. Happy birthday.” She laughed, “Is it my birthday?” “I don’t know, what day is it?” “What month is it?” She asked. I laughed but she was right, it had been years since either of us had known or cared what the day was. She smiled and tried the boots on. They were too big. I pulled off my own boots and a pair of my socks, I was wearing four on each foot, and stuffed them into the toe of her boots. She tried them on again and smiled. I toss her old boots into the dumpster and we kept walking.
As we walked, I pushed along a beaten up old shopping cart that had all our possessions in it. A jug of brown water, a coffee can half full of kerosene, a few cans of food, a sleeping bag and some blankets. We each carry a backpack with some clothes and various other items: a flashlight, some matches, stuff. I’ve been carrying a book by Cormac McCarthy with me for years now. I don’t read it anymore but I feel better carrying it with me. In her backpack she has a stuffed animal, a dog, that she’s been carrying with her this whole time. It comforts her during the days when it’s hard to keep going. It’s the little things.
One day when we were walking along the road we came upon an old man walking by himself. It was the first person we had seen in years. There had been a couple of close calls of course when we’d heard voices or footsteps in the distance but we’d always hide. Totally silent, barely breathing, for hours we would lay in hiding wherever we could. You can’t be too careful. Hers was the only face I’d seen. Hers the only face I could remember. So when we found this old man she wanted to talk to him. Needless to say, I didn’t. You can’t be too careful, you know. “He’s harmless,” she said.
“Hey, old man!” I yelled. He turned around, startled, and sputtered something unintelligible at me. He stared, open mouthed at us. Gross, he didn’t have any teeth. She punched me in the arm and told me to be nice. “Don’t worry, we won’t hurt you.” I turned to her and raised my eyebrows. Happy? He continued to stare at us as we slowly approached him. She punched me in the arm again and told me to offer him some food. “But we don’t have very much!” She punched me in the arm again. Ow. Fine. “Old man!” Ow. “Sir, can we offer you some food?” He stared at us some more. Actually now that we were close he looked remarkably like Anthony Hopkins. “Holy shit! Are you Anthony Hopkins?” His eyes widened and he started sputtering violently. Suddenly he clutched his chest and fell over. He was dead.
“First person we’ve seen in years and its Anthony Hopkins. What are the odds of that?” I said as we walked along the road later that day.
“Yeah and you had to kill him.”
“Yeah but what a good story that’ll make. Right?”
It wasn’t long ago that she started getting sick. Her breathing was ragged and she was coughing more than usual. Her hair had been thinning badly and it turned black with filth. I used to love her hair. It was the color of gold in the sun and smooth as silk. I would bury my face in her hair and wake up every morning to the scent of her shampoo: wild cherry. It was my favorite. Now you would never know she had had the most beautiful hair I’d ever seen, ever felt, ever smelled. She was growing weaker every minute, sicker every day. She could no longer carry her own pack so I strapped it to my back, on top of my own and let her walk carrying only what she wore.
The next day she couldn’t stand on her own anymore. I stuffed what I could from the shopping cart into our packs and left the rest behind. Lifting her in my arms, I gently laid her into the empty cart. It was slower going that day. I wasn’t in much better shape than she was and though I could still walk, it took all my strength to keep us going. She did her best to stifle her cries of pain from riding over the uneven road. Her loud coughing stopped only when she leaned over the edge of the cart to vomit. Before long she had nothing left in her stomach to throw up and she just sat there in the cart retching violently. She died the next day.
I gathered up whatever I could find to burn and laid her down, wrapped in all our remaining blankets, in front of the fire. She was too weak to eat so I dripped as much water as I could down her throat. Eventually she lay quiet and calm in front of the fire and fell asleep. I stayed watch that night. I watched as her breathing became slower and more difficult through the long night but it kept up. At first light her eyes blinked open and she began hacking again. I held her in my arms as she coughed up first spittle and then blood onto my jacket. I did what I could to hold her still but her coughing was growing more and more violent. I brushed her hair out of her face and kissed her on her forehead.
Finally she grew still in my arms. She was gone.
“Look honey,” I said. “Don’t you keep telling me I need a bath?” I said it with a British accent and she laughed. She sat there under a tree and smiled at me as I walked slowly into the pond. Her hair was the color of gold in the sun and she was wearing pink and blue again. I hadn’t seen those colors in so long I’d almost forgotten what they looked like. When I stepped into the water I felt a warmth spread up from my legs into my chest. With it came a surge of color. The water turned a clear blue, the grass returned to a bright shade of green, and the tress once more burst into vivid color. Warm and happy, I turned back and smiled at her. I waded deeper into the water and closed my eyes. She would be waiting for me.
I like the joke about the bath and how that was woven throughout..this is my real comment :)
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