Hunger and Thirst by Wayne Wightman Read Free Book Online

dark, she said, “I know you think about leaving... crossing the mountains when the snow melts.”
    He held her a bit closer.
    “I know you're going to leave one day, but when you're gone, I want you to know that I'll still love you. Remember that. I won't like missing you, but when you need to go—” She pulled back enough to look into his eyes. “—when you need to leave, I'll fill your canteens and give you the warm coat.”
    “Sometimes I try to imagine what the ocean is like. I've never seen it. I've only seen pictures. They say the air smells different from anyplace else. Someday, I'd like to see it with you. But no time soon. Someday far from now.”
    He felt her arms hold him just slightly tighter.
    ....
    Out walking through the scrub, a mile from the house, Jack scanned the horizon and occasionally called for Artie. He still put food out at 8:00 and it was always gone, but he never saw what took it.
    The Sierra was still blanketed white and impassable. The mountains looked very far away.
    In the still air, he heard the baying of wild dogs long before he saw them.
    He checked the wind direction — he was probably safe. He headed back indirectly, to put more distance between him and the dogs, which took him nearer the highway than he would have gone otherwise.
    Twenty or thirty yards from the edge of the broken asphalt, he saw something red in the brush. He headed toward it.
    Faded and weathered, something red, plaid — a red plaid shirt. He pulled it loose and gave it a shake. Around the collar, it was stiffer and darker, probably blood. He recognized the pattern of stains in the front.
    “Hewitt,” he said. “You deserved getting your throat cut.”
    He stood tall and scanned the area, looking for any remains. Nothing.
    He dropped the shirt and kicked some dirt over it and started back. He had gone a dozen paces when something he just stepped over caught his eye. He knelt down and brushed aside the loose dirt.
    Teeth. Two upright teeth. A little more dirt brushed aside and there was the jaw... molars.... Hewitt apparently got a better burial than he deserved.
    Jack had gone only a few steps when he saw a bone. Perhaps from an arm. Then another one. A pelvis. Scattered to the side were ribs, vertebrae... too many ribs and vertebrae. More and more uneasy, Jack circled the area. Whatever was here, it was more than one person. Some of the vertebrae were as small as children's. Was it Hewitt and others? Who could have done this?
    He looked up suddenly and scanned the horizon, as though he might be watched.
    ....
    Natalie sat in her living room, gazing at the finger bones on the leather disk on her lap.
    “Come back to me, Jack. Come back to me.”
    ....
    When he walked in, she was there with her arms. “I missed you,” she said.
    When she'd finished with him, he told her about the dogs.
    “They usually keep their distance. I would never let anything happen to you.”
    “I was a mile away.”
    “I'll watch you more closely then. I'll also watch the dogs more closely. They seem to come through here every three or four days. Someone came down the highway while you were gone.” They had walked around into the kitchen. “Look.” She held up a bag of loose green material. “Ganja,” she said.
    “You're kidding. It's been years.”
    “It's old, but we shall see.”
    After dinner, after putting several pieces of meat outside the front door at 8:00, Jack noticed that Natalie had dropped her finger bones four or five times — he couldn't remember her doing it more than three times before. Then she was doing it again... six times. He asked nothing.
    ....
    In darkness: “I love you more than anything, more than everything. Every breath I take, I'm thinking of you. Every day the sun rises I'm thinking that we have another day to walk and I can hear your voice in this dry place, and every time the sun sets, I'm thinking that it's nearly night and then I can hold you like this and feel you next to me. Stay with