The Rain by Joseph Turkot Read Free Book Online

are doing after you leave them. They’re just gone, like they weren’t real, fading memories of a drier, warmer past, forsaken for the sake of faith, as Russell had called it. That’s what my dreams are. The memories of those decisions that I question now. The roofs over our head, the food in the cabinet, the streets to run through, the other normal people to talk to. The mistake of moving on when it isn’t that bad.
                The sky is telling me that it’s almost night now, as the sun smear dips to my left, making some of the gray endless mass of clouds glow red and pink. The whale has forsaken us too. He doesn’t need to help, for what connection does he have to the veneer? What favor does he owe people like us? Even still, I can’t force myself to go back in just yet. The sight of its body, now the memory of its body, eases my mind. The same ease it had moving through the death pool all around us. I need it to come back, just so I can see it again, be filled with its grace, its lack of concern, its playfulness. I strain my eyes looking for it over the canvas of brown, imagining it will come back. I think about Russell and his wife and his daughter. I wonder if this is how he feels about them. I wonder if because he said forever to them, and had meant it, if now he feels like I do about the whale not coming back. It doesn’t make any logical sense that it will return, but I cling to the idea anyway. I look out over the muddled horizon for the whale, but instead, I see a boat. I think it’s a boat. I move down to the water, and all at once it’s like the fear from before has jumped back into me, but twice as strong, because after I double check, and triple check, I realize it really is a boat. I tell myself it’s a different boat, but I know it’s not. It’s the same one. It’s the one I’ve seen for days now trailing us in the open water. And it’s moving toward our rock of mud. I almost run back up to the tent, but I know that if I go in the water again, I might not come back up. I slowly climb up the rocks, onto the mud, walking between the little streams leading down to the sea so they don’t send me flying down along with the rain into the brown.
     
    I open the tent flap. Russell’s still sleeping, but he’s rolled over onto his other side, facing the tent flap now. It sounds like he’s not even breathing, and the double fear of that and the face eaters launches me across to him. I grab him violently on his arm. He wakes up right away, like he isn’t even sick one bit.
                “What’s up Tan?” he says. Hearing my name makes me feel like I’m suddenly awake again, like the whale never happened, the trip I took down into the sea with it. I try to choke out the words, but I can’t. I feel paralyzed, like I’m going to fall down and start crying. It’s a combination of the fact that he’s okay and the fact that we’re going to die anyway. He sits upright, concern gripping his gaunt face.
                “Tanner!” he says, angry, desperate to know what’s happening. He’s awake, and he seems fine. I point outside the tent and finally mutter, “They’re coming.”
                But he’s not fine. He goes to stand on his knees, like he’s always done at the first sign of danger when we stay in the tent, but he grunts and sits back down.
                “What is it?” I say, panicked.
                “I’m just dizzy, give me a second,” he moans. Then he reaches into his pocket, and it takes him forever but he finally takes out his knife and tries to stand on his knees again. He falls a little bit but I grab him, hold him upright until he can find his strength. It seems like he won’t find it though, and I know the boat is getting closer. It’s not so dark that they won’t see where our canoe is tied up on the bank.
                “How close?” he says, weathered, but ready to move. I tell him a