The Rain by Joseph Turkot Read Free Book Online Page A

couple hundred feet. He starts to walk on his knees to the tent flap, and as always, I get behind him, waiting for his direction. I’ve never had to take charge, and I don’t want to start now. He’ll tell me what to do—either we run, or we stand our ground. But I don’t know how we can stand our ground, and I don’t know where we can row to. We’ll be on dark water if we row out there now. And we’ll have to backtrack north to find a patch of land to escape onto. And before all that we’ll have to flip the canoe because it’s half sunken.  
     
    Russell opens the flap and peers out, and then he steps out and stands up. I follow after him, locking my eyes right onto the sea. The boat is a lot closer now, or maybe I didn’t call it right, and it hadn’t been hundreds of feet away. I can see the blue plastic of their body suits. One of the men is limp, the other rowing. That must be what we looked like, with me at the oar.
                “They’re low,” Russell says. I see what he means—the edge of their boat is perilously close to the water line, because the limp guy isn’t bailing. They’re moving slow, taking on rain, and it looks like they might sink before they reach us.
                “What should we do?” I say, because it’s taking way too long for Russell to decide. He’s thinking slower than usual. He usually has a plan by now. He has them ahead of time. But he just looks out there, judging something silently to himself. I push into his chest, out of fright, out of having no words to express my need for him to make the call—to tell me to break the tent down again and tip our canoe over to empty out the water. But he always tips the canoe at the first sight of danger, because I usually can’t handle the weight by myself. But he isn’t moving yet. I squeeze him.
                “Russell, I’m scared,” I say. The storm had hit us so fast in the Sea Queen Marie that I hadn’t had time to register my fright. It was just one minute we were okay, and the next, we were fighting for the rafts, and then we were knocked around for two hours in swells that rose as tall as houses. But ever since we’ve been in Wyoming, and the face eaters started showing up everywhere, I notice my fear more. Maybe it’s related to the sinking feeling I get in my stomach now, that we are forever beyond all the warm and dry places in the world, forever beyond the veneer. And in the total dreariness of the place, I start more and more to fixate upon ideas. Like the idea of Russell and me being together forever. Maybe even in the idea, now separated from everything else, that I love him. And he might never know it. Love, the word, hasn’t passed his lips since Philadelphia. I think it stopped after his family died. He’s never told me he loves me. But the love is in me now, and alive, and it drives the fear of death to a pulsing and horrible swelling inside my chest—I don’t want to lose him, and I don’t want to die. Even if the rain doesn’t ever stop, I don’t want us to end. I tell him I need him again. “Russell, what are we gonna do?” I say.
                “They’re too low,” he says. He leaves me, pushes me off of him, and walks down to the water’s edge. I follow right after him and wait, hoping he’ll tell me what the plan is. He just stares, and I look too. They’re waists are level with the water.
                “Can they make it?” I say. They’re so close. Russell doesn’t say anything, but he kneels down for a minute, like something’s wrong. I kneel next to him, put my arm on his back, rubbing it, but he just keeps looking at the mud. He’s not even checking the water anymore. I ask if he’s okay, but he doesn’t say anything. He’s breathing really loud again, like the short walk to the water was too much for him. They see us I tell him, but he already knows that. My hope that they might miss, get swept in the wrong