Not a Drop to Drink

Fourteen

Stebbs was on the roof when she made it back to the house. A pale sliver of moon was rising and she could make out his dark form clambering down the antennae as she emerged from the yard.

“Hey, kiddo,” he called to her. “How’d it go?”

“Well enough. Brought your pack back.”

“They okay over there?”

“Neva’s got problems neither one of us can help her with.”

“That’s true enough.” They walked around the side of the house together. “And Eli? How’s he looking?”

“Fine,” Lynn said nonchalantly. “He got a deer today.”

“Did he? Good boy.”

“Why don’t you come on in?” Lynn said when she saw that Stebbs was headed toward the field as they approached her door. “No point you walking home cold when you can warm up downstairs before going.”

Stebbs rubbed his hands together. “Don’t want to put you out.”

“Doesn’t hurt me for you to soak up some heat.”

Their voices dropped as they entered the basement; Lucy lay curled up in her cot near the fire, her small legs making a neat V shape under her blanket. Lynn checked on her, tucking the folds under the small curves of her body. “She go to sleep okay?”

“Not a contrary word. I told her it was bedtime, and to bed she went. That’s a good little girl.”

“I know it.” Lynn opened the door to the stove so they could see each other in the flickering firelight, and set a pot of water to boil. “I’m having some coffee. You might as well have some too.”

“I don’t know what’s caused this sudden rash of kindness, but I’ll drink your coffee and thanks.”

Lynn fired a harsh look over her shoulder. “I’d kick you if you didn’t have two bad feet right now.”

“The old Lynn would’ve kicked me anyway.”

“The old Lynn’s still in here somewhere, so don’t tempt her.”

Stebbs laughed and propped his foot up on the edge of Lucy’s cot, leaning back to relax. “This isn’t a half-bad place you know? Your mom did a fine job getting you two set up.”

Lynn sat in the chair opposite Stebbs and began dismantling her rifle. “Long as you’re here, I’m going to clean this filthy thing,” she said. “I don’t feel right having a gun in pieces when someone could come down those stairs any minute.”

Stebbs propped his chair back, rested his head against the wall. “Clean away. I’m not going anywhere when there’s coffee brewing.”

“Neva wouldn’t come away from the baby’s grave today.”

“That right?”

“She said she wasn’t capable of caring for Lucy anymore either, and that she’s better off with me.”

“At the moment, it’s true.”

“I think she meant forever.”

“How’d you feel about that?”

Lynn threaded a wad of cotton through the ramrod before answering. “Not so good, really. I mean, I don’t want to give her up just yet. But she’s not mine to keep either.”

“True.”

“I think a girl should be with her mother.”

“I do too,” Stebbs said. “That particular mother isn’t in any shape to care for her daughter as of yet, though.”

“I know it,” Lynn said, and shoved the ramrod down the barrel. “Is that why you took it on yourself to care for them? ’Cause you don’t have family?”

Stebbs blinked at the straightforward question.

“Sorry,” Lynn said quickly. “Never mind.”

“It’s all right. Wasn’t expecting it, is all. Where’s all this coming from, sudden-like?”

“Neva talking to me about Lucy, and her baby that’s gone. She asked me if you’re my family.”

“And you told her?”

“I told her you aren’t.” Lynn critically inspected the cleanliness of her cotton before continuing. “I don’t mind you so much though anymore.”

“Thanks for the kind words. You’re all right yourself.”

Lynn poured them both some coffee and went back to cleaning her rifle without responding. Stebbs warmed his hands around his cup and watched her a few moments. “There’s lots of reasons why I help them. Part of it’s yes, ’cause I don’t have anybody. But I haven’t always done the right thing in my past, and this seems a good a way as any to make up for it.”

“Can’t imagine you doing something terribly wrong,” Lynn said, eyes still on her work.

“There’s different ways of doing things wrong, Lynn, and not all of it is choosing to hurt others. Sometimes it’s the things you don’t do that make you feel the worst.”

“All right then, what’d you not do that was so awful?”

“How much do you know about your daddy?”

Lynn’s hands stopped moving and she glanced up at Stebbs. “Not much. Mother wouldn’t really talk about him. All I know is, by the time I got here he’d been gone awhile.”

“Does the word militia mean anything to you?”

“Are you telling a story or asking me questions?”

Stebbs took a drink of his coffee and settled back in his chair. “If you want to hear it, I’ll tell it.”

Lynn changed the cotton in her ramrod and kept working on the barrel. “I’m sitting here listening.”

“Your daddy was part of the militia. That’s not the regular army that the government was in charge of, you understand? There was a chain of command, and weapons, and we would drill much like the proper army, but everything was voluntary, and everyone was local. Sometimes, we attracted people that the army wouldn’t have for whatever reason. Could be they had asthma or didn’t graduate from high school. But sometimes, we’d get the other kind, that the regular army wouldn’t take ’cause they couldn’t pass the psych exam. Meaning they weren’t quite right, up here.” Stebbs tapped his temple. “Your daddy, he was part of that last half.”

Lynn thought about Mother. Had she wondered how much of Father’s instability had rubbed off on her in the end? And how much of his insanity was inside of Lynn, passed on through the blood or Mother’s teachings? Lynn thought of the people she’d dropped in the fields, thirsty men and women she’d killed without hesitation. Was that because of her father’s priorities, instilled in her so young? Or was that who she truly was—a smaller, female version of him who took life without regret?

Stebbs was watching her, and she felt her mouth tightening into a thin line under his gaze. “I’ve known lots of people in my life, Lynn,” he said. “There’s plenty of good seed sown by the bad.”

She cleared her throat, and changed the subject. “You were militia, too?”

Stebbs nodded, and moved on. “I was regular army once upon a time, but my convoy got hit by an IED during the Second War for Oil and they sent me home ’cause my hand wouldn’t work just right after that.” Stebbs held up his left hand, showing Lynn how it wouldn’t close properly. “I can’t use my index and middle finger for nothing.”

“So you became militia?”

“Once you’ve been in that kind of situation, you don’t come back normal. I still wanted that lifestyle, and the militia was the only way to get it.”

“That how you met Mother?”

“I’d known your mother before. See, Lynn, even before the Shortage there weren’t a lot of people around here. To you, it would seem like a lot, but as far as the rest of the world was concerned we were as rural as it got. Your mom’s family, they’d lived here a long time—in this house even—and mine had been around this area for a while too.”

“Was she family to you?”

Stebbs looked at her sideways. “You don’t know much about her, do you?”

“She didn’t talk about herself.”

“Well, that’s not surprising, considering.”

“Considering what?”

“Well, your mom—her family—they did okay. They wasn’t rich, but they had enough to get by and then some, which was doing pretty good around here, especially during them times, after the Second War for Oil. Nobody had any money, and there wasn’t jobs anywhere either. Our militia started filling out.”

“Why’s that?”

“Lots of people were unhappy. They was mad at the government about the war, and about the fact that there was no money and no jobs. People always gotta have someone to blame, you see? People without jobs got nothing to do, and they feel like they’re not doing anything for their families. Some of them thought the only thing they could do was learn how to protect them, keep them safe. Crime was up; everyone was desperate. People started breaking into houses and cars for money, sometimes even just for food.

“Your mom’s family though, they didn’t have to worry about money too much, even in the bad times. They was good people, nice enough to give to others, and maybe their good will was part of what kept them safe from the robberies. But Lauren—that’s your mom’s name, you know—she was always a little skeptical about people, even then, and she came to me to learn about how to use a gun.”

“How old was she?”

“Oh, she was a bit older than you. Out of college, and all.”

“She was older than I am and didn’t know how to shoot a gun?”

“It was a different time, kiddo. Feels like a different place, even.” Stebbs took another drink of coffee, looking down into the depths for a moment. “Anyway, she started coming around, careful like, ’cause she knew her family wouldn’t care for it if she was hanging out with us roughnecks. That’s how she met your daddy.

“He wasn’t quite right, like I said. A few of the guys would rather walk through the mud to steer clear of him than pass close by. He was always looking for a fight and knew how to start one even if there was no reason. But he was a charmer too, and better-looking than what the women around here was used to seeing. He got around a bit, I can tell you that.”

Lynn blushed at the reference and moved to cleaning the bolt she’d removed from the rifle, keeping her eyes down.

“In any case he and your mom was meant for each other like sparks and gunpowder. She was always treating him like the miscreant he was, something the others lacked the balls to do, and he behaved even worse in front of her just to get her attention. I do think they cared about each other on some level, but neither one of them would ever admit it to the other. Even once they was together, they tried to act like they weren’t, like making that choice was a discredit to them both. And maybe it was.

“Her family, they weren’t too fond of her decision either, being as your daddy had a reputation of being cracked in the head. She was still living at home and they did try to stop her from seeing him, but shortly after that her parents—your grandparents—was killed in a car accident. Your aunt had already gotten married and moved out over the way with her husband, so Lauren got the house and it wasn’t too long before he was shacking up with her, which didn’t go over too well with a lot of people. Your mother was supposed to be a civilized kind, what with her college degree. But your daddy . . . he just wasn’t.”

“What was wrong with him, specifically?” Lynn asked, now knowing if she wanted the answer.

“Nothing you could put your finger on, exactly. He was the kind of crazy that hid itself well, ’cept in the eyes. That’s where you can always see it, if you know how to look.”

“What’d he do that was so crazy?”

“Well, now, that’s the funny part, really. He’d seen some documentary about how we was running out of freshwater and the government was trying to keep it a secret, so as to avoid a panic. All over the globe, he said, people was running out of water and the news, they was putting a different spin on it, so we wouldn’t know what was going on. All the violence in third-world countries was over water, he said, but they kept telling us stories about tribal wars and religion to keep us distracted, and them poor countries didn’t have a way of telling people any different.

“Pretty soon, he claimed, the east would be going down. There was too many people over there and not enough water. Then we’d be next. He said the whole environmental movement had shit-all to do with caring about the planet and everything to do with people giving their money to green programs so that desalinization plants could be built for the rich people to survive the coming shortage. It got so bad with him talking about the freshwater shortage that people started avoiding him out of just plain annoyance along with the fear. Nobody took him serious until the Aswan Dam was blown up.”

“Mother told me about that.”

“It was a big deal,” Stebbs said. “That dam had always been a political problem for Egypt, but the rest of the world was always told it was about power, not water. Well, when the guerrilla group over there took it down, a lot of people over here sat up and took notice. Your daddy finally had an audience.

“He took a group of us up to the lake, Lake Erie, you know?” Lynn nodded. “He took us up there to show us this plant that had been built brand new on the Canadian side to clean up the lake water. We rowed out in a boat, pretending to be fishing, and he pointed out there was armed guards all along that plant’s walls, and ‘what was a water purification plant doing with a private army holding M16s?’ he asked me.

“It was a good enough question, I thought, so once we came home, we started taking him serious. By then he’d knocked your mom up—uh, I mean, Lauren was pregnant with you, and the two of them weren’t getting on so well. She needed help at home, but he was all in love with the fact that he had men to lead. He kept saying that the regular army was too busy overseas, and when the time came it was up to militia like us to defend what was ours. Or, in the case of the lake, keep what he felt was Ohio’s away from Canada.

“In any case, as it turns out, the crazier he sounded, the closer to the truth he was. One morning, our taps had all been turned off, and we was told if we wanted water we’d have to go into town to buy it. Now, buying water was no new thing—we’d always had to pay for our water, unless you were lucky enough to have a well. But now the water companies was saying they couldn’t afford the upkeep of the water lines, and if you wanted it, you’d have to come and get it.

“That’s how the Shortage came to be, and it went from there. At first, you had to go into the nearest town with a utility office to get your water. Then pretty soon they said it was too much of a bother to keep those open. So if you wanted your water you had to come to the city to get it, and eventually they just said if you wanted water, you had to live in the city. People started leaving, piling into their cars and going to the city limits to pile on top of each other there. Those of us out here with wells or access to water stayed, and there were bad enough stories coming out of the cities after that to make us glad we did.”

“Like what?”

“The cholera, for one,” Stebbs said. “Pack all those people together, you’re bound to have sicknesses of some kind passing around. They forced a bunch of sick people out of the cities, I heard, but nothing can stop a burn like that once it gets going. Wasn’t just the cholera either. Every now and then, people would pass through here that your mother didn’t shoot and I’d learn a thing or two. Made it sound like the Black Death had come back again, nearly. But out here, with less people, the illnesses weren’t the worst. Out here we mostly just managed be threats to each other.

“Not long after they drove the sick from the cities, your daddy and I, we had a falling-out. I tried to stop him from taking the men up to the lake to take that water plant by force. He said it’d be a proper war, fought by the militia like the first one in our country was. Enough of the men were on his side that I backed down. He had everybody eating out of his hand by then, and I wasn’t half certain that he didn’t have it in for me, seeing as he was always looking over his shoulder and wondering who was causing problems in his little kingdom. So I cut my losses, decided to set up on a little piece of land I owned that had a decent vein of water running under it.”

“Across the field,” Lynn said.

“That’s the place.”

“You just happened to be able to keep an eye on Mother from there?”

Stebbs shifted uncomfortably in his chair. “Well, here’s the part I’m not so proud of, kiddo. Your dad, he said good-bye to your mom, even though her belly was as big as the world with you inside, and he took a bunch of the men up north to the lake, armed to the teeth. Not a one of ’em came back. Not long after I got set up, your mom came walking across that field, gun in one hand, your tiny body in the crook of the other elbow. She said she didn’t much see the point in me living in a shack when she had a whole house to offer, and two guns was better than one anyway.

“I could tell she had thought a lot about what she was going to say ahead of time, and made it all come out right so that it sounded like it would be the best thing for both of us, and not like she was asking for my help. I took one look at you, with your eyes so big they filled up most of your face, and your little bare feet so small it looked like they’d fall right through a crack in the ground and I told her I didn’t need no more work than I already had, and that responsibility for one was all I had left in me. Your mom, she walked away without asking twice, and I didn’t talk to her again until I stuck my foot in a trap.”

Stebbs swirled the now-cold coffee in his cup and threw the dregs in the fire, where they sputtered into steam. “I turned my back on her same as her family had done, and the same as your daddy did once there was work involved along with the play. Your mother raised you right, but she raised you hard, and I can’t help but think if I’d been around maybe you’d have some softer edges. Maybe you could’ve actually had a life, and not just survived if I’d been here. But here you are, and it seems you don’t need any help.”

Lynn snapped the stock back onto her rife. “Nope, I don’t.”

“So that’s why I give it elsewhere, I guess. Making amends.”

“I remember you being here, after your foot,” Lynn said. “I think I might’ve liked it, if you’d stayed.”

“I think I might’ve liked that too,” Stebbs said quietly. “I tried, Lynn. I promise you I tried after I got hurt. I wanted that woman to see sense so bad . . .” He trailed off, lost in memories made in the very room he was sitting in.

“So why not?” Lynn asked, her voice small. “Why couldn’t it happen?”

“She wouldn’t have me. It’d taken more out of her than I could’ve known to ask the first time, and when I shot her down I think it killed everything that was left in her but pride in herself and love for you. She wasn’t always a hard woman, you know. It’s what she became. You told me once not to speak of her unless you asked—”

“And I’m asking,” Lynn said.

“So I guess I’ll go ahead and tell you—don’t be making the same mistakes she did. Or hell, the ones I did either. Don’t be afraid to care for that little one, and don’t be too proud to let that boy know what you feel. Otherwise you might end up with neither of ’em.”

Lynn propped her rifle in the corner and tossed her own coffee onto the coals. “Seeing how it’s pretty late now, you might as well stay here, I guess.”

“That’s all you got to say after that?”

Lynn gave her rifle a last rubdown with a cloth, hands moving slowly while she thought out her sentence. “I don’t know that there’s anything to say. I can’t change it if some of Father’s wrongness found its way into me, and I can’t change the way Mother raised me.”

“I’m not asking you to. I’m asking you to be more than they were. Be strong, and be good. Be loved, and be thankful for it. No regrets.”

Lynn sat quietly for a moment, watching the firelight flicker on her oiled rifle barrel.

“‘It’s not for sins committed

My heart is full of rue,

but gentle acts omitted,

Kind deeds I did not do.’”

Stebbs watched her carefully. “That’s not you talking, I take it?”

“No, that’s Robert Service. Mother always said the winters are long, but poetry anthologies are longer.”

Stebbs shot a glance at the bookshelf, where some of the spines were thicker than his hand. “Ain’t that the truth. Your mother had something else she said—‘It is what it is.’”

A smile spread across Lynn’s face at the words, dissipating the sadness. “That’s familiar, all right.”

“You know well enough what it means, then?”

“Mother always said it when something happened that couldn’t be undone, like when I lost that bucket in the pond, or broke a canning jar. Means you can’t change it.”

“Like the past. You can’t change the things you’ve done. It’s now and the here on out you’ve got control of.”

Lynn stood up, cracking her back. “All this talking is wearing me out, old man. You gonna stay or not?”

Stebbs got up and stretched as well. “I’ll stay, and thank you.”

Lynn nodded at him and crawled into bed beside Lucy, curling her body protectively around the little girl. “All right then, good night.” She left him to find his way to her cot by the stairs.

She felt tense with an extra body in the room. Stebbs drifted to sleep easily, and she found herself watching him by the waning light of the stove, tracing the fine lines of his face and the spiky grays of his hair, something she would never let him catch her doing while awake. Her affection and gratitude were too subtle and burned away under the harsh light of day. But in the familiar darkness of the basement she let her unspoken feelings pour out of her like water, and hoped that somehow the flow would reach him while he slept, and he would know without her having to say. Not long after, the slow, steady breathing of the three filled the basement, in stark contrast to the wild whipping of the wind outside.