I like it quiet...12 Kilos
“Arrogant for a nearly dead man, aren’t you? Charlottesville is closest, a day’s walk south along the sand. Old Monticello still sticks out of the water unless the waves are rough.”
Garrett doesn’t recognize any of those names and for the first time since leaving on this doomed voyage he feels truly lost. D.C. as the old woman calls it, is supposed to be along the coast, or what was the coast, south of York and Chi town, northeast of Ridgeway and the eastern grasslands. Suddenly every place seems oddly not where it ought to be as Garrett clears his troubled mind and tries to focus on his breathing.
“If you’re gonna puke, lean over the side. I can’t spare the water to clean my porch.”
“I’m not so much sick as confused, profoundly confused. I had a map once. It was of a part of the world inland from here. I imagine far to the west of those hills over there. Between that map and what I knew of the place I came from, and the places I have traveled north, that’s all anyone seemed to know of the world. Geographically speaking anyway.”
The ancient remains silent and finishes filleting the dead fish, scooping its meat and head and depositing them into the pot with the shucked clams. Garrett takes another slow sip and watches as she goes about her work.
“I hope you aren’t going to any trouble with dinner, I don’t want to be rude but I don’t have much of an appetite even when I’m not slowly oozing life essence all over a stranger’s porch.”
No reply, again. The ancient sets the pot aside and scoops the waste onto a flat wooden board and flings it out toward the field of yellow grass in the distance. With some effort and a bit of noise she gets seated once again and starts chopping up what looks like carrots and short, crooked tubers of some kind and adding those to the pot.
“What I mean is, I doubt I’ll be able to hold anything down for a while.”
The ancient continues to cut and dump vegetables into the pot and Garrett clears his throat, ready to try another attempt to break the silence when she cuts him off.
“It’s been years since I was stuck listening to someone talk about nothing. Most days its just me out behind the place plucking these things and killing hill trash. I like that better, its quiet until the shooting starts and hill folk are honest, all they want is my food and all I want is them dead.”
