Letting the rain call us names...12 Kilos
“Goodbye Wally.” Garrett nearly whispers the words as he sets the bag back down on the sand.
The ancient comes up behind him with her sack of dinner supplies and looks down at the bag. “Trash is always washing up from the old city, the easy life folks used to have.”
“The people before us, I’ve always referred to them as those who drank it all up.”
The ancient looks up at the clouds rolling in from the ocean, pointing one shaking hand at the rolling waves underneath those darker clouds. “Well, they didn’t drink it all up, the left plenty of acid rain for us to deal with, best we head for cover before those clouds roll in.”
Garrett is exhausted and in abject agony by the time he resumes his place, half laying on the porch, half leaning against the ancient light metal camping chair. The ancient is nearly as winded as she comes out of the hovel interior with her trusty cutting board and her stew pot. He figures on another wordless session of her cutting and gutting and shucking the nights meal into her pot but the ancient breaks their usual silence.
“There’s something I should say, about the hill folk. Not a warning like the last time I mentioned being armed, just a heads up since you’re coming in tonight. I have an armory of sorts. I keep it locked up but there’s plenty to defend ourselves with if they decide to get bold again and come up on the porch.”
Garrett nods and dares a sip of the ever-bitter water provided. “I don’t imagine you managed out here alone with nothing but a kitchen knife at your disposal.”
The ancient slips the tip of the blade between the edges of a clam shell and deftly opens it with a slow sucking sound. “Oh, I’ve gotten a few of them with this knife too, back in the day.”
Garrett raises the old wine bottle full of bitter water. “Let’s hope you cleaned it afterwards.”
The ancient grunts and waves the knife a little in one shaky, arthritic hand. “I’ve murdered hill folk in all sorts of ways, even took pleasure in it, damning as that is to say. See, Garrett, I say murder, not kill, because they’re awful cannibal scum but they’re still people and its still murder. There’s a difference. You know what I mean?”
Garrett caps the bottle and sets it down next to him and nods. “I do.”
The ancient gets to the fish portion of her preparations as she continues, “I figured. I don’t know many people, maybe a handful my whole life, but I know a murderer when I see one, being one and all. You dance in the dark once you take a life. Did the ones you kill have it coming?”
No one had ever asked Garrett that before. Was it a given? Was it something no one who got close enough to him wanted the answer to? Oddly enough he didn’t need to think about an answer, not at first. His reaction came automatically, it fell out of his mouth because it was an instant and until recently constant truth. “Yes.”
Such a short answer seemed paltry given the heavy weight of the question but it was true, until recently.
The ancient finishes gutting the small fish and cutting it up before turning her attention to the carrots and tubers. “Awfully quick and final. Must have been a just life you lived to give that answer.”
“It was. It used to be.” Garrett let that last bit fall out just as easily as the first simple answer.
“That sounds more like it. Killing ain’t ever easy, and when it is, then you know it ain’t right. I’ve murdered some I didn’t need to.”
“Yeah, me too.”
The ancient keeps cutting the vegetables and nods, “This is the world that belongs to us then. The one we took away from others.”
Garrett doesn’t have a response to that but the acid rain begins to hit and hiss against the metal roof of the porch. As responses go, its as fitting as any.
They sit in silence until the stew pot is full and the ancient nods at it as she groans and stands up. “Well, fetch that pot and come on in. Won’t do no good for us to sit out here and listen to the rain call us names.”