A Drop to Drink                                                                                 

You are about to slit your wrists when you see the umbrella.  The knife against your forearm, you pause, squinting into the glare. The umbrella remains, pulsating like a psychedelic cactus in the heat. Shrunk by the hazy immensity it is a mere pinpoint, but you know what it is at once. It is the only speck of color you have seen in the six days since you left the highway leading out of the city.  

You were not the only one who left; ten miles from the city-limit, the highway became impassable, blocked by abandoned minivans and jackknifed tractor-trailers, and many of the refugees who clogged it decided to strike out in small bands or on their own, like you. But after the first day you have seen no one else.  

You only packed two bottles of water, reassuring yourself that you could stock up at one of the Emergency Relief Stations the TV bulletins had assured you were standing by at regular intervals along the highway. Later, walking on your own with the Relief Stations– if they had ever existed– falling far behind you, you believed, were sure, you could refill your lightening bottles at the town, which, you told yourself, would materialize out of the heat within the next hour. Comforted by this delusion, you did not ration your water but drank it as you normally would– in sucking post-jog chugs, letting some dribble down your chin and trickle down the sides of your sunburned neck. Nor did you conserve your urine, preferring to irrigate the mesquite and cracked hardpan with a profligacy that now appalls you.   

Of course you, faithful watcher of castaway movies and zombie apocalypses, knew how travelers should act in these situations, how they apportion their water in dainty capfuls and distill their piss, but you disdained these measures, because to take them, would mean admitting to yourself that your life had become not life at all but survival. 

Drought was not an alien concept to you, living as you did in a desert city, born out of a mirage of real-estate speculation less than  a century and a half ago. There were times when, glancing at an ornamental fountain or sprinkler-misted lawn, you wondered where such a glut of water came from, and how it could last. But it always had lasted. Time to time you would see the Water Advisories, their urgency going from yellow to orange, but the fountains remained full, and, in time, the browning lawns returned to green with the Advisory Level. 

That first night, when you turned on your bathroom faucet and it coughed and dribbled brownish silt, your initial thought was to call a plumber, so certain were you that this was a one-off inconvenience, one of those unwelcome but always-expected hitches in daily routine. Of course you knew there was another drought going on. The weathermen had shown a big meter flashing orange, and one of the anchors had even talked about it going all the way up to red, which, you assumed, meant the lawns would stay brown a month or two longer than usual. Even after you turned on the TV again and saw the evacuation orders, your panic remained muted. 

At the supermarket, you’d been focused on getting cans of chili and minestrone before only Spam was left. Your real prize of the outing had been the knife, which you’d spotted lying in a litter of broken glass from a busted frozen food cooler. Seeing it there, the unfolded blade catching the glitter of the glass, scared you for a moment, but as you bent to pick it up, you heard the overhead speakers announcing a clean-up in the aisle, telling you help was on the way. You didn’t wait to see if the help came; you were already wheeling your cart to Checkout, jostling with the other shoppers. The water had been an afterthought, even though you knew the lack of it was the reason for your flight. 

When you drained the second bottle on your second night in the desert, you still did not panic. Curled in your sleeping bag on the cooling sand, you drifted off thinking about the town you would reach the next morning. 

By noon the town had not come, but the fear had. You started to cry, wiping your face and licking the tears off your fingers. Their salt burned your burning throat, but you craved more, and dwelt on the hopelessness of your situation, so that you could cry the harder. But, by midafternoon your tears had run out too, and you walked on, your throat and your eyes a single rawness scorched by the sun. 

It was on the evening of your second day without water that the idea of drinking your blood occurred to you. It would be like the tears, you thought, its salty warmth bringing no relief but only the desire for more. And you would have more blood to give than tears.

You resisted the idea until this afternoon. There was no final eureka of despair, but in the desert, its merged glare of land and sky, there was also no reason to put it off anymore. 

————–

Until now. The umbrella is still there, still a speck of color in the bleached-bone haze. Yet its sudden appearance, the serendipity of it, rouses your suspicions. You will walk towards it, until the mirage breaks up, you decide. Then, the desert emptiness unrelieved once more, you will cut and you will drink.  

After a half-mile you realize the umbrella has kept its solidity. It is a beach model, its outsize canopy striped orange and green. In its shade, you can see a Tiki-bar. Hanging from its thatched awning is a rack of sunglasses—tourist shades in pink-plastic frames, their lenses filmed with dust.  Lined up on the bar beneath the rack stand Mason Jars, bound with blue satin ribbons. Each jar is filled to the lid with air-clear water in which points of sunlight glint like mica. 

Thickening your tongue chafes the roof of your mouth. You force yourself to slow, your breath trapped like the grit in your throat. With each blink, each shutter-flash of red, you expect the umbrella and the bar beneath it to vanish, but they remain, getting closer. Behind the bar, you can now make out other racks filled with ceramic cacti and Elvis T-shirts, Viva Las Vegas printed on their fronts. 

These details reassure you. Even distorted by thirst, your imagination, is, you know, too shallow to hold such a reservoir of Existential imagery. Slipping the knife into your backpack, you break into a hitching half-jog. 

—————

Sitting in a beach chair at the edge of the umbrella’s shade is a man wearing one of the Elvis shirts and a pair of the pink plastic sunglasses, which he takes off as you approach. The stubble on his pitted cheeks looks like impacted sand. 

“Help you?”

“Please.” 

“What’s that?”

“Water. Thank God.”

You can hardly hear the word above the scrape of your breath. Sighing, the man gets to his feet and looks at you, his head cocked, polite expectation on his face.

“Water? That what you said? Sorry, friend, my hearing isn’t what it used to be. ”

“Yes. Please.”

“Sure.” The man grins. “Always popular. Now more than ever, I’d expect.”

“Jesus Christ, yes. I thought I’d never see it again.”

“But you have– Right where you least expect it and most need it.” The man chuckles. 
“That’s a rule to live by, right there son.”

“I’ll remember it, always. Thank you.”

“Don’t thank me yet, friendo. Have your drink first.”

You reach for the nearest Mason Jar, your hands already bathed in its phantom chill. 

“Hey, hey. Jesus.” The man snatches the jar away, glaring at you. “What the fuck do you think this is? Oxfam?”

“What?” For a moment you stare at your cupped hands, uncomprehending. 

“Barter and exchange. Ring any bells?” The man taps the side of the jar, his nail clicking on the glass. For the first time, you notice a label, on which is written a number:

 $250

“What the fuck? That much?”

“That’s what it says, buddy. You can read right?”

You try to swallow, fighting your panic. Your throat clicks like the man’s nail. “You know what’s happening, right. Everything’s going to shit.”

“Sure is.” the man’s grin widens. “What else do you think the price is so high? Supply and demand, baby. Lots of demand and I got the only supply for thirty miles either direction.” He points. Beyond the umbrella’s shade is a well fringed by plastic sunflowers. Its chrome-plated  handle glints like a sythe in the sun.     

“Aquifer,” the man explains. “You won’t find water so pure again.” He glances at you, his eyes rueful. “Or any kind of water by the looks of you friend. So, what you say? We got ourselves a deal?”

“Fuck you.”

You lunge for another Mason Jar, but the man is quicker. From under the bar he produces a double-barreled shotgun which he levels at your chest.

“Take it easy, buddy.” The man gestures with his shotgun. “Take a breather and chill the fuck out, ok?”  

You face him, your fists clenched, your pulse a pebbly rattle behind your eyes.

“I’m not about to get robbed,” the man says. “And I’m not about to start giving handouts. It’s the principle, you fucking understand that. Things are going to shit, but the free market soldiers on. It always does, y’know. Human fuckin’ nature. I was hearing on a podcast how it’s all evolution or some shit.”

“I have an fucking Econ degree,” You say. “You don’t need to lecture me on the fucking free market. Let’s be reasonable.”

“Let’s. How much do you have?”

“Whatever. Just fucking take it.” From your backpack you take your crumpled wallet and toss it at the man. He catches it one-handed, opens it, and takes a crumpled dollar from the billfold.  

“Is this a joke?” He flutters the dollar. “You might as well expect me to give you the fucking water.”

“I paid cash at the supermarket. That’s all I have.”

“Well you should have bought more water there before you walked into a fucking desert, friend. I didn’t lead you here at gunpoint. Free and consensual trade, that’s what I’m all about. You don’t come here and throw me a fucking dollar and expect to get what I’m selling. That’s not an acceptable basis for a transaction, friend. If you had big tits and came up here in hotpants then maybe we could work out another arrangement. But not with you, buddy. So, you’d better find your own way unless you can be a rational actor about this.”

“Wait.” You raise your backpack, and, raising it,  you realize what you must do, the conclusion to this transaction. “I have something else.”

“Holding out on us?” The man smiles, beckoning with his shotgun. “Let see it.”

“I didn’t want to.” You set the backpack on the counter. The man leaned forward, lowing the shotgun. As you withdraw the knife, you realize you are smiling too, your cracked lips bleeding, the blood running into your mouth like tears. “But I see it’s the only way.”

————–

As you drain  the first Mason Jar, the water dousing the agony in your throat, its stony cool filling your belly, your impression of the vendor softens. He is no Neo-Feudal extortionist, you understand, but an entrepreneur, the paragon of capitalist vision and ingenuity. After all, you reflect, the apocalypse is the ultimate test of grindset. 

Seeing his corpse– the knife buried in its throat, the blood soaking the sand, turning it to blackish mud– disgusts you. In the desert, every fluid is precious. That had been his mistake, you realize. “Diversify,” you say aloud and fight your laughter. 

The man’s sunglasses are lying on the sand beside him. There is a smear of blood on the left lens. You pick up the sunglasses, wipe the lenses and put them on. Through their amber gloom you can see a figure, a moving speck in the desert stillness. You wait, as before, for the mirage to break. When it doesn’t, you smile. Your anticipation is building. This is first customer,  and you must have your wares ready. The full range of options for the weary traveler, for whom water is the ultimate luxury. The desert’s lessons have been harsh but you have learned them well. 

You lay the shotgun on the bar, kneel beside the man, and hold the empty Mason Jar to his throat. His severed carotid is still pumping. In less than a minute the jar is a quarter full.  The blood is black as the water is clear, rich with the salt-sweetness of tears.

____________________________________________

Will Hodgkinson (he/him/his) has fiction published in Northwest Review (2024) and in the new anthology Below the Poverty Line (Free Spirit Press; 2023). His work has also been published multiple times in Off the Coast. Will’s interview with Noam Chomsky and Will’s reflection on that interview were published in Breakwater Review; Will’s interview is archived at chomsky.info.org. He lives in Arlington, MA, has recently graduated from Brandeis University and is in Graduate School at Northeastern University.