The Same River Twice by Chris Offutt Page B

do is pop them. No shame if your skin’s falling off. Nothing wrong with dying, it’s all in how you go. Battle’s best because when you die strong, you’re stronger in your next life. If you go pansy, you come back worse. It’s a proven fact. Scientists did it. You got to be ready all the time because they might hit today. We won’t know till it’s too late, but they better fucking wait until I see Mama!”
    â€œUh, Winner. Who all’s in on this?”
    â€œThere’s me and my brothers for starts. Back east it’s all farmers. What the fuck are you so nosy for?”
    â€œMaybe you got room for an extra man.”
    His right arm snaked across the seat and grabbed my chin. His thumb pressed my jaw while his fingers sank into my cheek. He jerked my head, squinting at me.
    â€œWhat’s your last name?” he said.
    I told him.
    â€œAnd your mother’s?”
    â€œMcCabe.”
    â€œYou willing to swear on the flag and Bible you’re solid white? Not a drop of nigger, kike, Mex, A-rab, wop, or Indian in you?”
    I nodded until my head hurt and my jaw felt like it was cracking. He released me.
    â€œSorry, boy,” he said, “but that’s what it’s all about.”
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œUs.”
    That remains the most frightening word I’ve heard uttered in a lifetime of conversation with strangers. Epithets could be dodged, scatology shrugged off. But “us” was chilling. Us meant lynch mobs and gang rape, book burning and genocide. Us was a synonym for control, the grim satisfaction of veracity reflected in a corroded mirror. “Us” implied a “them,” and all thems were ripe for destruction. Aristotle set the precedent: “There are Greeks and there are slaves.”
    As suddenly as he had begun, Winner was silent. The amphetamines darted away, stilling his tongue, making him slouch. We were high in the mountains. Clouds piled each other for miles, bellies tinted scarlet by the setting sun. The air turned purple to the east.
    â€œMutants, spies, and commies.” Winner muttered. “Shoot on sight. Burn the carcass. Stay upwind.”
    â€œYup.”
    â€œYa fucking A! They got satellites to take a picture a thousand miles up. See every hair on your ass.”
    The meth had shot its wad. Winner steered to the shoulder and we switched sides. In less than a minute he slept the speed freak’s twitchy sleep and I studied the tattoos on his arms. An eyeball topped a pyramid sitting on a skull. Spiderwebs stretched between his knuckles. The number thirteen crinkled at the base of his thumb. Etched into flesh was the phrase “Born Dead.”
    I leaned out the window, allowing the wind to scrub my face. Stars sprinkled the night sky like a random computer printout. A full moon hugged the mountains. Bug corpses smeared the windshield, reminding me of Al. Maybe he and Winner were both correct—the world was doomed to extinction. Global annihilation was better than getting old; heaven and reincarnation were the same guarantee. No one surfed the river Styx.
    Winner dropped me off at dawn near a town called French Gulch and I followed Highway 299 west to the coast. For a week I wandered down the edge of what Spanish explorers originally considered to be an island. Years later wagon trains lost everything on their western trips, following ruts six feet deep. The desert fried the very old and the very young. Spring settlers passed thawing corpses. Now there are seventy languages spoken in Los Angeles and if California were a country, it would be the sixth most productive in the world. The state was like the end of a pier crowded by fishermen with tangled lines, all hoping for a big one.
    The first night, I slept on the beach. My backpack was stolen by two kids on bicycles. I went to a homeless shelter, where row after row of cots lined a stained floor. To prevent theft while sleeping, I threaded one