For Oliver

I am going to die today, and I have made my peace with that. Before me stretched out, miles and miles of repulsively barren desert. Not a tree, not a cactus or shrub, not even a couple measly blades of desert grass; just a glaze on the horizon and the treacherous majesty of the sun. I shield my eyes and with a discernible amount of effort I look at that treacherous, disloyal, scathing, bastard sun; I thought you were the giver of life, I yell in my mind, my mouth too dry to speak, how can you betray us like this with death? It was getting hard to pick up my feet from the sand. Why are you forcing yourself to suffer? The Voice said. Shut up. I respond. Remember Oliver? The Voice whispers sinisterly, are you punishing yourself? My heart starts to race. I was nearly frothing from the mouth now. I stopped and flung my pack off my back. “Shut UP” I yell, swerving around and around, raising my fists. My ankle buckles beneath me and I can’t catch myself in time. I take a mouth full of sand and don’t have enough saliva to spit it out. I don’t have strength to rise. Panic bubbles in my throat for a minute then dissipates. This is how it’s going to end? The Voice taunts, how many cannibals and bandits have you fought off to die of thirst in the desert? Enough, now. I plead.

A buzzard flies close overhead. I make direct eye contact with it’s beady, empty, soulless gaze. We have been two marathoners in a race towards life. The momentum has inevitably swayed in his direction. I close my eyes and I see Oliver’s fat little face blanketed by his soft ringlets. More than water I want to hear his fat, padded feet running down a hallway, naked and wrapped in a towel after a bath. More than water I want to feel his warmth on my chest as we lay down to sleep in a cool, damp, dark room. I want to smell his milk breath as he drifts off to sleep and kiss his sweaty toes as I take them out of his footie pajamas the next morning.

The sound of the buzzard made me shoot upright. A piercing, agonizing cry deep within its bosom. I only caught sight of the edges of his tail as he plummeted to the ground. A bright yellow arrow sticking straight out the top of its bald head.

The one who shot the arrow was kneeling directly in front of me, blocking the sun and bringing with him the first shade and coolness I’d felt for weeks. Even kneeling he towered above me. There was something heart-wrenchingly familiar about his face.

“Can you walk?” The man asks.

“Are you going to eat me?” I whisper gracelessly, hacking up a glob of sand. I couldn’t conjure up any real fear, and I was entirely certain that whether this man’s intention was to cannibalize me it was going to be what it was going to be and perhaps this was the fate I deserved the most.

“I’m not going to eat you.” The man says, “I’m going to pick you up. We need to hurry.”

I don’t know how much I weighed, at this point I was primarily bones with a bit of skin. The man carried me effortlessly in his arms without any effect on his own gate. I studied his face seriously then, feeling it a good enough excuse being this close. That serendipitous feeling was poking at my ribcage. He had a lean, healthy, soft looking face. His beard was trimmed and well-kept and produced a sweet fragrance. His nose was pointed and round and at the tip were bits of freckles. However, what truly irked me the most about this man, other than his suspiciously well-kept appearance, was his hair. The color of it was a mimicry to my own, brown with flecks of red, hints of lighter tones beneath the darker ones and subtle waves at the tips. Something was eating at me. I breathed in shakily.

“I need to set you down.” The man says, breaking my reverie. He was looking ahead, and I followed his set gaze to where a ship stood directly in front of us, bathing us in its eerie shadow. A mound of sand on the opposite side of its hull was keeping it upright. He gently lowered me onto the sand then released a rope ladder that was neatly tied to the back deck of the ship.

“Can you—”

“I can pull myself up.” I stop him, coming to a stand with all the agility of an 8-month-old infant.

My hands touched the cool wood of the deck. With every atom of energy left in my body I was able to shimmy myself forward onto the ship.

“You need to drink and rest.” He says.

He picks me up and navigates us carefully across the uneven, sun-washed deck to the wheelhouse, which looked to be, from the outside, the size of a small shed. He took a long, pointed key from his left pocket and unlocked the heavy wooden door.

It was damp inside and the wood creaked and groaned under our weight. He set me down on a green cushion and finds a jug of water besides a small bed on the far wall across from me.

“Take sips. Take as many sips as you want, but don’t gulp.” I take it from his clean hands tentatively and put the neck of the jug to my lips.

“What if I don’t want to.”

“Drink?”

“Yeah”

“You’ll die then.”

“Maybe that’s for the best.”

The man stands up and retrieves something from the trunk. Whatever he found was little and fit into the palm of his hand, his fingers nearly white from gripping it shut.

“I am going to be straight with you because we don’t have much time.”

“It seems like time is all we have.”

“It’s not. We have what we are given and it’s not much. There are rules. If you and I can follow them, things will turn out alright.”

“Sure”

“Just try for me.” He looks straight into my face. As far into my face as the gaze of a person can reach. The expression sent nails straight to my chest. Something so familiar, achingly familiar.

“Do I know you?” my voice is barely above a whisper.

“I need you to do something for me.” He says sternly back, “something very important. It needs to happen now. We are running out of time.”

I can do nothing but nod. He digs out a wide, white porcelain bowl from the trunk and fills it with water from a jug that is also white.

“Where do you get the water?” I ask.

“There’s a well.”

He sits down in front of me with the jug and carefully swirls his fingers along the surface. The floor beneath us begins to vibrate.

“We are running out of time.”

“What was that?” For the first time I was genuinely petrified. The man’s facial expression was enough to cause goose bumps to raise on my arms.

“There’s an exchange that can happen. If you follow my directions and if you trust me, it’ll work.”

“I must be hallucinating” I whisper.

“You are not hallucinating.”

“To be fair, that’s what a hallucination would say.”

“What difference does it make”

“True.”

“I want you to make an intention.”

“An intention for what?”

“An intention that you are going to speak to someone who can grant you exactly what you want.”

“Like God?” I ask.

“Yes. Like God.”

I close my eyes.

“I am going to speak to God.”

“Good.” He says, “now I want you to say these words. In the name of God.”

“In the name of God.”

“Good. Now I want you to reach into the jug with your left hand, take a little bit of water in your palm, and wet your right hand, wet the wrist bone and the inside of the fingers too.”

I dip my left hand into the cool water and do as he says. When I am done, he quietly proceeds to do the same.

“Now take the water into your right hand and do the same to your left.”

When I am done, he takes some water into his right hand and pours it into his mouth without swallowing it, then spits it over his left shoulder.

“Do what I just did.”

I look at him imploringly.

“You don’t have to swallow it. But you have to do this.”

I take the water into my right hand, just enough to cover the middle of my palm, and slurp it into my mouth. I force it out and over my shoulder in a spray.

“Good. Now take some water with your right hand and bring it to your nose and inhale it as far back as you can. Then with your left hand take the water out your nose.” He demonstrates as he speaks.

I do.

“Good. Now take the water with both hands and wash your face.”

I do.

“Good. Now take the water with your left hand and rinse off your right arm. Then take the water with your right hand and rinse off your left arm.”

I do.

“Now take the water like this, with both hands,” he takes the water with both his hands and pours it over his head, then in a simultaneous action wipes the inside and backs of his ears.

I do.

“Good. The last thing, take the water with your left hand and clean your right foot. It is very important; you must clean between the toes. Then do the same for the right foot using the left hand.”

I do.

“Good. Now ask.”

“Ask for what?”

“Ask for what you want.”

“That’s a very open-ended question” I say.

“It’s not. It’s why I am here.”

He reaches into his pocket then and pulls out a tiny blue velvet box. He lifts it open.

“Where did you get that?” I say as soon as my eyes register what it was. I snatched it out of his clammy hand and repeated myself, my body inexplicably shaking.

“It was mine.”

“It was NOT yours!” I yell.

“You gave it to me.”

“I never gave this to you.”

“You needed to go and find water. You left me in the tent under the bridge. It was nighttime. I was sleeping.”

“Stop.”

“You didn’t know that there was a man watching us. How could you have known that? He was too weak to fight you, so he waited until you were gone.”

“Please stop.”

“I was still sleeping when he carried me away. I didn’t feel any pain--”

“You watch the next words that come out your mouth.” My body couldn’t produce any tears, but the sound of my voice was anguished enough that he finally stopped, “this was my son, Oliver’s necklace. This belonged to my 18-month-old son. I don’t know how you know what you know—”

“You told me you would trust me.”

“What you are saying is a lie.”

“Look at me. I’m your son. We are running out of time. All you need to do is ask.”

I felt something breaking inside of me. I couldn’t look at him, but the weight of the truth was starting to press on my shoulders.

“How?” I whisper, opening the heart-shaped locket that belonged to my baby. Inside was a picture of myself, holding a newborn Oliver who was sleeping on my shoulder, “How could I leave my baby? I still remember the weight of you when they laid you on my chest at the hospital. You were so tiny, but you were so, so heavy on my chest. I could have waited.”

“Just ask.” Oliver whispers.

“Will you take me with you?”