You See a Watering Hole
"Down here, beneath the surface, YOU feel relieved. YOU feel safe."
Short Fiction
YOU see a watering hole. Reprieve from the old dusty path. YOU start across the one hundred yards of yellow land separating YOU from your first drink of water in three days.
YOU stifle your excitement and barely allow a grin. YOU know if YOU smile any wider it’ll crack those sunburnt lips. YOU instead let your legs express the emotion. Each step toward that water is made with more urgency than the last. The remaining coins in your pocket clang against one another.
YOU continue at this pace for seconds before YOU suddenly slow. The reason for the slowing of your pace: YOU see THEM at the watering hole.
THEM is a brown woman in her 20s with her black hair down, over the shoulders of a dark blue pioneer dress. THEM is crouched at the watering hole.
YOU continue walking, slowly. Without your glasses, YOU squint. YOU blink. YOU squint some more. YOU blink some more. It’s no mirage, no trick: THEM is still there, at the watering hole, a hand cupping water to her face and neck. YOU see that her dress and hair and skin are caked with dust, as if she too has been on foot for days.
As YOU draw nearer to the watering hole, THEM becomes alert. THEM stands and turns to you. She is pregnant. Far along. THEM keeps her eyes down and her mouth taut. She is submitting to YOU and, satisfied, YOU allow your tense shoulders and neck to relax.
YOU move your eyes from THEM to the watering hole: the water is dirty, rancid, tinged brown, a dozen dead flies floating on the surface.
Mind if I—?
THEM shakes her head.
YOU crouch to the watering hole. THEM stands a few feet away, watching as YOU cup your hand and bring water to your mouth. YOU do it again and again and again. Eventually, you can’t resist. YOU submerge your face in the water.
Down here, beneath the surface, YOU feel relieved. YOU feel safe. YOU are protected from the cruel sun, from the cruel earth. YOU hear so little. YOU see so little.
When your throat and lungs can take no more, YOU come up gasping for air. THEM has moved to the other side of the watering hole.
I knew you'd come.
Did you now?
You're here to hunt.
I am. I’d be doing that right now if your kin hadn’t taken my things in the night.
You're here to hunt me.
What else is left to hunt?
THEM paces on the opposite side of the watering hole, growing comfortable with the act of looking at YOU.
Unforgiving land for a pregnant lady to wander, wouldn’t you say?
I’m not wandering.
I don’t see any water buckets. Don’t see any arrows. You’re not even wearing your own clothes.
One doesn’t wander their home.
Sure they do. I did until I was 25. Headed this way once I got sick of beating my head against my father’s walls.
YOU sit on the bank of the watering hole. YOU lean back and look up at the sun. When YOU return your eyes to center, THEM is staring at you.
You know, I’ve never been any good at hunting. Most of us aren’t. I knew it the first time my sister took me out into the woods. I was six or seven years old and we were after whitetail deer. That’s what my sister was always after. Good meat, real good meat. Lean, but tender, not like the game out here, not as wired for survival. You can taste that in the blood, you know, that relentless fear they live with. It’s different—different than being spooked now and again. Anyway, I was too impatient for it, waiting for those whitetail to appear, the sitting still, the quiet. Even now the only time I can sit in silence longer than a few minutes is when I sleep.
And when you sleep, you let your horse get stolen.
Any other day, I wouldn’t think that was very funny.
I don't care if you laugh.
YOU shrug your shoulders.
If you’re bad at it, then why do you hunt?
Simple. I love killing. That’s one thing the whitetail did confirm, the day I finally played the game it wanted me to play and I put an arrow right through its heart.
YOU stare at the rancid water.
If there’s one thing I appreciate about your people, it’s that: I can sit here and tell you that I like to kill and you don’t fall into a panic, like some dainty white woman back east would. You’re not afraid to admit that you like killing.
I don’t like killing.
Then you’re in the wrong place, sweetheart.
No, I’m not. I told you: this is my home.
What is?
YOU motion to the north and south and east and west, at the oceans of plains stretching far beyond what the eye can see.
This watering hole is your home? The tree I passed ten miles back?
All of this.
You can’t have all of it. Not anymore. That’s what the hunting is about, and you know it. It’s about the shifting of perspective.
—the shifting of my perspective. Not yours. You want me to see my homeland in a way that I’ll never see it, and you ask nothing of yourself. No shifting of you, no shifting of them, whoever it is you speak of. Where is your homeland? Where do your people come from?
Born in North Carolina, raised in North Carolina. Before that, before me at all, was Scotland.
Scotland?
Mmhmm. My family was one of thousands run out of their homes. They escaped here, to America, and settled in North Carolina. But they were never really settled, were they? Can the systematically oppressed ever truly feel settled? Can they? Huh? But they settled nonetheless. God, I hate that word, settled. Settled. Settled. I don’t think any of us were meant to be settled. I really don’t. But thousands of years in the making, here we are. And there you are: wild, free, bred to roam. Relics.
THEM puts her hand on her belly and walks into the water, stopping when the water is up to her shins.
Don’t you see what’s happening here? What’s been happening? Oppressive systems are built by jealous men. They always have been. And this system is swooping you and your people up.
Where will it drop us?
Wherever it wants to.
And your life is unaffected by this?
My life is supplied by this. I’m an agent of the system and I’m handsomely rewarded for the work I do. Does that mean that in my soul I support the system? No. But I don’t think my soul factors all that much into this life.
Without so much as a shift in posture, THEM’s water breaks. As THEM’s water reaches the watering hole, there are small splashes, and there are ripples that follow and make their way to the watering hole’s edge.
YOU stand.
Hey there, whoa—are you okay? Maybe you should sit back down.
I’d rather stand.
YOU remain standing, caught between helping THEM and staying put.
Sit. I don’t want your help.
YOU raise your hands as if to say, “Fine then.” YOU sit.
Tell me: if not for the soul, what do you believe this life is for?
YOU remain silent, in thought.
You do believe that you have a soul?
I'm not sure if I do.
Then why do you kill? If it does not please your soul, what is it pleasing?
My brain, maybe. My hands and mouth.
That tingling you get—
—the buzz, yes. That tingling, that hum. So you have killed?
Again, without grimacing, without changing her posture, THEM gives birth—into the watering hole her offspring drops, so fast that it’s a blur until YOU see the splash.
YOU stand and hurry to the watering hole.
THEM remains still.
I believe my soul is in my brain, that it's in my hands and in my mouth. I believe my soul is in my skin, and that the hum after a kill is just one way my soul chooses to talk to me.
YOU stand feet from THEM, crouched, your hands plugged into the watering hole, frantically searching for THEM’s offspring. It takes seconds for YOU to realize that there is no umbilical cord hanging from THEM.
Maybe the only way you could understand this is if the system had passed over you and your family, if it had left you in Scotland, but my soul is in that tree ten miles back. My soul is in that watering hole, and my soul is not happy.
A SNAKE leaps out from the watering hole and bites YOU in the throat. YOU gasp for air. YOU swipe at the SNAKE with your hands and miss and miss again, and again and again.
THEM remains standing, watches as the SNAKE bites you on the cheek and forehead.
YOU slip on the mud beneath the water and fall beneath the surface. Water goes over your chest, over your face. YOU come up gasping for air.
The SNAKE keeps biting you. On your hand, on your ear. Again, your throat.
THEM walks to you through the water. Her belly is now flat. She leans down and quiets her voice to a whisper.
I know the current of your people is strong, and that a choice by you to swim upstream would mean death. I know how this ends. I know we all have our parts to play. An dI know that the only thing you and your people will do to dull the tragedy you bring is talk. Talk and talk and talk.
Author’s Note
An earlier version of this story was published as Chapter 19 in Collected Voices in the Expanded Field by the kind folks at 11:11 Press. The book is “a collectively written novel composed of 34 unique voices from the expanded field,” and each author featured within wrote their chapter from the exact same starting point—the first two sentences you read right here in this story: “You see a watering hole. Reprieve from the old dusty path.”
The fun being where each author would, or could, take readers from there, particularly this batch of authors, so many of whom are masters at pushing, pulling, stretching and twisting the idea of form.
It was a really cool project to be a part of, and I count myself as very lucky for the invite.
Even if it isn’t this particular book, do yourself a favor and check out 11:11 Press. They’re an incredibly inventive bunch, and they’re consistently putting fascinating work by truly unique voices out into the world.