The Hole

Elliot sat on the front steps of his house and sipped a warm Dr. Pepper as he watched his neighbor drag her husband’s corpse to the curb. This marked only two of them left on the block now, him and Evajean. Oak Street’s last two residents, the rest decaying in piles the city had stopped picking up three weeks ago. He’d immediately began thinking of them as the Easy Es, taking it easy while the world dies. Elliot had even wondered, perhaps thrown off his moral game by the craziness of the world around him, if this meant he’d finally get to sleep with her.

He stood up. “You need help?” he called to her, waving the pop can over his head.

Evajean shrugged, only looking at him briefly, and continued her slow progress, dragging Henry by the wrists.

Elliot set down the drink and jogged across the lawn and street. He took hold of Henry’s ankles. The dead man’s ass now was all that touched the ground and Evajean’s speed improved considerably. Elliot smiled at her, a sort of aren’t-you-glad-I-was-just-hanging-out-and-available look, but she didn’t return it. Her eyes were wholly on Henry.

Elliot felt for her. He didn’t care for Henry, had always pegged the guy as fat, dumb, and not nearly good enough for her, but she’d been attached to him, had married him, so this sudden separation was likely messing her up good. He needed to let her calm down, get her wits back, and then he could move in as the savior. He was the last man around-and Evajean looked oh so much like she could use a man.

“You want some place to stay,” he said, panting now with the weight, “or don’t want to be alone in- I don’t know, all alone in that empty house…”

She did look at him now. Her eyes slowly came up from Henry’s grey face, and she smiled. It was a tiny gesture, not even showing any teeth, but Elliot’s heart went all a-flutter.

“I don’t have much,” he continued. “The stores, everything, there’s not a lot to get. But I do have some steaks still frozen and some bottles of Jim Beam.”

“Yeah,” Evajean nodded. “Whiskey’s just what I need right now.”

For a moment he thought she was being sarcastic but then he saw how hungry her expression was. This lady needed to get plastered.

“Three bottles is what I got,” he said. “And some other stuff. Stoli’s. I think a wine cooler from that office barbecue.”

“Just the whiskey.”

“Sure,” he said. Then, “It’s not like I’m a big drinker. Three bottles, I mean, shit that’s a lot of Jim Beam. But it was for an engagement party. A buddy a mine, he and his girl… Then all this happened,” he rolled his head, indicating the neighborhood in general, “and, well, things got called off.”

“I understand,” Evajean said. She was back to looking at Henry.

A couple of grunting heaves and they had the body at rest next to the curb. Someday, if things ever got back to normal and the city’s administration started humming away about its business, a truck would drive by and men would get out and take Henry away to be fed back into the Hole.

But the world was dead. Elliot knew nobody would come and that the act of putting Henry in the collection area was only to provide closure to Evajean. Her husband was really gone and she could accept that now.

Elliot put his hand on her shoulder. “You want to stand here? Be alone for a bit?”

She nodded. She didn’t react to the contact.

“Sure,” Elliot said. “Look, I’m going to go back inside and see about thawing those steaks. If you’d like one or you want that drink, go head and knock, okay?”

“Okay,” she said.

He turned and left her standing by the curb, leaning forward slightly, palms out, like she wanted to touch Henry but couldn’t make herself do it.

He’d lied about the steaks. They were already mostly thawed, his freezer broken nearly three days now. Electricity was still on-how, he had no idea-but the appliance was unreliable even before the bad times had come and the city’s entire population of repair guys died.

He sniffed the meat before putting it out on the counter, deciding it was probably okay. He’d just refer to it as dry aged if asked. These were the last of them, though. No more beef or chicken, no more fresh vegetables. He’d be eating canned goods and dry stuff in boxes within a week.

Elliot leaned back against the wall of the kitchen and exhaled slowly. The harsh loneliness of his life came in waves and watching Evajean silently and stoically mourn over Henry, standing so small on the asphalt between his body and a Honda with broken windows… The image stuck, flashing now, the fresh memory intruding against dinner preparations.

Clarine had looked just like that back in July when the two of them, exhausted from the terror of days barely past, had taken their daughter across the lawn and laid her out in the street-what people were just then beginning to call the collection area. Callie was smaller than Henry, her tiny body sunken, her face warped from screaming, but the presence of her laying there while Clarine wept was every bit as large. How had they made it through? How had his wife kept it even modestly together into August, when her speech had first taken the lilting quality that indicated horribly that the infection had set in? How had he not snapped, not killed the both of them, when the lilting progressed to that weird and musical babbling and she’d just stared at him, without moving for days, eyes cold and hateful?

He’d been alone since the tenth of that month. Clarine had finally taken her own life, breaking the ropes binding her to her grandmother’s hand-me-down rocking chair and driving a broken off, crystal candlestick into the fleshy spot beneath her jaw. That’s how Elliot found her. He wondered then if she’d done it shut herself up, to stop the tongue gone mad in her mouth.

“Mr. Bishop?”

Elliot jumped. He’d left the house’s wooden door open, the entrance covered only by the screen door. Evajean was there now, calling into him. How long had he been standing against the red wallpaper of the kitchen-a floral design Clarine had insisted upon when they’d bought the place as newlyweds?

“Oh, Jesus, Evajean,” he said, jogging to the front of the house to let her in. “Please, you can- I mean, if you want, call me Elliot.”

She smiled at him as he undid the latch. “Elliot,” she said.

“Right.” He held the door for her and she stepped in, looking around at the small and dim foyer, with its large mirror and framed poster of a Paris martini ad from the 1920s. “Look, I got the steaks ready, I can fire up the grill-”

“I’ll have that drink if you don’t mind.”

“Oh, sure,” he said. He stepped back toward the living room, pointing. “Right over here. You want ice? There’s a little left in the back-”

“No,” she said. “Just straight. I need it straight.”

He nodded. The two large bottles of whiskey were on the tiny table they’d setup just for drinks in an effort to give the place a sophisticated air. The intent had always been to get a set of crystal decanters and fancy tumblers so they could offer guests drinks like the charming hosts in the movies. But Clarine and Elliot had never settled on a design and the years had gone by with the table holding only opened bottles and a couple extra glasses they didn’t have room for in the kitchen.

It was into these Elliot poured a huge rush of Jim Beam, handing the nearly full glass to Evajean. “Sorry,” he said. “If that’s too much-”

“No, it’s fine,” she said, taking it from him and sipping slowly, then faster. Without looking at him, she swallowed half the whiskey, then set the rest down next to the bottle. “Thank you.”

“Sure thing. Are you hungry?”

Evajean shrugged.

Elliot didn’t want to push her but he was hungry. Dry cereal, his usual breakfast these last couple weeks, had been far from appetizing that morning and he’d only managed to get down a couple of handfuls before deciding it just wasn’t worth it. Now he wanted the steak and his stomach wasn’t going to let him wait out Evajean’s mourning period before getting it.

“Well, it’ll take a while for me to get everything fired up and cooking. So why don’t I start, you can finish your drink, and then if you don’t want to eat I can reheat it later for you.”

“Okay,” she said.

He picked up her drink and used it to lead her into the kitchen. She sat at the table there, silently, sipping her drink while he seasoned the meat.

Physically, Evajean looked devastated. She was a tiny woman to start but now, after maybe weeks of dealing with a mad and dying husband and the horrors of the world beyond that, she’d shrunk in on herself, her eyes dark and shallow, her hair matted. Elliot hoped she hadn’t given up yet, hadn’t decided to just let this terror beat her down. They weren’t friends, he knew that, but she was the only one left Elliot knew and the thought of being alone in the world of strangers, without even this defeated woman’s familiar face, tightened his stomach and made him feel sick.

So he’d feed her because getting food in her belly (how long since she’d last eaten? he wondered) would have to be the start to recovery. Then talking, then tears, and then, if the hurt didn’t run too deep, maybe a smile. Elliot, who throughout his life had seen problems as projects, obstacles to be methodological overcome, decided Evajean would be his next puzzle. He’d figure her out and help her because there was no one else to help.

Elliot piled the meat on a plastic Dora the Explorer tray he and Clarine had found at a thrift store and Callie had insisted on they buy on the spot. One corner was broken off from his daughter banging against the inside of the car on the way home, overcome as only children can be by delight and excitement and youthful insanity. He missed her. Jesus Christ, he missed both of them.

“I need to take these outside now,” he said to Evajean, who had nearly finished the enormous quantity of whiskey and was staring blankly at the glass. “They’ll be only maybe ten or fifteen minutes on the grill.”

She nodded. “That sounds fine,” she said.

Elliot almost put his hand on her shoulder as he walked past her and out the door at the back of the kitchen that lead to the deck. But he didn’t. He couldn’t be sure how she’d take it. He might spook her. Elliot wanted her, wanted to be with her-it had been so damn long since he’d had companionship or human touch-and frightening her now would ruin it. Better to wait and feed her, get her thinking about life again and not just that corpse in the road.

He left the back door open while he dragged the grill to the center of the deck, turned on the propane, and got it going. The smell of the meat was fresh and new in a neighborhood gone quite. August was the month of barbecues and beer, families in backyards firing up charcoal and struggling through games of croquet. But this August had been silent and without those summer smells. It had been empty and Elliot was glad when it slipped away into September and he could put the month of his wife’s death behind him.

He sat down on the wooden bench that ran along the edge of the deck. Were they really the only ones left? Of course not. The chances of two people, across the street from each other, being the lone survivors of this murderous illness was clearly impossible. Others continued living somewhere, maybe even close. Once Callie’d gotten sick and then Clarine, he’d confined himself to the block, only venturing out so far as the Safeway grocery store a quarter mile north. And this last week he hadn’t left the house at all.

Elliot turned over the steaks and stared into the heat until they’d finished. Spearing them onto Callie’s tray, he took the food inside and set it on the table in front of Evajean. She still had her drink, though it was almost gone, and she swallowed the remainder before touching one one of the steaks and then licking her finger. “It’s good,” she said. “Thank you.”

Elliot smiled. “They should sit for a few minutes. You want another drink?”

She exhaled-almost a sigh-and shook her head. “I’ll get sick.”

“Something else, then? I think I have some cranberry juice.”

“No,” she said. Then, “Actually, could I just get a glass of water?”

He rinsed and filled her cup at the sink in the kitchen and came back with it and a couple of plates, forks, and knives. Evajean pulled a steak from the tray and cut into it. The two ate slowly, not talking. Once, during the meal, Evajean glanced at him and smiled. He smiled back and the they finished the food in comfortable silence.

After they’d finished eating and had cleaned up, Elliot and Evajean talked about nothing until the sun dipped low and dark came. She asked if she could stay-”I can’t stay in that house,” she’d said. “I just can’t.”-and he offered her his bed while he took the couch.

In the morning, Elliot woke to find her in the kitchen again, her glass half full of whiskey, her head on the table, asleep. He took the liquor away without waking her and poured it down the sink. He hoped she wasn’t going to do this for long. A drunk-a sad, lonely, defeated drunk-wasn’t the kind of girl he pictured making a life in a devastated environment with. You’re husband’s dead, Evajean, he wanted to say. And if you keep at it like this, you’re going to end up right there with him.