The World Without Flags

Eric is lying on his stomach. His arms and legs are splayed out wide. His face is on the ground. He doesn’t move at all. Flies buzz around him, drawn to his stench. I step forward and crouch down, listening for the sound of his breathing. I don’t hear anything, but it’s hard to hear through the sound of my own heart beating. I bend down closer to his face. I watch the dirt near his mouth, searching for any sign of breathing, just the merest trembling of dust. Nothing. I reach out fearfully. I’m horrified of touching him, terrified of feeling numb, cold, waxy skin. But I have to know.

I feel his face with my finger.

“Unh,” Eric says. I leap away from him.

“You scared the shit out of me!” I cry, holding my chest as if I’m afraid my heart will crash through my ribcage, it’s beating so hard.

“Unh,” Eric says again. I’m so glad he’s alive, I laugh out loud.

“Yeah, good to see you too!” I exclaim. I roll him onto his back, and then grunt as I pull him up to a sitting position. Eric sits with one shoulder hunched up while he leans forward. He looks like someone is giving him a wet willy and he’s trying to shrug them away. I’m so happy that he’s not dead that I laugh at the sight. I wipe away a tear of relief. “Are you hungry?” I ask him. “I’m starving. I’ll make us some breakfast.”

“Unh,” he says, his jaw drooling a line of black filth. I wave away the flies that crawl on his face. I could kiss him. In theory. I’m not going to, but I could. I put my hand on his shoulder instead and give him a squeeze. Then I reach into his coat and pull out the drooly towel. I really have to wash it, I think to myself, as I try to wipe his face and scrub away the black bile that dried in his beard overnight. It falls from his face like pepper. “There you go,” I say happily. “You’re growing quite a beard, aren’t you?” I smile at him and stand up.

I have a plan for breakfast. The sleep has been good for me. I’m thinking a lot more clearly. I take out our food from the backpack and my jackknife. Then I begin to slice deer meat into smaller and smaller pieces before I add some bread. I break this down too. Then there’s the problem of water. When I look around for a well and don’t find anything, I walk through the field to the line of trees and sure enough, there’s a babbling little brook underneath the trees and I fill up our kettle with water. Back at the farmhouse, I start a fire and wait for the water to boil. In the meantime, I slice up the bread and deer meat into even smaller pieces. Then I mash it into a paste. When the water boils, I pour it into a mug, and then add just enough of the meat and bread to make a thin soup. Eric will drink, that’s no problem. I just have to trick him into eating some food along with the water.

When I go back to Eric, I’m careful. I’ve learned my lesson. When he begins to lap at the soup greedily, I steady him with a hand on his chest. I want to look away as his black tongue laps away at the soup, but I can’t, I have to make sure it’s getting in his mouth. It’s messy and disgusting and his open mouth stinks like death. It takes me like an hour to feed him all the soup I can. More of it is wasted than I’d like. The soup is all over his beard and down the front of his shirt. I take out his drooly towel and wipe him off as best I can. Then I take the towel out to wash it with boiled water. I wring black water from it and then lay it out on a rock to dry in the afternoon sun.

Only after I lie down do I realize that I’m hungry. Not like normal hunger either. It hurts. I look over at the food I have and it’s not much. Some deer meat, a little bit of bread, a jar of pickles, two shriveled little apples, a big, rubbery carrot, and four, rock-hard potatoes. I want to eat the deer meat and bread, but it’s all I have to feed Eric. I put the potatoes in a pot to boil while I eat both apples without hardly pausing. The hunger pains subside, but I’m still famished. I open the jar of pickles and eat three of them. They are wonderful and salty and it’s all I can do not to eat the whole jar. I drink some of the pickle juice and then look greedily at the deer meat and bread. My stomach twists in me. I bite my lip. I tell myself that I could have just a little meat too, maybe just one piece. I have to stay strong too, right? I reach out, but I stop myself. I have to save it for Eric.