text: Like the drought, it had been getting a little worse every day. The sky hasn’t released a drop of water since May, the wind refused to blow and displace any of the hot air, the temperatures stay above 93 even at night and now this feud had gone from stupid to dangerous. In mid-July The Asshole cut off Josh in traffic. Josh’s tenacious hot head tendencies erupted and road rage ensued and Josh followed the rusty brown Buick LeSabre around the city for an hour - screaming and throwing stuff at his car until eventually The Asshole made a tactical error and drove home. Josh followed him. Now that Josh knew where he lived he dedicated some time every day for the next few weeks to driving past his house and doing some general act of harassment or vandalism escalating from burnouts in front of the residence to spray painting phallic symbols on the garage door. Josh proudly told us about his innovative ways of generally being obnoxious as he felt totally justified. In retaliation The Asshole somehow figured out where Josh worked and got his friends to stop by the auto parts store; their harassment escalated in kind from being generally a nuisance in the store to eventually slashing Josh’s tires after the garage door incident. So now its mid August and Josh has now enlisted HIS friends and increasing numbers of people are conducting drive-by assholery and terroristic actions against each other. I was always hoping for a decent breeze but I had been praying for a good rain - if it rained maybe they would all stay home for a day to stay dry and they would cool off and the city would cool off and we could get back to normal. I had made my own tactical error, getting a ride to the grocery store from Josh. I just needed the usual, some pop, some cans of soup and maybe some grapes - grapes are my favorite. I had to raid my spare change cup on top of my dresser to fund my food trip- I had a little bit of folding money, but I had a roll of quarters and one of those gigantic half dollars that always seem to turn up if you start collecting change. I stuffed the coins in my pocket. Usually, I just walk to the store; on the way there the downhill route back isn’t too bad, but walking the two miles up the hill in this heat was too much to even contemplate. It was noon and probably 100 degrees already. I should have gotten up early and walked when it was cooler because the timing now means it will be the hottest and brightest part of the day on the way back up the hill. I asked Josh for a ride when I saw him outside. We’ve got lots of hills in this city, and we had just got to the flat part at the bottom of the hill and I could see the grocery store up ahead across from some new construction. I don’t know what they are building exactly but I’m sure it’s another Walmart or Meijer based plaza that will never actually fill all the storefronts up, and in six years it will be a Big Lots and two crappy dollar stores; at one of them everything will actually cost a dollar but not be worth more than about 42 cents, and at the other store nothing will actually cost less than $3 but still somehow be worth about a dollar. Currently, they are at the strip-the-land and drop-truckloads-of gravel-stage of construction, and in this dry heat if there is any wind at all it would just blows billows of dust everywhere. I didn’t even see the Buick until after it hit us. I didn’t recognize the driver, but I could see The Asshole riding shotgun and looking triumphant. Josh must have caught some motion from the corner of his eye and tried to swerve but it still rammed us into the back of the car in the next lane. The way Josh’s head hit his side window he had to be unconscious, so he didn’t see the passenger stick his hand out of the window with a gun in it and he probably didn’t hear the shots whizzing past us or the shots that hit him and made his body jerk. I don’t even remember getting my door open, but I was out and running even as I heard four or five more shots. I guess leaving my friend was wrong, but from what little I remember from mass, suicide is a mortal sin, and staying there was definitely suicide with the gun pointed in our direction. Behind me I could hear horns and screaming and tires squealing. I didn’t have a master plan, I was just trying to get away - to get space between me and all of that. I didn’t even have the presence of mind to zig-zag as I ran towards the new plaza and it’s ongoing construction. I’m not known for either my sprinting speed or my stamina, but it had to be a personal record for the quarter-mile or so from the street to the parked earth moving equipment. Somehow bullets were still flying so I was running on pure adrenaline until I guess the running gave me a cramp because I got a sudden pain in my side that threw me off balance. My velocity caused me to trip and fall headlong into a parked bulldozer I didn’t see until I hit it because some overachieving wind had kicked up the dust - my eyes were gritty and hard to close and I couldn’t get a good breath from all the sand in my nose and I couldn’t really see more than a few feet ahead of myself. I figured I was safe since if I couldn’t see the bulldozers or whatever then they couldn’t see me to shoot me. I walked around the bulldozer and then around a large dump truck. The heavy equipment apparently very effectively stopped the wind and the dust, because it was like walking through a door and coming out into an entirely different and unexpected place. The sun now felt like it was trying to warm me and not just desiccate me and the wind was no more than a reasonable breeze that seemed to be blowing the dust off of my clothes. I used my hands to help that process along and looked more presentable shortly and felt so much better. My side still kind of burned but my head didn’t even hurt from banging it into the bulldozer. The dusty lot transitioned to grass that had somehow survived the drought so far - about 30 yards ahead was a pretty good drop-off and then a long green field in a kind of valley that I wouldn’t have imagined was back here and didn’t make much sense in the middle of a city. At the far end -way on the other side of a little creek was a house by itself with some grapevines on trellises and a low wall behind it. I figured there was another street on the other side of that house that would be a much safer place than the street behind me. Although it was now quiet in that direction I could imagine the emergency vehicles showing up and the questions and all those things I wanted no more part of. I made it across that last bit of plateau and started down the drop-off using some handily strategic rocks that worked as steps and ended up on a convenient little path. I was a little worried I was trespassing or something but there was no fence to cross and the path was well worn so I followed it. The field sloped more than I thought at first but it was an easy downhill walk. About halfway across I noticed someone walking on another path that looked like it was going to merge with mine close to the creek - the grass and plants were kind of high so it was hard to see the actual path but just kind of eyeballing the direction it looked about right. She saw me and gave a friendly wave as she stepped up her pace a bit; it looked like she wanted to catch me before I got to the water. It was hard to get a read on her even as she got closer - she walked with a bounce and with energy almost like a little kid would walk, but I could see some gray and silver in her hair even from a distance. She was wearing some kind of off-the-shoulder tunic thing that somehow covered an ample and attractively bouncing bosom. As she got closer I noticed her tanned but smooth skin - I guess she was Middle Eastern or Greek or something and I wanted to ask but figured it wouldn't be polite for those to be my first words to her. Up close, I guess the gray hair was some trick of the sun, because it was dark and curly. Its hard to figure people’s ages sometimes and especially in this case I guessed she was probably a bit older than me but still young. “I’m sorry, I was just trying to find a shortcut - I can just go back the other way.” “Going back is a lot harder than you think” I turned and looked, and it might have been another trick of the sun and perspective, but it did look like I had walked a lot farther than I thought. Walking back meant I would have to walk back uphill. And back to all the mess I had run from. “Well, I don’t want to be trouble - if its ok I’ll just walk through to the other side” “As long as you’re sure you want to go this way” Her statement seemed oddly stern - from where I stood I could clearly see what seemed to be the back of a decent size farmhouse- there had to be a driveway out to the street on the other side, and whatever was over there had to be better than where I had come from. Like she could hear my thoughts, she just shrugged. “Why don’t you relax here for a bit, maybe have a snack and then you can decide where to go from here. My name is Sharon by the way” She pronounced her name kind of funny - with more of a “Ch” then an “Sh” sound, but I knew all kinds of people with much weirder names - for a while everybody seemed to name their kids with an L’ or D’ before some normal name - L’don and D’john (who everybody called Mustard) and so on. The relaxing made perfect sense though. It sure seemed like I had walked farther than I thought at first - I still had the taste of dust in my mouth, thirsty for sure and wouldn’t mind a little snack. I could imagine full ripe grapes on their grapevines and that would be a great mouthful or two. This time she smiled, maybe a little sadly. “Careful making the crossing. Keep your eye on the next step, because if you look too much, what you see plays tricks on you and messes up your balance - and the water is much deeper than it looks.” I don’t know what the difference between a creek and a stream is, but whatever this body of water was, it definitely much wider close up. Still, it was pretty easy to step from one stone to the next, ignoring the water moving lazily to my right - but right at the end it was kind of a big hop to the far bank. I was almost all the way across when I saw movement near the side and expected to see a fish or some crawdads or something, but it was an eel or snake that shot out from somewhere almost faster than I could follow and then just hovered still in the water, looking at me. I made that big hop to the other bank. I wasn’t really scared of snakes, but that one was big. I took another big step - just to be prudent. I turned to face her “Watch out for that snake” - I started to say, but she was already across on this same side of the stream, dipping in her hand in the water. I couldn’t see clearly, but it looked like she was petting something in the water. I stepped back closer and she was clearly murmuring to something - peeking over her shoulder there were now a half dozen snakes of similar size hovering close to the surface for her to stroke, like they expected and liked it. I could have sworn the water had been moving lazily to my right before, but now it was definitely moving much more briskly - but still to my right. Which didn’t make sense because I was facing back the way I came. What had been a creek or a stream before now was wider and tending towards what I would say was a river. And that big hop from that last stone now looked like a jump to the first I wasn’t quite sure I could make, even if I had to and had a running start. “Umm, I guess I’ll be heading out” I said, spooked. I figured I would do a quick walk to the street and go on about my business; I was fully prepared to walk uphill or downhill as far as needed to get away from this weird snake lady. I turned to go and almost bumped into some guy who had come out of nowhere. He was tall, I could see straight up his large and hooked nose from my angle. Jet black hair with mustache and goatee, long sleeve purple (silk?) shirt and black pants with black cowboy boots. His lips tilted up at the corners revealing yellow-ish but very straight and oddly skinny teeth. He smiled like he had never really done it before but had read about it. He grabbed my hand and shook it like we were old friends. Gesturing behind him to a long table set for about ten -“Welcome, you are just in time to eat. Sharon (he also said it with more of a “Ch” sound) loves bringing in new people.” He was outwardly polite, but something in the way he looked at me made me just not trust or like him. I paused, trying to think of a polite way to say “no”. “Have a seat” he said, now more as a command than an invitation - a king or other royalty used to his word being taken as imperative. I was tired - well - fatigued and definitely hungry and thirsty so I figured some refreshments and a quick rest would do me good before I headed out. Nevermind the grocery store, I just wanted to go home. Since he grabbed the chair at the head of the table, I moved down 3 or 4 seats for my own seat. It was in front of what looked like a fancy silver lemonade pitcher and a big bunch of grapes on a platter so I hoped it didn’t seem obvious I was distancing myself from him but rather just sitting where the food was. Sharon moved to sit directly across from me. In the shade under the grape arbor she looked older - and less healthy. There were lines around her eyes and her hair from the front seemed grayer and thinner than it had been. She was skinnier than I thought she was and out of the sun her skin was paler and more translucent. She looked like she might have been pretty once, but that was a long time ago and time had not been easy on her. She poured me a generous draught from the pitcher into what I could only define as a straight-up chalice, and her hands were shaking a little. She pushed over the silver platter with the grapes and smiled as she sat back down with a handful of grapes for herself. From my left the man raised his own stein and gave a little toast “To live in hearts we leave behind is not to die.” “You always use that toast, Yuri” “You have a better one Sharon?”, in a way that was on the surface amused but somehow menacing. They bickered like an old couple that had spent decades together - each knowing what the response from the other would be but still making their remarks anyway. I wasn’t sure if they were married or brother and sister or just old friends. I was sure, though, that my cup did not contain lemonade. I am not a fan of red wine but this seemed sweet and heavy and thick and even the small semi-aborted first sip began to quench my thirst. “Is Yuri a Russian name?” I just wanted to make conversation. “Yuri with a ‘Y’ is basically George, but I am Eurynomos with an “E” - this is a Greek name.” “I thought maybe you were Greek or Middle Eastern” - they both cringed when I said this, and I hoped I had not offended them. Maybe they were Hispanic for all I knew. Sharon smiled sadly but kindly “We are not exactly Greek and definitely not Hispanic, but have been called far worse things” It was freaky that she seemed - that they both seemed - to know what I was thinking. “Eurynomos is not really my name, but that is what they came to call me, just like “Sharon” is a convenient name for her.” I thought it prudent to apologize - they were kind of weird but really had been nothing but nice - or at least polite - to me. “Here in the fields it is understood that you mean no harm.” Euri began, but then looking suddenly distracted “I am famished - we should eat some... real food. You may stay here and rest and refresh as long as you like.” I figured I would enjoy their hospitality and a meal before I walked back home. Coming down to this place I should be pretty far downhill from my neighborhood. Even though I figured I was a little disoriented about which way I was facing, logically there should be at least one obvious and substantial hill somewhere across that stream and field that I would need to walk all the way back up. And looking at the stream it seemed even wider from this angle. Going the other way past the house should probably be about the same distance to come at my street from the other side of the hill but I was having trouble visualizing that route. Looking in that direction I couldn’t see the street beyond the house, but I could make out the stone wall covered with vines, it looked higher than before - easily chest high, but was hard to see exactly because the sky above it was starting to darken with twilight. This was disconcerting, because by my estimation it should be maybe two or so in the afternoon, but judging by the light level it was late in the evening. I couldn’t see the sun from my angle, but it looked like the stars would start peeking out soon. It explained why I was suddenly so hungry. Sharon said she would gather the others and bring out the food as she was also famished. Walking into the house she looked half-starved now - gaunt and malnourished. I don’t know what flattering angles led me to see her as vital and attractive earlier. I finished my cup and poured myself another - Euri looked pleased at this - and what I guessed were “the others” began trickling from the house or from around the sides. This table looked to seat about a dozen comfortably - hopefully everyone was friendly because it looked there weren’t going to be any empty seats. In no particular order or pattern the seats around the table filled - there was muted but friendly conversation from these folk who seemed to know each other. There were a few more people than I first thought and there must have been a few more chairs available than I thought, because I counted 15, with myself, Sharon, and Euri making the total 18. A few were about my age, most though were more elderly and there was one younger boy who looked vaguely familiar. I don’t know why his face and striped shirt seemed to ring a bell, but he looked to be about twelve or thirteen. For whatever reason I was feeling his name was Jeff. He sat right next to me without really looking in my direction. Sharon appeared with serving trays and loaded the table with first with fruit and nuts and then with some things I didn’t really know the names of - hummus and flat bread, some sort of green paste with tomato pieces in it - I guess this was Greek or Middle Eastern foods. In front of Euri though, she placed a pile of BBQ ribs. I could smell the sauce and spice from my seat and they were mouth-watering. I was jealous and was hoping for our own plate of ribs or at least chicken. Euri ate the ribs like a machine - wasting no time sucking the meat off the bones and cleaning them in one quick slurp so not a speck of flesh remained. The rack on his plate disappeared in minutes, and as the pile of cleaned bones grew I noticed the oddly- shaped bones at the bottom of the pile - one looked like a soup bone or a bone you would give a dog, and that one he gnawed on like he was dog, and when he finished that he picked up several smaller and more delicate bones to clean, and those were not ribbed shaped at all. They looked more like fingers, and after sucking the flesh off he cracked each one and cleaned out the marrow. By the time he was done with those small bones I had changed my mind. I didn’t want barbecue, and I wasn’t sure I could even keep the other food down if I tried. None of the others seemed to notice, and if they did, they weren’t at all phased by this. I reached for my wine glass to clear the bad taste from my mouth just as Jeff or whoever reached for his. It occurred to me that he probably shouldn’t be drinking wine, and I crane my neck a bit to glance into his cup. I relaxed because it looked like milk. And then I remembered where I had seen Jeff. His picture, wearing that same shirt, with a caption saying something about missing since March, in block letters on the side of a milk carton. Here he was, and I knew I had to get him out of this place and back home, just like I needed to get back home and out of this place. I figured I could grab his hand and hustle us both out of here. Looking at the house and the wall behind I could see old-fashioned lanterns hanging from the wall, but the lanterns were hung well above my head height and the top of the wall was not even visible in the moonlight. And I had no idea where the gate or opening in that wall would be, or if it would be barred or locked. The only way out of here was back across the stream. Snapping my head that way I planned to grab Jeff’s hand and - hopefully he would come willingly - but drag or carry him if I had to - back to the stepping stones. I wasn’t sure about that big jump to the first one, especially pulling a 12-year-old but the river seemed closer than I thought it had been. I could hear the water rushing much more loudly and moving more quickly than it should have been. Maybe it had finally rained somewhere and it was like a mini-flash flood. Frantically, I pushed my chair back from the table and grabbed for Jeff’s hand. He jerked his hand away and half-shreiked. Which was fair seeing as a stranger was trying to grab him and apparently not for the first time. I yelled for him to come with me, right now, for fuck’s sake. Euri was incensed, his voice was deep and strong enough to drown out all of the side conversations instantly. “No one demands that you stay longer than you want, but you can not force another to go. Know though, you might not like where the river takes you!” Everybody was staring at me, although they didn’t seem particularly alarmed. Even Jeff had calmed down and was munching on some bread. I started toward the river, and as I approached I couldn’t even see the stepping stones anymore. And I did not want to wade or worse - swim in the water with those eel/ snake things that I knew were lurking just beneath the surface. Sharon stepped up next to me, and she again looked young and vital, her skin smooth and full. “I will ferry you downstream, the current is too fast to go back across.” She pointed to a small but sturdy-looking flat-bottomed rowboat pulled up on this side of the river. I felt guilty now - she had been nothing but nice and inviting, and I was taking her away from her dinner and friends. “There is no trouble, this is what I do.” I couldn’t see the other side of the river in the dark at all, or even where the river was going, it seemed to veer around a curve and go on as far as I could see. Somewhat irrationally, I felt like I owed her... something. “A token payment is customary - whatever you have in your pocket will do” I reached in my pocket and my hand closed around the giant half-dollar. Before my hand even came out, she smiled. “Teleios.” (and I knew that meant “perfect”) I helped her push the boat to the water’s edge and sat in the front as she stood in the back to control the rudder. It was cooler on the river and I felt suddenly cold. She picked up a robe from the bottom of the boat and handed it to me before putting on her own robe and pulling the hood over her head. “I do not know how far we will have to go, but we will know when it is time for you to disembark.