Cool Water

I could be mistaken –I could always be mistaken, I often am– but this seemed to be the scenario: I was asking for a glass of water. I was begging for a glass of water. I was so fucking thirsty that I could barely swallow. My tongue was all fat and fuzzy. It felt like a dried cow tongue lodged in the middle of my face.

I’d been crawling for days. I couldn’t even begin to tell you how many days. Crawling across empty suburban strip mall parking lots, across busy city streets, along old state highways, and right out into the fields and the darkness. I crawled across creeks and rivers.

If you spend enough time crawling across fields, I can tell you that eventually those fields might as well be deserts. You get parched. You get thirsty as the devil himself for a glass of water. Your hands and shoulders and knees throb. Your whole body hurts.

These days not one person will bat an eye at a crawling man, let alone stop to offer him a glass of water. You crawl long enough, though, and the law is eventually going to get tired of what they’ll call your “routine,” as if you were a gymnast or a ventriloquist.

The police will drag you up off your hands and knees and haul you away. They’ll want some answers, which you will be unable to provide. They’ll put you in a room with a plain table and bad fluorescent lights. You will ask them for a glass of water. You will beg them for a glass of water, and they will bring you a styrofoam cup of scalding hot coffee.