A Form of Currency

Jasper considered the lone pinecone in the center of the road, on what little was left of the yellow line. The pair stood atop one of so many hills, and Taffy stopped to take in the long stretch of highway before them, a narrow cut through the valley and a lazy rise beyond it. A pale sky let through the sun which made silver of the asphalt below, and yellow grass sprouted from around the graying spruce and hemlock that dutifully hugged the side of the road. Jasper rushed the pinecone and sent it flying with a weary swing of his torn boot.

Taffy and Jasper, all ribs and standing side by side with bags over their shoulders and hands on bony hips, watched the cone spiral over the descending road, looking for shapes in the sky, and failing to hear the sound of engines, growling with tanks full of stale gas and struggling with the weight of Hazards, whose arms were the color of rust and who spilt out of the cabs and crowded the beds. They were outfitted with the standard issue rebar and nail-studded clubs, with their layers of cheap plastic necklaces, rounded hearts bouncing against blistered collar bones. In the sharp moment before a feisty GMC eagerly crested the hill, Taffy turned, thought about a few things, felt for the locket beneath their shirt, and flew into Jasper with both arms, into and beyond the tree-line. The trucks bounded past in a roar. Hazards, for all the ruckus, made no noise themselves. They never did.

“Phew. Damn.”

“Yowzers. You okay honeybear?”

“Sure thing, sugar.”

Jasper helped Taffy up and began to brush the grass and hitchhikers from their overalls and hair. Taffy, out of breath, waved him off. “I’m alright, honey, I’m alright, I’m good.”

“Okay, sugar.”

Jasper patted down his shirt, or what remains of it hid under a jacket whose own remains fit the missing pieces of the shirt well enough to create what looked from afar like a complete, if decidedly bohemian top. “You ever wonder why they’re quiet like that?” he said.

“They drink the rain, sweetie. Ever scalded your throat?”

“Yeah, once.”

“Once?”

“Once, when I was ten. And I never did it again.”

Taffy checked their pack, checked the lockets. Small, swampy gems had been glued to the plastic hearts and marketed as some sort of energy healing trinket. Nobody bought them. Consequently, overstock had filled displays in now empty department stores, gas stations, a crystal shop in Southampton, and, to the delight of Taffy and Jasper some weeks ago, forgotten delivery trucks. Officials in SWATish garb had begun raiding metaphysical novelty shops soon after the first rain and well before anyone knew why.

“I spied on one of their little camps once, a little before I found you.” Taffy reached a gentle hand towards Jasper. “They collect the rain in barrels, take it like shots.”

Jasper lifted a frightened hand to his throat and swallowed with some difficulty. “Jesus.”

Taffy pulled his hand back down. “Exposure therapy, Jasper. Between the drinking and the lockets, the Hazards may look like pure hell, but they’re doing better than us.”

Jasper took back his hand. The last few lockets they managed to filch had gotten them through a few rains, but Jasper had noticed Taffy itching distractedly at their arms, which had begun to grow complex shapes after the last downpour. Taffy saw him looking and gave him a sharp glance. “We need more than tarps before the next one hits,” they said. Jasper smiled and opened his arms, welcoming the crystalline skies. “It’s a beautiful fucking day, isn’t hun?”

By the time they had made their way down to the valley, the low sun had made lacquer of the honeyed hills to the east, and the thick shadow opposite crept toward the road while they walked. Jasper looked wearily at the looming ascent and paused to quarrel with his knees. “Ah Jesus fuck, sugar.” he said.

“Ah hell, honey.”

The pattern in the sky gave the appearance of watching the sunset through a screen door. Taffy, trying very hard not to panic, opened their pack and looked again at the lockets. They were down to the last two. The stones gave off the subtlest light, but the light was there all the same. Jasper had pulled a locket from his shirt, and Taffy saw his face grow pale. The stone was dark. Taffy didn’t need to check their own to know it was close.

“Two hours,” Taffy said quietly, “Two hours to find a miracle.”

“Well,” Jasper said, leaning on Taffy’s shoulder, “Okay,” and the pair stood still at the side of the road. A faint breeze rattled and tore the brittle leaves, and the grass scratched at their ankles.

“Found it,” Jasper said, after a long minute. The sun had just fallen below the mountains, and the opening was faint where the forest hid in half-light. A faint set of tracks ran to the tree line and led to a narrow arch in the trees. Jasper cautiously approached it and held out his hand for Taffy to follow. “Hazards,” Taffy said, “Has to be.”

“No, sugar,” Jasper halted, whispering, “those tracks barely hurt the grass. Hazards would chew it right up.”

Taffy looked up at the sky through the last of the light and saw the grid growing ever thicker, moving from behind through the clouds. Smelling the ozone and what Jasper had once described as polite skunk, Taffy nudged him into the trees. “90 minutes, honeybear.”

-

“Cutting it a little close, aren’t ya?”

The flashlight emerged from an indeterminate point in the dark. Arms shielding eyes, after an hour of anxious tripping along the trail, Taffy and Jasper couldn’t think of anything useful to say.

“Throat’s starting to itch. ‘Best follow,” the flashlight said.

Jasper reached for and squeezed Taffy’s hand. “I’ll start thinking of something,” he whispered. Taffy nodded, and the two followed the flashlight, whose beam anxiously scanned the trees. Within minutes the flashlight disappeared to reveal a short man standing in front of a small cabin. Taffy and Jasper knew in their own way that the man, bespectacled and wearing a plaid coat much beyond his size, couldn’t possibly be up to any good. But he could be made into a miracle if they decided to make it so. They already had.

“C’mon inside,” he said, with somewhat less authority than the flashlight. “I need your help with something, and you need to not die, I suspect.”

The pair shrugged and loped into the cabin, a single room outfitted with bunks along the walls, a small kitchen, and a massive table in the center of which lay scattered drawings of the region’s long dead wildlife.

The man went to a cabinet over a small washbasin and pulled out a pair of lockets. “Don’t ask me why, but I need you to put these on.”

Before Taffy could stop him, Jasper pulled the dead locket from his shirt. “Already have one,” he said.

The man stood agape, then shrugged and replaced the lockets. The first drops of rain thudded against the roof, and all couldn’t help but look up.

“Sit,” the man said, indicating a bench at the long table.

The pair did not, and a thick discomfort settled among them. The man had not offered his name, but Taffy and Jasper didn’t need it. “I was here on a research grant when the first rain hit,” the man finally said. The downpour had begun in earnest now, buzzing on the roof and drilling into the dirt.

“One evening, I saw a rain coming, went inside,” the man said, “Next morning the ground was covered in what greasy patches were left of the wildlife.” He coughed and shifted on his feet. “Now there’s only the echo of the loons.”

Jasper and Taffy remained silent. Jasper finally took a seat at the bench and Taffy, trusting his lead, did the same. The man seemed satisfied with this and sat across from them. He looked small, sitting at the big table, jacket bunched up around his neck.

They both knew that this man, one of dozens they’d met, was desperate to tell his story. They were all variations on a theme. Having no desire to share in the collective grief of seeing one’s friends turned to an amorphous soup in the middle of the road or knowing full well the inevitable anarchic surfacing of baddies and predatory sorts, they left their respective homes. Taffy and Jasper tended not to meet the ones who’d stayed.

“Have you been here the whole time?” Taffy finally asked. Jasper cast them a glance.

“Yes,” the man said, with a half-smile, “Though I’ve had a few scares with the locals. Those boys really committed to riding this thing out.” The rain howled over the roof, and the old log beams groaned under the weight. Many of those nights sealed up in a tarp, curled in the hollow of a tree, Taffy had been more afraid of the rain’s absolute force, that it would shatter their bones and force them into the mud long before melting their skin.

The man stood then and went to the pantry. This was one of a few moments the pair always anticipated, where they really got their nails under the scene. They mouthed the words as the man said, “So who wants a drink!”

Taffy sniffed at the air. “Vodka?” they said

“Special occasions,” the man said, bringing a half-full bottle and glasses to the table. He poured the shots and, with a showy grimace, downed his at once. The pair waited, then took theirs in unison. The rain-cut vodka burned Taffy’s throat, and their locket went dull. The man waited, expectantly, then shrugged. “So,” he said.

Jasper, having held the drink in his now sizzling cheeks, spat the liquid out and scrambled over the table in an instant before the man could reach Taffy, who fought back the gnarled, rusted arms. The man yelled and, finding the bottle, swung blind, spraying the vicious liquor across the table. Taffy dodged the thing, and Jasper yanked the man onto the ground, putting the blistered neck in a vice. Taffy rushed around the table and grabbed the man by his feet, and the pair dragged the writhing body, which emitted some squealy monologue in gibberish, towards the front door. Jasper made to kick it open, and the man, finding some of his words, informed them that the Hazards will want their lockets, that they are exactly fucked, will be dead tomorrow, etc. Nothing they hadn’t already heard. Jasper, with one arm firmly locked around the man’s neck, reached down with the other and pulled the man’s locket out of his shirt, snapping it off of his neck. Taffy then kicked the door fully open, letting in a spray of hissing rain. Taffy looked towards Jasper and the two nodded at one another. A noise from somewhere far away passed through the man, and they swung him into the night. He landed with his face in the mud, and the rain drove him into it.

Taffy grimaced and, with that arm which was already going, reached outside and pulled the door closed. Steam rose from their skin, which had turned an angry red. Jasper was already at the cabinet, stuffing a healthy pile of lockets into his pack.

“Asshole,” Taffy spat, while gently poking at their arm. They winced. “Asshole.”

Jasper took two of the lockets and put them around his neck, then brought a pair over to Taffy. They righted the bench and fell onto it. Taffy laid their head on Jasper’s trembling shoulder, and he took their hand and began to gently massage it. They sat there for a long time. The rain kept on, and Taffy and Jasper silently agreed that they could only have been imagining the sound of thirsty engines ploughing through the dark.