There it was again – the smell. Barrick glanced at his
father, who had his eyes closed but he probably wasn’t asleep, just too
exhausted by hunger to keep them open. His cheeks were shallow, as though sucking
air, his lips two thin lines of scabs.
Father’s
hemp shirt had become a shawl these last few weeks. The same was true for
Barrick, his brothers and his sister.
Finally,
father’s eyes opened, his nostrils twitched, and with energy summoned from a
dark place, he rose. “Again…” he said, barely moving his lips; tension in the
jaw and scabs that would split.
“I
don’t know how they can do it,” said mother, head limp and resting on her raised
knees.
Father
swung his legs from the bed and stared into space. The look was a disease, and they
all had it. Barrick had seen it first in the faces of the eldest; at night,
sharing a bowl of thin soup and disappearing as the first songs began, taking a
bottle of moonshine with them. One by one, others caught the look and stopped
turning up at all. He’d see them by day, afflicted by the vacant gaze as they
sat beside the transparent wall of the dome. They’d stare at the sands but
Barrick had no idea what they were looking at; perhaps they saw mirages of
visiting caravans that no longer came.
