Free The Seventh Day by Joy Dettman Page A

“munity”. Reckons just now he saved me from fever when I was a young ’un. Reckons a bastard searcher come down and I took his bag of pellet food and near died of it. Carried me up to the pool, Pa did, held me in it for a day.’
    I look at him and his small eyes are concerned, or fearful, as he places me down in the water. ‘He reckons lay you in it. Water’ll wash the ills out from you.’
    I sink gratefully into the water, my face submerging, my hair waving over my breasts like the old water weed might float over one who has drowned in a watery womb, for I am drowning, drowning in this nausea, choking on it.
    This breeding of Jonjan’s foetus is worse by far than the Implantations. Once having been Implanted, there are changes in me, but not this continuing flip-flopping illness of the belly. Lenny watches me for a moment, then he leaves, and I float there, my belly calmed by the water.
    How I love the scent, the buoyant liquidity of water. The chem-tub, supplied by the grey men, cleanses me, but Lord, this water is sweet. I remain in it until my hands are white ridged and the flip-flopping of my belly settles, stills.
    Lenny does not speak when he brings his buckets to empty my bathwater onto Pa’s pumpkins. Eventually I give it up and stand dripping precious water to the floor while I wrap myself in a paper towel. I think he reads this paper more hungrily than I read the newsprint, but he keeps dipping water, filling his buckets.
    â€˜Fever’s raging in city,’ he says. ‘I seen the shed of dead on the last V cube. Seen them feeding the dead to the Godsent.’
    â€˜I believe I will vomit on you if you speak more of this, and Granny did not think that blacrap Godsent.’
    â€˜Didn’t think much was Godsent, that one. Hard old bitch. Reckon you’ll be well for the little bastards tonight?’
    â€˜Perhaps I will vomit on both of them,’ I say, ringing water from my hair, wasting water on the floor.
    He stands, watching each precious drip. ‘Diseased little bastards. They left you here where you was safe from their frekin plague and they bring it to you themselves.’ Then he turns, carries his buckets away.
    Later I walk downstairs and make a cordial, adding hot water from the kettle. I sip it slowly as I stare at the grey men’s pill container, which is not empty. I pour many pills into my hand. Small they are, round and blue, smaller than the ones they bring for Pa. I crush one, mix it with a little grey spread. It makes a blue paste, but I have much good blue paint from the old ones, so I drop the pills, one by one, through a gap in the floor. There are many gaps in this creaking floor, and many rats that live beneath it. Perhaps they will enjoy my pills.
    The hot cordial sits well in my belly. I eat a slice of cornbread. It remains in me. So the nausea has left me for today, but it will rise again, for it is as the sun of this season.
    Granny once said that God did not make man, that man had grown from the animal, and that we each still possess a little of the animal brain. Today I believe I can feel that animal within me and it tells me danger is lurking, that I must take my basket and run to the hills.
    From this window I cannot see to the top of our hill, only the woods in the distance, and as I sip, the trees grow more distant, until escape loses its importance.
    It is time, girl . She is back, her cold fingernail running down my spine. I shiver.
    â€˜The sun is shining. The searchers may be about.’
    When is a searcher less loathsome than a viper?
    â€˜I do not like your riddles. I never liked your riddles.’
    When the viper is poised to bite you, girl.
    I sit down and think of Jonjan. How many times have the grey men been here since his coming? I think three, but between the first and the second was the longer period of the ten bottles of cordial, which is allowed me before the new Implanting. On the visit previous