Free Water is Thicker than Blood by julie ann dawson Page B

every day for her. Rue had asked Lula about it,
and Lula had insisted that it was fine and that she had all the
water she needed. But Lula had seemed discomfited as she said it.
Like even though the water itself was clean, the way it was
acquired was less so. She remembered back to when Joseph had said
he had conjured up water for his mama. At the time, she had taken that as a
figure of speech. But after talking with Lula she wasn’t so
sure.
    For the most part, whatever
conjuring those mages at the Circle did they kept behind closed
doors. Except for how some of them dressed funny, like how some of
them had taken to wearing long robes with odd symbols sewn into
them and pointy hats and other peculiar adornments, they didn’t
make a show of whatever it was they did. But one couldn’t help but
know something was
going on in there, because just walking by the place was enough to
make little bumps rise up on her arms.
    She got out of bed and
walked into the kitchen. Two of the jugs of water he had brought
over were sitting on the counter. Devil
water , she thought. She unscrewed the top
of the jug and held the jug over the sink. She held it there for a
minute before setting it back down and replacing the
top.
    Even if it was Devil water,
it was still water. A body needed water to survive. If she just
poured it down the drain, she’d resign herself to death by
dehydration. And doing that on purpose would be the same as
suicide. And everybody knew suicide was the one sin God could not
forgive.
    Rue went back to bed, but
didn’t sleep.
     
    * * *
     
    “ Where you been, woman?”
asked Hank as Rue walked in the door. He had found his way home
while she and Lula were in the Quarter looking for Rue’s
dress.
    “ I could ask you the same
question, man. ”
She kept walking toward the bedroom as if she wasn’t happy he was
alive. “You forget what day it was? You were supposed to be home
Monday.”
    “ I ain’t in no mood. What’s
in the bag?”
    I ain’t in no mood,
either, she thought. “Lula got me a dress
for my birthday for as me to wear to the Court next
week.”
    “ Where the Hell she getting
money to buy you a dress?”
    “ Lawd! Lawd! What do you
care where her money come from? You need to be worrying about that
water purifier you still ain’t fixed.”
    “ I just got home this
morning!”
    “ Uh huh. You got home this
morning and need to rest, right. That always what you say. Then
you’ll rest up and be off again and not do it.”
    “ What the Hell are these
jugs of water then if you in such a hurry for me to fix
it?”
    “ Lula’s boy been bringing
them over for me to keep me tided over until you drug your sorry
ass home.”
    “ You taking water from that
Devil boy of hers?”
    “ Lawd! The boy just been
bringing them here. It’s Lula’s water.”
    He didn’t respond. At
first, Rue was pleased as she thought she had won the argument. But
he didn’t say another word to her the rest of the day. She asked
him about how things went on his expedition. He just shrugged and
said he was too tired to talk about it and was going to take a nap.
But when she went into the bedroom to check on him later he wasn’t
sleeping. He was just lying on his side, staring off at the
dresser.
    “ I made a stew for supper,”
she said as she tried to lure him out of the bedroom. “Even got
some meat in it. Caught a big, fat opossum in a trap yesterday and
used some of the meat in the stew. Rest is in the
smoker.”
    “ Ain’t hungry.”
    “ Well, hungry or no, you
should still eat something. Sleeping on an empty stomach ain’t good
for you.”
    “ Ain’t hungry.”
    “ Lawd!”
    Rue ate her supper alone.
With Hank not eating, she had a lot of stew left. She hated
throwing out food because it was so hard to come by. And she had
done a particularly fine job with this batch if she did say so
herself. Old Man Blue once said that people used to put leftovers
in their refrigerators, which would keep them cold and