Not a Drop to Drink

By Brian McCurdy

Very rapidly, the day was becoming long and tense. Lowering skies were just starting to spit down on them as they hustled across the parking lot. A woman shuffled to her car with a cart with several pounds of butter, three gallons of milk and some potato chips. Another guy walked to his car struggling to carry an oil lamp, a mag light and a large pack of batteries. 

In the last day or so, Madeleine and Rob had become quite familiar with the subtle gradations between the colors of the hurricane clouds. Late yesterday afternoon the clouds looked sort of charcoal. By that morning they had progressed to a slate color. Now, before dusk, they settled on gunmetal. 

They streamed into the store with the rest of the crowd. It was too much to hope that Wal-Mart would be anything less than a mob scene. There was a steady stream toward the grocery aisles with a tributary breaking off and moving toward housewares and hardware. The evening before the hurricane, the store looked like the rains and winds had already hit and left a trail of destruction. Ron and Madeleine walked past the devastated bread aisle and ravaged dairy case. 

It was slim pickins at the bottled water section. Most of it was gone except for a few cases of generic Wal-Mart brand bottled water.

“Are you kidding me?” Rob said. “Generic water? I can’t drink this.   
 

“We’re running out of time,” Madeleine said. “The storm will be here overnight.    
   

“How far does someone have to go to get a decent case of Dasani? Or at least some Aquafina. Something potable. Honestly.”   

“I know but at this point, we may just have to take whatever we can get, babe.”   

Rob bent down and checked out the labels on the bottles. “I know, I know. I really didn’t think every store would be sold out.”     

“Seriously. Acme. Target. Super Fresh. Pathmark. Wawa. CVS. No water.”  

“And I don’t want to be stuck inside for a few days and they tell me we can’t drink the water because it’s contaminated. Or we have to boil it and the power’s out and we can’t.”

“BJ’s. Walgreens. Seven-Eleven. Nothing.” 

A woman wandered by and at the sight of the generic bottled water, her eyes widened. She put a case in her cart, with an eye on Rob and Madeleine.
    

“Maybe we should just …”        

“No,” Rob interrupted. “I hate to sound like a diva but I just don’t want this water. If we’re stuck inside by a fallen tree or something, I just don’t know that I can drink this stuff.”          

“We’re running out of options.”    

   

A guy in a blue Wal-Mart smock, taking inventory, walked by. “I couldn’t help overhearing.”         

“Yeah, we’re just having no luck with bottled water today. Deer Park, Nestle, Fiji, anything.” 

“You know what you could do,” the employee suggested, “is head to housewares and get a couple pitchers. Then just fill them with tap water at home. You’ll have enough to get through the storm and you can reuse the containers. It’s probably cheaper than buying all that bottled water anyway.”      

Madeleine and Rob looked at the guy like he had three heads.          

“Tap water?” Madeleine said. “I’m sorry … tap water?”         

“No. I’m not doing that,” Rob insisted. “Not tap water. What is this, Malawi?”         

The couple pushed their way through streams of people and left the store. Rob was already looking at his phone, trying to find any stores in the area they hadn’t already scoured. Water quest continued.