Читать книгу After the Flood - Kassandra montag - Страница 17

THE SALOON WAS a run-down shack with metal siding and a grass roof. Light filtered through dirty windows made of plastic tarp. In the dark, voices were disembodied, lifting and mixing in the shadows and the rank smell of dirt and sweat.

Upturned buckets and stools and wood crates served as chairs around makeshift tables. A cat lay on the bar, licking its black tail while the bartender dried canning jars with an old pillowcase.

Daniel sat at a table with a younger man who had the look of a runaway teen; disheveled, jaunty, like he could make use of anything and leave anywhere at a minute’s notice. Daniel leaned forward to hear what the younger man was saying, his brow deeply furrowed and his fists clenched on the table. His face was turned toward the door, as if trying to block the commotion of the bar from his view.

Pearl and I were in his eyesight, but he didn’t notice us. Pearl tried to step toward him but I caught her shoulder.

“Wait,” I said. I ordered moonshine at the bar and the bartender placed a teacup of amber liquid in front of me. I pushed a Harjo coin, a penny with an H melted into the copper, across the bar.

When the younger man stopped talking, Daniel leaned back in his chair, arms crossed over his chest, his eyebrows low and heavy over his eyes, his mouth a tight line. The younger man got up to leave and I thought about slipping out after him. I had wanted to see Daniel, to convince him to help us, but we didn’t need to get involved in whatever he was part of.

Pearl leapt toward Daniel before I could catch her. He jumped when he saw her and he forced a smile and tried to level his face into a friendly expression.

“The advertisement even had a picture of your tools,” Pearl was saying, moving her hands in excited circles as she told him.

Daniel smiled at her, that same sad smile he often wore around Pearl.

“I appreciate you coming to tell me,” he said.

Daniel wouldn’t look me in the eye, and I felt tension coming off his body like steady heat.

“Maybe we should go, Pearl,” I said, setting my hands on her shoulders.

An old man from the table next to Daniel’s tottered toward us and laid a gnarled hand on my arm. He smiled widely, showing a mouth with few teeth. He pointed in my face.

“I see things for you,” he said, his voice coming out wheezy, stinking of alcohol and decay.

“Town prophet,” Daniel said, nodding to the old man. “He already told me my future.”

“What was it?” I asked.

“That I’d cheat death twice and then drown.”

“Not bad,” I said.

“You,” the old man pointed in my face again. “A seabird will land on your boat and lay an egg that will hatch a snake.”

I glanced at the old man. “What does that mean?”

“It means,” the old man said, leaning forward, “what it means.”

I felt a blankness in my head, like my thoughts had nothing to connect to. A white fear rippled through me. Why did the prophet talk about snakes and birds? I shook myself inwardly. Snakes and birds were some of the only animals not extinct. He probably brought them up in everyone’s fortunes. But Row and Pearl’s faces rose up in my mind, their lives like tenuous things that could drift away.

“Myra,” Daniel said. He touched my arm and I startled, stepping away from him. “It doesn’t mean anything.”

“I know.” I glanced around the dark saloon, the silhouette of heads bent over drinks, bodies slumped toward tables in fatigue. “We should go.”

“Wait—can—can I stay one last night on your boat?” Daniel asked.

I glared at him. “So you don’t have to pay for the hotel?”

He tilted his head. “I’ll help you fish in the morning.”

“I can fish on my own.”

“Mom, stop. You can stay, Daniel,” Pearl said. I glanced at Pearl and she raised her eyebrows at me.

“Who were you talking to?” I asked.

“Just an old friend,” Daniel said. “I’m only asking for one more night. I like being around you two.”

He ruffled Pearl’s hair and she giggled. I regarded him coolly, arms crossed over my chest, wishing I could read his face the way I could read the water.

“But you’re still not coming with us?” I asked.

A pained expression crossed his face. “I shouldn’t.”

He looked down at his hands on the table and I could feel him resisting us. As though there were two magnets in him—one pulling him away and another pulling him closer.

BEFORE SETTLING ON our boat for the night we searched the coast for firewood. The rule in most villages was anything small or damaged, like driftwood, could be claimed by anyone. Anything larger was considered property of the village and needed to be bought. If you were caught taking good wood that could be used for building you could be thrown in prison or even hanged.

The three of us drifted apart across the beach, scanning the sand for driftwood or kindling. I picked up a piece of dirty cloth and pulled up a clump of dried grass and stuffed them in my pockets. Daniel walked toward me, carrying a few sticks and an old paper bag.

“I was thinking, you might want to reconsider your trip,” he said.

“Why’s that?” I asked.

“Atlantic crossings are rough. Your boat is suited to the Pacific coast. It’ll be expensive to build another one.” Daniel kicked sand off a rock. “News in the saloon earlier was about how the Lily Black has a new captain, who is using biological warfare now. Rabid dogs, smallpox blankets. They start an epidemic, cut a population in half, and then take it over and make it a colony. They’re looking at northern villages.”

“Yeah, I’ve heard that,” I muttered and bent to pick up a discarded shoe. I took the shoelace out, stuffed it in my pocket, and tossed the shoe aside.

“I know this Valley place sounds nice, but … is it worth the risk?” Daniel asked.

I looked at him. When he met my eyes I saw he knew I had another reason for going. His question set me on edge. I realized I couldn’t see Pearl anywhere on the beach. “Where’s Pearl?”

Daniel turned and looked over his shoulder. “I thought she was just over thataways.”

I scanned the beach. No sign of anyone, except a couple of people farther down the beach, behind a cluster of rocks. Pins and needles spread down my spine. I had heard of children just disappearing. Parents turning around and them being gone. Kidnapping was a new form of pickpocketing, and seemingly, for those good at it, just as easy.

“Pearl!” I called, trying to stay calm.

“Maybe she went back to the boat?” Daniel asked, in a carefree tone that enraged me.

“Of course she didn’t,” I said, glaring at him. “Pearl!” I screamed.

“Calm down—”

“Don’t tell me to calm down!” I shouted at Daniel. “What do you know about losing a child?”

I took off running, calling Pearl’s name, sand flying off my heels. To my left the mountain rose in a steep rock face and to my right the ocean stretched past the horizon. I leapt over a pile of seaweed and kept running and calling for her. It was eerily quiet on the beach, everything gone still. Even a small boat a mile from the coast seemed anchored, stuck in place as though painted into the landscape.

I stopped running and quickly turned in a circle. There was nowhere she could have gone; it felt like she’d been lifted up into the sky. Panic rose up in my chest. I could hear Daniel’s footsteps behind me, and farther behind him the cries of seagulls.

Pearl crawled out from a crevice in the mountain, a crack at the base only three feet wide, and she held a bundle of driftwood.

“All the wood is in the cave,” she called out to us.

I inhaled sharply. Her small body silhouetted by the darkness behind her, both familiar and strange, someone made from me and separate from me.

I ran to her and pulled her into a hug before pulling her back from me and tilting her chin up to face me.

“You need to stay in sight,” I said.

“I found the wood.”

“Pearl, I’m serious.”

Daniel caught up to us.

“She always overreacts,” Pearl told Daniel as I stepped into the crevice to pick up an armful of wood.

He reached forward and tousled her hair. “No,” he said. “She doesn’t.”