I smiled. “I didn’t know that. What games did they play?”
“The first week we were there, he brought chalk with him. He said there was one little boy, and he went to give him a piece of chalk, and suddenly he had two dozen children climbing all over him with their hands out. He was lucky it was chalk, so he was able to break it into smaller pieces. Some of the little ones tried to eat it. ‘At least they got their calcium,’ he told me later. After that, he didn’t bring them anything, since he didn’t have anything else to split so many ways. He made me teach him hopscotch, so he could teach it to them. Can you imagine that? This big soldier playing hopscotch? Then four square, football, anything they could play with a stick or a line in the dirt or the ball they already had. He would sneak back in with his eyes glowing like he had forgotten where we were and why we were there. Then the first attack—” She twisted her hands in her lap.
“Why were you there, Mama?”
A church bell began to chime, and another one, and another.
“Tell me more, Mama, quick!”
There was so much I wanted to know. A tear rolled down her cheek, and she pulled me close. She didn’t answer, and I knew it was too late. I thought of my father, the man in the uniform, and tried to picture him teaching hopscotch to me instead of village children. It was hard to imagine somebody I had never known, never could know. I should have started with her instead of my father.
Minutes passed, and the bells stopped. Mama’s face closed down like a shutter. She fumbled in the pocket on the side of her chair. The photo of my father slid off her lap and to the floor.
“I don’t know why, but I’m in the mood to watch something funny before we make dinner,” she said. “Do you want to watch with me?”
“Sure. I’ll be right back.” I picked up the fallen photograph.
“Who’s that?” she asked, glancing up.
“Somebody who fought in the war.”
“A school project?”
“Yeah,” I said.
“I’m proud of you.” She smiled. “Those soldiers deserve to be remembered.”
Nana was asleep on her bed. I hid the photo back in my drawer where Mama couldn’t reach it or find it accidentally. Why had I asked about him first? I could never know him. He was gone and she was here and I still didn’t know any more about the parts of her that went away.
Mama’s voice carried down the hall. “Clara, are you watching with me?”
“Coming.”
I pulled a chair up beside Mama’s and leaned up against her. She leaned back. This was the Mama I knew best. The one who couldn’t quite remember why she was in a wheelchair, who thought war was something that had happened to other people. The one who laughed at pet videos with me.
Some year, maybe the old soldiers would vote to lift the Veil. Maybe I’d get to know the other Mama, too: the one who remembered my father, who had died before I was born. The one who could someday tell me whether it had been worth everything she had lost. Next year, I would try to remember to ask that question first.
— Sooner or Later Everything Falls into the Sea —
The rock star washed ashore at high tide. Earlier in the day, Bay had seen something bobbing far out in the water. Remnant of a rowboat, perhaps, or something better. She waited until the tide ebbed, checked her traps and tidal pools among the rocks before walking toward the inlet where debris usually beached.
All kinds of things washed up if Bay waited long enough: not just glass and plastic, but personal trainers and croupiers, entertainment directors and dance teachers. This was the first time Bay recognized the face of the new arrival. She always checked the face first if there was one, just in case, hoping it wasn’t Deb.
The rock star had an entire lifeboat to herself, complete with motor, though she’d used up the gas. She’d made it in better shape than many; certainly in better shape than those with flotation vests but no boats. They arrived in tatters of uniform. Armless, legless, sometimes headless; ragged shark refuse.
“What was that one?” Deb would have asked, if she were there. She’d never paid attention to physical details, wouldn’t have recognized a dancer’s legs, a chef’s scarred hands and arms.
“Nothing anymore,” Bay would say of a bad one, putting it on her sled.
The rock star still had all her limbs. She had stayed in the boat. She’d found the stashed water and nutrition bars, easy to tell by the wrappers and bottles strewn around her. From her bloated belly and cracked lips, Bay guessed she had run out a day or two before, maybe tried drinking ocean water. Sunburn glowed through her dark skin. She was still alive.
Deb wasn’t there; she couldn’t ask questions. If she had been, Bay would have shown her the calloused fingers of the woman’s left hand and the thumb of her right.
“How do you know she came off the ships?” Deb would have asked. She’d been skeptical that the ships even existed, couldn’t believe that so many people would just pack up and leave their lives. The only proof Bay could have given was these derelict bodies.
Inside the Music: Tell us what happened.
Gabby Robbins: A scavenger woman dragged me from the ocean, pumped water from my lungs, spoke air into me. The old films they show on the ships would call that moment romantic, but it wasn’t. I gagged. Only barely managed to roll over to retch in the sand.
She didn’t know what a rock star was. It was only when I washed in half-dead, choking seawater, that she learned there were such things in the world. Our first attempts at conversation didn’t go well. We had no language in common. But I warmed my hands by her fire, and when I saw an instrument hanging on its peg, I tuned it and began to play. That was the first language we spoke between us.
A truth: I don’t remember anything between falling off the ship and washing up in this place.
There’s a lie embedded in that truth.
Maybe a couple of them.
Another lie I’ve already told: We did have language in common, the scavenger woman and me.
She did put me on her sled, did take me back to her stone-walled cottage on the cliff above the beach. I warmed myself by her woodstove. She didn’t offer me a blanket or anything to replace the thin stage clothes I still wore, so I wrapped my own arms around me and drew my knees in tight and sat close enough to the stove’s open belly that sparks hit me when the logs collapsed inward.
She heated a small pot of soup on the stovetop and poured it into a single bowl without laying a second one out for me. My stomach growled. I didn’t remember the last time I’d eaten. I eyed her, eyed the bowl, eyed the pot.
“If you’re thinking about whether you could knock me out with the pot and take my food, it’s a bad idea. You’re taller than me, but you’re weaker than you think, and I’m stronger than I look.”
“I wouldn’t! I was just wondering if maybe you’d let me scrape whatever’s left from the pot. Please.”
She nodded after a moment. I stood over the stove and ate the few mouthfuls she had left me from the wooden stirring spoon. I tasted potatoes and seaweed, salt and land and ocean. It burned my throat going down; heated from the inside, I felt almost warm.
I looked around the room for the first time. An oar with “Home Sweet Home” burnt into it adorned the wall behind the stove. Some chipped dishes on an upturned plastic milk crate, a wall stacked high with home-canned food, clothing on pegs. A slightly warped-looking classical guitar hung on another peg by a leather strap; if I’d had any strength I’d have gone to investigate it. A double bed piled with blankets. Beside the bed, a nightstand with a framed photo of two women on a hiking trail, and a tall stack of paperback books. I had an urge to walk over and read the titles; my father used to say you could judge a person by the books on their shelves. A stronger urge to dive under the covers on the bed, but I resisted and settled back onto the ground near the stove. My energy went into shivering.
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I kept my eyes on the stove, as if I could direct more heat to me with enough concentration. The woman puttered around her cabin. She might have been any age between forty and sixty; her movement was easy, but her skin was weathered and lined, her black hair streaked with gray. After a while, she climbed into bed and turned her back to me. Another moment passed before I realized she intended to leave me there for the night.
“Please, before you go to sleep. Don’t let it go out,” I said. “The fire.”
She didn’t turn. “Can’t keep it going forever. Fuel has to last all winter.”
“It’s winter?” I’d lost track of seasons on the ship. The scavenger woman wore two layers, a ragged jeans jacket over a hooded sweatshirt.
“Will be soon enough.”
“I’ll freeze to death without a fire. Can I pay you to keep it going?”
“What do you have to pay me with?”
“I have an account on the Hollywood Line. A big one.” As I said that, I realized I shouldn’t have. On multiple levels. Didn’t matter if it sounded like a brag or desperation. I was at her mercy, and it wasn’t in my interest to come across as if I thought I was any better than her.
She rolled over. “Your money doesn’t count for anything off your ships and islands. Nor credit. If you’ve got paper money, I’m happy to throw it in to keep the fire going a little longer.”
I didn’t. “I can work it off.”
“There’s nothing you can work off. Fuel is in finite supply. I use it now, I don’t get more, I freeze two months down the line.”
“Why did you save me if you’re going to let me die?”
“Pulling you from the water made sense. It’s your business now whether you live or not.”
“Can I borrow something warmer to wear at least? Or a blanket?” I sounded whiny even to my own ears.
She sighed, climbed out of bed, rummaged in a corner, and pulled out a down vest. It had a tear in the back where some stuffing had spilled out, and smelled like brine. I put it on, trying not to scream when the fabric touched my sunburned arms.
“Thank you. I’m truly grateful.”
She grunted a response and retreated to her bed again. I tucked my elbows into the vest, my hands into my armpits. It helped a little, though I still shivered. I waited a few minutes, then spoke again. She didn’t seem to want to talk, but it kept me warm. Reassured me that I was still here. Awake, alive.
“If I didn’t say so already, thank you for pulling me out of the water. My name is Gabby.”
“Fitting.”
“Are you going to ask me how I ended up in the water?”
“None of my business.”
Just as well. Anything I told her would’ve been made up.
“Do you have a name?” I asked.
“I do, but I don’t see much point in sharing it with you.”
“Why not?”
“Because I’m going to kill you if you don’t shut up and let me sleep.”
I shut up.
Inside the Music: Tell us what happened.
Gabby Robbins: I remember getting drunk during a set on the Elizabeth Taylor. Making out with a bartender in the lifeboat, since neither of us had private bunks. I must have passed out there. I don’t know how it ended up adrift.
I survived the night on the floor but woke with a cough building deep in my chest. At least I didn’t have to sing. I followed the scavenger as she went about her morning, like a dog hoping for scraps. Outside, a large picked-over garden spread around two sides of the cottage. The few green plants grew low and ragged. Root vegetables, maybe.
“If you have to piss, there’s an outhouse over there,” she said, motioning toward a stand of twisted trees.
We made our way down the footpath from her cottage to the beach, a series of switchbacks trod into the cliffside. I was amazed she had managed to tow me up such an incline. Then again, if I’d rolled off the sled and fallen to my death, she probably would’ve scraped me out of my clothes and left my body to be picked clean by gulls.
“Where are we?” I had managed not to say anything since waking up, not a word since her threat the night before, so I hoped the statute of limitations had expired.
“Forty kilometers from the nearest city, last I checked.”
Better than nothing. “When was that?”
“When I walked here.”
“And that was?”
“A while ago.”
It must have been, given the lived-in look of her cabin and garden. “What city?”
“Portage.”
“Portage what?”
“Portage. Population I don’t know. Just because you haven’t heard of it doesn’t make it any less a city.” She glanced back at me like I was stupid.
“I mean, what state? Or what country? I don’t even know what country this is.”
She snorted. “How long were you on that ship?”
“A long time. I didn’t really pay attention.”
“Too rich to care.”
“No! It’s not what you think.” I didn’t know why it mattered what she thought of me, but it did. “I wasn’t on the ship because I’m rich. I’m an entertainer. I share a staff bunk with five other people.”
“You told me last night you were rich.”
I paused to hack and spit over the cliff’s edge. “I have money, it’s true. But not enough to matter. I’ll never be rich enough to be a passenger instead of entertainment. I’ll never even afford a private stateroom. So I spend a little and let the rest build up in my account.”
Talking made me cough more. I was thirsty, too, but waited to be offered something to drink.
“What’s your name?” I knew I should shut up, but the more uncomfortable I am, the more I talk.
She didn’t answer for a minute, so by the time she did, I wasn’t even sure if it was the answer to my question at all.
“Bay.”
“That’s your name? It’s lovely. Unusual.”
“How would you know? You don’t even know what country this is. Who are you to say what’s unusual here?”
“Good point. Sorry.”
“You’re lucky we even speak the same language.”
“Very.”
She pointed at a trickle of water that cut a small path down the cliff wall. “Cup your hands there. It’s potable.”
“A spring?”
She gave me a look.
“Sorry. Thank you.” I did as she said. The water was cold and clear. If there was some bacterium in it that was going to kill me, at least I wouldn’t die thirsty.
I showed my gratitude through silence and concentrated on the descent. The path was narrow, just wide enough for the sled she pulled, and the edge crumbled away to nothing. I put my feet where she put hers, squared my shoulders as she did. She drew her sweatshirt hood over her head, another discouragement to conversation.
We made it all the way down to the beach without another question busting through my chapped lips. She left the sled at the foot of the cliff and picked up a blue plastic cooler from behind a rock, the kind with cup holders built into the top. She looked in and frowned, then dumped the whole thing on the rocks. A cascade of water, two small dead fish. I realized those had probably been meant to be her dinner the day before; she had chosen to haul me up the cliff instead.
This section of beach was all broken rock, dotted everywhere with barnacles and snails and seashells. The rocks were wet and slick, the footing treacherous. I fell to my hands several times, slicing them on the tiny snails. Could you catch anything from a snail cut? At least the ship could still get us antibiotics.
“What are we doing?” I asked. “Surely the most interesting things wash out closer to the actual water.”
She kept walking, watching where she stepped. She didn’t fall. The rusted h
ull of an old ship jutted from the rocks down into the ocean; I imagined anything inside had long since been picked over. We clambered around it. I fell farther behind her, trying to be more careful with my bleeding palms. All that rust, no more tetanus shots.
She slowed, squatted. Peered and poked at something by her feet. As I neared her, I understood. Tidal pools. She dipped the cooler into one, smiled to herself. I was selfishly glad to see the smile. Perhaps she’d be friendlier now.
Instead of following, I took a different path from hers. Peered into other pools. Some tiny fish in the first two, not worth catching, nothing in the third. In the fourth, I found a large crab.
“Bay,” I called.
She turned around, annoyance plain on her face. I waved the crab and her expression softened. “Good for you. You get to eat tonight too, with a nice find like that.”
She waited for me to catch up with her and put the crab in her cooler with the one decent-sized fish she had found.
“What is it?” I asked.
“A fish. What does it matter what kind?”
“I used to cook. I’m pretty good with fish, but I don’t recognize that one. Different fish taste better with different preparations.”
“You’re welcome to do the cooking if you’d like, but if you need lemon butter and capers, you may want to check the pools closer to the end of the rainbow.” She pointed down the beach, then laughed at her own joke.
“I’m only trying to be helpful. You don’t need to mock me.”
“No, I suppose I don’t. You found a crab, so you’re not entirely useless.”
That was the closest thing to a compliment I supposed I’d get. At least she was speaking to me like a person, not debris that had shown an unfortunate tendency toward speech.
That evening, I pan-fried our catch on the stovetop with a little bit of sea salt. The fish was oily and tasteless, but the crab was good. My hands smelled like fish and ocean, and I wished for running water to wash them off. Tried to replace that smell with wood smoke.
Sooner or Later Everything Falls Into the Sea Page 4
