After the Flood. Kassandra montag

I traded for nets at the next post and from then on only dove when the nets came up empty.

      I didn’t know how to talk to Pearl about what lay beneath us. Farms that fed the nation. Small houses built on quiet residential streets for the post–World War II baby boom. Moments of history between walls. The whole story of how we moved through time, marking the earth with our needs.

      It felt like cruelty to bury the earth, to take it all away. I’d look at Pearl and think of all she wouldn’t know. Museums, fireworks on a summer night, bubble baths. These things were already almost gone by the time Row was born. I hadn’t realized how much I lived to give my child the things I valued. How my own enjoyment of them had grown dull with age.

      But other times, when everything was so dark out on the sea that I felt already erased, it seemed like a kindness that life before the floods had gone on for as long as it did. Like a miracle without a name.

      BY THE THIRD day Pearl pulled Daniel into her games: hopscotch on deck with a piece of charcoal, naming games for each cloud or strange wave. The next day it rained for most of the afternoon and we sat under the deck cover, telling each other stories. Pearl got Daniel to tell her stories about places he’d been that we’d never heard of. I didn’t know whether any of his stories were true, they seemed so tall, and Pearl never asked if they were true or not.

      One morning while I was caulking a crack in the gunnel with hemp, Daniel and Pearl played shuffleboard with caps from plastic bottles. They’d drawn squares on the deck with charcoal and took turns knocking their caps into the squares with sticks.

      “Why do you like snakes so much?” he asked Pearl.

      “They can eat things bigger than them,” Pearl said.

      Daniel’s cap skidded outside the square and Pearl cackled with laughter.

      “I’d like to see you do better,” Daniel said.

      “You will,” Pearl said, biting her lower lip as she concentrated.

      Pearl knocked her cap into the square and cheered, hands raised in the air, jumping in a little circle.

      Watching them gave me an unexpected good feeling, a warmth spreading slowly through me. It was like I was seeing a puzzle put back together after it had broken apart.

      “Where will you go once we’re in Harjo?” I asked Daniel.

      He shrugged. “Maybe stay in Harjo, work for a bit.”

      We needed a navigator, I kept thinking. Ever since I’d found out he could navigate I considered asking him to stay with us, to help us get to the Valley. I felt like I could trust him—or was it just that I wanted to trust him because I needed him? Daniel was clearly hiding something. I could tell by the way his expression changed when I asked him questions, like a curtain falling over his face, shutting me out.

      Pearl and I had never sailed with anyone else, and I liked being alone. Alone was simple and familiar. I felt sore from this division, one part of me wanting him to stay with us and the other part wanting to part ways with him.

      The next morning, Harjo loomed in the distance, the sharp mountain peaks piercing the clouds. Sapling pines and shrubs grew near the water and tents and shacks climbed up the mountainside.

      Daniel packed up his navigating instruments, hunched under the deck cover, his compass, plotter, divider, and charts spread out in front of him. I turned from Harjo and as I watched him put each instrument carefully in his bag, my chest grew constricted. Do you actually want to reach Row in time? I asked myself. Even if he taught me to navigate, I couldn’t afford to buy the instruments I needed.

      Only a few hours later we reached the coast. Seagulls fed on half-rotted fish on the shore. Pearl ran out among the seagulls, squawking and flapping her arms like wings. They rose up around her like a white cloud and she spun, her feet kicking up sand, the red handkerchief waving out of her pocket. I thought of Row watching the cranes, thought of my father’s feet hanging suspended. I couldn’t just do what I wanted anymore. I turned to Daniel, my chest tight.

      “Will you stay with us?” I asked Daniel.

      Daniel paused from stacking the tripod wood against the gunwale and looked at me.

      “We’re going to a place called the Valley,” I rushed on. “It’s supposed to be a safe place, a new community.” Inwardly, I winced at the lie. I hoped he didn’t already know the Valley was a Lost Abbot colony.

      His face softened. “I can’t,” he said gently. “I’m sorry. I don’t travel with other people anymore.”

      I tried to hide my disappointment. “Why is that?”

      Daniel shook his head and thumbed a piece of charred wood in front of him, the ash snowing on the deck. “It’s complicated.”

      “Could you just think about it?”

      He shook his head again. “Look, I’m grateful for what you did, but … trust me. You don’t want me with you much longer.”

      I turned from him and began loading the smoked mackerel into a bucket.

      “I’m going to trade this at the post. We can meet after if you want your share,” I said, my last attempt to be appealing, hoping he’d reconsider.

      “That mackerel is all yours. I owe you much more than that,” he said.

      Damn right, I thought.

      “I’ll carry it to the post for you and be on my way,” he said.

      I called to Pearl to follow us into town. We climbed rock steps leading up the mountain slope to where the town lay, wedged between a cluster of mountains.

      Harjo hummed with motion and voices. A small river cut down a mountain and fell in a waterfall into the sea. Twice as many buildings had been built in the year since I’d been this far south, with a flour mill half constructed up one side of a mountain and a new log cabin next to it with the word HOTEL in bold letters across the façade. Last year, the town was just beginning to farm basic crops like corn, potatoes, and wheat, and I hoped there’d be grain for a decent price at the trading post.

      The trading post was a stone building with two floors. We stood outside of it and Daniel handed me the bucket of mackerel.

      “Where will you go?” I asked.

      “First? The saloon. Have a drink. Ask the locals about work.” He paused and rubbed his jaw. “I know I owe you my life. I’m sorry I can’t go with you.”

      “You could,” I said. “You won’t.”

      Daniel gave me a look I couldn’t read—one that seemed both regretful and admonishing. He bent down in front of Pearl and tugged on the handkerchief hanging out of the pocket of her pants.

      “Don’t you lose that lucky handkerchief,” he said.

      She slapped his hand. “Don’t you steal it!” she said playfully.

      His face flinched almost imperceptibly, a slight tightening of the muscles.

      “You take care,” he said softly.

      Several people exited the post and I stepped out of their way.

      “We have to go,” I said.

      Daniel nodded and turned away.

      He was a stranger. I didn’t know why I felt a twinge of grief while I watched him walk away.

      THE CREDIT I had in Harjo would buy me less than I thought. I stood at the counter, biting back irritation, shifting my weight from one leg to another.

      A middle-aged woman with deep wrinkles and a pair of eyeglasses with only one lens hobbled around the counter to look into my bucket.

      “Last time I was here I was told my credit was equal to about two trees,” I told her.

      “Costs have changed, my dear. Fish has gone down, wood has gone up.”