After the Flood. Kassandra montag
“I’m Daniel, by the way.”
“Myra. Pearl. What’s in your bag?”
“Some of my maps and instruments.”
“Instruments?”
“For navigating and charting. I’m a cartographer.”
He knows how to navigate, I thought.
Pearl scooped a snake off the coals with a long stick and coiled it on the deck in front of her to let it cool. It was blackened and my stomach turned just looking at it. It smelled acrid. Snake meat was as tough as sinew, and I was weary of eating it.
“You remind me of someone I used to know,” Daniel said.
“Oh, yeah?” I poked the snake still on the coals with a stick. What I really wanted to know was what schools of fish swam this far off the coast and whether they could be tracked.
“A woman I lived with for a year in the Sierra Madre. She didn’t trust people, either.”
“What makes you think I don’t trust you?
He rubbed his beard with his palm. “If you got any tenser, your muscles would break your own bones.”
“Should she have trusted people?”
He shrugged. “Maybe some.”
“And now?”
“She passed at the end of that year.”
“I’m sorry.”
Pearl tried a bite of the snake, chewing fiercely, the stench of the meat drifting toward me on the breeze. She laid it straight on the deck and cut it into three even pieces and tossed our two pieces to us.
“Who’d you make maps for?” I asked
“Anyone who wanted them. Fishermen. New government officials.”
“Raiders?”
He sent me a hard look. “No. At least not that I know of.”
“I’d think you’d have a better boat with that kind of work. Maps are more expensive than wood.”
“Let’s just say I’ve had bad luck.”
I narrowed my eyes at him. He was holding something back.
Pearl whimpered and I saw why she’d been so silent during our conversation. She held up her handkerchief and ran her finger along a tear at the edge.
“It ripped,” she said softly. “During the storm.”
“Bring it here,” I said, holding out my hand to her. She crawled to her feet and brought it to me. I examined the tear. “Well, this will be easy to fix since it’s so near the edge. We can fold it like this and take the thread around in a thumb knot and it won’t even fray, it’ll just be stronger.”
Pearl nodded and touched the handkerchief gingerly. “I’m still sleeping with it tonight.” The red handkerchief had been Grandfather’s. When he died we laid it over his face and it almost fluttered away on the breeze as we dropped his body into the sea, but I snatched it from the air. Pearl tugged it from my hand and after that she wouldn’t let go of it, even in her sleep.
“You pay attention to the little things,” Daniel said, watching us. He said it wistfully, like he was remembering something. He looked out at sea and his face was cast in shadow.
The sudden tenderness on his face turned something over in me, like lifting a rock and seeing the life beneath it. My chest went soft with a sudden movement. There was something about him that was beginning to put me at ease. Maybe it was the easy way he looked me in the eye, his frank way of speaking, his lack of charm. Jacob had been charming; he pretended to be simple and transparent while hiding what he actually thought. Daniel seemed like a man who carried guilt willingly and didn’t skitter away from it, who labored under decisions.
I decided he could sleep free tonight, though I’d still sleep with one eye open.
“I have to,” I said.
“No one has to do anything,” he said, looking back out at the sea.
DANIEL CALCULATED OUR position and estimated that if we sailed southeast for four days we’d be close to Harjo. Daniel repaired the rudder while Pearl and I fished. After watching the birds and the water for hours, Pearl and I finally attached our net to the downrigger and began trawling for mackerel. We fished for two days before catching anything, our stomachs rumbling through the day and night, and when the rope finally went taut at the downrigger I swallowed sharply to stifle the gasp of relief that rose in my throat.
We spilled a full net of mackerel on the deck, the dark stripes on their backs glinting and shining in the sun. Each was at least eight pounds, and I savored the weight of meat in my hands. I gutted them, one after another, while Pearl set up the smoking tripod.
I still kept an eye on Daniel and tried to keep my defenses up. But I was growing more comfortable with him, as it felt as if he’d already been with us for a long while. We were quiet most of the time, just listening to the wind pull against the sail, or the distant splash of a fish or bird. Just sky and sea for miles and miles, the three of us, alone.
The closer we got to Harjo, the more we sailed over the old world, transitioning from the Pacific into water that now rippled over cities in California. I often sailed this way because I had to stick close to the new coasts, but it always haunted me to sail over cities, over the mass graves they’ve become. So many people died not just during the floods but during the migrations, from exposure and dehydration and starvation. Feet bloodied from trying to climb mountains and outrun the water. Possessions abandoned up the mountainside the way they were along the Oregon Trail.
Some of the cities were so deep below, no one would see them again. Others, which had been built at higher elevations, could be explored with goggles and a strong stomach. Their skyscrapers rose out of the water like metal islands.
I used to dive and spearfish in those underwater cities, but more recently I’d done it only when I was desperate. I didn’t like being in the water for long periods of time; didn’t really like being reminded of how it once was. Once, I was diving and swimming through an old city that’d been nestled on a mountainside in the Rockies. Fish made homes in the wreckage, hiding amid the sea grass and anemone. I dove down into an office building that was missing a roof. A few desks and filing cabinets floated in the room, items around them nearly unrecognizable. Barnacle shells grew on a mug with a photo of a child’s face, some birthday gift you once could get sent to you in the mail.
I swam deeper. A school of angelfish scattered and I speared one. As I turned to go up for air, the coiled rope I wore around my shoulder caught on the broken bottom handle of the file cabinet. I yanked at it, jimmying the cabinet loose from where it stood close to a wall. Out of the shadows, a skull tumbled along the floor toward me, settling a foot away. A flicker of movement from within the mouth. Something living inside it.
I yanked on my rope again to get free and the cabinet fell toward me. I shoved the cabinet to the side so it wouldn’t fall on me and my rope slid from the broken handle. In the space behind where the cabinet had stood, two skeletons lay on their sides, facing each other, as though in an embrace. Like falling asleep with a lover. One skeleton didn’t have a skull, but by the way it was positioned, turned toward the other body, I imagined its head had rested on the other’s chest. Positioned like they were waiting for their fate and chose to hold each other when the end came. Disintegrated clothing fluttered around them. Rocks lay on the floor all around their bodies. My oxygen-deprived brain recoiled before I realized they must have filled their pockets and stuffed their clothes with rocks so they could succumb to the water as it slowly inched upward around them, covering their arms that touched the floor first, a final whisper between them before it covered the arms that held each other. Otherwise the water would have