After the Flood Read online

  After my mother had gotten home, we found a mostly empty bag of groceries on the table with a note from my father: “The shelves were bare. Sorry.”

  I thought when I had my own children I’d understand him more, understand the despair he felt. But I didn’t. I hated him even more.

  Pearl tugged on my hand, pointing to a cart of apples sitting just past the dock.

  I nodded. “We should be able to get a couple,” I said.

  The village was a clamoring, crowded throng of people and Pearl stuck close to me. We slung the baskets of fish on two long poles so we could carry them on our shoulders and we started up the long winding path between the two mountains.

  I felt relief at being on land again. But as the crowd closed around me, I felt a new kind of panic, different from anything I felt when I was alone on the waves. An out-of-control sensation. Being the foreigner, the one who had to relearn the ever-changing rules of each trading post.

  Pearl wasn’t ambivalent like I was, hovering between relief and panic. She hated being on land, the only benefit being that she could hunt snakes. Even as a baby she hated being on land, refusing to fall asleep when we camped on the shores at night. Sometimes she got nauseous on land and went out for a swim to calm her nerves while we were at a port.

  The land was filled with stumps of cut trees and a thick ground cover of grasses and shrubs. People seemed to be crawling over one another on the path, an old man bumping into two young men carrying a canoe, a woman pushing her children in front of her. Everyone’s clothes were dirty and torn and the smell of so many people living close together made me dizzy. Most people I saw in ports were older than Pearl, and Apple Falls was no different. Infant mortality was high again. People would talk on the streets about our possible extinction, about the measures needed to rebuild.

  Someone knocked one of Pearl’s baskets to the ground and I cursed them and quickly scooped up the fish. We passed the main trading post and saloon and cut across the outdoor market, smells of cabbage and fresh-cut fruit lingering in the air. Shacks littered the outskirts of town as we traveled farther up the path, toward Beatrice’s tent. The shacks were cobbled together with wood planks or metal scraps or stones stacked together like bricks. In the dirt yard of one shack, a small boy sat cleaning fish, a collar around his neck, attached to a leash that was tied around a metal pole.

  The boy looked back at me. Small bruises bloomed like dark flowers on his back. A woman came and stood in the doorway of the shack, arms crossed over her chest, staring back at me. I looked away and hurried on.

  Beatrice’s tent stood on the southern edge of the mountain, hidden by a few redwoods. Beatrice had told me she guarded her trees against thieves with her shotgun, sometimes awakening at night to the sound of an ax on wood. But she only had four shotgun shells left, she had confided in me.

  Pearl and I squatted and slid the poles from our shoulders. “Beatrice?” I called out.

  It was silent for a moment and I worried it was no longer her tent, that she was gone.

  “Beatrice?”

  She poked her head through the tent opening and smiled. She still wore her long gray hair in a braid down her back and her face had deeper creases, a sun-etched rough texture.

  She sprang forward and grabbed Pearl in a hug. “I was wondering when I’d see you again,” she said. Her eyes darted between Pearl and me, taking us in. I knew she feared there’d come a day when we didn’t return to trade, just as I feared there’d come a day when I’d come to trade and her tent would be taken over by someone else, her name a mere memory.

  She hugged me and then pulled me back by my shoulders and eyed me. “What?” she asked. “Something’s different.”

  “I know where she is, Beatrice. And I need your help.”

  Chapter 4

  Beatrice’s tent was the most comfortable place I’d been in the past seven years, since Grandfather and I took to the water. An oriental rug lay over the grass floor, a coffee table sat in the middle of the tent, and off to the side several quilts were piled on top of a cot. Baskets and buckets of odds and ends—twine, coils of rope, apples, empty plastic bottles—were scattered around the periphery of the tent.

  Beatrice scurried around her tent like a beetle, wiry and nimble. She wore a long gray tunic, loose pants, and sandals. “Trade first, talk later.” She set a tin cup of water in my hands.

  “So what do you have?” she asked. She peered into our baskets. “Just fish? Myra.”

  “Not just salmon,” I said. “There are some halibut. Nice big ones. You’ll get a big fillet off this one.” I pointed to the largest halibut that I had positioned on top of a basket.

  “No driftwood, no metal, no fur—”

  “Where am I supposed to get fur?”

  “You said your boat was fifteen feet long. You could keep a goat or two. It’d be good for milk, and later fur.”

  “Livestock at sea is a nightmare. They never live long. Not long enough to breed, so it’s hardly worth it,” I said. But I let her scold me because I knew she needed to. A maternal itch, the pleasure of scolding and soothing.

  Beatrice bent down and sorted through the fish. “You could tan leather on a ship easily. All that sun.”

  We finally agreed to trade all my fish for a second tomato plant, a few meters of cotton, a new knife, and two small bags of wheat germ. It was a better trade than I expected and only possible because Beatrice was overly generous with Pearl and me. She and my grandfather had become friends years before, and after he passed away, Beatrice became more and more generous with her trades. It made me feel both guilty and grateful. Though I was known in many of the trading posts as a reliable fisher, Pearl and I still barely scraped by with our trades.

  Beatrice gestured to the coffee table and Pearl and I sat on the ground while Beatrice stepped outside to light a fire and get started on supper. We ate salmon I had brought, with boiled potatoes and cabbage and apples. As soon as Pearl was finished eating she curled up in a corner of the tent and fell asleep, leaving Beatrice and me to talk quietly as the night grew darker.

  Beatrice poured me a cup of tea, something minty and herbal, with leaves floating on the surface. I got the impression she was gathering her strength.

  “So where is she?” Beatrice asked finally.

  “A place called the Valley. Have you heard of it?”

  Beatrice nodded. “I’ve only traded with people from there once. It’s a small settlement—maybe a few hundred people. People who make it there don’t normally make it back. Too isolated. Rough seas.” She gave me a long look.

  “Where is it?”

  “How’d you get this information? Can you trust it?” she asked.

  “I found out from a raider with the Lost Abbots. I don’t think he was lying. He’d already told me most of the information before . . .”

  I paused, suddenly uncomfortable. A flicker of understanding crossed over Beatrice’s face.

  “Was he your first?”

  I nodded. “He captured Pearl and me.”

  “Those fighting lessons have paid off,” she said, though she sounded more sad than satisfied. Grandfather taught me to sail and fish, but Beatrice had taught me to fight. After Grandfather passed away, Beatrice and I would practice under the trees around her tent, a few paces apart, me mimicking the motions of her hands and feet. Her father had taught her to fight with knives back during the early migrations and she wasn’t gentle with me during our lessons, tripping me up with a heel, yanking my arm behind my back until it nearly snapped.

  The tea steamed before me and I warmed my hand around the cup. I felt my body try to steady me with stillness, but a cascade still fell within me, as if inwardly I were scattering to pieces.

  “Can you help me?” I asked. “Do you have maps?” I knew she had maps—she could charge wood and land for the maps she had, which was also why she had to sleep with a shotgun at night. I’d never heard of the Valley, but I hadn’t heard of many places.

  When Beatric
e didn’t say anything, I said, “You don’t want me to go.”

  “Have you learned to navigate?” she asked.

  Since I couldn’t navigate, I only sailed between trading posts along the Pacific coast, which I knew well from sailing with Grandfather.

  “Beatrice, she’s in danger,” I said. “If the Lost Abbots are there, the Valley is a colony now. Do you know how old she is? Almost thirteen. They’ll be transitioning her to a breeding ship any day now.”

  “Surely Jacob is protecting her. He may pay extra taxes to keep her off the ship.”

  “The raider said she had no father with her,” I said.

  Beatrice looked at Pearl, curled into a ball, sleeping on her side, her face serene. One of her snakes lifted its head from the pocket of her trousers and slid over her leg.

  “And Pearl? What of her?” Beatrice asked. “What if you go on this journey only to lose her, too?”

  I stood up and stepped out of the tent. The night had grown cold. I sank my face in my hands and wanted to wail, but I bit my lips together and squeezed my eyes so hard they hurt.

  Beatrice came out and set her hand on my shoulder.

  “If I don’t try—” I started. The sound of bats’ wings beat the air above us as they cut across the moon in fluttering black shapes. “She’s alone, Beatrice. This is my one chance to save her. Once they get her on a breeding ship, I won’t find her again.”

  What I didn’t tell her was that I couldn’t be my father. Couldn’t leave her on a stoop somewhere when she needed me.

  “I know,” she said. “I know. Come back inside.”

  I hadn’t come to Beatrice only because she would help me, but because she was the only person who could understand. Who knew my whole story, going all the way back to the beginning. No other living person besides Beatrice knew how I met Jacob when I was nineteen and didn’t even know the Six Year Flood had begun. He was a migrant from Connecticut, and on the day I met him I was drying apple slices in the sunlight on our front porch. It was over a hundred degrees every day that summer, so we dried fruit on the porch and canned the rest that we harvested. I’d cut twenty apples into thin slices, lining them on every floorboard along the porch, before stepping inside to check the preserves over the fire. In the mornings I worked for a farmer to the east, but in the afternoons I was home, helping my mother around the house. She worked as a nurse only occasionally by that point, doing home visits or treating people in makeshift clinics, trading her care and knowledge for food.

  When I came back out a row of the apple slices was gone and a man stood frozen, bent over the porch, one hand on a slice, the other hand holding open a bag that hung from his shoulder.

  He turned and ran and I dashed across the porch after him. Sweat trickled down my back and my lungs burned, but I caught up to him and tackled him, both of us sprawling across the neighbor’s lawn. I wrestled the bag from him and he almost didn’t resist, his arms up to protect his face.

  “I thought you’d be fast, but you’re even faster,” he said, panting.

  “Get away from me,” I muttered, standing up.

  “Can’t I have my bag back?”

  “No,” I said, turning on my heel.

  Jacob sighed and looked to the side with a mildly dejected look. I had the feeling he was accustomed to defeat and stomached it quite well. Later that night I wondered why I’d chased a stranger and not been more afraid, when usually I took pains to avoid strangers and feared an attack. Somehow, I realized, I’d known he wouldn’t hurt me.

  He slept in a neighbor’s abandoned shed that night and waved to me in the morning. While I was weeding the front garden he watched me. I liked him watching me, liked the slow burn it gave me.

  A few days later, he brought a beaver he’d trapped at the nearby river and laid it at my feet.

  “Fair?” he asked.

  I nodded. After that he’d sit and talk to me while I worked and I grew to like the rhythm of his stories, the curious way they always ended, with a note of exasperation mixed with delight.

  Catastrophe drove us together. I don’t know that we would have fallen in love without that perfect mix of boredom and terror, terror that bordered on excitement and quickly became erotic. His mouth on my neck, my skin already moist with sweat, the ground wet beneath us, the heat in the air making rain every few hours, the sun drying it away. My heart already beating faster than it should, nerves calmed only by enflaming them more.

  The only photo we got at our wedding came from an instant-print camera my mother borrowed from a former patient. We were standing in the sunlight on our front porch, my belly already round with Row, squinting so much you couldn’t see our eyes. And that’s how I remember those days: the heat and light. The heat never left, but the sunlight dimmed so quickly during each storm that you felt you stood in a room where some god kept turning a light on and off.

  Beatrice ushered me back into the tent. She walked over to her desk, wedged between the cot and a shelf of pots. She rummaged through some papers and took out a rolled map that she spread out across the table in front of me. I knew the map wouldn’t be completely accurate; no accurate maps existed yet, but some sailors had attempted to chart the major landmasses that now existed above water.

  Beatrice pointed to a landmass in the upper middle of the map. “This was Greenland. The Valley is in this southeast corner.” Beatrice pointed to a small hollow surrounded by cliffs and sea on both sides. “Icebergs” was written across the seas surrounding the small land mass. No wonder I hadn’t been able to find Row after years of looking; I hadn’t wanted to consider she could be so far away.

  “It’s protected by the elements and raiders because of these cliffs, so I’m surprised the Lost Abbots made it a colony. Traders from the Valley said it was safer than other land because it’s so isolated. But it’s hard to get to. This”—she pointed to the Labrador Sea—“is Raider’s Aisle.”

  I’d heard of Raider’s Aisle. A stormy section of dark seas where raiders lurked, often taking advantage of damaged ships or lost sailors to plunder their goods. When I passed through ports I’d barely listened to the tales, always assuming I’d never have to go near it.

  “The Lily Black keep several of their ships in Raider’s Aisle,” Beatrice said. “News is they’re moving a few more ships up north.”

  The Lily Black was the largest raider crew, with a fleet of at least twelve ships, maybe more. Ships made from old tankers fitted with new sails or small boats rowed by slaves. A rabbit tattoo marked their necks, and trading posts buzzed with rumors of other communities they’d attacked and the taxes they’d extracted from their colonies, working the civilians almost to death.

  “And,” Beatrice went on, “you’ll have to deal with the Lost Abbots.”

  “But if the Valley is already a colony, the Lost Abbots will only have left a few men behind to guard it. I can get Row out and we can leave—sail somewhere else before they return.”

  Beatrice raised her eyebrows. “You think you can take them alone?”

  I rubbed my temple. “Maybe I can sneak in and out.”

  “How do you plan to get there?” she asked.

  I dropped my forehead into my palm, my elbow resting on the table, the steam from the tea warming my face. “I’ll pay you for the map,” I said, so tired my body ached for the ground.

  She rolled her eyes and pushed it toward me. “You don’t have the boat for this journey. You don’t have the resources. And what if she’s not still there?” Beatrice asked.

  “I have some credit in Harjo I can use for wood to build a new boat. I’ll try to learn navigation—I’ll trade for the tools.”

  “A new boat will cost a fortune. You’ll go into debt. And a crew?”

  I shook my head. “We’ll sail it ourselves.”

  Beatrice sighed and shook her head. “Myra.”

  Pearl stirred in her sleep. Beatrice and I glanced at her and each other. Beatrice’s eyes were tender and sad, and when she reached out and grasp
ed my hand, the veins in her hands were as bright blue as the sea.

  Chapter 5

  The next morning Beatrice and I sat in the grass outside her tent, making lures with thread she’d scavenged in an abandoned shack up the mountainside. I knotted the bright red thread around a hook, listening to Beatrice tell me about how things were before the old coasts disappeared. Born in San Francisco, she was a child when it flooded and her family fled inland. Sometimes when she talked, I could tell she was trying hard to remember how things were when she was young, before all the migrations started, but that she couldn’t really. Her stories felt like stories about a place that never really existed.

  The neighbors to her right, who lived in a one-room sod house dug out from the side of the mountain, were bickering, their voices rising and railing against one another. Beatrice told me about the Lost Abbots and how they began. They were a Latin American tribe, mostly people from the Caribbean and Central and South America. They began as many raider tribes began: as a private military group employed by governments during the Six Year Flood, when civil wars continued to destroy countries. After all known countries fell, they developed into a kind of sailing settlement, a tribe trying to build a new nation.

  “Just last week, Pearl and I saw a small boat taken over by raiders north of here,” I said. “It was a fishing family. I heard their screams and—” I squinted hard at my lure and bit the thread to cut it. “We sailed away.” I had felt a heaviness in my gut when I placed my hand on the tiller, turning us south, away from their screams. I felt hemmed in and trapped on the open sea, left with few choices.