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I looked back out the window, praying I’d see my mother reappear, surface for a breath of air. After the water settled, the surface was still and my mother did not come up to break it.
The water settled a few feet below our upstairs window. We waded and swam through the water for weeks afterward but could never find her body. We later found out the dam had broken half a mile from our house. Everyone had said it would hold.
After Mother was gone I kept wanting to tell her about how things were changing, in me and around me, Pearl’s first kicks, the water covering all the prairie as far as the eye could see. I’d turn to speak to her and be reminded she was gone. This is how people go crazy, I thought.
It was only a month later that Jacob would take Row. Only Grandfather and I were left in that house, sitting in the attic, that empty room the length of our house, as the boat slowly filled it.
A month after Jacob left we took the attic wall out with a sledgehammer and pushed the boat out of the house and onto the water. The boat was fifteen feet long, five feet wide, and looked like a large canoe with a small deck cover at the back and a single sail in the middle. We loaded the boat with supplies we’d been hoarding for the past year—bottles of water, cans of food, medical supplies, bags of extra clothing and shoes.
We sailed west, toward the Rocky Mountains. At first, the air was thin and felt hard to breathe, as if my lungs kept clutching for something more. Three months later I awoke with birthing pains. The wind was so strong it rocked the boat like a cradle and I rolled back and forth under the deck cover, gritting my teeth, clutching the blankets around my body, crying in the lulls between contractions.
When Pearl came she was glistening and pale and silent. Her skin looked like water. As if she’d risen out of the depths to meet me. I held her to my chest and rubbed her cheek with my thumb and she broke into a wail.
A few hours later, when the sun rose and she was suckling at my breast, I heard gulls above us. Holding Pearl at my breast was both like and unlike when I held Row at my breast. I tried to hold the feeling of both of them in myself but couldn’t; one kept sliding away and replacing the other. Deep down, I had known that one couldn’t replace the other, though I now discovered I had been hoping Pearl could replace Row. I placed my nose on Pearl’s forehead, smelling her newness, her freshness. I mourned the loss of it, the loss I felt before it happened.
In Grandfather’s last days he began speaking nonsense more and more. Sometimes talking to the air, addressing people he’d known in the past. Sometimes speaking in a dream language that I would have found beautiful if I wasn’t so tired.
“Now, you tell my girl that a feather can hold a house,” Grandfather said. I wasn’t sure if by “my girl” he meant my mother, myself, Row, or Pearl. He’d call all of us “his girls.”
“Who do you want me to tell?”
“Rowena.”
“She isn’t here.”
“Yes, she is, yes she is.”
This irritated me. Most of the people he spoke to were dead. “Row isn’t dead,” I said.
Grandfather turned to me, shock on his face, his eyes wide and innocent. “Of course not,” he said. “She’s around the corner.”
A week later Grandfather died sometime in the night. I had just finished nursing Pearl and had laid her in a small wooden box Grandfather had made for her. I crawled over to where Grandfather slept, my fingers outstretched to shake him awake. When I touched him, he was cold. His skin not yet ashen, only slightly pale, the blood having settled. He otherwise looked the same as he always did when he slept: eyes closed, mouth slightly agape.
I leaned back on my heels, staring at him. That he could pass with so little ceremony stunned me. I had never expected sleep to take him, of all things. Pearl whimpered and I crawled back to her.
We were alone, I kept thinking. I had no one left I could trust, except this baby that depended on me for everything. Panic pressed around me. I looked at the anchor lying a few feet away. I’d heard of people leaping from their boats tied to their anchors. But this wasn’t a possibility for me. It was as impossible as the water receding from the land and people standing up again where they’d fallen. Instead I took Pearl in my arms and climbed out from under the tarp into the morning sun.
I would carry him with me; he would still guide me. Grandfather was the person who taught me how to live; I wouldn’t fail him now. I wouldn’t fail Pearl, I told myself.
When I think of those days, of losing the people I’ve loved, I think of how my loneliness deepened, like being lowered into a well, water rising around me as I clawed at the stone walls, reaching for sunlight. How you get used to being at the bottom of a well. How you wouldn’t recognize a rope if it was thrown down to you.
CHAPTER 7
AFTER THE STORM, we came out from under the deck cover and surveyed the wreckage. We’d lost all the rainwater from the cistern. I dropped to my knees in front of it and swore. The waves crashing overboard had filled the cistern with salt water. We’d have to empty it all and get back to land as quickly as possible before we got dehydrated. We had a small emergency supply of water I kept in plastic bottles, tied down under the deck cover, but it would only last a few days.
Pearl kept close to me as we sloshed through the water, across the deck toward the bow. She held her arm against her side, a bruise blooming where she must have fallen when trying to scramble under the deck cover with the tackle and bait. I squatted in front of her, kissed my finger, and touched it to her arm. A shadow of a smile flickered across her face. I brushed her hair from her face with my palm, took her head in my hands, and kissed her forehead.
“We’ll be okay,” I said.
She nodded.
“How ’bout you get the bucket and towel. Start wringing the water off the deck. I’ll check the rudder.”
At the stern, I inspected the rudder and tiller. A crack split the base of the rudder support and it was leaning to the side. Above me, our single sail fluttered in the breeze, a tear down the middle. The bottom yard swiveled in the wind. The storm had taken our punting pole and the tomato plant Beatrice had given us, but the rest of our supplies were stored in the hull or tied down under the deck cover.
I cursed and rubbed my face with my palm. We were losing time, I thought. How would we get another boat built when I didn’t even know where we were?
“Oars are still here,” Pearl called to me, her hands on the gunwale, looking down to where the oars were tied tightly to the sides of the boat.
I shielded my eyes from the sun and squinted against the glint of water, peering east. Or what I thought was east. I glanced at the sun and back at the water. How long had the storm gone on? It felt like forever, but it could have been only a half hour. I couldn’t tell how far west we’d been pushed off our usual course, which was always two miles from the coast, straight north or south, tracking the bits of land that hovered above water.
Wreckage from another boat floated about a mile east of us, drifting our way. I squinted and grabbed the binoculars from under the deck cover.
It had been a salvage boat, made from various scavenged materials. A few tires were tied around a base of doors nailed together. A few dozen feet away, the cabin of a truck lay floating on its side, and a bright yellow inflatable raft floated nearby. Plastic bags and bottles were strewn across the surface of the water like trash.
“Grab the net,” I told Pearl. I hoped there was food or water stored in those bags and bottles.
“There’s a man,” Pearl said, pointing to the wreckage.
I peered through the binoculars again, scanning the wreckage. A man clutched the raft of tires and doors, treading water and squeezing his eyes shut against each wave that rolled into his face.
Pearl looked up at me expectantly.
“We don’t know anything about him,” I said, reading her thoughts.
Pearl scoffed. “That doesn’t look like a raider ship.”
“It’s not just raiders we should fear. It’s anyone.”
A nervous buzz spread through my veins. I hadn’t brought anyone else on Bird and I didn’t want to now. Someone sleeping right next to us under the deck cover. Sharing our food, drinking our water.
I glanced at the man and back down at Pearl. She wore the steady expression of already having made a decision.
“We don’t have enough food or water,” I told her.
Pearl knelt under the deck cover and pulled out her snake pot, a clay jar with a bright blue glaze. She lifted the lid and caught a small, thin snake just behind its head, its fangs out, its tongue a flickering red ribbon. She held him up to me and grinned. The snake opened and closed its mouth, biting the air. She squatted on the deck, cut its head off, held it by the tail over the water, and pinched it from tail to neck with her thumb and forefinger, draining its blood into the water.
“We can eat him,” she said.
She never offered her snakes for meals. I turned back toward the wreckage, the man now only half a mile from our boat. I felt in my bones that he would bring us trouble in some way. Every sinew and tendon in me turned and tightened like rope on a pulley.
But I couldn’t tell if the panic was from being lost or taking a stranger onto our boat. The fears mixed like blood in water and I couldn’t separate them. I thought I could get us back to a trading post, but if I miscalculated and it took longer than expected and it didn’t rain—I couldn’t stomach the thought of us drying up like prunes under the sun.
The man was beginning to float away, pulled by a current. Watching him in the water reminded me of how Grandfather would sing “I will make you fishers of men” while he fished the rivers in Nebraska. He’d lean back in the boat, an umbrella propped in the corner to shade him, a pipe stuck in the corner of his mouth, and he’d chuckle to himself as he sang. He always found things both silly and serious. The chorus began repeating in my mind as the man floated farther away, and I felt it as an admonishment. I clenched my jaw in irritation. I had wanted Grandfather to guide me, not haunt me.
“Grab the rope,” I told Pearl.
The man was barely conscious, so I jumped in the water and swam to him. I tied the rope around his torso and swam back to our boat. I climbed back onto Bird and Pearl and I hauled him up, bracing against the gunwale with each pull.
The man carried nothing but a backpack, and when we got him on the deck he sputtered and coughed up water, lying on his side, almost curled in the fetal position. Pearl crouched next to him, peering into his face. His dark hair fell loose and disheveled almost to his shoulders. He had a broad chest, long strong limbs, and skin darkened by the sun. He wore the rough-hewn look of someone accustomed to sailing alone. Despite this, he was handsome, in a still and solemn way, like a photograph of someone from another era. When he opened his eyes and looked at me I was startled by their light gray color.
“Sweetie, grab a water bottle,” I said.
Pearl leapt up and got the water. I leaned forward to dribble a few drops onto his lips, but he jerked away from me.
“It’s water,” I said gently, holding the bottle in front of him to show him. He reached for it and I pulled it away.
“I’m going to give you just a little. We don’t want you throwing up.”
I knelt forward and dribbled a few drops on his lips. He licked the water quickly and looked at me, a pleading expression on his face. I poured more water in his mouth, half the bottle, my stomach clenching as I did so, and I thought about the heat, the water bottles we had left, and the miles to shore.
The man lay back, closing his eyes, leaning against the gunwale. Pearl and I let him doze. Pearl and I caught what we could from his wreckage in our net and sorted it on the deck. Not much of use. A few bottles of water, two spoiled fish, and a bag of dry clothing. We fished spare wood from the water to use for rebuilding the rudder. We tied his raft to the stern of Bird so we could tug it along behind us like a caboose in case we ever needed it.
I brought down the sail and examined the tear. When I finished mending it two hours later, it was uneven and puckered along the tear, but it would last until we got to shore and I could trade for more thread and material.
I walked over and kicked the man’s shoe. He startled awake, his hands out in front of him.
“Almost dusk,” I said. “Can you skin two snakes?”
He nodded.
Pearl brought the bucket of coals over to where the man lay, near the mast step, and poured them in a flat pan, the kind we once used to make birthday cakes. We were lucky it wasn’t windy tonight. When it was windy we’d have to eat raw or dig into our stores of dried meat or flatbread. I sat in front of the pan with a box of kindling, arranging the twigs and leaves on top of the coals. Pearl lit it with her flint stone and knife.
“You didn’t have to. I’m grateful,” the man said. He had a soft, clear voice, like distant bells.
I was trying to decide if we should tie him up while we were sleeping. The uneasy feeling in my gut wouldn’t loosen.
“Can you help me hoist the sail?” I asked.
“Gladly,” he said.
He finished pulling the skins from the snakes and Pearl tossed them on the hot coals. The sun was low on the horizon, casting a gold glow across the water. The sun seemed to go down so much faster since the floods, now that the horizon had risen to meet the sun.
“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.
CHAPTER 8
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 separated them when it came, pulling them apart, floating their bodies before it sank them, miles apart.
I dropped the spear and swam for the surface. 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.