36
ATTICUS
There was no fish on the line and the crickets were gone. I came back with a turtle.
“I won’t eat a turtle.” Thais looked as though I’d offered her a puppy. “I’ll eat just about anything to survive, but never a turtle. They’re harmless, defenseless, and slow—surely it doesn’t make you feel like a man to run down a turtle and expect me to eat it, Atticus Hunt.” She was truly beside herself over this.
I just stared at her, blinking; the little turtle wedged between my fingers and thumb, its yellow-and-black speckled legs moved back and forth as though it thought it was still on the ground; its long head, quite small and cartoonish-looking with beady black eyes and an animated little mouth, smiled up at me.
“Atticus, it breaks my heart! I can’t do it! I won’t do it! Give it to me!” She took the turtle from my hand, named it George and set George free in the yard.
Two days later, George was still there, roaming the backyard. Thais thought it was just taking him a long time to figure out where he wanted to go. I thought the damn thing—I admitted it was cute and I was glad we didn’t eat it—just liked Thais and had no intention of going anydamnwhere. As long as it didn’t eat the dandelions that grew in the grass; I liked it when Thais put them in our salads.
But we were starving. I had lost ten or fifteen pounds since we left Lexington City between the miles and miles of walking and the days and nights of eating plants and insects and worms. The most we’d had since breakfast at the farmhouse was a snake. Thais was getting skinnier, too. She needed meat on her bones soon or I’d lose her with one gust of wind.
“I’ll go and check the line,” I told her late in the afternoon. “If there’s nothing on it, I’ll move it. How much line is left?” I had set snare traps around the cabin, and would check everything in one trip.
“Quite a bit.” Thais brought the fishing gear box from the cabinet.
I took out the roll of fishing line and made two poles from the sturdiest, most flexible sticks I could find. We went to the pond together and sat on the bank and we fished.
I smacked my shoulder hard with my hand.
“Damn mosquitos.”
“They like your blood,” Thais teased. “They’re not sucking my blood. I must not taste as sweet as you do.”
I looked over at her. I was sure nothing tasted as sweet as Thais.
“What do you think Shreveport’s really like?” she asked.
“Well,” I said, “I’m not one for daydreaming, but if it’s going to be like anything, I’ll settle for exactly as Edgar described it.”
Thais stood up and walked backward to bring her line in since she had had no bites in a while. The worm she’d baited was still there, now dead, hanging limply from the hook. She struck a concentrated pose, pulling back her arm, and with all her might she swung hard, sending the bait back into the water with a plop; the tiny fluorescent orange bobber bobbed up and down for a moment and then became still. She sat back down beside me on the grass, and tucked her dress underneath her bottom. I stared out ahead watching my bobber float in the water.
“My father used to talk about places like Texas,” Thais began. “He said they were mostly on wind power; but there were many towns that used a lot of solar energy too, that before The Fall they were number one in the nation to use wind and solar. When you told me about the nuclear plants, it reminded me.” She held her pole with one hand, reached down and scratched her ankle with the other—the mosquitoes didn’t like her but the ants sure did. “But I was so young then; I didn’t really know much about what any of that meant. But I remember everything. Every word of it.”
I pulled my pole back gently so the bait would move to attract fish. The orange bobber stirred and went a few inches across the surface of the water and then came to a stop.
Frogs croaked all around us; I thought that if we couldn’t catch any fish, and I couldn’t use my gun to hunt, we might be having frog legs soon—I hoped Thais wasn’t as fond of frogs as she was of turtles.
“What you heard was right,” I said. “Texas and Arizona were at the top of the list. I don’t doubt they still are, that there are towns and cities thriving farther south and west—Shreveport included—but what worries me is how the people are in those places, Thais.”
She glanced over, but only for a moment so she could keep an eye on her bobber.
“People will do anything to survive.” I paused, thinking mostly about myself and how much of what I was telling her, had to do with me, too, and the things I’d done. “They’ll do just about anything,” I repeated absently, staring at the bobber in the water but not seeing it.
After a moment, I snapped out of the dark memories. I stood up and pulled my line in, walking backward.
“Anyway,” I went on, “let’s just hope the good people outweigh the bad, because if not, the bad will take over and there won’t be anything left.”
I cast my line and sat down again.
Thais looked over at me.
“You’re not one of the bad guys,” she told me, sensing my guilt. “I don’t think you ever were, no matter what you did, or had to do—I think you’ve always been one of the good guys.”
I couldn’t look at her.
“Is that what Lexington City does?” she asked. “Do they attack and take over other places?”
“Yeah,” I admitted. “I remember a meeting with William Wolf and his men, and it was only because of that meeting I gave any real thought to trusting Edgar’s advice. He’d said some things that made me believe he might’ve been telling us the truth.”
“What did he say?”
“There was talk of sending Wolf’s men to attack the South, but Edgar spoke out against it. And I knew him to be one of few people Wolf ever listened to. Wolf gave him shit in front of the other men, but it was obvious to me Wolf kept Edgar around because he thought him valuable—there was no other reason to keep him around. Edgar had a way with words. He was a good strategist. And if Wolf didn’t find his advice valuable he never would’ve let Edgar sit in on any of those meetings.”
Thais glanced over. “Well, whether he was telling the truth or not,” she said, “we’ll never know unless we see for ourselves.”
There was a tug on Thais’ line and the bobber bounced in the water. She sprang to her feet and jerked back on the pole. “I got one! I got one!”
I set my pole on the grass and got up with her.
“No, I got it!” she said excitedly when I reached out to help her. “Let me show you how it’s done!”
I smiled as I watched her, how she pulled and tugged on the pole, her tongue poking from one corner of her mouth, her eyes squinted in concentration, her freckle-speckled nose all scrunched up like cabbage in her adorable face. She walked backward, yanking and pulling the line toward her as the fish struggled on the other end.
When she pulled the fish to the bank, I grabbed it, thumb inside the grainy mouth, index and middle finger holding the outside in place. The fish’s tail moved side to side mechanically as it hung from my fingers, the gills opening and closing against the air.
After pulling the hook from its mouth, I placed the fish in a five-gallon bucket.
Thais looked down into the water as the fish, no bigger than the palm of her hand, swam round and round in the small space.
“That’s about two tiny bites for you,” I joked. “Kinda small, don’t you think?” I grinned and started toward my pole.
Thais followed, her nose scrunched on one side.
“Well,” she said smartly, “a little fish is better than no fish.” She smirked.
She reached for the cup between us and dug around inside the dirt; a worm wiggled between her fingers, and she hooked it.
I laughed lightly and drew in my line again.
“I’ll get one,” I said with confidence. “And mine’ll be big enough for both of us—not like that little appetizer you caught there.”
Thais glared at me, but she couldn’t keep the joy from her eyes.
“I accept the challenge,” she said, undaunted.
She cast her line again and then plopped down next to me, moving the cup of worms out of the way.
Two hours later, bait depleted and I nearly drained of all my blood, we called it quits before sunset.
A sharp smack rang out after my hand shot up and fell across the back of my neck.
“Come on before they eat you alive,” Thais said.
THAIS
We left with two palm-sized fish.
“A big-shot fisherwoman,” Atticus said as we came upon the backyard. “You were right.”
I blushed and set the poles against the side of the house.
“Well, I didn’t really prove anything with my appetizer.”
Atticus smiled.
“You may have only caught one little fish,” he said, setting the bucket next to the bottom step, “but you know what you’re doing. I thought you’d ask me to bait your hook for you, or something. I’m impressed!”
“Well, now you get to impress me,” I said, pointing at the bucket. “By cleaning them.”
He looked at me curiously, arching a brow.
“You mean you don’t know how?”
“Well, I know how, I just don’t want to do it. I don’t like it.”
“Oh, you think it’s…gross.” He laughed lightly. “So, you’re like the other girls, after all.”
My eyes narrowed.
“I don’t think it’s gross,” I halfway lied. “I just…well, I don’t—what, you can’t clean fish?” I turned the tables on him. “Big strong man like you can’t stand the sight of blood?”
ATTICUS
I reminded her it was me who’d hunted the snake, cut off its head, brought it back to our camp, skinned it, sliced open its belly and pulled out all the guts without flinching, but I was having too much fun. And I was about to have even more.
“Honestly,” I said without honesty, “I’ve never actually cleaned a fish before. I’ve caught them and have eaten them, but looks like you’re the only one of us who can do it right. And since we have only two with hardly any meat on their bones, you probably shouldn’t leave it up to me or else we’ll end up having turtle for dinner.”
Thais’ mouth fell open with a spat of air.
“We are not eating George!”
She stepped right up to me, reached behind me (I wanted to lean in and kiss her, but I didn’t) and she pulled my pocketknife from my back pocket.
“This is the sharp one, right?” she asked, holding it up in front of me.
“Yeah, that’s the one I sharpened yesterday.”
“Good,” she said. “Then I’m going to clean the fish this once to show you how to do it, because after this I really would rather this be your job.”
I nodded. I tried so damn hard to keep a straight face.
“Okay.”
Thais reached into the bucket and grabbed a fish—once she could get a good hold on it—and then sat down with it on the steps.
“The first thing you do is cut off the head.”
She laid the fish down on the step, positioned the knife and began to saw away. A few scraping and popping noises later and the head separated from the body.
“Then you scrape off the scales.” She turned the knife to the blunt side, and she scraped off the scales.
“Then you cut off the head.” She cut off the head.
“Next is removing the guts.” She dug her finger inside and pulled out the guts.
When she was finished, she held her fishy hands out at her sides away from her dress.
“Now see how easy that was?” she said, her mouth pinched with disgust.
My lips pressed tightly together as I tried not to smile.
“Well, yeah I suppose that was simple enough,” I said, arching a brow. “Maybe you could show me one more time on the other fish? You know, just so I know I have it right.”
The smile finally broke in my face.
THAIS & (ATTICUS)
Realization dawned, and I cocked my head, chewed lightly on the inside of my lip. “You already know how to clean fish, don’t you?” I said, feeling stupid.
He shrugged, smile still in-tact.
I marched right up to him; he stood his ground, towering over me enough to shade me from the setting sun, his smile growing.
I put my hands on my hips.
Atticus just looked at me, amused.
I just looked at him, plotting. Oh, so you want to play, huh?
I tilted my head, and pushed up on my toes. Atticus leaned toward me, expecting a kiss, but instead, my grimy hands came up and grabbed a hold of his stubbly cheeks. He froze as my slimy fingers slid down his face and neck; blood and fish scales stuck to his skin.
I smirked.
Atticus’ face turned beet red, and his smile grew.
“If you weren’t so pretty…”
“You’d what?” I challenged.
“I’d nothing,” he answered quickly, beaming. “Nothing at all.”
I blushed, and my brief bout of boldness fell under layers of shyness. To combat it, I went back over to the bucket and the chopping block.
“I’ll do the other one,” Atticus gave in.
“No, it’s okay. I can do it.” I tried so hard not to think of my father.
He placed his hand on mine. “Let me clean it,” he insisted. “This shouldn’t be your job; you’re too…kind to be sawing the heads off fish.”
“I really want to do it, Atticus,” I lied, and grabbed the flopping fish into my hand. I can do this…I can…
Despite the confidence, I still thought of my father as I cleaned the second fish; I thought of him standing at the sink cleaning the fish I’d brought from the lake because he knew I didn’t like it. I thought of his kind, happy eyes and the way his tooth used to hurt him so terribly. As I cut off the fish’s head, I thought of my father sitting in his favorite chair; him coming home with squirrels and rabbits to eat and how he’d told me he’d killed them in one shot so they did not suffer. As I cut off the tail and pulled out the guts, I remembered his teachings and his advice and how he made sure that none of the men in our small town ever touched his daughters. And as I dragged the knife over the scales—scrape, scrape, scrape, cringe, scrape, cringe—I heard my father’s cries as he rocked my dead mother in his arms; his shouts as he told me and Sosie to run and hide in the cave; I saw his final moments, heard his final thoughts: Lord, please keep my daughters safe…I will gladly spend an eternity in Hell if only You’ll spare my daughters, and I saw him curse the raiders who came into the house after him. And I saw him die. I saw him die. I saw him die…
Atticus caught me when I collapsed. He held me in his arms as I wept.
(I held her in my arms where no one could touch her but me, where no one could ever hurt her again. “Shh,” I whispered onto her hair. Shh…)