That was a long time ago, but I remember the taste of cedar ash and sea salt as I look at the back of him. I never once thought those moments would last forever, and yet here I am, regretful and old.
Yolanda is one of the last to leave, stately and elegant with her braided white hair and black church hat with netting. I catch up with her as she heads down the steps.
“Can we talk?” I ask.
Her shoulders slump a little when I ask, but she bids the reverend farewell and walks with me until we are out of earshot.
“Tris needs an abortion,” I say.
Yolanda nods up and down like a sea bird, while she takes deep breaths. She became our midwife because she’d helped Bill’s mother with some births, but I don’t think she wants the job. There’s just no one else.
“Libby, the glassmen don’t like abortions.”
“If the glassmen are paying us enough attention to notice, we have bigger problems.”
“I don’t have the proper equipment for a procedure. Even if I did, I couldn’t.”
“Don’t tell me you agree with Beale.”
She draws herself up and glares at me. “I don’t know how, Libby! Do you want me to kill Tris to get rid of her baby? They say the midwife in Toddville can do them if it’s early enough. How far along is she?”
I see the needle in my mind, far too close to the center line for comfort. “Three and a half months,” I say.
She looks away, but she puts her arm around my shoulders. “I understand why she would, I do. But it’s too late. We’ll all help her.”
Raise the child, she means. I know Yolanda is making sense, but I don’t want to hear her. I don’t want to think about Tris carrying a child she doesn’t want to term. I don’t want to think about that test kit needle pointing inexorably at too fucking late. So I thank Yolanda and head off in the other direction, down the cracked tarmac as familiar as a scar, to Pam’s house. She lives in a small cottage Victorian with peeling gray paint that used to be blue. Sure enough, Bill sits in an old rocking chair on the porch, thumbing through a book. I loved to see him like that in our clam-digging days, just sitting and listening. I would dream of him after he disappeared.
“Libs?” he says. He leans forward.
“Help her, Bill. You’ve been outside, you know people. Help her find a doctor, someone who can do this after three months.”
He sighs and the book thumps on the floor. “I’ll see.”
Three days later, Bill comes over after dinner.
“There’s rumors of something closer to Annapolis,” he says. “I couldn’t find out more than that. None of my… I mean, I only know some dudes, Libby. And whoever runs this place only talks to women.”
“Your mother didn’t know?” Tris asks, braver than me.
Bill rubs the back of his head. “If she did, she sure didn’t tell me.”
“You’ve got to have more than that,” she says. “Does this place even have a name? How near Annapolis? What do you want us to do, sail into the city and ask the nearest glassman which way to the abortion clinic?”
“What do I want you to do? Maybe I want you to count your goddamn blessings and not risk your life to murder a child. It’s a sin, Tris, not like you’d care about that, but I’d’ve thought Libby would.”
“God I know,” I say, “but I’ve never had much use for sin. Now why don’t you get your nose out of our business?”
“You invited me in, Libby.”
“For help—”
He shakes his head. “If you could see what Pam’s going through right now…”
Bill has dealt with as much grief as any of us. I can understand why he’s moralizing in our kitchen, but that doesn’t mean I have to tolerate it.
But Tris doesn’t even give me time. She stands and shakes a wooden spatula under his nose. Bill’s a big man, but he flinches. “So I should have this baby just so I can watch it get blown up later, is that it? Don’t put Pam’s grief on me, Bill. I’m sorrier than I can say about Georgia. I taught that girl to read! And I can’t. I just can’t.”
Bill breathes ragged. His dark hands twist his muddy flannel shirt, his grip so tight his veins are stark against sun-baked skin. Tris is still holding that spatula.
Bill turns his head abruptly, stalks back to the kitchen door with a “Fuck,” and he wipes his eyes. Tris leans against the sink.
“Esther,” he says quietly, his back to us. “The name of a person, the name of a place, I don’t know. But you ask for that, my buddy says you should find what you’re after.”
I follow him outside, barefoot and confused that I’d bother when he’s so clearly had enough of us. I call his name, then start jogging and catch his elbow. He turns around.
“What, Libby?”
He’s so angry. His hair didn’t grow in very long or thick after he came back. He looks like someone mashed him up, stretched him out and then did a hasty job of putting him back together. Maybe I look like that, too.
“Thanks,” I say. We don’t touch.
“Don’t die, Libs.”
The air is thick with crickets chirping and fireflies glowing and the swampy, seaweed-and-salt air from the Chesapeake. He turns to walk away. I don’t stop him.
We take Dad’s boat. There’s not enough gas left to visit Bishop’s Head, the mouth of our estuary, let alone Annapolis. So we bring oars, along with enough supplies to keep the old dinghy low in the water.
“I hope we don’t hit a storm,” Tris says, squinting at the clear, indigo sky as though thunderheads might be hiding behind the stars.
“We’re all right for now. Feel the air? Humidity’s dropped at least 20 percent.”
Tris has the right oar and I have the left. I don’t want to use the gas unless we absolutely have to, and I’m hoping the low-tech approach will make us less noticeable to any patrolling glassmen. It’s tough work, even in the relatively cool night air, and I check the stars to make sure we’re heading in more or less the right direction. None of the towns on our estuary keep lights on at night. I only know when we pass Toddville because of the old lighthouse silhouetted against the stars. I lost sight of our home within five minutes of setting out, and God how a part of me wanted to turn the dinghy right around and go back. The rest of the world isn’t safe. Home isn’t either, but it’s familiar.
Dad gave us a nautical chart of the Chesapeake Bay, with markers for towns long destroyed, lighthouses long abandoned, by people long dead. He marked our town and told us to get back safe. We promised him we would and we hugged like we might never see each other again.
“What if we hit a jewel?” Tris asks. In the dark, I can’t tell if it’s fear or exertion that aspirates her words. I’ve had that thought myself, but what can we do? The glassmen make sure their cluster bombs spread gifts everywhere.
“They don’t detonate that well in water,” I offer.
A shift in the dark; Tris rests her oar in the boat and stretches her arms. “Well enough to kill you slowly.”
I’m not as tired, but I take the break. “We’ve got a gun. It ought to do the trick, if it comes to that.”
“Promise?”
“To what? Mercy kill you?”
“Sure.”
“Aren’t you being a little melodramatic?”
“And we’re just out here to do a little night fishing.”
I laugh, though my belly aches like she’s punched me. “Christ, Tris.” I lean back in the boat, the canvas of our food sack rough and comforting on my slick skin, like Mom’s gloves when she first taught me to plant seeds.