I wouldn’t know how right she was until years later.
CHAPTER 1
River
Gathering the bundle of fish I’d caught, I lifted them off the ground and grabbed my pole. I’d eaten so much fish over the years, I kept expecting to sprout gills one day. Gills were a better option than starvation though. Despite the vast quantities of fish I’d caught over the years, I still hated the vacant stare of death in their eyes and the fact I’d been the one to cause it. I avoided looking into their eyes as I swung them over my back and gathered the rest of my equipment.
Turning back to the ocean flowing through the canal, I stared across the deep blue water swirling with rapid currents. On the other side was a rocky shoreline and pathway that practically mirrored the shore where I stood. More fishermen and women stood on the rocks or waded down into the water. I couldn’t make out any of their features, but it didn’t matter anyway; I’d probably never meet any of them. Below me and across the way, there were more people walking the rocks, plucking crabs from between them, and tossing the clawing creatures into baskets.
The crisp, briny smell of the ocean tickled my nostrils as I inhaled the familiar, well-loved scent. I brushed away the strands of black hair the breeze tugged from my ponytail and blew across my eyes. The power of the sea, the life flowing through it called to me, making me feel strangely more alive and yet all alone as I watched the sun dancing across its surface. Above me, seagulls and herrings cawed and circled before plunging into the water.
An older man with gray hair and a kind smile waved to me before gesturing at the stripers hanging heavily against my back. “Nice catch today, River,” he commented.
“Thanks, Mr. Wix,” I replied and shifted the weight of the three fish I’d caught. Now that it was mid-May, the bigger stripers were finally starting to come through the canal again. The most we were allowed to pull from the ocean was three a week, so as not to deplete the fish population now that they’d once again become Cape Cod’s main food supply. Mostly, I only caught one at a time so they wouldn’t go bad but today was a special day and I had plans for these three. “Good luck to you.”
He wiped the sweat from his forehead. “I think I’m going to need it,” he muttered.
I knew how he felt. It had taken me years to become as good at fishing as I was, and I most certainly hadn’t done it alone. After the bombs, it had fallen on my shoulders to keep my family fed. Gage was still breast-feeding, thankfully, but my mother and I were on our own.
One day, with my stomach grumbling and my head spinning from lack of food, I had decided to take my small, freshwater pole here. On my first cast, I managed to hook myself in my right eyebrow. After cutting the line, I placed a new hook on the line and successfully cast the hook into the water. I’d barely had time to breathe before the pole was snatched from my hands by the strong current, which had probably been for the best because if I had miraculously managed to catch something, it would have snapped my pole like a toothpick.
I had returned to my neighborhood, desolate and starving as I shuffled down the street at sunset. My eyebrow throbbed from the hook still stuck in it; I’d had no success in getting it out on my own. One of my neighbors, Mr. Anderson, had spotted me walking down the street, sniffling as I tried not to cry. He’d taken me into his garage, pulled the hook from my eyebrow with a set of pliers, and placed a piece of ice over it.
I’d sat on a stool, with the ice over my eye, and stared at all of the poles and lures hanging from the hooks and pegs on his back wall. Many on the Cape enjoyed fishing, but he had reveled in making his own hooks, lures, and poles. To him, it had been better than actually fishing; to me it had been a stark reminder of my recent failure.
“Seems we’ve got some things to teach you, young miss,” he’d said after I’d told him my story and how my mother and I hadn’t eaten in two days. He’d sent me home with a smallmouth bass to eat, and instructions to return early in the morning so I could start learning how to fish. He told me if I was late, he wouldn’t offer again.
I showed up a half hour early and ready to go. He taught me how to catch fresh water fish for a few years before determining I was old enough and strong enough to handle saltwater fishing. He’d also patiently taught me how to bend the hooks and create lures, with a vise and a pair of pliers, in his garage. When I was ready for them, he’d given me a couple of his poles and taught me how to care for them.
He’d allowed me to use his materials in exchange for giving him a fish every once in a while. When we ran low on supplies to create our fishing gear, we would scavenge for metal and other scraps we could find from junkyards and abandoned homes.
On my fifteenth birthday, he’d gotten together with some of our other neighbors to scrape up enough supplies for me so I would be able to have my own workspace. To this day, it was the kindest thing anyone had ever done for my family and me, and I’d openly wept over the gifts.
I may have been sixty years younger than him, but I quickly became his adopted daughter, or perhaps I’d become his replacement for the grandchildren he’d lost. They were living in Kansas with his son when the bombs were dropped, and they had been his only remaining family.
Whatever I was to him, we had both needed each other, and when he passed away in his sleep the following year, I’d spent the next six months crying every time I went out to fish. I still thought of him often and couldn’t help but think of him now as I stood in his favorite fishing spot, but instead of tears, I smiled as I stared out at the water.
Turning away from Mr. Wix, I started climbing the boulders, careful to avoid the people set up around me. The canal was one of the best places to go for the saltwater stripers; unfortunately, everyone in the area knew it. The rocks were clustered with fishermen and women looking to feed their families.
At least we were a coastal community; from what I’d heard, the inland towns of Massachusetts were worse off than us, but then we never knew what was true and what wasn’t. Rumors swirled like the wind around here.
I glanced up at the Bourne Bridge, arching gracefully over the canal. At one time we’d been allowed to travel freely over the bridge, but after the war finally ended, barricades had been established on the bridge to stop the crush of people trying to move onto the Cape after the bombs had fallen.
What had once been a thriving tourist community, now depended on being able to feed its own by shutting out the rest of the world.
After the bombs, the Cape had experienced an influx of people looking to get as far from the radiation fallout as possible. There hadn’t been enough homes for them, or resources, and the homicide and robbery rate skyrocketed overnight. People killed each other for a loaf of bread before it had been determined that the ocean hadn’t been affected by the radiation from the bombs, and it was still safe to fish from its waters.
The terror and insanity of those first six months was something I could never forget. I would lay in my bed with Gage in my arms, praying no one would break into our house, kill us, and then claim our house as their own, as was becoming the frequent practice. All through the night, the screams of others would resonate through the air, fires would erupt, and sobs were heard.
The only protection we’d had against the roving groups of thieves and murderers were the residents from our neighborhood who would patrol every night, looking to keep as many people safe as they could. Still, they weren’t able to save everyone.
Eventually, the small military presence we had here at the time, what remained of the police force on the Cape, and most of the residents got together to start removing anyone who hadn’t been a resident before the bombs. Afterward, they’d shut off the Bourne and Sagamore bridges.
Now, soldiers guarded the bridges against people coming over. Military boats patrolled the canal and surrounding ocean to keep out anyone who might try to cross over that way. The supplies we had here were shared and bartered amongst the towns on the Cape and with those across the canal as well as they could be, but it was essential that the natural resources weren’t depleted beyond their ability to replenish themselves.
I turned away from the bridge and my mind away from those early, awful memories. Things were far better now, and today was a day mostly of celebration, not one of melancholy, I decided.
Finally breaking free of the rocks, I straightened and adjusted my catch when I reached the asphalt pathway running the length of the canal. When I was a kid, the pathway had been well maintained, the grass cut, and the asphalt smooth. It had been a popular place for tourists to walk, bike, and run while watching the water and birds.
