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Houjin looked left and right, and didn’t spot his comrades. So he shrugged and trotted up to the group alone. Cly introduced him. “Josephine and Deaderick Early, this is Houjin. He’s going to be an engineer. ”
“Good to meet you,” said Deaderick, and Josephine said something similar, though she looked at him with open curiosity.
“A bit young, isn’t he?” she asked.
“He’s young, but he does all right. Anyway, Huey—we’re headed to see the Ganymede. I thought you’d like a look. ”
“Yes, sir!” he said excitedly, and almost headed off down the trail without them.
“Chester will tell your other men where we’ve gone, and likely bring them along with Dr. Polk,” Josephine assured Cly, falling into step beside him.
He wasn’t entirely certain how he felt about being so close to her again, having been so far away for so very long. But this was business, wasn’t it? And they were friends now, weren’t they? Or couldn’t they be? It’d been long enough since the fighting, the arguing, the battling of wills. It’d been enough years that the good times seemed warmer, and the bad ones were weaker, more fuzzy. Harder to recall, somehow. Surely it was like that for her, too; otherwise, she wouldn’t have called him out.
Maybe she hadn’t left their relationship as mad as he’d thought.
He resolved to have a word with the crew on the way home to Seattle, and during this word, he intended to give them all a firm understanding of why there was no earthly good reason for Briar Wilkes to know anything at all about Josephine Early.
By way of making conversation, or maybe only for the sake of business, Josephine said, “We call its resting place ‘the dock,’ but it’s no dock to speak of. We have to keep it submerged. Texas watches from the clouds, and if they spot it, they’ll claim it in a heartbeat. ”
“They’ll try,” Deaderick said.
His sister chided, “Don’t talk that way. Especially not now. Texas took the island, and they could take the lake, too. I feel like a goddamn coward about it, but right now, all we can do is hide. It’s the only way to finish this operation. ”
“It’s not cowardly; it’s strategy,” her brother corrected her. “I don’t want to have to defend it. We might have the firepower, but we sure as shit don’t have the manpower. And it’s hard smuggling diesel back here in decent quantities. The rolling-crawlers are ready to ride, but they can’t go more than fifty miles without refueling, so we can’t waste it. ”
Houjin dived into the conversation with a question, as he was so often inclined to do. “Does the Ganymede run on diesel?”
Josephine answered. “It can, and does. But Wallace Mumler—he’s one of the Fort Chattanooga lads—thinks he can run almost anything on alcohol, if you make it pure and strong. So he’s experimenting. He keeps a still out in the trees, away from the main camp. ”
“Why?” the boy asked.
“Because the still requires fire, and fire makes smoke. We keep it to a minimum, and he’s working on a converter that would process most of the smoke out of the air before anyone ever sees it—but that’s not ready yet, so for now he does it all the old-fashioned way. ”
Deaderick said with a smile, “He’ll distill anything. Or by God, he’ll give it a shot. Corn works best, but from a scientific standpoint, there’s no good reason he can’t distill all kinds of things. And by God, he’s giving it a shot. ”
“I bet he’s a popular fellow. ”
“And how. Even the alcohol that won’t work to power anything … usually it’s drinkable. ”
Josephine shuddered. “After a fashion. ”
“I didn’t say it was fine wine,” Deaderick joshed her. “But after hours, when things are quiet and we’re all settled down for the night, most anyone in the camp is happy to give his latest batch of … whatever he’s brewed … a taste. ”
Hiking the rest of the way down to the water was a warm, sticky experience fraught with a hundred slaps against mosquitoes and a general wish from Captain Cly that it would rain or dry up already. The heavy, humid lingering of the damp air so close against the earth, so moist on his skin … it felt like inhali
ng through a wet bath sponge. He’d all but forgotten the weight of it, in his ten years of absence, and though he’d been in town not even two days, he’d already forgotten the season. Springtime in the Gulf was hardly any different from its summer, though the nights were still cool enough to breathe, and the days were not yet hot enough to fry bacon on the side of a ship. It was still too warm to be comfortable, and too moist to breathe deeply.
Conversely, the springtime chill of the Pacific Northwest was not terribly different from its fall, or its winter either, for that matter. With all his heart, he missed it—even though he’d left it not so long before, and could expect to find himself once again cool as the tides within the month.
Even now it blew his mind that Josephine had preferred this sunken swamp to the cooler, clearer Northwest. Then again, back when they’d first started fighting about who should live where, she’d said it blew her mind that anyone would want to live in the rain by an ocean that was never warm enough to swim in, and didn’t even have a beach.
Then they’d fought about the differences between a beach and a coastline, and fought furthermore about what on earth she’d wear to stay warm all year if she left—and what he’d wear to stay cool all year if he stayed.
In reality, they weren’t arguments about the weather. They were always about other things. Other issues. Other matters of control, and autonomy, and money. It was the same fight again and again, regardless of the details, and it took them months to figure out that they were bickering over who was being asked to give up the most … and who would do so, for the sake of being together.
So she’d felt abandoned. So he’d felt rejected.
So neither one of them compromised, and both got what they wanted most. Or least. Sometimes it was hard to recall.
