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.