I know this aversion to death. Father has it, too.
I’ve also seen the fear on his face before. It was only a matter of time. But Father didn’t recognize this fear of me, not at first. Unlike other children, I remember all of my existence since I arrived on the shores of Isle Royale. I remember being milk-fed, only a day old, and vomiting up every white drop. Father quaked in fear that I would die, not realizing I sought a different kind of nourishment. I remember being so angry, not being able to speak when my infant mouth lacked the tone and control to do so.
And yet I forget things. Too many things. Like the fact that once, I enjoyed strawberry jam. Or that there was joy to be found within other months of the year. It wasn’t always about November. And now it is nothing but.
I remember other things, too. There were days in my first years that Father would watch me tend to a patch of rock cress among a collection of stones near the house. He couldn’t understand why I would weep every time they grew an inch. He couldn’t see the roots forcing their way into the soil, pushing aside other lives for their own sake. He is blind to parasitism, in the guise of spring greenery and plumpness. But I know that pain has to be nurtured for the surrender later. I don’t like it, but there is an order in the world that even I cannot undo.
Years ago, Father found me smiling for the first time. He panicked. My chubby hands were curled around the wrung neck of a scarlet tanager, blood and red feathers all the same color, the smear of crimson on my triumphant cheek. It would not have to go hungry any longer or be buffeted by the winds on its journey southward. Calypso orchids and thimbleberry plants would sigh with contentment, their roots threaded about the skeletonized remains someday. I didn’t know why, but taking the bird was easy compared to what the struggling rock cress offered.
Here, I had found relief. And in my father’s face, horror.
In that sliver of a moment, I hurt in a place I couldn’t quite locate. I felt this way because I am partly my father, and my father is apt to mourn the ending of things, unable to see that twilight and dawn occur at the same time, everywhere. Is death not a gift to the living? If there were no death, would not the world corrupt itself and shatter into its own unalterable ending? This taking and giving on the island, abolishing one life to nourish another—it must be nurtured. Still, his pain was ten times mine, yet worse for me because I bore witness to it.
So I started to make allowances here and there. I made an effort to live off the flourishing springs and summers, though they made me clench my teeth. And I orchestrate deaths, too. Father is not upset by a wolf consuming an infirm, old moose, but he is upset by my splintering the bones of a living calf at a mere thought. So I save my most violent renderings for when he is gone, when November is eager to unfurl its energy my way.
These are things I learn, and do, to live. To keep him happy.
But the death of humans and ships is my domain as well, and it can’t be suppressed forever.
November is coming in a few days. And I am still hungry. I, too, must live.
But this boy’s eyes bore into me like Father’s, that flickering of human sentiment that lights a fading piece within myself. I can’t forget the way they looked at me, pained, when I asked him why death was such a terrible thing.
Perhaps I can wait a little longer before I let another storm bring me a ship.
I can be patient. Can’t I?
Chapter Seventeen
HECTOR
We don’t speak for the rest of the day.
After our conversation, I couldn’t shake the feeling that this girl had something to do with the deaths of those sailors. It makes no sense, of course. She was less than thirty feet away from me the whole time it was happening, and then she was unconscious.
I don’t understand, but my gut says I should probably leave this girl alone and flee far, far away.
But I stay. She’s not quite better. She looks frail, the way she’ll refuse to move for hours at a time, just lost in her thoughts. Maybe it’s selfishness, but taking care of her makes me feel good. I experiment with the flour and sugar to make some really bad pancakes, and she gobbles them down. Her appetite is a great distraction from everything else. That evening, she consumes another sleeve of crackers and jam, plus a load of biscuits as dense as rocks. She watches me, but says nothing. Not like she’s afraid of me—I get that plenty already, just walking down the street in Duluth—but like she’s afraid of what I think of her.
Smart girl.
But after a while, even I can’t bear the silence. When I pick up her dirty dishes, I say, “I wish we had more strawberry jam. We’re running out.” I pause, because she’s staring at me from her thin bed. But her eyes brighten at my comment. “Uh. I guess you like berries.” Dumb thing to say, but silence makes me talk without thinking.
“Strawberries are not berries,” she says.
Since when? I want to say. “Then why are they called—”
“They aren’t true botanical berries. They are an aggregate accessory fruit.” When I say nothing because the definition does diddly for me, she adds, “A false fruit, or pseudo fruit. Like pineapples.”
I lean against the wall by the door, dishes still in hand. “Wow. I didn’t know that.”
“I don’t know things, too.” She sits up in bed, eyes brighter. “You like to eat fish. Why?”
I laugh. “Because I have no choice? Not much else to catch on this island, and I don’t plan on eating a moose.” She waits and seems to know that’s not the only answer I’m capable of giving. I focus on a hangnail and explain. “Well, my mom in Korea made it for me every Sunday. She’d sprinkle it with salt and cook it until the skin got crispy. I don’t really like fish any other way.”
“But no butter.” The girl pouts.
Oh. That’s right. Her version has been a bit different. “Hey, butter is good. I like the butter.”
She smiles, and we just hang in that silence for a minute, not knowing what else to say. Soon, her eyes flutter. Before long, she’s asleep again, and I wonder how a convo of berries, fish, and butter could be so exhausting.
The next day, I spend the afternoon with the radio, listening to more about the sinking of the St. Anne. Apparently, she was an old ship and bent too much in the middle from her heavy cargo. It’s weird to hear about a ship that’s over fifty years old, dying in such a way. But then again, all things have to die, right? Even ships. It’s sad, though. Funny how I care more about an old boat than my uncle or my dad.
There are still Coast Guard ships on the horizon. I put away the binoculars when the girl exits the bedroom. She eyes the binoculars on the kitchen counter where I put them and curls her lip a little, like she’s cussing at them. Weird.