Scarlett Hopper's Arc

Chapter 6 of 33

Scarlett shook the last strips from the jar into her palm. Three pieces. The crows on the wall watched her count. She fed them out one by one and the jar came back empty. Duke pushed a picture into her head: the flock lifting off the posts in a black sheet, the ridge open again. She got the message. "We need meat," she said. She pulled the rolling cooler out from under the porch. The wheels squeaked on the step. "Fish will keep them fed longer than jerky anyway." Duke's tail swept left. He showed her a picture of a pier out past the low ground, planks sagging under water, silver bodies heaped along the walkway. She had seen it once from the ridge. The flood had killed the fish faster than anything could eat them. Sun had done the rest. She pulled the mask on, tightened the straps, and rolled the cooler down the track behind the house. Duke trotted ahead. The morning was still cool. They kept off the open road and cut through the collapsed lots. Duke stopped twice and pushed pictures back to her — an empty street, a broken fence, no people. She kept moving. The pier came up through a stand of dead reeds. Water covered the first ten feet of planks. Fish lay stacked along the rails, dried stiff by the sun, scales gone dull. The smell pushed through the mask. She stepped onto the wet boards and tested each one before shifting her weight. She worked fast. She snapped fish off the pile by the tail and dropped them into the cooler. Small ones, palm-sized, the kind a crow could carry. She filled the bottom, then a second layer, then a third. Duke stood watch at the shore end, head turned toward the reeds. He gave her one clear picture: nothing coming. She kept loading until the lid would barely close. She leaned on the handle and dragged the cooler back off the planks. The wheels bit into the mud and she pulled harder. Duke came up beside her and pressed his shoulder against the frame. Between them they got it to the track. They were home before the ash wind rose. She threw fish along the top rail of the wall by the handful. The crows dropped from the posts and took them. She kept throwing until every bird had two in its beak or under a claw. The cooler was still half full when she shut the lid. She filled the watering can at the cistern and walked the rows. The bean leaves lifted under the water. The tomatoes held. When the wind came, she built a small fire in the pit by the back step and cooked two of the bigger fish on a flat stone. Duke ate his raw. She ate hers slow, watching the wall. The crows sat along it, heads turned outward, fed.