Ship Breaker (5 page)

Nailer had been surprised that Sloth hadn’t protested. He wasn’t about to forgive, but he respected that she hadn’t begged or tried to apologize when Bapi got out his knife. Everyone knew the score. What was done was done. She’d gambled and lost. Life was like that. There were Lucky Strikes and there were Sloths; there were Jackson Boys and there were lucky bastards like him. Different sides of the same coin. You tossed your luck in the air and it rattled down on the gambling boards and you either lived or died.

“It’s the Fates,” Pima’s mother muttered. “They’ve taken you now. No telling what they’ll do with you.” She was staring at him with an expression that almost looked like sadness. He wanted to ask her what she meant, but Pima came in through the door with the rest of the crew.

“Hey, hey!” Pima said. “Look at our crewboy!” She inspected his puckered wounds and stitches. “You’ll get some nice scars out of this, Nailer.”

“Lucky scars,” said Moon Girl. “Even better than a tattoo of the Rust Saint’s face.” She handed him a bottle.

“What’s this?” Nailer asked.

Moon Girl shrugged. “Luck gift. God’s got you tight, now. I’m getting close to God.”

Nailer smiled and sipped, was surprised at the quality of alcohol that burned his mouth.

Pima laughed. “It’s Black Ling.” She leaned close. “Tick-tock stole it. Crazy licebiter just walked out of Chen’s noodle shack with it. He’s got no sense, but he’s got fast hands.” She pulled him toward the shore. “We got a fire going. Let’s go get drunk.”

“What about work tomorrow?”

“Bapi says that storm’s coming for sure.” She grinned. “We can strip wire with a hangover, no problem.”

The crew gathered around the bonfire, swapping drinks. Pima went away and came back a little while later with a pot of rice and beans and then surprised Nailer again with a stick of grilled pigeon. At his look of surprise, she said, “Other people want to get close to God and the Fates. People saw you come out of the ship. No one gets luck like that.”

He didn’t question any more but ate greedily, glad to be alive and eating so well.

They drank, passing around the rusty shiv that had nearly killed him. Considered the possibilities of turning it into a talisman, a decoration to hang around his neck. The buzz of alcohol warmed him, made the world seem even better than before. He was alive. His skin sang with life. Even the pain in his back and shoulder where the shiv had driven into him felt good. Being close to death had made everything in his life shine. He rolled his shoulder, savoring the pain.

Pima watched him across the firelight. “You think you can crew tomorrow?”

Nailer made himself nod. “It’s just stripping wire.”

“Who we getting for scuttle duct?” Moon Girl asked.

Pima grimaced. “I thought it was going to be Sloth. Got to swear in someone new to replace her. Get bloody with someone.”

“Lot of good that does,” Tick-tock muttered.

“Yeah, well, some people still keep their word.”

They all looked down the beach to where Sloth had been dumped. She’d be hungry soon, and needing someone to protect her. Someone to share scavenge with, to cover her back when she couldn’t work. The beach was a hard place to survive without crew.

Nailer stared at the bonfires, thinking about the nature of luck. One quick decision by Sloth, and everything about her future was decided. She didn’t have many options now, and all of them were ugly. Full of blood and pain and desperation. He took another swig from the bottle, wondering if he pitied her despite what she’d done.

“We could bring Teela on,” Pearly suggested. “She’s small.”

“She’s got a club foot,” Moon Girl said. “How fast can she move?”

“For light crew, she’d hustle.”

“I’ll decide later,” Pima said. “Maybe Nailer heals quick, and we don’t need a scuttle duct replacement.”

Nailer smiled sourly. “Or maybe Bapi cuts me out, and sells my slot. Then none of us get to choose.”

“Not over my head.”

No one said anything. It was too good a night to spoil it with bad speculation. Bapi would do whatever he wanted, but they didn’t need to pick that scab tonight.

Pima seemed to sense their doubts. “I talked to Bapi already,” she insisted. “Nailer’s got a couple days free. On the boss man’s quota. Even Bapi wants to get close to luck like his.”

“He’s not pissed that I lost that crude to other crews?”

“Well, that too. But the wire came out with you, so he was happy about that. You’ve got your heal time. Rust Saint’s my witness.”

It almost sounded good enough to believe. Nailer took another drink. He’d seen enough adult promises turn out to just be wishes that he wasn’t going to hold his breath, though. He needed to be crewing tomorrow, and he needed to look useful fast. He carefully worked his shoulder, willing it to get better. A couple days wire-stripping would be a blessing. If anything out of this whole mess was lucky, it was that a storm was coming.

Then again, without the storm, he wouldn’t have been back in the hole twice on the same day.

Nailer drank again, enjoying the view of the beach. In the night, you couldn’t even see the oil slicks on the water. Just the liquid silver reflections of the moon. Far out on the distant water, a few red and green lights glowed like fairy fire—the running lights of clipper ships crossing the Gulf.

The sailing ships slid silently across the horizon, blown so fast that their lights disappeared over the curve of the earth within minutes. He tried to imagine standing on the deck of one of those ships, leaving the beach and light crew behind. Sailing free and fast.

Pima took the booze bottle from him. “Daydreaming?”

“Nightdreaming.” Nailer nodded out at the colored lights. “You ever sail on one?”

“A clipper?” Pima shook her head. “No way. Saw one dock once; they had a whole bunch of half-men for guards. Wouldn’t let beach trash paddle close.” She grimaced. “The dog-faces put electricity in the water.”

Tick-tock laughed. “I remember that. I tried to swim out and started tingling all over.”

Pima scowled. “And then we had to drag you back like a dead fish. Almost got us all zapped.”

“I would have been fine.”

Moon Girl snorted. “The dog-faces would have eaten you alive. That’s how they do. Don’t even cook their meat. Those monsters always tear in raw. If we left you out there, they’d have been using your ribs for toothpicks.”

“Grind that. There’s a half-man who muscles for Lucky Strike… what’s its name?” Tick-tock halted briefly, stymied. “Anyway, I’ve seen it. It’s got big damn teeth, but it don’t eat people.”

“How would you know? The ones it eats aren’t around to bitch anymore.”

“Goats,” Pima said suddenly. “The half-man eats goats. When he first showed up on the beach, they paid him goats to work heavy crew. My mom told me he could eat a whole goat in three days.” She made a face. “Moon Girl’s right. You don’t want to tangle with those monsters. You never know when their animal side will try to take your arm off.”

Nailer was still watching the lights moving out in the deeps. “You ever wonder what it would be like to ride a clipper? Get out on one of those things?”

“I don’t know.” Pima shook her head. “Fast, I guess.”

“Damn fast,” Moon Girl supplied.

“Red-rip fast,” Pearly said.

They were all looking out at the water now. Hungry.

“You think they even know we’re here?” Moon Girl asked.

Pima spat in the sand. “We’re just flies on garbage to people like that.”

The lights kept moving. Nailer tried to imagine what it would be like to stand on deck, hurtling across the waves, blasting through spray. He’d spent evenings staring at images of clippers under sail, pictures that he had stolen from magazines that Bapi kept in a drawer in his supervisor’s shack, but that was as close as he’d ever gotten. He had spent hours poring over those sleek predatory lines, studying the sails and hydrofoils, the smooth engineered surfaces so different from the rusting wrecks he worked every day. Staring at the beautiful people who smiled and drank on the decks.

The ships whispered promises of speed and salt air and open horizons. Sometimes Nailer wished he could simply step through the pages and escape onto the prow of a clipper. Sailing away in his imagination from the daily mangle of ship-breaking life. Other times, he tore the pictures up and threw them away, hating that they made him hungry for things he hadn’t known he’d wanted until he’d seen the sails.

The wind shifted. A black cloud of smelting smoke blew over the beach, enveloping them in haze and ash.

Everyone started coughing and choking, trying to get some clean air. The wind shifted again, but Nailer kept coughing. His time in the oil room had hurt him. His chest and lungs still felt tender and the taste of oil lingered in his mouth.

By the time Nailer looked up from his coughing, the clipper ships were gone. More smelting smoke blew across their campfire.

Nailer smiled bitterly in the acrid wind. That was what thinking about clipper ships got you. A lungful of smoke because you weren’t paying attention to what was around. He took another swig from his bottle and passed it to Pearly.

“Thanks for the luck gift,” he said. “I never knew Black Ling was so damn fine.”

Moon Girl smiled. “Damn fine drink, for a damn lucky bastard.”

“He’s lucky, all right,” Pima said. “Luckiest bastard I ever saw.”

She inspected the other luck offerings that had accumulated over the night. Another stick of pigeon that Nailer offered around to the group, a pack of hand-rolled cigarettes, a bottle of cheap liquor from Jim Thompson’s still, a thick silver earring, wide bored. A sea-polished shell. A half-kilo sack of rice.

“Luckier than Lucky Strike?” Nailer teased.

“Not after you lost all that oil,” Moon Girl said. “If you were Lucky Strike, you’d have figured out how to sneak it out, instead of wasting it. Be a big rich man now, owning the beach.”

The others grunted agreement, but Pima had gone still, her black skin a shadow. “No one’s that lucky,” she said bitterly. “Everyone daydreaming about being the next Lucky Strike is what made Sloth go bad.”

“Yeah, well”—Nailer shrugged—“I still feel lucky today.”

Pima made a face. “You weren’t just lucky,” she said. “You were smart. And Lucky Strike, he was smart, too. Half the crews out here find some cache of oil or copper or whatever and none of them figure out what to do with it. Crew boss grabs it in the end, and they get bumped off the wrecks. Shit.” She took another swig from the bottle and wiped her lips on her arm before passing it on to Moon Girl, who drank and coughed. “Luck isn’t what you need out here,” Pima said. “Smarts is what you need.”

“Luck or smarts, I don’t care, long as I’m not dead.”

“Cheers to that. Still, we get all excited about being like Lucky Strike and we lose our heads. We waste all our money throwing dice, trying to get close to Luck, trying to get the big win. We pray to the Rust Saint to help us find something we can keep for ourselves. Hell, even my mom puts good rice on the Scavenge God’s scale for a luck offering, and we just end up like Sloth.”

Pima nodded down the beach to where men from the heavy crews had started their bonfires. Nailshed girls were with them, laughing and teasing them, twining slender arms around the men’s waists, urging them to drink and spend. “Sloth’s down there now. I saw her. Dreaming about a Lucky Strike got her nothing except shame cuts through her crew tattoos, and a whole lot of bad company.”

Nailer studied the men’s bonfires. “You think she’ll come after me?”

“I would,” Pima said. “She’s got nothing to lose now.” She nodded at Nailer’s luck gifts. “You better find a good place to stash all that. She’ll probably try to steal it. Maybe she finds some sugar daddy down there to take her under his wing, but no one else is going to deal with her. Grub shacks won’t take her because the ship breakers won’t buy anything from someone with slashed crew tats. Smelter clans definitely won’t touch an oath breaker. Liar like that, she’s out of options.”

Moon Girl said, “She could sell off a kidney. Maybe tap out a couple pints of blood for the Harvesters. They’re always buying.”

“Sure. She’s got those pretty eyes,” Pearly said. “Harvesters would take those in a second.”

Pima shrugged. “Medical buyers can slice and dice her like a side of pork, but after a while everyone runs out of pieces. Then what?”

“Life Cult,” Nailer suggested. “They’d buy her eggs.”

“Just what we need.” Moon Girl made a face. “Bunch of half-men that look like Sloth.”

“Dog DNA would be a step up for her,” Pearly said. “At least dogs are loyal.”

They all laughed darkly. Started joking about which animals would enhance Sloth’s genetic makeup: Roosters at least woke up early, crawdads were good eating, snakes were perfect for duct work, and they didn’t have hands, so they couldn’t stab you in the back. Every animal they considered was an improvement over the creature who had betrayed them. Ship breaking was too dangerous to not have trust.

“Sloth’s about to hit a dead end,” Pima said, “but we’ve got the same problem. Maybe not this year, but soon.” She shrugged. “My mom’s feeding me extra, trying to get me so I can compete into heavy crew.” She hesitated, looked down the beach again to the bonfires and the men. “I don’t think I’m going to make it. Too big for light crew, too small for heavy crew, what happens then? How many clans are taking kids who aren’t their own?”