Recompense (Recompense, book 1) Page 2

  He veers off toward the settlement. He’s faster than I am. He’ll draw off the truck and then scoot into some alley too narrow for it to follow. I choose the opposite direction—straight into the wilderness.

  I hear footsteps behind me. The beam of a flashlight bobs through the trees. One lucky swipe and they’ll know exactly who I am, and I can’t afford to be identified. By now, most of my demerits from my pre-Opal days should have dropped off my record in the courthouse, but anyone with a holoband could scan my full history from the tattoo on the inside of my wrist. And it includes more than misdemeanors. I’m not taking any chances. The punishments for eighteen-year-olds are harsher than those dealt out to kids. And now I have far more to lose.

  Branches swipe my hair and snatch at my clothing. I ratchet my stride up another notch. Greencoats take some flack for not making Military, but they’re no slouches. They either just missed or they washed out and had to settle for civil patrol. Either way, they’re fast. But nobody knows these woods better than I do, except maybe Opal.

  I dodge into an area thick with blackberry brambles. There’s a thin game trail that threads between them. I navigate it in the dark and soon hear the faint sound of cursing. I smile smugly. That slowed my pursuer down and gave him a few thorns for his efforts, but I can still hear him following doggedly behind me. I lead him into a muddy bog, hitting the stump, the tussock, the fallen log, and launch into the rocky rivulet beyond. So far my tail has been able to follow my footprints with that flashlight, but the streambed will erase them.

  The water cuts a channel through the heights and empties onto the flat shoreline of the cove. I turn upstream and follow the rocky bank for half a mile before dodging up a narrow trail that brings me to the top of the gorge. From there, I can see the flashlight beam swinging in wide arcs about a quarter mile back. The Greencoat has lost my trail. With a smile of satisfaction, I dodge into a dense pine forest where a carpet of needles ensures that he will never find it again. I slow my stride back to a steady jog, letting my heartrate drop and my breathing grow even.

  Will is waiting for me at our meeting tree. It’s just an old sycamore that’s grown to enormous circumference, dwarfing the surrounding foliage, but it has always offered a destination away from the eyes of our younger siblings. We staked a claim to it years ago by carving our initials into its trunk. I knew he’d be waiting here.

  “They see you?” he asks.

  “No. You?”

  “The headlights raked me just as I rounded a corner, but I was moving pretty fast. I don’t think they got a good look.”

  I grab his hand and squeeze it hard. The gesture says everything for me: Thank you for watching my back. We’re unconquerable together. I’m so glad you’re on my team. But my heart holds far deeper thoughts that I don’t quite know how to communicate. Hopes that reach past friendship into a future I can’t quite see. Dreams that include Will long years down the road. A home. Perhaps a family. These feelings have snuck up on me, and I don’t know if Will shares them. He’s never so much as kissed me.

  My anxiety subsides as we traverse the familiar path home, soothed by the scent of pine, the springy give of woodland soil, and the distinct sounds the wind makes as it pushes through different kinds of leaves. I know every tree, every path. The sap of the forest flows through my veins. Here, I am most alive.

  It takes only minutes to arrive in Opal’s yard. I wait on the dark porch—skipping over the rotten step—until Will fades into the underbrush between our houses before I duck inside. I dip a cup in the bucket of water that always sits by the back door and drink my fill. Then I wipe down with a scrap of wet flannel, change into an old T-shirt, and lie across the bed beside my little sister. The night air dries my skin.

  I check my stopwatch. It’s now ticked seven minutes over the time I hoped to beat. I’d been joking about running from the Greencoats. They certainly gave me a good workout, but I have no idea how far or how fast I ran.

  Despite my gamble, I’ll be going into Friday’s test without the surety that I can beat the standard.

  TWO

  My muscles cramp all through breakfast. I rub at them discreetly, trying to work out the kinks, but nothing’s going to loosen them like the walk to school. I wrestle down my impatience as Opal flips another few acorn cakes onto Tillman’s plate and slathers them with maple syrup. I’m responsible for getting the twins to and from school each day, and there’s no rushing their morning routine.

  “It’s your last day,” Opal tells me, as if I have somehow forgotten. Her eyes grow distant, straining to see back through five decades to her own graduation. “Everything changes tomorrow. Once you take the test, you’ll be considered an adult, free to make your own decisions. I’ll have no hold on you any longer.”

  But she will. Opal will always be tied to me in a unique way. I want to tell her thank you for taking me in off the street. For giving me a home. For treating me with love and showing me how to eke out a living from the earth so I never need hunger again. But I don’t. I’m not one for emotional displays. I do smile at her, however. Straight into her eyes. I think she catches most of my thoughts.

  Ollie watches the exchange through bright brown eyes. She brings her empty plate to the basin and says, “Tell us how you got us again, Opal, and turned us into your family.”

  It’s her favorite story, and for good reason. There aren’t too many happily-ever-afters in Settlement 56. I gauge Tillman’s progress on those acorn cakes and decide he won’t down them before Opal can finish her telling of it, so I sit and wait, sweeping up the last drips of syrup on my own plate with my final bite.

  Opal eases her frame into an empty chair, still holding the wooden spoon she used to stir the batter, and scoops the little girl onto her lap. “There isn’t much to it, Olive. One day I just said to myself, ‘I’m tired of rattling around in this house all by myself. It needs the sound of children in it.’ So I went off to town, straight to the government building, and scrolled through their database. And wouldn’t you know it? There were the two most beautiful babies I’d ever seen, all pink and round-cheeked. So I filled out the paperwork, and within a few days I was able to bring you home.”

  Tillman is listening now, too, chewing slowly to hear over the sound of his eating. His hair gleams the exact color of Ollie’s. It’s funny how alike we look, all shades of fair even as the Ransoms are all shades of dark. “Tell how we were so naughty,” Tillman says.

  “Not naughty,” Opal corrects. “Busy. Two babies opening cupboards, emptying baskets, and chewing on everything you found. You were partners in mischief.” Tillman grins as she approaches his favorite part. “One day I slipped outside to fetch a bucket of water. I was gone three minutes, just to the well and back, but by the time I got inside, Tillman had emptied a whole bag of dried beans onto the kitchen floor and Ollie upended my yarn basket. You must have batted that yarn around like a pair of kittens, because I could hardly get to you without tripping over strings. That same day, I went back to town to find myself some help.”

  “And that’s when we got Jack!” Ollie exclaims.

  “That’s when we got Jack.” The creases around Opal’s eyes grow moist as she looks me in the eye again. “You’ve never seen such a skinny, sad child. Dark brown eyes as big as her face, a tangle of long hair. She was a wild one, I was told. A runaway. If I chose that one, I was in for a heap of trouble. I chose her anyway, and look at her now.”

  The air in the kitchen is growing too thick for my tastes. Opal’s never told the story quite that way before, and Ollie and Tillman are both peering at me curiously, trying to see what’s so special about their big sister. Nothing, I want to tell them. Nothing at all. I’m just about to herd them to the washbasin when Hoke bursts through the door in his raggedy nightshirt and dives straight for my lap.

  The day suddenly grows brighter. I scoop him up and squeeze him close, inhaling his earthy little-boy smell. I would do everything in my power to protect the twins and see them grow u
p safe and well. But Hoke? I’d give up my life. Since the day Opal brought him home, we’ve shared a special bond. He refused to take his bottle from anyone but me. I was the one he cried for. I rocked him to sleep at night. Maybe it’s our age difference. Maybe it was simply the peace of knowing I was wanted before he came along that let me open my heart up to him so wide. I don’t have any children of my own, but I can’t imagine the bond could be any stronger than the one I share with Hoke.

  I run a hand over coarse blond hair that sticks up in every direction and finish Opal’s story. “And four years ago, we decided we needed a little more commotion in our lives.”

  Opal chuckles. “We certainly got that.”

  Hoke turns on my lap and takes my face between his pudgy hands so I’m forced to look directly into his eyes. “I wanna to go to school today, Jack.”

  “Not today, buddy. Next school year you’ll be old enough.”

  “But I want you to bring me.”

  I think I know what this is about. One of the twins must have told him I’ll be going away soon, because he’s been trying every trick he knows to get me to stay. My heart is breaking as I tell him, “I can’t promise you that, Hoke. I may not be here in the fall. But I do know that no matter how far I go or how long I’m gone, I will always, always come back.”

  His eyes are solemn as he looks into my face. “You promise?”

  I tuck him under my chin and snuggle him close. “Cross my heart.”

  Opal rises from the table. “You kids need to get going. Tillman, wash the syrup off your face. Ollie, bring me your blue hair ribbons.”

  As she gives orders, Opal drops her wooden spoon onto the floor. Batter splashes over the cracked linoleum. She stoops to retrieve it, but her spine won’t bend quite that far anymore. In the settlements, age sixty-seven looks more like eighty-five. I scoop up the spoon and toss it in the basin then wipe up the mess with a rag. I’m glad Opal still has Hoke to keep her company and help out around the house while the rest of us are at school. If I fail to attain Military, what will happen to the children when Opal grows too feeble to care for them?

  As the twins finish their preparations, I say to Hoke, “Come with me to the tide pools.”

  His grin widens and he hops off my lap, tugging me behind him. It’s bittersweet, seeing his enthusiasm for something so simple and knowing we could have few of these moments left. I vow to make an extra effort to enjoy each remaining day with my baby brother.

  We string our way through the tall grass and bayberry bushes to the rugged shoreline. The tide is out, exposing the seaweed clinging to the rock. I can smell its sharp scent. Sand collects in the crook of the cove where the village shelters, but out here on the fringe, the currents sweep the coast bare. And when the tide goes out, tiny sea creatures are left in their hollows.

  Hoke pads down to one of the pools and peers into its depths, poking at something with a stick. He looks like a street waif in his bare feet and overlarge shirt. I stand over his shoulder. The pool’s a maelstrom of color: green sea lettuces, strands of brown rockweed, and red fronds of dulse. Tiny branching corals wave in the current Hoke stirs up. He pokes at a green anemone and then a red one. “Look, Jack! A starfish!”

  “Hoke?” Will’s voice carries to us, then his head pops over the top of a rock. “Jack?”

  I wave. It’s not unusual to run across Will out here, hiding in some recess and watching the everlasting motion of waves spending themselves against the shore. He loves the ocean as I love the woods. The spray of salt, the shifting colors of the surf, marine life in all its forms—they are his life breath.

  Hoke and I round the corner of the rock and join Will. He doesn’t look any worse for our nighttime escapade. “Sleep well?” I joke.

  “Like a baby.” He smirks. “Come see what I found.”

  He leads us closer to the pulsing waves, into the intertidal zone where the land is underwater more than it is exposed and covered with a slick layer of algae. “Look there.”

  He points to a deep crack where a fuzzy harbor seal pup lounges in the still water. Speckled and doe-eyed, he’s adorable.

  Hoke dives for it immediately, but Will grabs him by the back of the shirt. “Not so close, buddy. That’s his mama, on those rocks just there. I’ve been watching her. She’s come back once to let him nurse then took to the water to find herself some breakfast.”

  “How long have you been out here?” I ask. We didn’t even get home till well after one o’clock.

  “An hour. Maybe two.” He shrugs. “I do my best thinking out here.”

  That I can understand. We both have plenty to contemplate these days.

  Will turns to my brother. “Hoke, you think you can keep an eye on this fella today? Just until the tide reaches him again?”

  Hoke nods silently, his big eyes eager.

  “Stay back,” Will cautions, “and let his mama do the work. Just keep an eye out for eagles or coyotes who might like an easy meal.”

  “I can do it.”

  I eye Will gratefully. Hoke is no stranger to woods or to shore. Now he’ll have something else to think about besides my looming absence.

  Will ruffles his hair. “I knew I could count on you.”

  “We have to get to school,” I say. “Hoke, help me collect a handful of mussels to take back to Opal.”

  Hoke pulls the hem of his shirt into a makeshift basket and Will helps me fill it.

  When Hoke and I return, the twins are gathering up their books and their lunches. I give Hoke an extra hard hug and a kiss on top of his spiky head. I’m herding the others out the door when Opal hands me a basket. “Will you see that Mrs. Sweeny gets this?”

  She and Mrs. Sweeny were schoolmates together, years ago, and Opal likes to send her bits of food—blueberry muffins, a tin of fresh-picked raspberries, a sack of dandelion greens. I don’t know why she bothers. Whatever character traits Mrs. Sweeny once possessed that drew Opal to her in friendship have been shed like the hair of a hound. And it’s not like she can’t afford to buy her own, married to Councilman Sweeny, the highest official in the town. But I agree to deliver it, and we set off toward town.

  Will and his brothers are waiting for us on the road in front of their house as they do every morning. Jonas is slender and awkward, still only halfway through the metamorphosis that will spit him out a man. Hobart is thicker and broader and darker. He looks more like Will. I fall into step beside them. We don’t say much during the walk to town. Will and Hobart are naturally reserved, and this year Jonas has put some distance between himself and the twins who clown on ahead, collecting rocks and pinecones and the broken shells of fallen eggs. I ask Jonas a few questions about the new lamb, but the conversation doesn’t last long, and we walk the rest of the way in silence.

  As we near town, the road opens up and buildings rise out of the rock and sand. The cove looks so beautiful in the morning, with the sun rising from a hazy ocean and the light too weak to point out any flaws of age and decay. The pastels of sunrise still linger in the shadows, but by the time we arrive, the rocky arms protecting the bay have begun to take on solidity. At the end of the northern point, I can see the lighthouse rising like a pale pink finger.

  The cannery is the first building we pass, sitting at the outskirts of town like a child no one wants to play with. It’s a bully among buildings, the one that snatches away the lives of those who pass each day within its walls. Already the machinery has been set in motion, the first shift well underway. Beside it sits the tidal pond, a three-acre pockmark where rock and sand have been blasted away to capture water at high tide and release it at low. The current enters and empties through a narrow channel, and as it ebbs and flows, it turns the turbines that run our settlement. It’s ugly, but it does the job.

  After the cannery, we pass into the waterfront district with its few shops and stalls. We’re far too late to see the trawlers leave their slips. The marina lies empty, its lonely pilings poking down into the mud like a row of sawn-off
stumps. An ocean ship lies at anchor, a rusty bilge of a tub, bringing trade goods and news from distant settlements. The waterfront isn’t much of a metropolis, but we can trade for cloth and shoes and other things we can’t make or find in the woods.

  The houses fan out from the water, two score of them, all bigger and in better condition than our cabin. But the construction’s the same—clapboards sawn from local timber at the mill outside of town. Some have a small addition or a lean-to on one end. Most feature a front porch for sitting. All of them have turned silver and mossy, weathering to match the shoreline.

  We aim our steps toward the school, located in the residential neighborhood. It’s the biggest building in town, aside from the cannery, and built of dull yellow brick. It doubles as a town hall and houses every public event that can’t take place outdoors. But I turn off before we reach it. The others go on as I climb the steps to the only other brick building in town—a large house that was once grand, with tall pillars supporting the portico roof and a commanding view of the harbor—and knock on the door.

  Mrs. Sweeny answers, all pinch-faced and scowling. “What do you want?”

  I hold up the basket. “Opal asked me to deliver this.”

  She takes it without a word and shuts the door in my face.

  Why does she have to be so unpleasant, I ask myself as I descend the steps to the street. She’s like a paper wasp nest, dry, brittle, and full of venom. No wonder half the kids in town are frightened of her.

  I enter the school and head straight for the library. Miss Whaley is already there, dusting the shelves and setting a fresh bouquet of wildflowers on her desk. She’s youngish, mid-thirties, and wearing a lavender dress of some gauzy material. Her smile radiates warmth. After the wasp nest, entering the library is like stumbling onto a clover field buzzing with honeybees.

  “Good morning, Jack. How is the wilderness this morning?”

  Miss Whaley always asks. I think she wishes she lived on the fringe instead of in the center of town. She always likes it when I share details of my walk to school. She calls the morning recital my canvas, as if I’m painting her a picture. I always take pains to make it a good one. “The beach roses are in bloom, both pinks and whites. Their scent lingers in the stillness before the wind kicks up. I spotted a tiger swallowtail butterfly, and there were two sea lions lounging on the rocks outside of town.”