boat laid the boat down on the side of the path.
“My father—”
Patty stopped him. “You don’t need to say.”
“I do. No one knows.”
“They do, Doug.”
“What do you mean?”
“We’ve always known. This town is small.”
Doug hung his head in shame.
“You’ll be fine. Make your own life. It won’t follow you.”
“I can’t. I can’t leave him. I’m stuck.”
“No. You’re not stuck. You just feel that way now. You’re never stuck. You can always leave.”
“My mother, she . . . sits there every day, same spot.”
Patty exhaled, wiping the sweat of his forehead with a stained hanky he always carried and looked at the lost teen. Maybe it was all those years of malnourishment that affected his frame, or just his hard life?
“I’m hard on you for a reason. It’s the lack of things in our lives that brings us down, okay? Remember that.” Patty gave the kid a firm pat on the shoulder. “We’ll continue on here.”
“Okay,” said Doug struggling internally under a grimace.
***
If there was a way out, it wasn’t obvious to Ahanu as he fumbled in the black.
“Hello?” His voice carried ahead of him, so he followed it.
He was very tired, very hungry and his voice box ached from the pressures it had suffered under attack. Swallowing gently, he stopped to listen for any sign to give him direction, but there was nothing, just the feeling of a low-pressure zone, the cool and the dank. He leaned down against the uneven wall he had been running his hand along and tried to think. How’d I get here? That thing couldn’t have dragged me all the way in. No way. No way.
The stories were all there in his mind about the land. He’d heard them over and over, and tried to remember them now.
Dinner was over, and Ahanu’s beautiful mother cleared the plates away from the small table, all six of them crammed in. She never ever bothered to sit and eat with them, just served in demure silence. She was always so happy, regardless of what was going on. Her face was the color of the inside of a seashell and her black hair always back in a neat braid. She carried her posture well and though she was not rich, she dressed as best she could in tanned skirts and tops, the occasional sundress. She began her washings, and the rest remained to listen to the ritual of the oral traditions.
All attention moved to the head of the table. His white-haired grandfather rubbed his worn hands together as he always did before he said a single word, then his face became very solemn as if each wrinkle carried a weight of its own. Ahanu always tended to focus on his grandfather’s nose for some reason. It had a crook in it, just sort of stuck out from the rest of him.
“Legend has it that many years ago a darkness washed upon this land, through our mountains, down our streams and into the river. It came as fast as the wind and as straight as the arrow. For some it was just another day, but for the few, and the few that could, it pierced them right in the heart, right here.” The teller took his fist and pounded his chest. “At first it was just a couple who were affected by it; later the rest would follow, one by one. It was in the grain, it was in the water, in every bite and every sip. We danced the nights away and sang away to the evil spirit that he may be appeased, that he may go back from where he came. But he did not and we did not. We offered the fish to him each season, as the leaves fell from the trees; we gave him the flesh of our catch. He accepted and we carried on. To this day, in this exchange, we live.” The Teller then spat as he always did at the end of a story, and his mother tsked, and Ahanu smiled.
“It’s the evil spirit. It’s the wolf.” Ahanu sighed thinking about the story and the salmon, as only some had made it past the dam work to spawn the previous season. The rest had washed upon the banks or gathered in awful, silvery-pink piles. There was more to catch than ever before and the leftovers would be dried, canned and stored for future use. The upcoming season would be worse. He knew it and then it all clicked for him—the dam. It