Ship Breaker (Ship Breaker #1)(13)

“No.” Tick-tock shook his head. “The difference is that Sloth deserved it, and Pima doesn’t.”

“Deserving doesn’t have anything to do with it,” Moon Girl said. “If people got what they deserved, Nailer’s mom would be alive, Pima’s mom would own Lawson & Carlson, and I’d be eating six times a day.” She spit into the fire. “You don’t deserve anything. Maybe Sloth was an oath breaker, but she was smart enough to know you don’t deserve things, you gotta take them.”

“I don’t buy that.” Pearly shook his head. “What have you got without your promises? You’re nothing. Less than nothing.”

Nailer said, “You didn’t see that oil, Pearly. It was the biggest Lucky Strike I ever saw. We can all pretend like we aren’t like Sloth, but you never saw so much oil for the taking in all your life. It would turn anyone into an oath breaker.”

“Not me,” Pearly said vehemently.

“Sure. None of us,” Nailer said. “But you still weren’t there.”

“Not Pima,” Tick-tock said. “Never her.”

And that killed the discussion, because whatever other lies they told themselves, Tick-tock was right. Pima never wavered. She never broke and she always had your back. Even when she was bitching at you to make quota, she always kept you safe. Nailer suddenly wished he could give all his luck to her. If anyone deserved something better, it was her.

Depressed by the turn of conversation, people started gathering the leavings of their meal, dousing the beach wood with sand, and getting ready to return to whatever families or caretakers or safe flops they had.

The wind blew over them and Nailer turned into the freshening breeze. The storm was coming, for sure. He had enough experience on the coast to have the sense of it. It was out there, coming in. A good big blow. It could shut down work for a couple days at least. Maybe give him a chance to rest up and heal.

He inhaled the fresh salty air as it poured over him. Other campfires were dousing out, and there was an increasing scurry of activity as the beach residents started tying down meager belongings in preparation for changing weather.

Out on the horizon, another clipper ship was skating across the Gulf’s night waters, running lights glowing blue. He took a deep breath, watching it rush for whatever port would protect it. For once, Nailer was glad to be on shore.

He turned and trudged down the beach toward his own hut. If he was really lucky, his father would be out drinking and he’d be able to slip in unnoticed.

Nailer’s home lay at the margin of the jungle surrounded by kudzu vines and cypress, made of palm sheathing and bamboo struts and scavenged sheet tin that his father had tagged with his fist mark to make sure nobody scavenged it while they were away during the day.

Nailer set his luck gifts outside the door. He could almost remember times when this door hadn’t seemed dangerous. Before his mother went feverish. Before his father turned drunk and high. Now, opening the door was always a gamble.

If it weren’t for the fact that Nailer was wearing loaned clothes, he wouldn’t even risk the return, but still, his other set of clothes lay inside, and if he was lucky, his dad was still out drinking. He scraped open the door and padded through the interior darkness. Opened the jar of glowpaint and smeared a bit on his forehead. The phosphorescence gave dim shadows—

A match flared. Nailer whirled.

His father leaned against the wall behind the door, watching him, a nearly empty bottle of booze gripped in one fist.

“Good to see you, Nailer.”

Richard Lopez was a rib-thin conglomeration of ropy muscle and burning energy. Tattooed dragons ran the length of his arms and sent their tails curling up his neck to twine with the faded patterns of his own long-ago light crew tattoos. Fresher, and far more ominous, a whole series of victory scars gleamed on his chest, showing all the men he’d broken when he’d been a ring fighter. Thirteen red and angry slashes there. His very own baker’s dozen, he would say, grinning. And then he’d ask Nailer if he was ever going to be as tough as his old man.

Richard lit the storm lamp that hung overhead, setting it swaying. Nailer held still, trying to guess his father’s mood as the man pulled a scavenged chair around and straddled it. The lamp’s swinging glare cast shadows across them both, looming and swooping shapes. Richard Lopez was sliding high, burning with amphetamines and liquor. His bloodshot eyes studied Nailer carefully, a snake waiting to strike.

“What the hell happened to you?”

Nailer tried not to show fear. The man didn’t have anything in his hands: no knife, no belt, no willow whip. His blue eyes might be crystal bright, but he was still a calm ocean.

“I had an accident on the job,” Nailer said.

“An accident? Or you were being stupid?”

“No—”

“Thinking about girls?” his dad pressed. “Thinking about nothing at all? Daydreaming like you do?” He jerked his head toward the torn image of a clipper ship that Nailer had tacked to the wall of their shack. “Thinking about your pretty sailing ships?”

Nailer didn’t take the bait. If he protested, it would just make things worse.

His father said, “How you going to pay your way around here, if you’re off your crew?”

“I’m not off,” Nailer said. “I’m back tomorrow.”