Ship Breaker (Ship Breaker #1)(9)
He swam for the beach, still laughing and drunk on survival. Waves caught him and pushed him into the shore. He realized that he’d been doubly lucky. If the tide hadn’t come in, he would have slammed against sand instead of plunging into water.
Nailer crawled out of the breakers and stood. His legs were weak from so long swimming but he was standing on dry land, and he was alive. He laughed madly at Bapi and Li and Rain and the hundreds of other laborers and crew gangs, all of them staring at him dumbstruck.
“I’m alive!” he shouted at them. “I’m alive!”
They all said nothing, simply stared.
Nailer was about to shout again but something in their faces made him look down.
Sea foam lapped around his ankles, rust and bits of wire. Shells and insulation. And intermixed with the ocean froth, his blood. Running down his legs in streams, bright and red and steady, staining the waters with the pounding of his heart.
5
“You’re lucky,” Pima’s mother said. “You should be dead.”
Nailer was almost too tired to respond, but he mustered a grin for the occasion. “But I’m not. I’m alive.”
Pima’s mother picked up a blade of rusted metal and held it in front of his face. “If this was even another inch into you, you would have washed into shore as body scavenge.” Sadna regarded him seriously. “You’re lucky. The Fates were holding you close today. Should have been another Jackson Boy.” She offered him the rusty shiv. “Keep that for a talisman. It wanted you. It was going for your lung.”
Nailer reached for the metal that had almost cut him down and winced as his stitches pulled.
“You see?” she said. “You’re blessed today. Fates love you.”
Nailer shook his head. “I don’t believe in Fates.” But he said it quietly, low enough that she wouldn’t hear. If Fates existed, they’d put him with his dad, and that meant they were bad news. Better to think life was random than to think the world was out to get you. Fates were all right if you were Pima and got lucky with a good mom and a dad who was nice enough to have died before he could start beating you. But the rest of the time? Watch out.
Pima’s mother looked up, her dark brown eyes studying him. “Then you get right with whatever gods you worship. I don’t care if it’s that elephant-headed Ganesha or Jesus Christ, or the Rust Saint or your dead mother, but someone was looking after you. Don’t spit on that gift.”
Nailer nodded obediently. Pima’s mother was the best thing he had going. He didn’t want to tick her off. Her shack of plastic tarps and old boards and scavenged palms was the safest place he knew. Here, he could always count on shared crawdads or rice, and even on days when there was nothing to eat, well, there was still the certainty that within these walls—under blue dangling Fates Eyes and a mottled statue of the Rust Saint—no one would try to cut him, or fight him, or steal from him. Here, fear and tension fell away in the presence of Sadna’s strength.
Nailer moved gingerly, testing the stitching and cleaning work she’d done. “It feels good, Sadna. Thanks for patching me.”
“I hope it does you some good.” She didn’t look up. She was washing the stainless-steel knives in a bucket of water, and the water had turned red with her work. “You’re young, you’re not addicted to anything. And say what you like about your father, you’ve got that Lopez tenacity. You have a chance.”
“You think I’ll get an infection?”
Pima’s mother shrugged, her corded muscles rippling under her tank. Her black skin gleamed in the candlelight of her shack. She’d left her own crew and shift to make sure that he’d been cleaned up. Dropped a quota, thanks to Pima, who had had the sense to run for her when she heard that her missing crewboy was down in the shallows instead of up in the ship.
“I’m not sure, Nailer,” she said. “You took a lot of cuts. Skin’s supposed to protect you, but water’s dirty here, and you were in oil.” She shook her head. “I’m not a doctor.”
He made a joke of it. “I don’t need a doctor. I just need a needle and thread. Patch me up like a sail, I’m good as new.”
She didn’t smile. “Keep those clean. If you get fever or the skin starts to pus, you find me. We’ll put maggots on it and see if that will help.”
Nailer made a face, but he nodded at her fierce glare and gingerly sat up. He put his feet down on the floor, watching as Sadna bustled around the single room, carrying his blood water out into the dark, then coming back. He straightened and carefully made his way to the door. He pushed the plastic scavenge door aside so that he could see down the beach.
Even at night, the wrecks glowed with work, people laboring by torchlight as they continued the steady job of disassembly. The ships showed as huge black shadows against the bright star points and the surge of the Milky Way above. The torch lights flickered, bobbing and moving. Sledge noise rang across the water. Comforting sounds of work and activity, the air tanged with the coal reek of smelters and the salt fresh breeze coming off the water. It was beautiful.
Before almost dying, he hadn’t known it. But now that he was out, Bright Sands Beach was the best thing he’d ever seen. He couldn’t stop looking at it all, couldn’t stop smiling at the people walking along the sand, at the cookfires where people roasted tilapia they’d hooked in the shallows, at the jangle of music and the shout of drinking from the nailsheds. It was all beautiful.