Marrow Island by Alexis M. Smith

Author:Alexis M. Smith
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Dinner was oysters, greens and roasted potatoes, and loaves of sourdough. I hadn’t enjoyed oysters as a girl, no matter how fresh, but my hunger made them delicious to me now, steamed at the fire pit, a dollop of butter dropped in the shell and chased with dry herbed mead.

We ate outside, on the bluff, like we had earlier in the day. Talk circulated about the indicator clouds streaking across the radiant sunset; rain would come soon. Without water, there are no mushrooms. I was becoming aware of how much of the colonists’ conversation revolved around water and the paucity of it, the drought that was descending on the West. It was difficult to imagine, looking out at the sea, that there could ever be an absolute end to the rain in the Northwest, even with all the stories I had written about the subject. I sucked oysters from their hot, calcified bowls while one of the old-timers, Jack, told me about the oyster, its importance to the wild waters it lives in, the way it filters and diversifies the ecosystem, how their populations have increased as their natural predators have dwindled, especially after the sea star wasting disease that swept through the year before. No one knew why the sea stars had died, only that their limbs had begun to shed, then become palsied. Then they detached themselves one by one, creeping away, leaving their bodies to die. Jack said they had to thin the oyster beds off Marrow’s shores every now and then, for an oyster bake like this. And they would smoke and jar them for the winter, too. The cooks brought more oysters from the fire, every table steaming with heaps of them, their shells burst open from the heat of the wood coals.

I began to feel sick, like my belly was full of seawater. I had eaten too many, too quickly.

Katie and I sat close together, as Tuck helped with the oyster shucking. A spirit of the celebration drew people to the fire. The mead was stronger than I had guessed, and I was warm in the cheeks, less connected to my body, and freer with my conversation. More people were introducing themselves to me, sitting nearby and asking me questions about where I was from and what I did back in Seattle. Some of them asked about the current state of politics at large; they didn’t all make it off the island very much and didn’t have much time—or chose not—to tune in to radio broadcasts from Canada or the U.S. As the night wore on, the questions became more personal. Jen, who had obviously warmed to me more than anyone else, asked whether I was seeing anyone. So I told her about the breakup, the two successive layoffs, the attempt at freelancing. And then I started talking about the cottage on Orwell. How it looked after twenty years: the same, but falling apart; how memories of those years sifted through every minute of the present there.

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