Reckoning

A.P. Golub

(Selected from the field guide left on your nightstand)

Common Raven:

Your favorite bird. There was a big one that lived in the hospital courtyard and, on your good days, I’d take you out to see it. When I said I thought it was actually a crow, you said very matter-of-factly that it was far too big to be a crow—like me mixing up crows and ravens hadn’t been an inside joke for most of our marriage. It was good to laugh again.

When you got too sick to go outside, you put your wedding band on the sill hoping the bird would come visit. Ravens like shiny things, you said. I said I still thought it was a crow. You smiled and told me crows also liked shiny things.

I set my own wedding band down next to yours while you were sleeping. Maybe two shiny things would call that many more ravens to your window.

The Clapper Rail:

Because it was a sub-species, then its own species, then a sub-species again. Like you, its environment was ruined, and it held on as long as it could—where else was it supposed to go? The marshes dried up.

Your hometown’s water was toxic—your parents couldn’t afford to move.

Piping Plover:

Went extinct in the early 21st century despite conservation efforts, but sightings continue to this day. Most are likely the result of different shorebirds and people with hope meeting on lonely beaches.

New Carolina Parakeet:

A joke bird, named by the internet when they finally decided birds were, in fact, real. It’s an introduced species, or maybe a few species people aren’t bothering to differentiate that have spread north of Florida. They’re not real Carolina Parakeets.

Remember in undergrad when we kept running into each other after our 8AM discussion sections? Remember when that turned into coffee? Not the real stuff, that’s too rare and expensive these days for broke college students, but the diluted “coffee flavored” stuff that’s so syrupy it sticks in your mouth for hours after drinking it.

Sometimes, you settle for the fake stuff.

Saltmarsh Sparrow:

It’s always the ones in the marshes, isn’t it? Like it’s always the poor towns in rural areas with space to spare. It’s the places where the people they don’t care about get pushed/the places where people are forgotten.

The land under the marsh is more valuable than all the life on top of it.

The plastics and chemicals company killing your hometown is more profitable.

Ruffed Grouse:

What’s in a photo? Brown, non-descript, just another bird in the underbrush. Then you see the photos of the male’s mating display: wings flared, tail wide, neck rough black and shining, drumming like a failing heart.

Photos of you on the news: dying in a hospital bed but still smiling. I preferred the photos I snapped of you before, when you wouldn’t even look at the camera. When we were out in the woods looking for birds, and your eyes scanned the trees for the source of some far-off, chortled song.

The ruffed grouse is extinct in most of its former range, but it’s a shy bird. Maybe it’s still there, and we just don’t see it.

Kirtland’s Warbler:

A success story, brought back from the brink like I thought you might be.

You beat the cancer as a kid. You escaped the poor town. You were a professor, a specialist. You were tenured. You were an activist. You’d spoken before Congress about your hometown—not that they listened. You’d beaten the cancer before. Why couldn’t you beat it again?

Bobwhite Quail:

Did you know there is a population of these still living in Italy? You probably knew that. They’re not even supposed to be there, but they are. I like to think you’re also still living somewhere else, even though you’re supposed to be here with me. If I think hard enough about it before I fall asleep at night (when I manage to fall asleep), maybe I’ll wake up where and when you are.

Maybe with the success of the meadow conservation project, they’ll reintroduce Bobwhites to the eastern US.

You would have liked that.

Klee’s Most-Eastern Meadowlark:

A subspecies, lost. Is one loss worth it, if it spurs on change? The vanishing of Klee’s Most-Eastern Meadowlark galvanized a large-scale conservation push of eastern meadow habitats. Now the Meadowlark itself seems safe. A bill named after you works its way through Congress. It’s going to make it easier for communities to fight companies that pump toxic waste all over them. Your mother texted to tell me they’re shutting the chemicals plant down.

But the song specific to the Klee’s subspecies is gone forever like your own off-key singing and the way you badly mimicked bird calls.

American Crow:

You always laughed because I couldn’t tell the difference between a crow and a raven. I leaned into it, till you thought I was playing. But you know what? I really can’t tell the difference between them to this damned day. But I knew you made friends with the big black birds that lived in the trees behind our house. You’d give them peanuts on the regular. You’d pick up little bits of costume jewelry from the second-hand store for them.

After your funeral, I put our wedding rings out on the deck railing—if I can’t have you, I’ll be friends with your friends, be they crows or ravens.

In the morning they were gone. So I set out peanuts and wait.

Ellis Nye

It is with sorrow that this paper announces the passing of one of our town’s greatest treasures, Wendy “Darling” Marszałek. She died on August 18th, 2081, in her early eighties. Contrary to her frequent predictions, she did not die “crushed under a pile of old tech”; she went peacefully, in her sleep, at her home here in Adden, MO, just a few miles from where she was born. I’m afraid I don’t know her exact birth date, since she never told it to me, and there’s no one else to ask. I only know that she was born here in town because she pointed the old hospital building out to me once, when she was giving me a tour of Adden. (She was shocked that no one had done so right when I moved in, and never seemed to understand that it was because there wasn’t much of the town to tour.)

Wendy was predeceased by most of her family and close friends; she never married or had kids, and her older sister, Leah, passed in the heat wave of 2072. As far as anyone knows, Wendy’s great-nephew, Rupert, is alive, but I was unable to contact him. After asking around town, I’ve realized I may be Wendy’s closest living friend—she said we were destined to be friends, since our names went together so well—so I volunteered to take on the obituary, even though I’m just the paper’s photographer and illustrator. (If there’s an afterlife, Wendy is out there boasting right now that a real newspaper reporter wrote her obituary, ignoring the fact that I’m not a writer at all.)

I don’t know how to sum Wendy up, and I feel like there were whole parts of her personality I never got to see. Here are a few things I can tell you about her. Wendy’s house was always a cluttered mess, filled with broken machines, except for her kitchen. Her kitchen she kept spotless, and once a week she’d devote a whole day to covering her counters in dumpling-making materials. She would then eat almost nothing but those dumplings for the rest of the week, until it was time to make more. Wendy tried a different dumpling recipe from a different culture every time, and I never noticed her repeating one.

Wendy always wore steel-toed boots, and she walked with a slight limp. She said the two were connected, but refused to explain why.

She was the Grand Marshal of the Adden pride parade a total of eleven times—five of them in a row. It was the only time I saw her out of her usual uniform of jeans and a T-shirt, wearing a sharp, custom-made boiler suit sewn in the trans flag colors instead.

Wendy loved to sing while she was working, and she was absolutely terrible at it. One time when she was working on my fridge, it got so bad I had to leave the house.

She was a regular at the town dump, and after a few half-hearted attempts to keep her from trespassing, they just gave up and told her to come by whenever she wanted. She had a great eye for things that could be salvaged, and would rant at length about how people throw everything out, because, “No one knows how to fix anything these days!” She would, however, be the first to admit that no one knows how to fix anything these days because almost nothing’s worth fixing, and most people figure you might as well try to find a new one somewhere.

One time I was walking past her house and heard an explosion; when I looked in to see what had happened, her entire kitchen was covered in her best attempt at homemade wine. She was also covered in it, and when she saw me in the doorway (she never bothered to lock her door) she licked the wine off her lips and said it tasted like shit. I got a bottle of wine from her, labeled “Shit Wine”, for my birthday the next year. It did taste like shit.

Everyone here in Adden has at least one “Wendy story”, so I asked around to get an idea of what to include. I found that just about all of them were a lot like my own experiences, so I thought I would tell all of our readers my own Wendy story.

Sometime in September of 2068, two of our remaining three computers at the paper went out. I don’t remember what problem the desktop was having, but the laptop was acting like it was haunted; the cursor would move on its own, and half the keys on the keyboard didn’t work anymore. As the writers were all busy, and I had some free time, I was tasked with fixing both computers. The internet had been down all that week, and I’m not tech-savvy myself, so I was beating my head against the wall as I restarted them for a third time, hoping that it would magically change something. Then, like a 5’2” vision of an angel in a pair of dirty jeans, Wendy appeared.

I think I just started crying at her, but clearly she picked out enough words in between the blubbering to figure out what was going on. She sat down at the desktop computer, worked some kind of magic, and told me that it was a loss. I started panicking, because we’d been using some knockoff graphic design software to set up the newspaper pages on the desktop—it was the only computer we had left with the power to run the software—and the then twice-a-week paper was supposed to go to print in a few hours. Wendy somehow managed to get the pages off the desktop in a usable file format so we could transfer them to the laptop (which she kept limping along for another year and a half) and we could print the paper.

After that, we here at the newspaper saw a lot more of Wendy. With the desktop out of commission, we had to start getting creative. Luckily, we had this huge old monstrosity of a copy machine that must have been used for something industrial, so we were able to write up articles on the laptop and the tablet, print them out, and glue them to one of the newspaper sheets to make copies to distribute. The laptop and the tablet were much more fragile than the desktop had ever been, and like I said, the laptop gave up the ghost a year and a half later, with Wendy coming in almost every day to nurse it.

“You need to start planning ahead,” she told me on one of those days; she often did that, starting in the middle of a conversation. “For when you don’t have computers anymore.” I had thought about that, briefly, but it was overwhelming; I’ve never been techy and I don’t know where to start. Everyone else at the paper seemed so busy—this was just before I switched over to illustrating articles and became just as busy as the rest of them—and I hadn’t brought it up. Plus, part of me still believed that we could buy new ones that would actually work, instead of breaking down within a few months.

I gaped at Wendy like a fish out of water. “I’ll get you some typewriters,” she said. She eyed our copy machine critically. “And a replacement for that, in the next few years. After that, I’ll have to start asking people to break into museums for the old machines.”

That’s how all the Wendy stories I heard went; she figured out what you needed long before you did. She was a genius at repairing a wide variety of technology (“Except sewing machines, they hate me and the feeling’s mutual”), and if she didn’t know how to fix it, she knew someone who could. Dee Herrera used to live down the street from Wendy. She’s diabetic, and had always found that a somewhat outdated insulin pump worked best for her needs. Well, about twenty years ago, the company that made that pump announced that they would no longer be supporting it or offering repairs; everyone would just have to upgrade. The upgraded pumps would get the finest customer support the company had, naturally, and whenever they broke they would immediately be replaced with the newest model. Which was exactly what Dee didn’t want. Wendy heard Dee fretting about this at a neighborhood party, and before Dee knew it, Wendy had gotten her in contact with an organization of hackers—many diabetic themselves—who were working on keeping that pump model running without the company’s support. Today, Dee uses a new and improved version that was designed by one of those original hackers to mimic her old, discontinued one. If she ever has a problem with it, she can ask a real person what to do, and they’ll give her multiple solutions as soon as they get her message. It’s not an exaggeration, Dee told me, to say that Wendy saved her life.

I can’t possibly list every story that people told me about Wendy, but here are a few people whose lives she touched:

Álvaro Garret, whose severe asthma forces him to stay indoors for the entirety of the dust season, relying on consistent air filtration to keep his environment safe.

Melania Okafor, who needed to keep her ancient computer working so she could stay in touch with her far-flung family.

Leo Tong, the owner of the only restaurant in town, The Bluebird. We’re all very thankful that Wendy kept his kitchen appliances working for so long, and that she was able to find replacements for him when they finally died.

Aiden Wise, whose powerchair broke down in the middle of the sidewalk one day. Luckily, Wendy was just stepping out of the barbershop next door.

Coral Ojeda, who works two towns over, and who refused to get a new car since it would just break down in two years anyway. Wendy kept hers kicking for almost twenty years, and only stopped because Coral got a job in town that she could walk to.

And, of course, myself, and the entire newspaper staff. I think Wendy would be delighted to note that I am currently typing this obituary—after hand-writing it out—on one of the typewriters she procured for the newspaper. At this point, we do all our writing on a pair of solid, old-fashioned typewriters that are older than some of the newspaper employees. (Myself included.) They break down far less than the computers ever did, and with the new copier set up, we’re more efficient than ever.

Even from beyond the grave, Wendy is helping us with a problem that we’d barely started to consider. She was meticulous about keeping her will up-to-date, and I wasn’t surprised to hear that I was in it. Wendy left me a few interesting gadgets, as well as a slip of paper. On it is the contact information for a friend of hers who might know where to obtain some historical newspaper printing machines. “Just in case,” Wendy wrote.

—Peter Lamarr

Laura McKnight

Dustin picks up the sand dollar and rubs it between his fingers, feels the strange chalkiness of it. He studies the delicate etchings, the five-pointed flower, before putting it in his mouth and closing his eyes. The texture against his tongue. The light salt.

Organics are some of the coolest things left over from the Before Times, and Dustin feels like finding one must be a good omen. He knows some of the marsh people collect them, stash them in the little mud jars they use to store treasures, alongside the metal circles once used for trade.

This particular organic, a sand dollar, is exceedingly rare, especially for this particular stretch of the Nouveau Gulf Coast. Dustin knows this because he is a collector, or a trader rather, owner and operator of Before Times Shells & Gifts, Hand-Harvested Souvenirs from Pre-Armageddon Louisiana. He drives a bulky Before Times van, from BT 1900 and 84 to be exact, filled with artifacts carefully selected from the seaside: scraps of metal from barges and oil rigs, wooden bits of shrimp boats, the occasional tou-lou-lou shell or tide-beaten fiddle string, or maybe a flashy Carnival doubloon.

As he moves down the shore, past the raggedy old pier, his heart picks up pace, knowing the sand dollar is of high value—and not just to the petro-tourists who pay billions of solar-credits to visit the rigs. The sand dollar looks and feels like a world Dustin has never known—except through hand-me-down memories.

Years ago, when Dustin was in his early 20s, his uncle would sit at the table in the mornings and talk about the Before Times, how the sky was various shades of blue most days, and there were so many birds he couldn’t even remember the names of most of them—and how the marsh stretched so far into the horizon. How the swamp fires lasted just a few weeks per year. 

Dustin really did not want to hear about it, was so tired of hearing about it, would shrug his shoulders and sigh to himself before leaving for work. 

Fire-free swamps and flocks of seabirds were old-fogey stuff, and what’s a blue sky got to do with him or his life? The sky is pink now and that’s that. Every once in a while, he sees a pelican float above, and the sight of the magnificent bird, coasting on air in spite of its size, makes his breath catch. Why can’t he just enjoy this pelican without knowing there used to be so many more? Can’t he just have this one thing—without someone nagging him about what all is missing? 

Sometimes, as he was trying to escape his uncle and head to work, the hip neighbor would stop by to chat, wave through the screen door and loudly ask hey, comment ça va? 

This also annoyed the piss out of Dustin, who found this particular guy’s French pretentious and performative, something he used to seem cool. Dustin would offer a tight smile and answer pointedly in English: fine, everything is fine. 

Now, as Dustin studies the waves, he realizes he misses being asked the question: how are you? He even misses the French. 

Given the option now, he might even respond in French. He might say something like ça va bien—not because he is actually well or anything, but because it’s the only answer he remembers. 

In English, things really are pretty terrible. He could use a full range of synonyms for disaster and despair, has a whole lexicon at hand for tragedy, grief, and mourning. But in French, everything is always good and well—because bon and bien are all he knows.

He places the sand dollar in the bag’s special side pocket, zips it tight, and keeps walking. He moves quickly past the driftwood memorial for the marine scientists. Stops at the rotting wooden shell of a trawl boat. Grabs a bright green scrap of net, feels its stringy texture with his fingers, and drops it into the bag. 

The hot pink of the sky grows deeper. Offshore, a manmade constellation appears above the horizon: lights glittering from the old oil platforms. Orion—or Orion’s Belt, he thinks, if Orion was a roustabout.

The surf moves, and Dustin spots a flash of blue and white in the tide. A piece of concrete statue, the Holy Mother. He can tell by the shade of blue, the same blue as the veil on the Virgin Mary his own mother displayed near their front door. 

Dustin doesn’t pray, hasn’t prayed since his favorite priest got kicked out of the church, hasn’t prayed since his aunt was refused Communion for protesting the first fossil fuel war, but he does pause to bow his head. The crashing waves are the prayer. The incoming tide.

He puts the piece of statue in his bag and moves on. 

As he walks, he feels the ocean suck the sand from under his feet, the landscape always shifting beneath him. He lets the tide grab and tug his soles as he sifts through today’s collection: the frayed strings of the net, the coarse concrete of the Holy Mother’s veil. 

He unzips the side pocket and runs his fingers, softly, over his prize find. Tapping his fingers gently against it, Dustin feels a sudden urge to throw the sand dollar back into the sea. He realizes he doesn’t want anyone to own the sand dollar, not even himself, and especially not some tourist. 

But first he does want to lick it again. Maybe he can taste how things used to be. For once, experience that time and place first-hand, through his own senses. The sand dollar tastes like salt and air and bones and sun and the most hidden parts of the sea. It tastes like his uncle’s dark roast coffee and ghost crabs and the way the light hits gold in the marsh in late summer.

Satisfied, he pitches it toward the hot pink horizon, watches it clunk into the sea, and gets back to searching the sand for lesser curiosities. 

Orion’s Belt twinkles, and a half-moon is high in the neon sky. Dustin clutches his bag, walks away from the waves, toward the marsh. The Holy Mother will catch a good price, he thinks. He climbs into his clunky van and heads home, the taste of another world still on his tongue.