Page 6 of Rainshadow

Flora collapsed back into her bed, too exhausted to argue that her mother never had an art career. The next day she walked into town and down to the small fishing marina. Her mother had always said dock work was for lowlifes, but that’s what she was feeling like right about then. There was one fishing boat at the dock, a crabbing vessel, with two haggard-looking fishermen hanging out, smoking cigarettes. “Hi,” Flora said, looking up at them.

One nodded, the other smirked. Neither spoke to her.

“I’m looking for work.” It was an overcast day, but Flora still had to squint to look up at them. “Are you now?” one of the men said. “Fishing work?”

“I can cook.”

“We can cook our own food at sea. You want the kinds of boats that need a cook, you gotta go the docks in Port Angeles or up to Alaska.”

Flora nodded. “Do you have anything for me to do?” One of the men chuckled quietly. “Girl,” said the other, “I don’t have no work for you. I wouldn’t let you work for me if I did.” Flora flinched. She couldn’t handle any more rejection.

“But,” he kept going. “I know some people on the docks in Seattle that might have something for you.” The man wrote the name of two vessels on a slip of yellow paper he found on the dash of the pilot house and reached off of the boat to hand it to her. “You’ve probably got four, five days before they leave for the winter. It’ll be hard work.”

“It’s hard being broke, too,” she said, and both men laughed.

“True enough,” one of them said. “True enough.”

Flora slipped the wrinkled slip of paper into her pocket and trudged back to her house. Rain was beginning to fall, a light mist that wouldn’t stop until June. Flora was glad for it. She only cried a little, feeling foolish and hopeless. When she got home her mother was waiting for her.

“Did you go ask for your old job back?”

“No, mom, I already told you I can’t do that.”

“Where were you?”

“I asked for a job on a fishing boat.”

Her mom looked at her for a moment, then burst out laughing. “A fishing boat? Are you kidding me? You wouldn’t last five minutes!” She laughed again. “What would you do?”

“Cook.”

Maureen laughed again. “Um, hello? You don’t know how to cook?”

“I could learn.”

Her mother rolled her eyes. “You had a perfectly good job at the grocery store.”

“Mom, I got fired!”

“Right, because you were so offended that a young man was making overtures. The owner’s son! You should have been flattered, but instead you were hysterical!”

Flora looked at her mother, and she wanted to be shocked, but she wasn’t.

“You think,” her mother went on, “you’re better than the people here, better than a life here!”

“I have no life here!” Flora sobbed. “Everyone left! Everyone else got to go to college.”

“Oh, and it’s all my fault you couldn’t go!” Her mother laughed cruelly and rolled her eyes. “I have given you a unique, magical life, and you blame me for everything that isn’t perfect.”

“Just let me sleep!” cried Flora.

“It’s not even seven.” Her mother pointed at the old Seiko clock on the bus wall. It wasn’t yet seven, but it was getting dark.

“Fine,” Flora said, and peeled herself from her bed. She tugged on her old riding boots. She set out from the school bus, her mother chasing her.

“Where the hell are you going?” Maureen called, following in her house dress and slippers.

“Just… walking,” Flora managed. She didn’t know where she was going. She just needed to get out.

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