The Wandering Island Factory

by TR Nowry

  Chapter 23

  As comfortable as they were getting around their new Canadian friends, the family headed south before winter again. They contemplated offering to trade their boat for passage into Canada, but as nice as the fishermen seemed, they were still Canadians, and the family was homesick for America.

  They drifted with the slowing coastal currents as soon as the weather turned cold. When the GPS said they were near, he kept a careful eye toward the shore and, with great relief, saw the charred remains of a mansion on the hill.

  Ava stared at her last, cherished bag of peanut butter M&Ms. Only the blues remained; she had eaten the other colors already. She was saving the blues for a special day, but instead started eating them on a rainy Wednesday.

  It was sad, she knew she had no special days left ahead of her.

  The light morning rain drizzled down the outside of the window as she stared out into the rippling sea that had been her horizon for years. She placed two on her tongue and let them melt against the roof of her mouth, like the rain dissolved into the sea. She contemplated eating the rest in a massive handful, all at once. Oh what a few heavenly minutes that would bring. . . but, she refrained. She closed the bag and stored it away, for another rainy day.

  She turned on her laptop and added another entry in her diary about how there was nothing to write in her diary, then played a few card games.

  Gina came in from the rain and hung her plastic coat by the door. "Caught another tuna, Mom," she said, plopping down in a chair by the door as she took off her soaked shoes and wrapped a towel around her wet hair. "This is so odd, it's like they're totally confused. Like they got lost or something. Maybe it has something to do with the gaping hole in Panama, I don't know. They're not supposed to be here, and we keep finding them."

  Makayla poured her daughter a cup of coffee, then stirred in a pinch of powdered milk. "I like the taste of tuna steaks, so, maybe I just don't ever question it—"

  "Oh, I'm not complaining. I stuffed him in the holding net with the others." She sipped from the mug, "Which makes four tunas in the last month. That's like, maybe a half-ton of tuna. Even if we did get around to killing and cleaning them, we haven't had enough sunny days recently to dry them. There's no way to— we just might have to let them go if the weather doesn't turn. I mean, we can't even put the sail up in this mess, and it just doesn't seem to want to stop. It doesn't even seem to want to rain, just drizzle all the time!"

  The mom topped off her cup, then sipped silently.

  Nathan came in from his room, "When are we going to put ashore again?" He plopped down in a chair and pounded the table. "This floating indefinitely shit totally sucks!"

  "Not indefinitely—" Gina said.

  Nathan pointed at his older sister, "It's not like you care, you took your boyfriend with you—"

  "Now wait a minute!" Gina slammed down her mug, "He took us with him, and besides that, it's not like that anyway, Piss Head!"

  Nathan stood, balled fist by his side. But he wasn't alone; his older sister was more than willing to take their argument to the next level.

  Makayla separated the two, "Listen, both of you. I'm not happy about living in a tin can bobbing around in a rainy ocean. My garden has probably been destroyed by now, even covered like it is, but I'm not about to start swinging because of it." She pushed a pointed finger into Nathan's chest, "Say you beat up your sister, then what? Huh? Does that mean you get to go ashore today? Does it? Does it mean we get a house on land, get jobs, and life returns to normal? Not likely. We'll still be exactly where we are, right now." She turned to Gina, then pushed her back down in her seat.

  "He's never won a fight with me in his life—" Gina started.

  "And what do you get if you win?" her mom answered, pushing Nathan back into his chair. "Do you think he'll stop stewing about all this? You think those bruises will come with an insight on patience?"

  Gina stirred her mug, glared at her brother, then sipped.

  "I should make you two hug, but I won't." The mother pointed at each. "Unless this happens again."

  Jason climbed down from the control cabin, looked at everyone, but said nothing.

  Eventually, the rain broke to the mild, sunny weather that everyone expected, about on par for a winter in Hawaii, except they were off the shore of California. The tiny garden, though it suffered from being under the tarp for so long, was surprisingly resilient and continued to offer a taste of vegetables every few days.

  Mint leaves thrived and made a Christmassy addition to coffee that kept everyone in the season, despite the absence of a tree or the possibility of any gifts.

  Gina unzipped her Canadian sleeping bag on the floor of the control cabin as Jason smiled, then stepped in. She paused before turning down the lights, removed her clothes, then slipped in and zipped up the edge. It was chilly, but not cold.

  Their late night radio show started as they got comfortable on the floor.

  "Five years ago," George started his show, "this would have qualified as bad news. Today, I think we can all agree it rightly belongs in the win column. The government announced that unemployment has officially fallen to twenty-four percent. More importantly, and easily overlooked, the department of agriculture has announced that, for the first time since the disaster, we have produced enough food to feed our own country. For the first time, we didn't have to rely on imports from Canada. The department credits this to their mandated changes in crop varieties and a forced change in the public's diet away from corn, which has floundered poorly in the new climate.

  In other, otherwise bad news, it seems that the war between Iran and China has burned itself out. Iran either never had nuclear weapons, or they had them and were incapable of deploying them. Either way, they never managed to mount any kind of retaliation or effective resistance and the Chinese Republican Army now has full control of Iran's southern oil fields and has resumed deliveries to China.

  Skirmishes continue, but China isn't having the same problems we had in Iraq and Afghanistan. From the very beginning, they showed no compunction against killing everyone who approached their vehicles and positions. They showed no attempts to win hearts and minds, only to keep control of the fields.

  Suicide bombers were, like all civilians, machine-gunned hundreds of feet away from instillations and convoys. Roadside bombs were answered with artillery targeting high population centers and religious holy sites.

  Facing the realities of a truly brutal communist nuclear power, like China proved it could be in Tibet decades earlier, Iran is ironically calling on the US and its European allies to apply political pressure against China to end the occupation. A most interesting turn of events, indeed. I don't think any of our psychic guests could have predicted that Iran would ask for our help with the Chinese."

  While George paused for a break, Gina straightened a few uncomfortable wrinkles in the bag, then settled in for the night. Naked was as far as she was going. . . this time.

  "California," George continued after the break, "once the bread basket of the US, is starting to show signs of recovering, with agriculture leading the way. In other news. . . "