Take only what you need
I look at the knife, at the facón, in my hands. “This feels familiar …”
“That’s quite a fancy-looking knife you have there, William,” Pem says.
“It’s a facón,” I say.
“What’s that?”
“I’m … not sure.”
“Oh. Okay.” Pem washes her face with her paw in small circles.
Holding it, I feel something old, something …
I drop it.
It sticks in the ashy sand again.
Pem stops washing. Her eyes adjust. She looks from it to me. “Aren’t you gonna take it?”
“No,” I say.
“Why not?”
I look around at all the things sticking out of the sand. “These are here for some reason.”
Pem looks around. “Nah. Just stuff that’s been carried in here by the river.”
“I don’t think so.”
Pem struts past me. “Well okay then. Ready to leave?”
I’m not. But my ringer finger itches.
“Yes,” I say.
“K. Let’s go!”
We walk outside the cave.
The river looks calmer than when we entered. The earth is stable once more, but the landscape is changed.
“Are we even in the same place?” I ask.
Pem looks at me with large eyes. “How should I know? You’re the one with the finger. Speaking of which, I’m hungry. Can you scare us up some grub?”
“I don’t really think it works like that, Pem …”
My ring finger raises, pointing down river.
“Sure it does!” Pem says. “We do this every day, William!”
“Yeah, you said that before.”
“Still don’t remember?”
“No.”
“Don’t sweat it. I’m sure it’ll come back to you.”
We walk down the river.
“What do you know about the Station, Pem?”
“Not much. It’s where we sleep.”
“Right, but you know other things about me, right?”
“Sure!”
“So what do you know about me?”
“Oh, I thought you were asking about the Station itself!” Pem squints her eyes.
“Well, I guess I was but …”
“Let’s see … you write sometimes. You get drunk and yell sometimes. You …”
“Wait, what?” I ask.
“Oh sure! You work too much …”
“What do I do for work?”
“I dunno. You do it away from me, so …”
“Oh. Right.”
I feel tight in the throat but ask my next question anyway. “What about the woman?”
“What woman?”
“The one who lived with us in the Station.”
Pem looks ahead. “I don’t want to talk about her.”
“Why not?” I ask.
“She left us.”
“Why?”
Pem catches sight of some fish in a small eddy. “Yum!”
She pounces at them.
“Come on, Pem. Don’t avoid me.”
Pem’s eyes trace the movements of the fish, her head moving as they do, her paw poised in the air. She strikes with her mouth and gets a fish.
She chews at it.
I watch her eat it, and I grimace.
“She’s dead to me,” Pem says.
