Either the Beginning or the End of the World Read Online Free PDF Page B

old days, the day before yesterday. He leaps onto the pier. Despite the tension between us, I feel the rush of relief when he wraps his arms around me. The cold from his body crosses into mine. But I look past him to the crewman still on board.
    â€œMighty cold night for you,” he says, but he sees me looking on board, turns away, shakes his head. The crewman’s face is buried in a hoodie and slicker. But I already know it’s our old friend, Pete. “We got some work to do,” he says. Pete is hosing down the deck. The driver is here to drive the totes of shrimp to Gloucester. They work fast. Pete’s hands work with a rhythm. He hooks each tote on the winch, the crane lifts, the green box swings and rises to the pier.
    The pink sun descends. For a while it hangs between the towers of the lift bridge that spans the river, the bridge nearest the co-op and the opening to the sea.
    â€œCount ’em, thirty-four totes,” my father calls up from the boat. I will write the number in the book at home. Thirty-four. A good enough trip.
    â€œCan we go soon? Got work tonight,” I say. I think of forlorn Vincent, my manager at Dunkin’ Donuts. He hates me being late. I always am.
    My father says he’ll drive us home, then come back to finish up. The wind cuts through me, and the sun descends without a trace into the river. I leap into the truck that’s weighted with lines and buoys and thick with the smell of fish and gear. I love the smell. I miss my father and want us back. The way we were without a mother.
    â€œDad, you don’t have to go to Chincoteague. We’ll have more good days.”
    I don’t say my mother and grandmother won’t have to move into our house.
    He says, “Shrimping’s almost done, and it just got started. I’m going.”
    We clank round the turns in the rattly truck that might be colder inside than the bare outdoors. He downshifts, and the snowy night muffles the truck’s complaining screams. At our house the stack of traps spills over the driveway. The truck’s headlights catch the blue dinghy.
    â€œDad,” I say, “why don’t we sell some of this at the winter market? Sell it ourselves.”
    â€œCan’t,” he says. “Don’t have a permit.”
    â€œWe’d get more money. We could make a lot with thirty-four totes.”
    â€œLike the way you think, boss. Maybe next year,” he says, then lets it drop.
    His mind is someplace else. And I also think of the phone number at Kilim.
    Atlantic Co. Local Broker. Good Prices.
    We begin to unload the truck, and we stash a bucket of shrimp in a bin with ice. My father holds some back to give away or stock up in the freezer. “What if I take some to Atlantic? See what kind of deal we can get there?”
    He shrugs. “Never saw them to support local fishermen. But you’re the boss.”
    The moon plays through the trunks of the trees. I race to open the door, and Pilot flies into the snow dust. That’s when I see my mother’s yellow Corolla slide up in front of our house.

YOU THE DAUGHTER
    In winter I have seen my grandmother grow orange peppers in her bedroom, saving the seeds for next year’s garden. I saw it when my father and I visited my mother one Christmas. He had said, “Come on, it’s Christmas. You need to see her.”
    I’d sat slumped in my mother’s room, one that she rented with two other girls, all of them housekeepers at the Ashworth By the Sea near the strip at Hampton Beach. My grandmother slept there, too.
    I was nine and sullen and dressed like a boy. That’s what my grandmother said. I only remember I loved racing down to the river, filling bait bags with herring if my dad was hauling traps, stretching belly-down on the pier, calling out to the seals. How else was a kid going to dress?
    That day, I was supposed to be at Rosa’s, decorating little wreaths and reindeer cookies