Ship Breaker Read Online Free PDF Page B

existed, they’d put him with his dad, and that meant they were bad news. Better to think life was random than to think the world was out to get you. Fates were all right if you were Pima and got lucky with a good mom and a dad who was nice enough to have died before he could start beating you. But the rest of the time? Watch out.
    Pima’s mother looked up, her dark brown eyes studying him. “Then you get right with whatever gods you worship. I don’t care if it’s that elephant-headed Ganesha or Jesus Christ, or the Rust Saint or your dead mother, but someone was looking after you. Don’t spit on that gift.”
    Nailer nodded obediently. Pima’s mother was the best thing he had going. He didn’t want to tick her off. Her shack of plastic tarps and old boards and scavenged palms was the safest place he knew. Here, he could always count on shared crawdads or rice, and even on days when there was nothing to eat, well, there was still the certainty that within these walls—under blue dangling Fates Eyes and a mottled statue of the Rust Saint—no one would try to cut him, or fight him, or steal from him. Here, fear and tension fell away in the presence of Sadna’s strength.
    Nailer moved gingerly, testing the stitching and cleaning work she’d done. “It feels good, Sadna. Thanks for patching me.”
    “I hope it does you some good.” She didn’t look up. She was washing the stainless-steel knives in a bucket of water, and the water had turned red with her work. “You’re young, you’re not addicted to anything. And say what you like about your father, you’ve got that Lopez tenacity. You have a chance.”
    “You think I’ll get an infection?”
    Pima’s mother shrugged, her corded muscles rippling under her tank. Her black skin gleamed in the candlelight of her shack. She’d left her own crew and shift to make sure that he’d been cleaned up. Dropped a quota, thanks to Pima, who had had the sense to run for her when she heard that her missing crewboy was down in the shallows instead of up in the ship.
    “I’m not sure, Nailer,” she said. “You took a lot of cuts. Skin’s supposed to protect you, but water’s dirty here, and you were in oil.” She shook her head. “I’m not a doctor.”
    He made a joke of it. “I don’t need a doctor. I just need a needle and thread. Patch me up like a sail, I’m good as new.”
    She didn’t smile. “Keep those clean. If you get fever or the skin starts to pus, you find me. We’ll put maggots on it and see if that will help.”
    Nailer made a face, but he nodded at her fierce glare and gingerly sat up. He put his feet down on the floor, watching as Sadna bustled around the single room, carrying his blood water out into the dark, then coming back. He straightened and carefully made his way to the door. He pushed the plastic scavenge door aside so that he could see down the beach.
    Even at night, the wrecks glowed with work, people laboring by torchlight as they continued the steady job of disassembly. The ships showed as huge black shadows against the bright star points and the surge of the Milky Way above. The torch lights flickered, bobbing and moving. Sledge noise rang across the water. Comforting sounds of work and activity, the air tanged with the coal reek of smelters and the salt fresh breeze coming off the water. It was beautiful.
    Before almost dying, he hadn’t known it. But now that he was out, Bright Sands Beach was the best thing he’d ever seen. He couldn’t stop looking at it all, couldn’t stop smiling at the people walking along the sand, at the cookfires where people roasted tilapia they’d hooked in the shallows, at the jangle of music and the shout of drinking from the nailsheds. It was all beautiful.
    Almost as beautiful as the sight of Sloth getting kicked down the beach, her eyes wet with tears for herself, while he was getting stitched up. Bapi had put his knife through her light crew tattoos himself, disowning her completely.