COASTERS

By AE Stueve

Ma says Grandpa is ‘rough around the edges.’

This morning he is on the roof screaming into the bullhorn and I’m reminded that this description isn’t strong enough.

“Coasters!” he bellows a word I’m not supposed to use, ever. My mama says it’s ‘der-og-a-tory.’ I’m not sure what that means, only that it’s bad.

“Coasters!” he repeats and repeats and repeats. Then he adds, “Wets!” That word is even worse. No one but the worst people use that word, the worst people and my grandpa sometimes.

The sun isn’t even up yet. Out my bedroom screen, I can see the sky is just a blue shade separated from the land by a fresh red cut that keeps getting bigger and bigger. It’s like one of Grandpa’s great old gods is bleeding out over the horizon. I don’t like it when he tells stories about them.

“Go get him to stop before he wakes up the entire pod!” Mama hisses as she runs into my room.

“Why me?” I grumble even though I am already getting out of bed. 

“He listens to you!” she says sharply.

I sigh. She’s right. “I wish Pa was back.”

“Well, he’s not.” She crosses her arms as though about to really let me have it. Then something happens inside her and she softens. “Craw, please do this.” I think it’s because she’s worried about Pa. He’s been gone far longer than normal on his latest scouting mission.

Grandpa’s voice shouts again about wets and coasters. Ma cringes. “He has to stop. You know those words are bad. He knows too. I don’t know why we haven’t shoved that man off the platform yet.”

“Ma!”

“Do you want the pols to send their gunmen here?” she asks, disregarding me. There isn’t anger in her voice though. There is fear. “They’ll do it. You know that.”

“After what Grandpa did last time? I doubt it,” I say, grouchy.

“You’re old enough to know it’s Provost Omaha who keeps the pols away, not your idiot grandpa. There is a line of people eager to take our job.”

I sigh again. “I’m on it, Ma.”

It’s already so humid outside that my t-shirt and shorts cling to my body as though holding on for dear life. 

Thank God for our wind catchers, I think as I shimmy up the ladder to Grandpa. The sun blazes even though it’s low in the sky. The wet air invites all sorts of buggies out to eat me. Luckily, Ma soaks me in her special repellent so most of them land on my exposed skin and zip away like I was one of those fancy zappers the pols have. 

“Grandpa!” I shout, climbing through the hatch onto the roof. Our house is one of the oldest in the pod and the tar roof can get kind of squishy when the heat really cranks up to the highs. It’s going to be like that today. I can feel it when my feet hit the sticky blackness. As soon as I can get grandpa to calm down, Ma’s going to put me out here with the cooler and the flats to make sure nothing seeps away and messes with our power. 

It’s awful when that happens.

“What, boy?” Grandpa’s voice is a scratchy, evil thing, especially when he calls me ‘boy.’ He raises one bushy eyebrow in my direction and gives me his best angry face. It’s probably the best angry face in the pod, cut through with criss-crossing scars and half covered in a scraggly beard, the man can’t help but look scary. It might have more to do with the scar running down his chest though. Half hidden by his beard, the pink line etched into the tight brown skin right there above his heart gives him a weird kind of power that I know he’s proud of. That’s why he never wears a shirt. The idea that someone as poor as him could have had surgery that kept him alive when, by all rights he should’ve been dead, is frightening because–I think anyway–people aren’t sure how old he is. Old enough to have been alive in the Before Time when doctors were everywhere.

That’s scary.

But I’m not scared of him. He’s my grandpa. “Ma wants you to come down and stop yelling,” I say, thinking that I might not be scared of him, but sometimes it is really, really hard to like him.

“She’s going to think otherwise when she sees what I see.” He grunts his disdain at his daughter’s foolishness and my part in it. “Take a look for yourself if you don’t believe me.” He tosses me the binoculars. “I’m just doing our job, aren’t I?”

I humor him. What else am I supposed to do? I think I’m going to catch the familiar sight of a small family of sad and dying coastal refugees. There are always a few of them following a dangerous road away from the certain death of the rising ocean toward the probable death of our pod, Treetown, at the base of Highland. 

That’s not what I see.

I see an army. 

There are red banners and black guns, even a few horses amongst the armored soldiers. The banners have symbols I’ve never seen. On a sea of red there is a white, statuesque woman holding up a flaming torch. Underneath it are words printed in blue I don’t understand: Dona mihi libertatem aut mortem. 

I look at my grandpa. 

He offers me a sad grin. “See,” he says calmly, “I’m right to holler, ain’t I? And did you see behind that army? There are refugees for miles!”

I gulp and scream for Ma.

She comes up, angry, of course. “I had to leave your sister alone!” she slaps me with her words. “You want a monker to get her?”

“No, Ma, I don’t–”

“What do you want?” 

I don’t reply. The last thing I need is a backhand against my sweaty temple. I offer her the binoculars instead and hang my head.

“Look,” Grandpa speaks up. His voice shakes now but not the way it usually does, not with anger, but with fear. I can tell because it’s so quiet.

Ma sighs. She does that a lot these days. She looks through the binoculars and gasps.

“They’ve mobilized,” Grandpa says. “I told the pols this was going to happen eventually. I told ‘em! They’ve come for everything we have! Just like I said! But why would they listen to an old lookout? Why would they pay attention to the words of the highest man in the settlement?”

Ma takes a deep breath and gives the binoculars back to Grandpa. “We don’t have much for them to take,” she says.

“We don’t,” Grandpa says, “but the pols do, up in the trees.” Grandpa grabs the binoculars from Ma like a hawk grabs a fish.

Ma places her hands on my shoulders. All of her anger has evaporated and her eyes shine with a kind of sweetness I don’t see too often these days. “Go down. Get your sister,” she says, soft but firm. “Take her up to Provost Omaha’s place. Tell him Shaney needs him now and that you two need to stay there. You hear me?” She grips my shoulders tighter.

“Yeah, yeah, Ma, I hear you,” I stutter. 

She pulls me in and hugs me tight. It almost hurts.

When she backs away I see tears in her eyes. I look at Grandpa. There is worry etched into the scars on his face. His long gray hair hangs limply at the sides of his head and rests on his shoulders like a hood. A few loose strands straddle the pink line in the middle of his chest just below his beard. There’s a grimness to him I’ve never seen, even at his most angry. “I’m getting my gun,” he says.

“Pa,” Ma says, “your heart.”

He waves the words away like an annoying buggie and scurries down the ladder.

“Ma, I–”

“Hurry now!” Ma says before I can offer her my own weak response. “Go!”

I climb down the ladder and find Trin in her pen squirming with a stuffed pink bear with a tattered heart on its white belly. She squeals happily when she sees me but fusses like a madman when I pull her from the bear.

“Fine,” I say, and grab the bear. She yanks it from my hand like its food. Babies. “We got to go, Trin,” I say. “We’re going to visit the provost’s house. Doesn’t that sound fun?”

It’s not fun.

It’s awful.

Normally, I love walking through town. I can smell the flowers, wave at the people, skip through the puddles, and if I’m lucky, get caught in one of those quick’uns. Those cool rains that come down for a few minutes are about the best ever. No quick’uns this morning though. Only heat. And no time to chat to the folks in Down Saddle Creek. Some shout at me as I run over the muddy path and through their slop gardens. Some try to stop me as I pass their huts and see them digging through the earth for creepers and the like. 

Can’t stop though. Today I got to run. I got to run to the uppers. I hate it there. Climbing stairs with Trin in my arms is hard enough, but then walking through the cement and plastic neighborhood built into the trees where all the rich folk live is worse when you’re covered in mud from running so fast. They stare at me. Some shout, angry at seeing someone like me come through like a maniac. 

No one stops me though. Thanks to my ma, they know better. If it wasn’t for our stilt-house on the edge of the forest just this side of the wall, they’d never know about the wide world, the possible invaders. Some of them say they don’t need us, that the wall is enough, but they never say it to our face, so they don’t mean it. They need us to act as lookouts. 

Even though if they’d just try, most of their windows are high enough, they’d probably see anyone coming just as easy as we do. But they don’t try. Grandpa said once that the people in the uppers think lookout duty is ‘below them’ so they ‘close their blinds and only look up and away from the coast, never down and back.’ He also said, ‘the past is the future and the future is the past,’ but he was drunk and I’m not sure what any of it meant. 

But I do know that without us, no one would ever be warned when visitors come, good or bad. And if it wasn’t for my dad, whose job is to go talk to other groups, they’d never communicate with the outside world. Sure, we’re dirty and we’re poor, but we’re important. Or, at least, my grandpa and my parents are. I always wonder why we aren’t… I don’t know… richer… if they are so important.

But I don’t understand grownup stuff. 

When I finally make it to Provost Omaha’s, a giant thing of plastic and McParts balanced on the biggest tree deep in the forest, I take a few big breaths and set Trin down on their front step. Once I catch my breath I make to knock, but the door flings open and Provost Omaha stares down at me, pale blue eyes wide in shock. They really are pale too, as pale as his white skin. Weak and sickly. And cold.

“Craw!” he shouts. “What are you doing here?” He looks at Trin playing with her bear at my feet. “And with Trin?” His eyes drift past us, looking for Ma. A quick panic rushes to his voice when he says, “Is everything okay?” his cheeks flushing pink. “Where’s Shaney? Where’s your ma?”

I take one more deep breath. “She sent me. She said you have to go to them and keep us here. Something’s coming, sir, something bad.”

He looks at me, gazes past me again, through the wet green trees in the forest I ran through to get here, over the tops of the houses in Down Saddle Creek where I know he can just make out our stilthouse on the edge of town. 

He knows my grandpa’s job, my mom’s job. I turn to follow his eyes. I can see our house through the leaves and branches, sticking out like a toothpick above the others. It’s just a black point though. I can’t even tell if Grandpa is still on the roof, let alone Ma. I haven’t heard any gunfire, so that’s a good sign. I cock my head to the side, thinking that it actually is difficult to see through all of this green. They really don’t even need to close their blinds to hide from the world up here. 

“Is there a group with a red flag?” Omaha finally asks.

I nod, my face probably going as pale as his. “There is. Lots of flags. Big group.”

“They’ve finally come for us,” he says, looking like a clueless doll in fancy clothes. He’s lost in some kind of fear I can’t understand and don’t want to. Then, as if snapping back to reality, he reaches for me and places a hand on my shoulder. It was comforting when Ma did it. I don’t like it when he does it. He bends down to look me in the eye. He is scary, or scared, I can’t tell which. Both? 

“Go inside,” he says. “Tell Nessa I said to make the call. She’ll know what that means. She’ll also know what to do with you and Trin.” 

He runs down his front walk toward the gate that leads to the main path. I stare after him, mouth hanging open like I’m a dummone. He turns, feeling my stare, and shouts, “Go!” like my pa does sometimes. I’m brought back to my senses and running inside his house faster than you can say quick’un.

Inside I find his housemaid Nessa and we make our way to the lower levels where she makes whatever call it is that Provost Omaha wants her to make. She’s definitely scared. I can tell because when I tell her to make the call she drops the pan she was holding. Also, her already white skin goes pale like Provost Omaha’s. It makes me more scared than I already am. 

Trin, thankfully, doesn’t know what is going on. But I think she can feel my worry, Nessa’s worry, everyone’s worry.

Come to think of it, I guess I don’t know what is going on either. But I know everyone is scared, so Trin and I are basically the same right now. Nessa puts us in a plain gray room carved out of the tree and lined with hard, gray plastic, then she opens a door and disappears inside it. A second later I hear her dial up someone on her webcom. I can only half hear the conversation she has but I can tell her words are clipped and filled with panic. And whoever she is talking to isn’t happy.

When she enters the room where I’m holding Trin on my lap, she smiles. 

It’s fake.

“So how are you, Craw?” she asks. Her voice shakes but it’s subtle. She’s trying to hide her fear. But I’m smart and what Ma calls ‘pers-ep-tive.’

“I’m fine,” I say. “How are you?”

She falters. “Oh,” she says, “oh you know.” Her eyes dart to the east, the direction that those red flags are coming from.

“What’s going on?” I ask.

She coos at Trin, her words lighter than they should be, considering the topic. “I suppose I can tell you…”

“Tell me what?”

“We’ve been waiting for your father to return from a scouting mission. He was due back weeks ago.”

“I know.”

She continues like I didn’t say anything, “Your grandpa saw an army coming, didn’t he?”

I don’t answer.

She takes a deep breath like she’s suppressing panic. “He did.”

“Are they… um…” I trail off. I know what Grandpa would call them but I know I’m not supposed to use those words either.

“Wets,” she finishes for me, the word comes out like a gross wad of phlegm. Hearing it makes me feel bad for them, for her, and, for some reason, for me. Maybe it just makes me feel bad for everyone. “Call them what they are,” she continues. There’s an anger that frightens me. “Your grandpa is right to hate them.”

“But, aren’t you from the coast?”

She slaps me.

“My parents brought me here when the borders were open. We were invited. We were not the idiotic and arrogant rabble knocking on our door now. We didn’t come with guns and knives and with conquest in our eyes. We came as supplicants, begging for aid before we knew the end was near.”

I rub my cheek and though my instincts tell me to say that I am sorry, I can’t bring myself to. I look her in the eye and hold her hate there with me. “I’m leaving,” I say, handing her Trin who is still mindlessly playing with that bear.

She doesn’t even try to stop me.

I walk back slowly, something in me holding me back. I know what it is: fear. When I finally reach out house, alone, Omaha is nowhere to be seen, but Grandpa and Ma are on the roof, using two sets of binoculars to look out at the amassing army. Grandpa’s rifle hangs from his shoulder. He’s turned on the spotlight we use at night to scan the horizon every fifteen minutes as though it will be of any use in the daytime.

“What’s going on?” I say. 

“I tried to blind ‘em,” Grandpa says, pointing at the light. “It didn’t work.”

I nod. “Where’s Omaha?”

“Where’s Trin?” Ma asks sharply.

“I left her at Omaha’s house with Nessa.”

Ma sighs. “Why are you here?”

I shrug. 

“Craw?” She raises an eyebrow.

“Are we getting invaded?” I ask. “Is this why Pa has been gone so long? Where did Omaha go?”

She sighs. “Nessa talks too much.”

“Ma, I’m thirteen. I can handle it.”

“I told you to tell him ages ago,” Grandpa chimes in.

“Oh for God’s sake,” Ma says. She looks from Grandpa to me and back again, then back one more time. “Fine.” She places both hands on my shoulders. “There is a large, armed group at our doorstep. Omaha went out to talk to them,” she explains. “Your dad has been spying on the Easterners for a long time.”

“If you’re going to tell him the truth, tell him everything,” Grandpa mumbles.

Ma’s lips go thin. “Fine, Pa,” she says and hugs me tight before she pulls away and begins again. “Your father has been acting as an emissary–”

“Christ, girl!” Grandpa jumps in. He waves a hand at me, exasperated. “Do you really think he knows what an emissary is?”

“It’s a diplomatic representative, Grandpa.”

Grandpa shakes his head. “Well…” he stammers. “Well, I guess… I guess go on.”

Ma closes her eyes and, as best as I can guess, prays for patience. “Your father meets with them periodically. There’s a rather large community out there–far closer than you think and far more powerful. He’s been trying to convince them–”

“The coasters!” Grandpa shouts.

Ma shoots him a look that could kill. “They are people, Pa, like us! You of all people should understand that.”

He huffs indignation and disdain as he turns from us and looks through the binoculars again.

Ma sighs and studies me with an immediately gentle eye. “Your father has been trying to convince these people to stay where they are, or, barring that, go around our community.”

“To attack the next one?” I ask.

“To save ours.”

“Why are they here then?”

“Isn’t it obvious, Craw?” Grandpa yells. “Peace talks have ceased!”

“But how? Why?”

“The ocean is coming to claim its own. They need higher land.”

“Higher land?”

“They need ours, damnit!” Grandpa flings a fist into the air. “I should’ve been allowed to shoot every one of those dirty coasters who came our way! If we’d had a pile of skulls at our border like they do in Hellsink this wouldn’t be happening now!” He mutters obscenities while blinking into the binoculars.

Ma ignores him. “This could be bad, Craw,” she says. “They’re just people, like us, scared. But they’re also desperate.” She paused as if trying to decide what to say next. “I need you to go back to Omaha’s place,” she finally says. “You’ll be safe there with Nessa and your sister, at least until help can arrive.”

“What about you? What about Pa?” I’m crying now. I can’t help it.

Ma shakes her head. “Don’t worry about us.”

“Holy shit!” Grandpa yells, pointing at the army and squinting. “Look through your binos!”

Ma does as he says and gasps, dropping the binoculars.

I pick them up. Ma’s trying to say something but can’t force the words out.

I move slowly. The whole world moves slowly. The binoculars come to my eyes. It’s like I’m not even holding them, moving them. I turn. I face the army approaching us. 

My pa is at the head of the procession. 

He’s leading them. Omaha is at his side, hands tied and his face swollen with bruises.

“What does this mean?” I ask.

“I don’t know,” Ma says. “I don’t know.”

Within a few minutes the army is at our gates. Ma is in shock. I know that behind us the town is in a panic. Since they’re so close now, there is no way to ignore them. I know messengers are being sent deeper into the woods to the more remote villages of the pod, through the trails and up the mountain trees higher and higher. I know poorer folks like us are digging in deep to their water tunnels, hoping they stay dry for the journey up and away. It’s a gamble I don’t know if I’d be able to make. 

At least facing the Easterners, there is a chance of survival. But a tunnel flood? There is no chance against water. None.

“I need to call the sirens,” Grandpa says. “Then I need to shoot.”

“We will not fire the first shot, Pa!” Ma says sternly. 

“Bah!” he gripes.

When the army is near enough so that I can make out my father clearly, I see him reach into a pouch at his side and pull out a bullhorn. “Ed,” he says loudly into it, his booming voice announcing his power, “don’t do anything stupid.”

“You’ve already got the lock on that, don’t you, boy?” Grandpa whispers through his teeth.

I see the way my dad’s shoulders slump at Grandpa’s words. Even though he couldn’t possibly have heard them, he feels their intent. “Ed,” he says calmly, his voice wavering some, “you know why I’m here and you know why the provost is in shackles. Don’t be like this. There are doctors here, Ed, actual doctors from Before. And more than that. There are scientists and farmers and builders. They don’t want to take over. They want to join. They want to help. Think of your heart.”

“No,” Grandpa shouts back. “It’s not possible.”

“What’s he talking about, Grandpa?” I ask.

Ma is crying.

“The ocean,” Pa says. I can hear his voice, strong and sad. “You knew it was coming. We all did. But there are people here who have ideas, ideas we can use to help us not only survive, but live. We need to let them in.”

I look around the roof for our own bullhorn. It’s sitting on the top of our supply box. I pull it to my lips. “What does that mean?” I shout into it.

“It means the coast is near enough now that we’re on the edge of the world,” Pa answers, a high pitched waver to his voice that I do not like. “But if we work with the Easterners, we have hope to survive.”

“Do we have to live with the–with them now?” I yell, tears surround my words. 

“The provost and his bosses don’t want us to,” Pa shouts up. “But we have to. The ocean has come for them and it will come for us. As enemies we’ll all die, son. We must be one people now more than ever.”

Ma sits hard, almost like someone or something pushed her down. She seems weak for the first time I’ve ever known.

“I know, Shaney,” Pa says to Ma, seeing her sit like that. “I’m sorry, but I saw it with my own eyes.” He looks back at the army behind him before facing us again and continuing, “These are our people now.”

“I don’t understand,” I whisper to Ma.

“I know it’s scary. It was scary for me too, but we must join them to survive. We must,” Pa says. There is a strange sound in his words. They are heavy but light with… hope?

Grandpa wrenches the bullhorn from my limp hand. “Or what, your army will kill us all?” he shoots back.

Pa shakes his head. “No,” he says, “that is not the plan.”

“Stop!” Nessa screams from below. 

Ma, Grandpa, and I look down at the hatch as Nessa climbs through. She has Trin in a pack at her chest. “Stop!” she shouts again.

Trin, completely oblivious, plays with that bear and coos.

“Nessa, what are you doing here?” Ma asks, shock dancing at the edges of her words.

“I’m here to end this,” Nessa says, unstrapping Trin.

“What are you–”

“Don’t come closer,” Nessa screams as she holds Trin to her side, hanging on to her arm so that she dangles out over the edge of the roof. “I’ll drop her,” she adds softly.

Any objections or actions from Ma, Grandpa, or me fall away at the sight of Trin hanging over the sky.

Grandpa clutches his chest.

“Nessa, what are you doing?” Pa calls. I can hear the tremble in his words. So can Nessa.

Nessa yanks the bullhorn from Grandpa’s hand and shouts into it, “Giving you no option. Turn around or your child dies.”

Grandpa backs away, uncharacteristically quiet. His mouth hangs open wide.

“No!” Ma screams, crawling on her knees toward Nessa. “Please, Nessa!”

Even Omaha’s eyes are wide with fear down there.

“Nessa, it does not have to be this way,” Pa says, trying to stay calm. “We don’t have to have war. We can have peace, together, and live, all of us!”

Trin starts crying.

She drops her bear.

I watch it fall. I listen to it land. When it hits the muddy swamp meters below, something breaks inside me and I move. With one hand I reach out and grab my sister’s leg, pulling her. I depend on Nessa’s sweat to weaken her grip. With my other hand, I shove Nessa. It’s a gamble my grandpa would be proud of, even if I’m terrified.

In a moment of time too short to measure, it’s over.

Nessa drops the bullhorn to the roof and screams as she falls forward. The sound she makes when her body hits the soft, muddy earth is different from the sound Trin’s bear made, and it will be with me forever.

Trin cries as I pull her into my arms and fall back.

Below us, there is an audible gasp, not only from my pa, but from seemingly everyone.

Next to me, Grandpa is on his knees. Tears stream down his wizened face. His mouth opens and closes, opens and closes. One hand clutches his chest.

Ma, blubbering, scoots over to Trin and me and hugs and kisses and hugs and kisses until I shove her away.

Grandpa falls to his hands. “I’m dying,” he whispers. Just like that, all the strength seems to leave him and he falls, face first, onto the roof.

“What’s going on up there?” Pa screams into the bullhorn.

Ma picks the one up from next to Grandpa. “I…” she wavers, “I… I think Pa just died.”

“I’m sorry,” Pa says, “I didn’t–”

“It’s not your fault,” Ma says. “It’s his.” She stands, hefting Trin to her side and looking down at the Easterners.

“Let us in,” Pa says softly, “and… and reinforce our walls not to keep out people though, to keep out water. Build taller homes. Go higher, work together.”

Ma nods and drops the bullhorn. “Come on Craw,” she says, “we need to open the gate.”

THE END

---

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

AE Stueve teaches writing, photography, filmmaking, and design at Bellevue West High and the University of Nebraska at Omaha. His novels, short stories, poems, and essays can be found online and in print. To learn more about him, check out his website: aestueve.com and follow him on twitter or Instagram @aestueve.