Amy Plum - After the End

“Well, now, what do we have here?” the man asks. He picks up the stone and fits a black spyglass type of lens to one eye. “A gold nugget”—he pulls a measuring stick out from beneath the counter—“measuring almost two inches.” He weighs it in his hand and then places it on a metal contraption, squinting as he reads numbers off a little screen. “Weighs a hundred twenty-five grams.” He peers at it again through the lens. “Low to medium quality, I would say. Well, little missy, today’s your lucky day, because I have just the buyer for this sort of nugget, and I can offer you the top-notch price of five hundred dollars.”

There is something wrong with his face. I lay a hand across Neruda’s head, my thumb pressing one of his temples and my middle finger the other. I grasp my opal as I crouch down to whisper into his ear, “How do you feel about this man?”

The man chuckles nervously. “Do you always consult your dog for your business decisions?” he jibes, and a bead of sweat forms on his brow just below the black pelt.

I stare at him and feel the tingle as I connect to Neruda’s thoughts. Animals don’t think in words. It is my dog’s primal instincts that I Read, and Neruda’s instincts tell me the man cannot be trusted. My dog sees him as an inferior pack member that must be expelled to ensure the security of the others.

I stand and hold my palm out. “My nugget,” I insist, and wait.

The man’s hand trembles slightly. “Let’s not be hasty, girlie. I’ll check my charts and see if I can do any better on that offer.”

I pluck my nugget from his fingers before he has a chance to pull his arm away, and turn his scales around toward me. Placing the gold atop the scales as I saw him do, I read aloud from a shiny strip near the base. “Two hundred grams, not a hundred twenty-five.”

I nod toward a sign I saw when I entered the store. “That says you pay forty dollars per gram of gold. According to your chart, you should be offering me eight thousand dollars for this nugget.” I slip the stone back into its bag.

“Now just wait a minute here, missy. You have no idea what standards the pricing is based on. A gold nugget is not as valuable as gold dust, which is what is melted down to make this high-quality jewelry.” He waves his hand to display the ugly jewelry inside the case.

His eyes tell me that he is lying. That my nugget is rare, and that he desperately wants it. I think of Whit’s satisfaction whenever one of us finds a nugget in the Denali riverbeds. “That may serve us well someday,” he says before ordering us to take it to the shelter and stash it with the rest. Unlike plentiful opals and semiprecious stones, the gold nuggets are hard to come by, and this man’s excitement confirms their value.

“I saw another ‘cash for gold’ sign by the waterfront,” I say, and nestle the bag into my rucksack.

“Stop!” he shrieks. Sweat courses down the sides of his face. “Okay, I’ll give you seven thousand,” he says, pain audible in his tone, “as well as some valuable information.”

I hesitate. “What kind of information?”

“Someone is looking for you,” he responds.

We stare at each other in silence for a minute before I fish the bag back out of my rucksack. He ogles it and licks his lips.

“Talk,” I say.

He walks back to where a red plastic apparatus is attached to a wall. Telephone, I think, as I recall the picture of a similar one in the EB.

The man pulls a card off a board stuck full of scraps of paper and slaps it down on the counter in front of me. On it is printed a ten-digit number, and scribbled in pencil in one corner is “Girl w/star.”

“They were big guys. Dressed in camo,” the man says. “Came in here yesterday saying they would pay top dollar for information on your whereabouts.”

My chest clenches painfully. The man’s description sounds like Whit’s captors, the big men I saw in the fire holding his arms. Why are they looking for me? “What does this mean?” I ask, pointing to the scribbled words.

“They described you as a teenage girl, long black hair, probably accompanied by two huskies.” He hesitates and studies my face suspiciously. “And what looks like a gold starburst in one eye.”

My starburst. The same as the rest of the clan children. The sign that we are in close union with nature. Yara-Readers. Our parents tell us it is something to be proud of—an inheritance from the earth. But now it marks me as someone to pursue.

And how do these men know what I look like anyway? I could ask the same about how they found my clan. Or how they knew I wasn’t with the rest of the group. But the knowledge that they may actually recognize me chills me to the bone.

I slip the card into my rucksack, pull the nugget back out of the bag, and place it on the counter. The man makes a grabbing motion, but I keep my hand on it. “Count the money out for me first,” I command, and he darts to the back of the room, disappearing through a doorway and then emerging with a handful of paper money.

He begins counting it, and I watch the numbers on each bill as he does, totaling them in my head until he reaches seven thousand. He pushes the stack across the counter toward me, not even looking at my face. His eyes are only for the nugget.

I withdraw my hand, and he plucks up the gold and pushes it under the counter. I have no doubt that the value of my piece is much more than what he has given me. I only hope that it is enough to obtain a boat ticket to wherever it is I am supposed to go.

I turn to leave, and the dogs leap to their feet, rushing before me to the door. They are as uncomfortable as I am in this artificial space with this artificial man.

“A word of advice, girlie,” the man calls as I open the door and gulp in the frosty outdoor air. I glance back at him, and his face has changed. He got what he wanted and his greed is satisfied, so he is happy. “Take out that weird contact lens, cut the hair, and lose the dogs.”

I nod at him and let Beckett and Neruda run outside. “And if I were you,” he yells, as I shut the door behind me, “I would get as far as you can—as fast as you can—out of town.”

I decide to take his advice. At least what I understood of it. Whit’s captors are sure to be watching the harbor, so it will be my last stop. Before that, I have a lot to do.

The woman in Beulah’s Hair Emporium takes one look at the huskies and calls, “It’s cold outside, so the dogs can come in, but they have to stay by the door. We have sanitation regulations, you know.”

I flick my finger, and they immediately drop to lie next to each other under a potted tree. “Wow, you’ve got yourself some obedient dogs there,” Beulah (I suppose) says, and instructing me to hang my coat on a rack, leads me to a chair. “What would you like, dear?”

I point to one of the giant hairstyle photos hanging on the wall.

Beulah gapes at me. “Oh, honey, you can’t mean that. You have such beautiful long hair.” I stare back at her, determined.

A half hour later the dogs and I leave. My hair looks just like the boy’s in the picture.

On the same street as Beulah’s Hair Emporium is a large, bright clothes store called the Gap. I leave the dogs at the door and follow the MEN’S DEPARTMENT signs. The artificial light and mirrors make me dizzy, but I deep-breathe and walk downstairs to an underground floor. The stale air makes it feel like a spot-lit tomb.

I leave twenty minutes later wearing all-new clothes, a baseball cap, and a black parka. My new synthetic backpack bulges with five shirts, a red “hoodie,” three sweaters, and three pairs of jeans. After buying some hiking boots at a shop next door, I drape my bulky fur parka and hand-stitched leather rucksack over a garbage can outside and hope that someone like the old lady in the park will find it.