End of Women: Part Four

Hunger

Fifteen wild berries. A handful of nuts. Three seagull carcasses. That's it.

Degan swung his axe into an upstanding log, splitting it half-way. He staggered backwards, light-headed, shook himself, and then pried the axe free for another swing. He took a swig of water from a makeshift canteen and finally, on the third strike, broke the log in two.

A foot-tall pile of logs sat beside the chopping-block. He was four hours in to his daily labour and so far that day had eaten less than the women sunning themselves on the beach. They had risen with him in the morning, of course, and busied themselves brushing out sand from the lean-to, after which they commended themselves their hard work and sat down to chatter. What they even had to chat about was beyond Degan.

Do the math, he told himself. And he had, countless times. The island's resources were finite. His ability to do work was directly proportional to the amount of food on the island. In the old days of shipping, he would have said his overheads vastly outmatched his income. Getting the girls to help him might, for a time, step the bleeding, but in the end there were too many of them on the island and too little labour potential. And yet here he was, cutting logs for the fire, just thinking about Kindra, and what Millie would do if Degan tried to rectify the situation in the only way he knew he could.

There is still one boat. He could get them on it, somehow, and tell them to find their own island. How many were there in this chain? A hundred? A thousand? He didn't know. For all he cared, their boat would catch Hell out in the open sea and that would be that. Drowning was about as good a death as they'd receive on the mainland. What difference did it make?

The sound of his incessant wood-cutting hid the soft padding of a woman's steps in the sand behind him. He only noticed Lukeisha when she came around to the opposite side of the block with folded arms and a thickly knotted hair. 

"Can I help you?" Degan asked, placing another log on the block to take a swing. 

"The girls are hungry." She said sharply, pinching the inside of her mouth with her teeth.

"So am I." Degan took a few breaths to steady himself. "We're running low on food."

"Can't you plant some? Grow some stuff?" Lukeisha brushed the dry earth with her bare foot.

"Only thing that grows here is wild berries and nuts from the trees and bushes you had me cut down weeks ago." Degan sniffed a breath and smacked open one more log. "They won't grow back, not with the palms taken down. I told you we needed to manage our resources."

Lukeisha let out a quiet but very discernible scoff of impatience. 

"You said you would protect us here."

Degan gripped the axe more tightly, holding it suspended over his shoulder. He glanced up at Lukeisha before bringing the weapon down hard on the wood. After a moment's glare he put the axe up against the block and stepped toward her.

"Some of your girlfriends have gained weight since they got here. We're eating more than the island can provide, is that simple enough for you? Do I need to put it in a song or maybe draw a picture? We can't survive here any more. We'll be lucky if we can make it to the end of the month."

Lukeisha unfolded her arms and took a fraction of a step backwards, her mouth a little agape.

"You... you said..."

"What?" Degan threw up his arms, agitated. "What did I say?"

She looked at him with fear in her eyes, as if she had never fully seen him before. Her pace was much slower, more measured, and her eyes full of thought, as she passed by Degan and back the way she had come.