Evergreen by Rebecca Rasmussen

tucked Emil’s fishing rod under her free arm, and went down to the river. If I can’t catch a fish on my own we won’t survive this. If I can, we will . When she was a girl, she used to play a similar game with the daisies in back of the Laundromat. The yellow petals revealed whether or not she’d find love.
    She knew how to win that game—she didn’t know how to win this one.
    On the way down to the river, Eveline dug into the soft soil on the forest floor with a trowel, turning the earth until fat brown worms wriggled up. She picked them up and put them into the pocket of her dress. How strange she could go on living after what Cullen had done to her and nearly faint at the thought of a handful of worms wriggling in her pocket.
    At the river’s edge, Eveline took the worms out one by one, pushed the hooks into their flesh, and cast out her line. Eachtime she felt a tug and reeled in her line, the worms were gone and the hooks bent backward.
    You have to think like a fish , Lulu had said. Eveline imagined a school of them slicing through the dark water like silver knives. How do you catch something that doesn’t want to be caught? Whose life depends on not being caught? Maybe you don’t. Maybe you give up .
    Eveline sat on the rocks. Hux had woken up and was looking at the blue sky and the birds crossing overhead, soaring on the updrafts. A cricket jumped into the basket and back out again. Eveline felt a tug on her line, but instead of reeling it in she let it out this time.
    Another tug, and she stood up. Out in the middle of the river, a fish jumped.
    Once she was sure she’d hooked the fish, Eveline began to reel in the line slowly until the fish was closer to her than it was far away. When she walked into the water, she could see it swimming circles in the shallows, panicked but alive. She kept reeling in the line. When all that was left between her and the fish was a few feet, Eveline held up Emil’s rod and carried it and the fish out of the river onto dry land.
    The fish, a lovely bluegill, opened and closed its mouth desperately. Eveline was on the verge of throwing it back, of eating beans and rice for the rest of her life. She thought of Emil and Cullen, two men forever part of her life, one she’d said yes to, the other no. She took that bluegill in her hands, slid the hook out of its gill, and with great sadness but a new resolve, my God, my God , she watched the life go out of it as it flapped against the rocks.
    Eveline caught five fish before she walked back up to the cabin with Hux, tossed them in flour, and fried them in the skillet. Something inside of her was shifting even if she didn’t know in what direction yet.
    For the first time in weeks, she was hungry again.
    She stood over the woodstove pulling the tiny bones out with her fingers and sucking the white flesh from them. When night came, Eveline placed Hux in his crib and brought a fillet out to Reddy’s pup tent.
    “I’m all right,” she said, handing him the plate. “You can go home now.”
    Reddy picked up the fillet with his fingers. “I like to camp.”
    “Nobody likes to camp for this long.”
    “Emil would want me to,” Reddy said. “I’d want him to if Lulu was out here alone.”
    “Emil’s not coming home,” Eveline said, thinking about the two of them in the truck all those months ago now. “At least not for a while.”
    “I figured as much,” Reddy said. “The paper in Yellow Falls said Germany’s invaded Poland. I didn’t know how to tell you.”
    “Emil said that in his letter, too.”
    Reddy reached into the pup tent and pulled out a sleeping bag for Eveline to sit on. Stars were appearing overhead. Owls spoke to each other in the trees.
    “Lulu thinks I should keep the baby,” Eveline said.
    “That’s only because her parents didn’t keep her,” Reddy said.
    “I didn’t know that,” Eveline said. “Maybe I did.”
    “When she came home from school one day, they were gone,” Reddy said.