The Light Pirate(10)
“Careful, Kirb,” Emilio says, eyeing the arc of the line. “It’s spittin’.”
Kirby reaches up to the cutout with his stick and knocks out the rod while Wes runs down to the cutout on the other side and does the same. The line bounces up a few times and then quiets.
“Get up there, already,” Emilio says. “I wanna be home before this shit gets bad.”
“You and me both,” Kirby says.
Emilio saunters over to the groundmen. “You’re the chain saws, kids, let’s move it along.” This is intended for Jerome.
In the air, Kirby rods out the line. The rain begins again, just a sprinkle at first, quickly thickening into something heavier. Wes is at the other end, ready to crimp the new line to the old one. Emilio gets back into his truck and fills out OSHA paperwork with the radio blasting so loud Kirby can hear the beat from up in his perch. Brenda finishes slicing up the branches while Jerome hauls it all into the woods. They operate separately but in unison, each with their own task, each with an eye on the mottled sky.
Chances are, the crew will be out again by tomorrow night—the only question is what kind of devastation they’ll be cleaning up after. Kirby replaces the fuse, feeling the futility of this morning’s work. The entire state of Florida is overrun with contract linemen, and probably more arriving at this very moment now that the category rating has been upgraded—speeding down empty highways, evacuation traffic in the other direction backed up for miles while the electricity workers head straight for the cone of uncertainty. The cities will repurpose airport runways and shopping center parking lots to hold them all, filling the empty pavement with trucks and equipment, just waiting to swoop in on the devastation. Motels will be jammed with contractors from out of state. Wherever this hurricane makes landfall, it will be an event. The utility company has been pouring money into preparation, and FEMA services are on red alert. No one expects the best anymore, not after the multitude of direct hits this year, and what happened to Puerto Rico last year, and the coast of Georgia the year before that. A sudden gust of wind knocks Kirby against the edge of his bucket. He mutters a few choice expletives, then slams the last fuse shut and flips the switch.
“We’re hot,” he shouts over to Wes, who is hanging from a pole down the road. Wes gives him a thumbs-up.
On the ground, Kirby starts strapping the equipment back onto the truck. The groundmen finish with the fallen branches. Emilio cracks a window and lights another cigar. “Took you long enough,” he says. The cigar smoke curls upward in a steady ribbon for just a second before the wind comes and takes it; Kirby watches it go.
Chapter 10
The power flashes back on, and with it comes the hum of the refrigerator, the buzz of a lightbulb, the quiet thump of a clock. Most importantly, the whir of the AC. Frida hears the boys shriek with excitement and scramble for the television remote. This evidence of their delight has a strange dissonant quality to her—their easy joy is unrelatable. She recognizes it, but only vaguely, as if it is an emotion she dreamed once. In the dim cave of the house, she feels her dread widen and calcify. The empty spaces between furniture fill; the ceiling creeps downward. She goes to the bedroom, then back to the kitchen, to the bathroom, to the bedroom once more, turning on lights, then turning them off again. Nowhere seems right. Another wave of discomfort rolls through her. A different person might call it pain. A midwife might call it a contraction.
She remembers Kirby’s note on the fridge, asking her to fill the water jugs and the tub when the power comes back, and so she makes herself do that and tries to focus on the gush of the faucet, the shine on the taps, the hum of the pump kicking on. She packs the jugs into the freezer and the fridge, as many as can fit around the food, and then lines up the rest in the hallway. She fills the bathtub with cool water and sits on the bath mat, letting her arm dip beneath the surface. It levitates there, her fingers just barely touching the bottom. Frida watches her sleeve drag in the water and lays her cheek against the cold porcelain edge of the tub. She feels diminished. Dim. Losing light like nighttime coming on fast. Is it visible? Can they see her fading? It seems she is growing—her stomach, her ankles, her breasts—but surely it isn’t right that there is more of her now than there was eight months ago. Surely she’s shriveled since then.
Her stomach is propped up on her thigh, her temple leaned against the edge of the tub, waiting for the hurricane to sweep away this festering anticipation. This tightness in her abdomen. She can hear the philodendron tapping on the bathroom window, but she can’t see it. All she sees is darkness where the light used to be.
After Poppy, she remembers walking for a long time through the torn streets of San Juan, stumbling over debris, the mud sucking at her sandals. Demolished homes on either side, their roofs peeled back like the thick skins of oranges, exposed rooms filled with trash and muck and water. An unbearably blue sky hanging over all that wreckage. There was almost nothing left whole in that city, only pieces. Pieces of road, pieces of buildings, pieces of vehicles. A strange puzzle. Stray dogs followed her as she walked, their ribs threatening to burst from their thin hides. She passed a crew of linemen, newly arrived. Frida could barely stand to look at them, set against that clear blue sky she felt so insulted by. But she made herself look. She made herself absorb the sunlight, the flutter of a gull passing overhead, the tap tap tap of a lone hammer, some ways off, the sound of someone beginning to rebuild. She saw one of the linemen hanging off a freshly raised wooden pole, saw his heavy work boots, saw the solidity of his broad frame, saw his sweating, sun-beaten face beneath the brim of his hard hat; at the same time, he looked down and took in her stained dress, her tangled hair, her burning gaze pointed right at him. It wasn’t love at first sight. It was the feeling she got when she saw the Bridge of the Americas as a child, when she walked onto her first college campus, when she signed her first lease. The recognition of something that would later be important. A crux. A beginning. This. Here. You. Laying the foundation of a future she hadn’t yet imagined. Love came later.