The Light Pirate(14)
She steps into a pair of tall rain boots by the door and throws on one of Kirby’s jackets, eager to manifest this happy resolution, her nightgown streaming out from under the waxed brown canvas, pink silk tail feathers whipping around her legs. She pulls the door open and the wind knocks it back on its hinges. Immediately the storm sweeps into the kitchen. All at once—a mason jar full of coupons skitters across the counter then smashes to the floor; the oranges she picked yesterday roll after it, thudding among the broken glass; the curtains snap and twist. The storm has not waited. It’s already here.
Frida ignores these things crashing to the floor and manages to climb over the sandbags in the doorway, her skirts flying up around her waist, a tutu now, the rain driving into her exposed skin, the enormous jacket wrapped around her belly. Stumbling into the yard, she protects her face with her hands and pushes forward, lurching toward the shed as pieces of debris, swept in from who knows where, roll through her little garden beds. She shouts the boys’ names as she goes, but there’s no answer.
At the shed, she wrestles with the door, knowing even as she yanks the handle that they won’t be here, that this is wishful thinking at best. But she’s come this far and so she gets it open and looks inside, where there are only half-full buckets of paint and toolboxes and a band saw and the ladder Kirby climbed just that morning to install the plywood on the windows. She is gasping for air, the baby constricting her lungs, crushing her organs with its mere presence. Her pelvis clenches in pain again when she takes in the emptiness of the shed, a pain that is radiating through her entire body now. She lays both hands over her belly, trying to funnel whatever is left of her well-being into her own womb, to mitigate the damage that is surely being caused by this agony. A bright, fully charged crackle of panic rips through her. She has so much to lose.
The hazy edge of the hurricane looms just beyond the breakers. Within, the eye is cloudless and calm, a kernel of stillness held in the arms of ferocious winds. They’ve named her Wanda, but this vortex goes by many names, given over the course of many lifetimes. A she is a he is an it. The ocean is whipped to a froth. The sky seethes. Wanda hurtles forward.
Chapter 14
Flip takes a step inside the trailer. “Lucas,” he whines, “I think we should go back.” Lucas stops swiveling in the La-Z-Boy and gives his brother a cold stare. He isn’t opposed to this idea. Not exactly. He can see the sky darkening over Flip’s shoulder, can hear the rain thickening against the roof, can smell the strange scorch of the hurricane in the air. He knows that it is unwise to be here. But he also knows that the only person waiting for them at home is Frida, practically catatonic in her bedroom, while Kirby works until the eleventh hour, as he always does. Here, in this empty trailer with his little brother, what he says goes. Lucas is in charge, and he will not cede that power so easily.
“Don’t be a chickenshit,” he says. Flip is wounded by this accusation and submits instantly, which is the point. He takes another step into the trailer and lets the flimsy door swing shut. His silence is his acquiescence.
“Come here,” Lucas commands, and Flip obeys. He slumps into the other La-Z-Boy and the two boys swivel in unison for a moment, wondering what to do now. Lucas turns on the television and they watch. Flip fidgets, balancing his rear on the edge of the seat as if to leap out of it at any moment, while Lucas lounges, an extravagant splay of his limbs thrown across the sticky leather upholstery. His apparent ease is a lie, a fib for Flip’s benefit, or perhaps for his own. Lucas can feel the sway of the trailer as the wind gusts. But he is not ready to go back. Going back is giving up—and that he will not do. There is more than a little of Kirby in his stubbornness.
“Let’s see what else is here,” Lucas declares when the episode ends. He hops out of the easy chair and heads to the bedroom, where the shades are drawn and a bed made up with pale wrinkled sheets looms ghostlike in the dark. Flip follows, reluctant but complicit. They inspect the bureau one drawer at a time, rifling through clothes and socks, then turn to the nightstand. There isn’t much—a tube of hand lotion, crumpled receipts, a bottle of Tylenol, pens with chewed caps. But then in the back of a drawer Lucas finds something more interesting—a thin fold of twenties, maybe a hundred dollars, fastened with a paper clip. He holds it up, triumphant.
“Check it out,” Lucas says.
Flip looks stricken. “You should put it back,” he whispers.
Lucas did not intend to take it until Flip said this, but now he must. Something has come over him this afternoon, some primal urge to assert dominance, to insist upon the corruption of his younger brother, to make decisions for them both that are questionable. This indescribable feeling in the air that has touched them all, whether they know it or not. Whether they understand it or not. The elements may be speaking, but listening is a skill that Lucas has never been good at.
He makes a show of putting the money in his pocket. “What are you gonna do about it?” he says, and puffs out his chest like a bird trying to look bigger than it is. Flip shrinks away and turns toward the door. He does not understand any of this. He only wants to go home, for his brother to stop being a bully.
“Well,” Lucas demands. “I said, what are you gonna do about it?”
“Nothing,” he replies.
“That’s right,” Lucas says. “Nothing.”