The Light Pirate(15)
Chapter 15
The storm will make landfall at any moment now. The wind and rain whipping around Kirby’s truck is vicious, smacking against the body of the vehicle with the force of metal chains. It will get much worse, but even now, it takes all of his concentration to keep the truck on the road. Driving through town, he sees that it’s mostly abandoned. He skims through the local AM radio stations for the emergency services updates, trying to keep his mind fastened to the question of where the boys might have gone as he wrestles with the steering wheel.
He goes to the high school auditorium first, where they’ve taped off dozens of eight-by-eight squares on the floor, a grid of displacement. There are the people who have done this before, with their tents and folding chairs and sleeping bags, and then there are those who didn’t know what to expect, who have arrived with nothing but handbags and protein bars in the pockets of their raincoats. Kirby scans the crowd, trying to be quick and thorough at the same time. A woman with a clipboard approaches and greets him with infuriating calm.
“Glad you made it!” she proclaims, as if his arrival warrants congratulations. “We still have plenty of space left, don’t worry. Over here you’ll see—”
He cuts her short. “I’m not here for that,” he says. “My boys are missing, twelve and eight. You got any strays around here?”
She scans the auditorium as if they might appear. “Oh no! I don’t think so…” she says, then looks to the clipboard. “Names?”
“Lucas and Phillip Lowe.”
They aren’t on the roster. Every second that passes in which he still doesn’t know where they are makes his heart beat faster. By now, there is a hummingbird inside his chest. She brings him to the ham radio operator who is set up at a little desk in one of the classrooms, an older man with a line of pens clipped into his breast pocket, intensely focused on the pile of equipment in front of him.
“Maybe George can help. He’s our contact from the Emergency Operations Center.” She quickly recounts the details of Kirby’s search. “Lucas and Phillip. Twelve and eight,” she says. “Wearing…” She looks at Kirby. “What did you say they were wearing?”
“I don’t, um. A red T-shirt on the youngest, maybe. And…I’m sorry, I wasn’t paying attention.” How could he not have been paying attention? How could he not know?
“That’s okay.” She pats his arm, but he barely feels it. He’s too busy staring at George, trying to disguise the panic on his face. The man isn’t looking at him anyway. He’s tuning his dials, speaking in half code into his mic, some of which Kirby understands, some of which he doesn’t. George listens for a few moments and then turns back to Kirby.
“Not accounted for,” he says. “But we’re sending out the alert to everyone. You got a phone number?” Kirby gives it to him. “Anybody’s guess how long these cell towers’ll last,” George says. “We’ll call you if we can. You got a CB?”
“Yeah, got one in the truck.”
“All right, good, well, stay on channel nine, then. We’ll find ’em eventually. You raise ’em right and they know how to take cover. Twelve and eight’s old enough to know.” Did he raise them right? Did he raise them at all? Kirby can’t bring himself to acknowledge such hollow optimism. He’s incredulous that this man could be so calm, so certain that it will all be okay, and yet it occurs to him that he’s been saying these things to Frida all along. Telling her not to worry. Telling her everything will be fine, even when it won’t be. Even when it’s all coming apart at the seams.
As he crosses the parking lot, the rain slices through his shirt. He throws up an arm to shield his face. It feels like the storm is ripping his clothes off—the fabric tearing apart and flying away into the wind, and then the flesh beneath it, too. Peeled back in bloody curls. If the old man is right and his boys are safe, this hurricane can do anything it wants to him. Kirby gets to his truck and beats his hands against the driver’s-side window until he feels foolish. The sounds he makes as he does this are feral, but no one hears them over the yowl of the wind. Inside the cab he gets a hold of himself and tries to think, to strategize, as if such a thing were possible when his insides are exposed, his bones bare, his nerves snapping against the air like live wires. Still, he tries: Where else could they be?
Chapter 16
Frida props herself against the doorway of the tool shed for a long, long time. The rain pounds into her aching back, and the wall of trapped heat presses against her belly. She is caught here, struggling to understand the emptiness of this place where she allowed herself to believe she would find the boys. She is unwilling to go back to the house, to sit alone, useless, waiting, while Flip and Lucas are lost, and she is unable to be in the open outdoors, to subject her body and the child within to the whiplash fury of the wind. So she occupies this in-between space and waits. She waits to be forced to choose—one or the other—but the moment doesn’t come. She surveys the tool shed and its contents, a domain unfamiliar to her. This is Kirby’s kingdom, not hers. All of this is Kirby’s kingdom, she realizes. The house, the yard, the shed, the town. Florida. She’s used to not belonging anywhere; she just thought that Rudder might be different.