The Light Pirate(31)
Kirby and Lucas pull into the yard and Brenda is waiting. She leans against the bucket truck, smoking a Winston with one hand and shading her eyes with the other. This is what’s left of his crew. The others slipped away over the years: Emilio retired and Kirby took over, Wes accepted a job with a contractor based out of the Panhandle, and Jerome got his license back and then promptly drove his car into a utility pole. A pitch-black joke. The pole survived; Jerome didn’t. The municipality used to promise Kirby they’d give him salaries for more linemen, but they don’t even mention it anymore.
The three of them load a new pole onto the trailer and hitch it to the bucket truck, then they drive out, Kirby and Brenda in the bucket truck, Lucas in the pickup. At the site, they get to digging out the pole that broke off in the storm. It’s already hot; they’re drenched with sweat as soon as they start. By lunchtime, they’ve pulled out the old stump and they sit in their trucks, the air-conditioning blasting, eating their warmed-over cold cuts. Kirby calls the congressman for their district three times in a row, but there’s no answer and the voice mail is full. He tries the offices of both senators, two times apiece. Nothing goes through. He’s not a political man by nature; Lucas is the one who put this idea of petitioning the government for help in his head.
“Why bother with that shit?” Brenda asks, mouth full of turkey and pickles on rye. Kirby gives up on the calls and tears into his own sandwich.
“Because those sons of bitches on the city council are full of garbage. Municipality’s going under, inch by inch. County don’t give a shit. Mayor don’t even live here anymore. Someone has to do something.”
Brenda just laughs, but the sound is dismal. Joyless. “Do they?”
“They do,” Kirby replies, not sure he believes it, either, hoping it’s true.
Back in his dingy office that evening, surrounded by paperwork that predates him and equipment that doesn’t work, Kirby does get through. It’s a senator’s office, the Republican, he thinks, but possibly the Democrat. Their names sound the same and neither has done much for him. He’s so startled when a human being answers that he is speechless for a little too long. “Hi,” he finally says. “I’m one of your constituents. I live in Rudder and I’m the foreman of our electrical maintenance crew.”
“All right,” the voice says. A woman. Young. Tired. “And what can the senator’s office do for you?”
“Well, look, I’ve tried to address this locally, but we need help and the local government isn’t up to it. The municipality’s about to go bankrupt, but the county doesn’t give us any money because of the municipality, you know how it is, everyone chasing their own tail. I can’t do my job without personnel and equipment. My job is keeping the lights on, ma’am. Without my crew, this town is in the dark. I’m just trying to do my job.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.” He waits for her to offer some kind of solution, but the line just buzzes quietly; she has nothing to add.
“We need support. Financial support. New hires. Equipment. Every year we need more and every year we get less.”
“I will be happy to log your comment.”
“And?”
“That’s all I can really do at the moment, sir.”
“I mean, and then what?”
“Sorry?”
“So you log my comment and then what?”
“Well.” She heaves a sigh, long and deep. “You want the truth?”
He does and he doesn’t. “Yes.”
“Nothing. We’re working around the clock to organize relocation packages for Miamians, which…well, we’re doing our best. We’re trying to save cities, not towns. We just don’t have the resources. You want my personal opinion, I’d say it’s time to move.” Kirby stares at his office wall. There’s a calendar hanging from two years ago that he keeps forgetting to throw away. Through the slit of his blinds he can see Lucas and Brenda unloading gear from the bucket truck and hauling it into the open garage bay. “Thank you for calling Senator Joel Farrow’s office, and have a good day.” She hangs up. He wishes this exchange surprised him, but it doesn’t. Even knowing that all he’s doing is prolonging the inevitable, Kirby cannot bring himself to give up on Rudder. It isn’t self-important to believe that if he leaves, this town is done for. It’s just the way things are.
If the ocean is a body, then the Intracoastal Waterway is a body, too: skinny and twisty and tall. It tickles the ocean with its currents—freshwater greets salt in the bays, the sloughs, the deltas. It reaches: from the top of North America to the bottom, cupping the tip of Florida with its curving channels, wrapping around the Gulf and flowing west to Texas. But all bodies change. Even these.
Chapter 34
On her first day back since Hurricane Valerie, Wanda counts twelve kids, including herself. The fifth grade class grows ever smaller. A few more students disappear after every storm, taken north by parents who decided to make their evacuation permanent. The classroom is half-full. Other kids spread out, claiming two desks instead of one, littering the room with their backpacks and lunchboxes and binders, trying to make it seem less empty than it is. Wanda keeps her backpack between her knees, like always, and doesn’t unpack more than the book she’s using so that if she needs to, she can grab everything and go. She has never felt relaxed in this room—in any of the classrooms she’s occupied. The older she gets, the better she is at keeping her questions to herself. It’s hard for her not to raise her hand; there is so much she wants to know, but it’s better for her this way. If the other children forget she’s there, that’s a good thing.