The Light Pirate(47)
The summer months set in. Mornings are hot and damp, hung with clear skies and a baking sun. It takes only a few hours before the ground begins to sizzle. The clouds roll in around lunchtime and shortly after, thunderstorms rip open the sky. Every day, the warm rain pummels them. Soon, the ground is full and wet, like unwrung laundry. This is how summers always are, but the rainfall has been extraordinary for months. The earth can accept only so much before there is nowhere left for the water to go.
A strange pause settles over the Lowe household. Kirby, for all his capable certainty, is unmoored. Lucas has never seen him like this. Those years just after Frida and Flip died, when he was living with his mother, he was consumed by his own haze, being shuttled from one therapist to another, trying this medication and that. Back then, Chloe was furious with him for not getting better. It’s part of why he chose Kirby when he had the chance—he didn’t want to get better, and neither did Kirby. They could at least be broken together.
Now, watching his father roam the house, pacing from room to room, he isn’t sure he’ll be able to leave him like this. Kirby assures him that the necessary things have been set in motion: job applications have been sent, new places to live are being considered. But without the tether of work, of going to the yard every morning, of each new job site, Kirby seems adrift. Confused by the hours he is expected to fill, almost childlike in his uncertainty of how to fill them. Lucas knows it’s only a matter of time before the job offers start coming; people need linemen everywhere. During this in-between time, he sometimes notices his father taking the bucket truck out to work alone, unpaid, unasked, maybe just to feel some sense of normalcy. He wonders if he should ride along, but he hasn’t been invited and it seems wrong to insert himself.
One afternoon, when the thunderheads have begun rumbling but the rain has yet to break, Brenda comes to say goodbye. It’s July by then, the heat creeping above one hundred during the day and dropping only slightly at night. She pulls up in her little Nissan pickup, sky blue with a silver stripe down the side, a black tonneau cover over everything she could fit in the bed, and honks to let them know she’s here. The Lowes spill out the kitchen door, all three of them.
“I wanted to come by before I leave,” she says.
“When will you go?” Lucas asks.
“Tomorrow. Early.” She leans against the Nissan. Sweat darkens the edges of her tank top and she’s taken her braids out, letting her hair float in a black cloud beneath her ball cap. She looks different to Lucas, like the weight of Rudder has begun to slough off her shoulders. “Gonna get a real early start, before the sun comes up,” she says. They stand, awkward, shifting from one foot to the other as they discuss routes and traffic and how many days it’ll take to get to Wyoming. The thunder comes closer. Brenda congratulates Lucas again on UC Berkeley.
“You deserve it,” she says. Lucas isn’t sure this is true, but he tries to accept the compliment gracefully. She slaps Kirby on the back. “These two,” she says, gesturing at Lucas and Wanda, “you did good, old man, with these two. Real special kids.”
“They are, aren’t they,” Kirby replies, and he sounds far away, as if he is someplace else, in the future maybe, watching them make their way in a world that extends beyond this town. Lucas asks Brenda about her new job, something near Laramie. It’s transmission only, she tells him, no more residential bullshit, just middle-of-nowhere type jobs. Lucas wonders if she and Kirby will realize how good they would have been together after it’s too late. Or maybe they’ll never figure it out. Maybe this is part of what makes them perfect for each other.
After a while, there’s nothing left to talk about. When they start to say their goodbyes, Brenda gives them each an unprecedented hug. Kirby kisses her on the cheek. Lucas thanks her for the recommendation letter and she pretends it was nothing, even though he knows she worked hard on it. Wanda won’t let go when it’s her turn. “Will I ever see you again?” she whispers into Brenda’s neck. Lucas’s heart breaks for all of them. Wanda especially.
“Of course you will,” Brenda says quickly and nuzzles the side of her head, awkward and tender.
But she won’t.
Chapter 44
Wanda’s time is her own now that school is out. Kirby doesn’t make her go to Phyllis’s anymore; she goes because she wants to. Sometimes she stays home if it seems like Lucas will pay attention to her, but this happens less and less—by now, he is occupied with preparations for his new life in California. It’s become clear that they have all arrived at an ending of sorts. That things will never again be as they were. There’s talk she doesn’t completely understand—about the municipality, about taxes, about federal money and county money—but she understands enough to know that everything is changing. The house, usually so empty during the day, is full of men behaving strangely.
On a particular afternoon, while Lucas is busy packing in their room and Kirby is pacing, looking for a project, Wanda rides her bike to Phyllis’s in the downpour. When she gets there, soaked, Phyllis dries her off and then they go out again, in the car this time, to a Target in the next town over. Driving through the rain, which smears the landscape across the windows in a rich green blur, they go slowly. The roads are almost empty. The air-conditioning is a little too cold against Wanda’s damp clothes, but it’s nice being too cold. It’s rare. When they get there, the parking lot is scattered with only a few cars.