The Light Pirate(49)
He allows himself fantasies of staying—a rogue lineman, keeping the lights on with no pay, no help. Raising Wanda to be his assistant. They could manage it for a little while. He’s certain they could. But why? For whom? Soon, the power plants that serve these lines will shutter. It’s only a matter of time. And what then? Nursing a dying creature isn’t always the kind thing to do. It’s the end of Rudder for the Lowe family. He understands it, he just doesn’t quite know it.
He could’ve learned something from Phyllis, with her solar panels and her hand-pump well; the chickens strutting around in the jungle behind her house; the garden, always yielding something. The willingness to see and plan for everything that most people ignored. But it’s too late now. He learned all of this the hard way. He put his trust in electricity, in a kind of civilization that requires politics and oversight and dollars. The house isn’t worth anything. And once the power goes and the supermarket folds and the gas stations sell their last gallon, money won’t be worth anything, either. Not here.
They’ll be gone by the time all that happens. They’ll go and he’ll work and he’ll earn: doubling down on this doomed infrastructure elsewhere. Someplace where he probably won’t be alive to see it collapse. Is the idea that he probably won’t be there to see it fall apart a comfort to him? It isn’t, not anymore. The strange thing is it used to be.
After breakfast, Kirby drives. Kirby is always the one to drive. But now, there’s no job site, no Lucas in the passenger seat, no Brenda following close behind. The only thing that remains of his routine is the driving. He goes to the yard out of habit. And once he’s there, he gets out and walks around the building, checking that all the equipment is strapped down or moved inside. He already knows it is. But checking feels good. It feels useful. The dirt has all turned to mud, inches deep, squelching over the toes of his work boots with every step. It’s been a wet year. The wettest he can remember. There was a time when the implications of this would register, but there is so much more than rainfall to worry about now. He flicks up the bill of his cap to see the gulls overhead, screaming at each other.
“You lost?” he says under his breath. “Ocean’s that way.” Gradually, he becomes aware of another sound underneath the squawking. Something delicate. A young sound. It’s close, near the chain-link fence, maybe? He paces, listening. Getting down on his knees, he parts the tall grass and sees, lying on its back, its tiny legs helplessly pedaling the air, a kitten. Black, like a smudge of soot. He scoops it up without thinking and on the enormous bed of his palms it mews with everything it’s got—not much—then tries to take the edge of his thumb in its mouth, teeth needling his calloused skin with futile desperation.
“Where’s your mother?” he whispers. He listens for the rest of the litter nearby, but there’s nothing, only the cawing gulls moving back toward the sea. He realizes he shouldn’t have touched it, that maybe now its mother, if she is here somewhere, won’t take it back. Is that true? He isn’t sure. The round, dirty belly heaves, the kitten so young its eyes are still shut tight. He touches that perfect mound of stomach at the peak of its roundness, and the kitten curls around his pointer finger, claws scrabbling against the knuckle, already sharp but too soft to pierce his weathered skin. He puts it back and hopes that it’ll be okay. As he walks toward the truck the mewing begins again. A thin, quivering wail.
He gets in the truck and shuts the door. The wail can’t penetrate the windows. He watches the tall grass and waits—waits for a long time, hours—but no mother comes. The afternoon thunder rolls in and the rain begins. Soft at first, then hard. He watches the force with which it hits his windshield. There is a meanness about the rain today. This whole season has been vicious, lashing Rudder with more than the ground can absorb. He can’t stand it. Eventually, he realizes he doesn’t have to.
The kitten is still there when he goes back, hidden in the grass, and when he picks it up, its body is so cold and damp and limp he worries he’s too late, that it’s already dead. But then it moves, and he can feel the shudder of a heartbeat, or maybe the heave of a breath, against his hand. He tucks the kitten inside his breast pocket, where it fits neatly. It’s the safest place he can think to put it. Back in the truck, it begins to knead his chest through the thick cotton of his shirt: weak pushes, delicate pinpricks. Without thinking, he tucks his chin down and exhales on the kitten, slowly, as if this air, warm from his lungs, might be a spell that will keep it alive. For a brief moment he imagines putting the entire creature in his mouth and holding it there, warm and safe, protected by his teeth, pillowed by his tongue, breathing his air. Is this strange? He doesn’t know anymore.
He drives to Phyllis’s and extracts the kitten from his pocket after knocking. He offers it to them both when Phyllis opens the door, Wanda just behind her, the warm light in the hallway spilling out onto the porch. Standing there with his hands full of fur, he feels that they are both helpless creatures: wet and lost.
“Oh, Kirby,” Phyllis says when she sees him, and he can’t tell whether this is admonishment or approval or something else.
“I found it,” he mumbles, as if to say, An event occurred and I succumbed to it, which is not incorrect. Wanda squirms past Phyllis to see what all this fuss is about and when she glimpses the living thing in her father’s hands, she gasps. She examines it carefully, so close her nose almost brushes against his fingertips.