The Light Pirate(53)

Chapter 48




So much has changed. The passage of several decades meant little to this peninsula, but it has meant a great deal to the creatures who live here. Wanda pilots her canoe between two sunken houses, slick with algae, veiled by Spanish moss. Her paddle slices the warm, sludgy water, sweeping aside garbage and leaves as she shoots forward, through the gap and out onto what was once Beachside Drive. A traffic light hangs ten feet or so above the water, dim and unlit. A relic. The sun has set, its fire fading from the sky. There’s another vessel, maybe half a mile down the way, heading toward the open water. The people who have stayed wait until dusk to move about; daytime temperatures are fatal. Wanda slips behind a ruined storefront and waits for the boat to pass. Sightings like this have become increasingly rare, which is a good thing. She breathes easier when she’s sure it’s gone.

An orange tomcat sits in the bow of her canoe, looking out over the water with a feral intensity that is reflected in Wanda’s posture as well, although they are intent on different goals. Wanda is paddling for home, while the cat eyes a squirrel scampering through a tangle of mangroves. He sinks low on his haunches, tail flicking, biding his time. The tom waits until the canoe is a few feet away from the trees, then leaps. He slips between the gnarled trunks and disappears. The squirrel pauses, alert, then vanishes also, into the bramble. Wanda paddles on. He’ll find his own way back to her—or he won’t. She can’t afford to be sentimental about animals any longer. Keeping herself alive is all she can manage. The human body is so delicate, so vulnerable. In this place, there are many, many ways to die.

After spending twelve feverishly hot daylight hours hunkered down on the second floor of an abandoned colonial, she’s anxious to get home. She was out fishing just before dawn and didn’t have time to return before the sun rose. It’s possible she could have made it, but being on the open water during daylight hours is a deadly thing. She’s seen too many lost causes to take the risk—boats that roam aimlessly with the tide, their occupants either gone overboard, thinking the water might cool them (it won’t), or worse, still there, their flesh decomposing so quickly not much remains by the time Wanda comes upon them. It’s the heatstroke that does it. Bodies boiled from within. No, it’s best to find shade before the first rays of sunlight glimmer and to wait until the very last rays disappear to leave it. Wanda doesn’t take chances on such things; Phyllis taught her better than that.

Even now, with the glare of the sun ducked down behind the waves, sweat drips from her face. She remembers a book she read once as a girl—there was snow in that book, coming down so fast and hard it was—what do they call it? A blizzard. She’s never seen such a thing. Her catch, fat and heavy, hangs off the edge of her boat in a cheesecloth sack, trailing low in the water as she rows. This was worth the discomfort of fitfully dozing on a moldy oriental rug all day. The fish grow more and more elusive every year—living deeper down and farther out, rising to the surface only when they must. To find a school of them flitting about in the bay as she did in the early hours of yesterday was rare. A moment to be taken advantage of.

Now, heading inland, she debates whether it still makes sense to venture out to the freshwater spring tonight. It’s a long way by boat, which is the only way. A whole night’s journey there and back, leaving her no time for her other tasks. She needs to prepare the fish for drying as soon as possible. They’ve already sat too long. Gutting and cleaning and filleting and salting and setting them out—all this takes time. If Phyllis were still here, it wouldn’t be a problem. They would divide and conquer, tending to the necessities of the human body as a team. But Wanda is alone now. Just one person, surviving on instinct and maybe a sense of duty. Phyllis taught her how to live, so now she must go on living. Tomorrow night will have to do for replenishing her water supply, Wanda decides. If these fish aren’t ready to cure during the daylight hours they’ll spoil for certain. Wanda cuts long, deep strokes with her paddle, on one side, then the other, shooting through the water now that she’s on a straightaway. The sky becomes translucent above her, the universe on the other side bleeding through as the blue deepens and the stars prick the atmosphere.

By the time she arrives, it’s dark and the temperature has cooled a few pivotal degrees. Her home hangs above, scattered among the canopies, a patchwork of salvaged siding and shingles and fence posts and shutters, connected by ladders and ropes. They built it equidistant between food and fresh water, as high as the trees would allow. It’s a rudimentary structure—made to be rebuilt after the hurricanes pass through if need be. An open invitation to the winds. “Better to bend than to break,” Phyllis always said. They called it “the nest” back when they were hauling materials into the swamp. They joked that they were a pair of birds, too heavy for their own good. It’s hard having no one to joke with anymore. This life was always hard, but it’s been so much harder these past few years.

She knows her dock is close before she sees it and then there it is, a black outline against the soft shimmer of ripples, illuminated ever so slightly by a dim reflection of the Milky Way on the surface of the lagoon. Wanda cuts the water with the broad side of her paddle to slow her momentum, then coasts in. She reaches out and snags the mooring post with a loop of rope, pulls it taut, ties it off. Hauling the cheesecloth bag up out of the water, she slings it across her shoulder and climbs, the ripe smell of the fish wafting over her. On a platform she’s designated as her kitchen, she guts and heads the fish, fillets them as thin as she can, salts them. There are so many things she doesn’t have enough of, things she yearns for but will never have again, things she hasn’t had for so long she’s forgotten they ever existed—but salt is not one of them. The water takes, and it gives, too. She lays the fish out on her drying rack in neat rows and throws the entrails in the water. A quiet splash, the sound of an alligator snacking. When the flood came it killed a great many creatures, but some did manage to thrive.