The Light Pirate(57)
Under clear skies, Phyllis and Wanda took stock. The water did indeed trickle into the house, but only just. Being farther inland and on high ground kept them drier than some, but nothing here was fully dry anymore. The ground was sodden. The air, too. Water coursed down the road set just below the house in a thick, sludgy brown river. Sewage and seawater, trash and mud. The garden would not yield again that year—its greenery was flattened, its soil swollen. One of the old lemon trees had broken off at the waist, a bow it would never rise from. All told, they were lucky. They were ready. This was how it would be now.
In other parts of the state, counties began to announce closures. Through that winter and into spring, whole communities slipped away, one by one. Piecemeal evacuation orders were issued and military vehicles began to patrol, ready to take refugees if they wanted to go. Many left. Some held on. Eventually the federal government announced the widespread closure of Florida as a whole, as if it were a rundown theme park with a roller coaster that was no longer safe to ride. And in some ways, it was. Hadn’t Florida always been the end of the line? The butt of the joke? Alligators that stalked Disney World’s children. The Florida Man. Headline after headline, rejoicing in absurdity, in poverty, in addiction and mental illness, in aimless violence. In one year, they said, Florida would be released back into the wild. Released, they said, like a creature the country had tried to tame but ultimately couldn’t. They made it sound like there was a plan. An orderly transition that would unfold. A whole year to wind things down, to strategize. But it didn’t happen like that. Once the announcement was made, the changes came even faster. That summer, panic spread. Supermarkets stopped restocking. Gas stations sold their last gallons. Hospitals and clinics closed their doors. And finally, well ahead of schedule, the post office stopped delivering with little to no fanfare.
Phyllis observed all of these developments and was unsurprised. She watched the military’s trucks splash through the sodden streets of Rudder, collecting refugees, reminding holdouts that they would be alone if they stayed. A melancholy twist of excitement gripped her. She had been right. About everything. The only thing she hadn’t planned for was the little girl who chased her chickens through the swamp, who drew orchids at her dining room table, who begged to explore the sunken lowlands of their town by canoe. Phyllis had never had to worry about anyone but herself until now. Should she do it differently? Unsure, she carried on.
Lucas called in a panic when he heard about the statewide closure. He’d been calling every weekend since he left, but the phone calls had gotten shorter. His life in California fuller. He told Phyllis he was uneasy with the idea of them staying, and she didn’t blame him. But she had spent decades preparing to stay. It was more than stubbornness or ego that made her determined to press on. She couldn’t turn away from the principles she’d arrived at as a young woman, fresh off her undergraduate degree, working as a park ranger in the Everglades and understanding for the first time that the very idea of civilization was irreparably broken. “It will get bad out there, too,” she told him. “At least here we’re ready.”
Lucas wanted to trust this, but there was doubt in his voice as he once again cycled through the options for Wanda, each option its own sacrifice. He asked her outright: “Do you think I should bring her here? I could move out of the dorms. Find a place. Take out another loan.”
Phyllis answered him as best she could, knowing full well that it wasn’t her decision, and also that she was desperate for Wanda to stay. “She’s old enough. She can decide.” Was this dishonest, knowing that Wanda would not want to go? Was it wrong to want to keep her so badly? If she were a parent, maybe she would have chosen differently. Maybe she would have moved, just as Kirby had planned to, anything to get Wanda a few more years of normalcy. But nothing was normal anywhere and she wasn’t a parent. In fact, this was why she’d never wanted to be. She did the best she could. Phyllis knew she would live with these questions for many years, but a decision was made. For now, Wanda would stay.
The dissolution of society was a peaceful thing to watch in many ways. In others, violent. Time took on a dreamlike quality. Days of the week ceased to matter. Months bled together. At the height of that summer, Phyllis and Wanda encountered a middle-aged man throwing rocks through the post office’s windows. They were riding their bicycles, tires whizzing through the water in the street, shallow but enduring, when they heard the breaking glass. Phyllis’s hands jerked on the handlebars at the sound.
“Why’s he doing that?” Wanda asked as the man threw another rock, shattering another pane. Phyllis tried not to stare, but he looked familiar. It was difficult to place him. His face was dirty, his clothes stained.
“I’m not sure,” Phyllis replied.
“Does he want to steal the stamps?”
“That could be.”
“But probably not?”
“No, probably not.”
Phyllis craned her neck as they passed and the man stared back at them: cold, angry, the bottoms of his pants sodden, sticking to his legs. And then his face clicked into place. She hadn’t recognized him without his uniform; it was the postman.
“Sometimes people feel so angry it eats them up inside,” Phyllis told her, glad that they weren’t on foot. She held her breath, waiting to see if the man would approach them. He didn’t, but that didn’t make her feel safe.