The Light Pirate(61)
A guess is not the same as knowing. Phyllis had spent her entire career seeking knowledge in one form or another, but the pursuit itself taught her infinitely more about the absence of knowledge than its presence. What is magic but science that is not yet understood? What is science but magic with an explanation? In the matter of Wanda and the local water bodies, she continued to collect data but acclimated to the idea that there were many, many more questions than answers. In this matter, and in every other. When she had been young, this truth had unsettled her. The older she got, the more she allowed it to soothe her.
Whatever secret aspirations she might have harbored to publish one more paper, to share one last thing with the outside world, laughingstock or no, they fell by the wayside as the following spring approached. The nearby cell towers were finally decommissioned after the refugee trucks ceased their evacuation efforts, and Rudder’s separation from the rest of the country became complete. She was ready for the logistics of all of this, but she wasn’t ready for the grief that slammed into her when she picked up her cell phone one morning and saw that the signal was gone. The final tether: cut. This was it. The beginning of the end. How quickly it all unraveled.
Chapter 52
Wanda lets the water slip over her head like a seamless veil without waiting to see who is coming. She doesn’t trust these whispers, but she trusts the swamp’s human remnants even less. Beneath the surface, the bulk of the manatees glimmer deep in the caves. She looks around for the curve of her boat’s hull, finds it, swims to it. On the way, she takes stock of a new vessel coming into view. A raft, by the look of its underside, a flat square sliding out into the openness of the lagoon through the channel. They’ve only just arrived, she thinks, that’s good. They’re still getting their bearings, probably transfixed by the glow of the water. There’s a chance they haven’t even seen her canoe yet. She surfaces as quietly as she can, on the opposite side of the canoe, and pulls herself aboard. This maneuver is impossible to do silently—but she does it quickly, and that’s what matters.
“Ahoy there,” the newcomer calls out. It’s as if they’re teasing her; that word, “ahoy,” that isn’t a serious word, is it? She hasn’t spoken to another person in a long time. Certain nuances have begun to drift away from her. “Don’t be scared,” they say, “I’m just here for the fresh water.”
She isn’t reassured by this, but what choice does she have? There is no way out of the lagoon but past the raft, and scrabbling up into the tangled mangroves that enclose it will only make her an easy target. Besides—the canoe. Without this vessel, she wouldn’t survive. She cannot just leave it behind.
“Hello,” Wanda ventures, still catching her breath on the bottom of her canoe. Her voice comes out crackling, a plastic bag caught in the weeds. She’s drenched; the pools of water she’s brought aboard with her are still glimmering, but faint. By the time she sits up, the lagoon has darkened. Just a strange sheen on the surface lingers.
“Did you swim?” Their voice is low and smooth. A woman, she thinks, but she’s not sure. Nuances again.
“Yeah.”
“I never seen the water do that here. It’s pretty.”
“It’s probably just the bacteria,” Wanda says, surprised she can find that word after all this time. One of Phyllis’s old theories. It occurs to her that this is almost a conversation now. The stranger asks her name, and without thinking, she answers: “Wanda.”
Even this, an exchange of greetings, of observations, the offering of her name, this is the closest she’s come to another person in a long time. A living person. Bodies gone crisp in their boats do not count. She’s missed it. She knows what loneliness is—how could she not?—but the absence of loneliness has become less familiar. The sensation of closeness frightens and thrills her at the same time.
“Wanda,” the woman repeats softly. “Like the hurricane.” Wanda forgot how much her name means, how clearly it marks her. It’s never been just any name. The thrill curdles to fear. It would have been so easy to swim into the swamp grasses and hide until the stranger left—but again, no, she couldn’t risk someone taking the canoe. She did what she had to. And she will do more, if she must. She feels again for the knife on her hip.
“I’m Bird Dog,” the woman says. The strangeness of this name is eclipsed by everything else that makes this moment strange. None of the fear coursing through Wanda is present in this person’s voice. The opposite. She is calm, nonchalant. As if this—a meeting of drifters—is not notable. Wanda can hear that she’s already started filling her bottles. She lets go of the knife. The water has returned to its customary blackness. “I was going to eat something before I turn back,” Bird Dog continues. “There’s enough, if you wanted. It’s just papaya. I could cut you a piece.”
Wanda squints through the dark, but there is nothing more her eyes can tell her.
Even though she knows she should leave, she stays. She does want something to eat, actually. But more importantly, she wants to keep talking. She wants to not feel afraid. She wants this feeling to last a little longer: of speaking aloud and being spoken to. Phyllis would not approve. She always taught Wanda that if you see another person on the water, you hide. And if you can’t hide, you run. But Phyllis isn’t here anymore; she couldn’t have known how much it would hurt to be so alone.