The Light Pirate(67)
As she works, the rain begins to thin. When the sky has closed and the flood has ceased, the only sounds are the water dripping down off the leaves and the fronds and the flower petals, a familiar melody ringing out all across the swamp. The sun manages to peek through the clouds, just the tiniest glow near the horizon, and Wanda realizes she hasn’t missed dusk after all. If she wants to meet Bird Dog, she should go now.
And she does want to. The problem is, she shouldn’t. She dresses, threading her arms through a damp, torn T-shirt and sliding into little spandex shorts that dry quickly. The elastic waistband is shot and she is constantly sewing up holes that appear in the seams, but everything she wears is falling apart in one way or another. It will do. Climbing into her boat, she tries to make peace with the foreboding sensation that creeps along the back of her neck by promising herself that she’s only going to see if Bird Dog is waiting for her. She’ll just take a peek from behind the ruins of the marina. That’s all. A peek and then she’ll leave. She wants to see the body attached to that voice. Surely this is an acceptable risk?
She can hear Phyllis chiding her as she unties the canoe, telling her to stay home, to stay safe. This idea of safety is something Phyllis drilled into her, as if it were the most important thing, the only thing. An idea synonymous with survival. But Wanda has begun to suspect that this isn’t true. She coils the rope at her feet. What if survival and risk belong to one another?
The water is high and rough after the downpour, but the current is in her favor. The heavy clouds still drooping low over the horizon take on colors as the setting sun illuminates them from behind the waves: orange, blush, violet. Wanda lets the water carry her toward the marina, toward the ocean, occasionally dipping her paddle in to steer. Nearby, she sees a flit of striped fur among the vegetation, a spark in this luminous moment before the colors fade and the light dims. The tomcat. Whether he is following her or running from her, she couldn’t say. It’s usually a little of both, and that’s why she and these feral creatures understand each other as well as they do. Yearning and fear, bound together as violently as the wire traps she doesn’t want to set anymore.
Arriving at the marina, she slots her canoe in among the ruins and hangs on to an old beam to anchor herself. She finds an angle so she can see the flagpole but still remain hidden behind the rotting, caved-in roof. It occurs to her that the journey home will be difficult—the tide is rushing out, all that rainwater determined to meet the sea. She sees Bird Dog arriving from farther south, near where the causeway—mostly submerged rubble now—used to connect Beachside to the mainland. Wanda watches her pilot the raft, taking stock of this strange woman’s strength and agility. Her grace. Wanda decides then that Bird Dog is beautiful.
When Wanda was still a little girl, Phyllis warned her that as time progressed and the swamp encroached, as the temperatures rose, as the population of Rudder thinned…the people who remained would become more and more ruthless. “Count on it,” Phyllis said, and she’d been right. More than once, she’d been right. Wanda watches Bird Dog bump up against the flagpole and tie off. She seems so vulnerable out there on the open water, so trusting. But maybe this is how she sets her victims at ease. Wanda wonders if some part of her wants Bird Dog to be one of the predators Phyllis warned her about. She thinks of the feral cat in her snare, the terrified, spitting, violent look in its eyes as she approached it. The frantic scrabble. But then, as she took out her knife, something unexpected: It stopped struggling. Perhaps it understood in that final moment that Wanda had come to set it free. Not free to limp back into the swamp with a mangled leg, but an actual freedom. An end.
She knew then, as she knows now, that there are worse things than giving up. What is this half life worth to her anymore? The lingering obligation she feels, to Phyllis, to Lucas, to her father and even her mother, to the pump of her own heart, could be over. Her duty to the breath in her lungs could cease. Her grip on survival could loosen. The Edge used to be a physical place, a line between the ocean and dry land, approximately nine feet below the hull of her canoe where she floats at this very moment. Now it is a state of mind, an undertow that tickles her feet no matter where she goes. She’s felt it since she was a girl, and she feels it now.
Wanda releases the beam that has anchored her, and plunges her paddle into the water, skirting the larger chunks of debris that float, pressing on toward the flagpole. The closer she gets, the lighter she feels. The clouds fade from violet to indigo to midnight as she rows. Even if all of this is a mistake, it is her right to make it. Perhaps even her duty. Rounding the last stretch of the marina’s ruins, she reaches Bird Dog’s shadowy craft, slowly fading into the backdrop of settling darkness.
“You came,” Bird Dog says. “I didn’t think you would.”
“I came,” Wanda replies. She slides in beside the raft, her canoe brushing up against it with the raspy whisper of plexiglass against rough metal. Skin on skin.
Squinting into the darkness, she tries to make out Bird Dog’s features in what little light is left. Something tickles at her memory.
“You still don’t recognize me, do you?” Bird Dog says. A charge of electricity jumps inside Wanda’s chest. Panic. She stares, her mind scrambling from one possibility to the next. Bird Dog’s face is angular, sharp cheekbones and a high forehead, features that look as if they’ve been sculpted by an exacting hand. Her hair is cropped close to her head, bristling and blond. Her skin is scored, pinkish, pale.