The Light Pirate(7)
Flip and Lucas come tumbling outside, awake and curious, and the feeling of that hot afternoon sun on his back fades. The smell of new paint leaves him. The rain begins again and the boys holler up at him, wanting to know what he’s doing up out here in the dark. On the other side of this wall, the best friend he’s ever had is curled around the child they’ll share, two overlapping bodies busy with the work of creation. This is what he has now. As the warm rain wets the earth, he is reminded that it’s enough. It’s more than enough. He is luckier than most. Today, he will be whatever this besieged family needs from him.
Kirby sets the boys to work and they are excited to help. Together the three of them ready the house, closing its glossy eyes against the coming storm, shutting those plywood lids one at a time.
Chapter 6
Inside, Frida has already been awake for hours. She builds a fortress of pillows around her naked body now that she is alone in this bed, one between her thighs, one at her back, one clutched against her breasts. Safely ensconced, she listens to Kirby and the boys boarding up the bedroom windows and lies very still. He is just outside, perched on his ladder, pressing the bit of his drill against the wall where their headboard stands, but it feels as if he is miles away. The bright light of his headlamp filters through the curtains, illuminating the pale pink nightgown she shed in the night, then the light is gone, four twirls of the drill, a thump, and the darkness is complete. She peels back the sheet; it’s too hot for anything to be against her skin but the air itself. She instinctively looks for the glow of the alarm clock, but it isn’t there.
He calls to the boys, “No, the big one,” and then there’s the whining motor of the drill again, the shriek of a screw, the thud of the board snapping up tight against the window frame. She knows it’s early. Knows that Kirby woke to the outage, as he always does, and was unnerved, knows that he didn’t expect to lose power until the afternoon at least. He’ll likely be called in to fix the downed line as soon as dawn breaks—or does not break, depending on the sky. Again, she wishes that just this once he had listened to her and the four of them were waking up somewhere in the Panhandle, far from the hurricane’s path. She wishes for a code she might speak that would convey this sense of emergency, this unhinged feeling she has that if he doesn’t let her be frightened, doesn’t let her exist in this fear completely and without apology, if he doesn’t listen, she might never recover.
None of this feels like a symptom of pregnancy, but maybe it is. She has to at least consider that, doesn’t she? Maybe this dread is part of making a life. She wishes her mother could be here to stroke her hair, to listen to her belly, to tell her little fibs about how much it will or won’t hurt when it’s time. Instead, she’s surrounded by men and little boys. Is it true that she doesn’t know a single woman here in Rudder? She tries to think, surely that isn’t the case, but it is. There’s a neighbor—an older woman who lives alone—but they’ve only exchanged pleasantries in the grocery store or met by chance, walking along the road.
Frida lived in Houston long enough to make a few good friends, but after Joy died, after Poppy, she couldn’t imagine going back and resuming her studies as if nothing had happened. So she lingered in San Juan, even after flights resumed. Her friends called to check on her, asking when she would be back, but she didn’t have an answer. She wanted to be close to people who understood what had just happened to her. Most of all she wanted to be close to Kirby. And he wanted her there, too. She’d never felt so wanted. She realized she was pregnant a few weeks before Kirby’s contract ended, and when he asked her to come home with him, it seemed fated. Now, it just seems rash.
The bedroom, so dark already, grows darker still as Kirby seals off the windows in the hall. Frida keeps her eyes open, watching the shimmer of molecules forming and reforming in the blackness. Kirby and the boys move on to the living room. She can still hear the thump of the ladder and the whine of the drill, but either they have stopped speaking or the wind is sucking their voices up into the brewing atmosphere. Not long now.
Chapter 7
Kirby lights the gas stove with a match and makes the boys eggs while he waits to be called in to work. It’s possible they won’t call—possible that they’ll wait till after the storm passes. But every hour with the power back on is another hour to bill. He glances at the clock on his phone, 5:37. They’ll call before six if they call at all.
He can tell that the boys are thrilled by this change in their routine: the early-morning quiet, the darkness, the urgent, rugged work of boarding up the windows as the wind starts to move faster and faster. They jab at each other with their elbows and drink orange juice straight from a slowly warming carton, condensation dripping down the sides. They are giddy in his presence, as if he is a girl they are trying to impress. Kirby almost laughs at the thought, at the idea that one day soon they will indeed be trying to impress girls, but his humor is short-lived. There is too much on his mind to enjoy the spare moments with them this morning. He is busy waiting for the crush of the day’s responsibilities to bear down.
“Let your brother have some,” he says as he sees Lucas take another chug, juice slipping down the corners of his mouth and onto his shirt while Flip waits his turn. His tone is harder than necessary, but his oldest has been difficult lately, pushing everyone a little too far. Lucas grins and burps, triumphantly unperturbed, then crushes the empty container and tosses it into the recycling bin. This fucking kid, he thinks, and resolves that he will talk to him after all. He should have done it last night when Lucas called Frida’s dinner disgusting. He’ll do it later today, when they are all stuck in this little house together and there is no escape.