The Light Pirate(77)

There’s something familiar about the ruins they pass, but she can’t remember what they used to be. When the sun is beginning to crest, Bird Dog heads for the only building still standing above the water line and disappears inside. Wanda looks for nearby shade, but there aren’t many options: a young mangrove island growing up out of the middle of a parking lot, decrepit streetlights looming above it, or a more mature canopy back the way they came. The young mangroves aren’t thick enough to shade her yet. It’ll have to be the older grove—it doesn’t have a clear line of sight to where Bird Dog is resting, but Wanda is out of options. She’s about to circle back toward the mature trees when a voice rings out across the water.

“Wanda,” Bird Dog calls. “You can sleep here.”

Her thoughts whirl. How did she give herself away? She was so careful. So quiet. It’s been a long time since anyone got the better of her in the swamp.

“I figure you been watching me long enough to know I ain’t my brother.” Wanda is still so shocked she can’t move, but she gathers herself enough to assess this statement and find it logical. “Come on, if I was gonna hurt you, you’d be hurt by now. I’m the one should be scared.”

Hesitant, Wanda paddles toward Bird Dog’s voice. The sun is beginning to edge higher, the sky coming alive with soft lilac brushstrokes. She can just barely see Bird Dog’s face, propped up on her hands in the second-story window, the first floor almost entirely full of water. “You knew I was watching?”

“Sure I knew, just didn’t see any need to rush you. You got a right to make up your own mind about us. About me.”

Wanda considers this. “Don’t know what I think, really.”

“So then stay,” Bird Dog says. “Find out.”

Here, the opening she yearned for, the invitation, being offered to her. It’s impossible to say no, not after all that wanting. So she lets out a breath she didn’t know she was holding and says yes.



They sit on opposite sides of a room that used to be someone’s office. There are three windows, hung with rags cut in strips to let the breeze pass through. Two face north, one east. Good ventilation, not too much solar gain. Wanda realizes that Bird Dog has chosen this place carefully, has probably stayed here many times. Reading her mind, Bird Dog says, “This is my stopover when I go south.”

“To Miami?”

“Sometimes.”

“That’s a long way. I only been to Miami twice, when I was little. Before. What’s it like now?”

Bird Dog thinks for a minute. “Sunk,” she says. “More to salvage. But more people, too.”

There’s a long desk, pushed up against the wall, and a nest of old sleeping bags and leaves on the floor. Arranged on the desk, a collection of items: framed photographs, the glass gone cloudy with mold and condensation; a stapler; an old telephone.

“This was the manager’s office, I think,” Bird Dog says, seeing her looking. “Used to be a bank downstairs.”

“How can you tell?” She squints into the cloudy glass of one of the picture frames and can just barely make out a smiling face looking back at her. It startles her, that pair of crinkly eyes peering out.

Bird Dog crooks an eyebrow. “’Cause I remember. My daddy had an account, I guess. He took us here, me and Corey, when we was little. They gave us candy. You know, with the stick. Pops…something like that.” The fact that Wanda has forgotten so much of this embarrasses her. She feels off-balance with this woman, still recovering from the shock of being seen when she thought she was so well hidden.

“What happened to them? Your people, I mean,” Wanda asks. She hadn’t planned on asking it so abruptly, but it’s out of her mouth before she can stop herself.

“I should probably be asking you,” Bird Dog says, settling into the sleeping bags. A rich, mildewed stink rises from them. She balls one up and throws it at Wanda, who catches it. A bolt of panic runs through her, but she wills herself to stay still, to learn what there is to learn. “It was hard when they didn’t come back, but it was better in the long run. They weren’t…” Bird Dog makes a show of patting her bedding into a comfortable shape, but she’s just stalling to gather herself. Wanda can hear the barely there cracks in her voice. What they are revealing, she isn’t sure. “They weren’t good people,” Bird Dog finally says. “I reckon you know that.”

“I dunno what you mean.” Wanda tries not to give herself away, but even she can hear that she sounds like a liar.

“Oh, come on. I knew where they was headed that night. Only thing I wasn’t sure about was if you got out before it burned. If you lit that fire or they did. But I had a feeling. Me and Corey, we weren’t like how twins are supposed to be, you know? Close and like-minded and all that. But even so, I could feel him go, I think. That night. Found the ruins later. And then I started seeing your traps. Don’t know how I knew they were yours. Little hands, little traps, I guess. But you stopped setting ’em, didn’t you?” Wanda nods slowly. She should be rigid with fear, but she’s not. “I just about gave up on you.”

It would be logical if Bird Dog wanted her dead, except that nothing about these past few weeks since they found each other at the freshwater spring has been logical. Or, Wanda silently corrects herself, since Bird Dog found her. “At the spring…” Wanda begins.