The Light Pirate(79)
“It’s special, what you got. Could be a big help. The water ain’t dirty like it used to be. And I never seen gators this close to—”
“No,” Wanda says again, and this time she means it just as harshly as it sounds.
“That’s okay.” Bird Dog shuts the toolbox and tucks it into her boat, unfazed. “Come on, there’s a place a ways down I been wanting to look at under a good moon like this.” She takes up her oar and Wanda watches her make long, languid strokes. She’d like to follow. She’d like to be as close to Bird Dog as she can possibly be for as long as a world like this might let her. This woman who says “okay” to both her darkest sin and her deepest secret, like it’s nothing. And she’d also like to be miles away, tucked up in her nest, alone and unaware that Bird Dog even exists. Above all, she’d like to be safe and she’d like to be sure—but neither of these are possibilities, not here. Maybe not anywhere. She thinks of the two bodies in the pantry. The wild stare in their dead eyes. The undisturbed blood snaking down the grooves between the tiles, a strange sort of beauty in its glimmering surface. The weight of the gun. The crack, the kick. The mineral stench of gunpowder. And she thinks of the fear that gripped her windpipe when she saw Phyllis on the floor. The agony of waiting to see if she would ever wake up.
Wanda realizes she’s paddling in the other direction, back the way they came. She has no idea how long she’s been going, but she’s covered a great distance by the time she understands that her body has made a choice without her mind. Bird Dog is behind her. The ruins, behind her. Ahead, just the rippling grave of a highway laid to rest. The shadows of young mangroves, rising to take back what is rightfully theirs. She leans into her stroke and goes faster. As fast as she can; not nearly fast enough.
What does Wanda imagine she is fleeing from: Grief or shame or danger? All three? Or is it the unbearable fragility of everything Bird Dog offers her, the tenderhearted possibility of a union bound to the jagged-edged certainty that nothing lasts? Perhaps it is these whispers that have followed her for a great many years now, that have been growing louder every night since she met the manatees under a dark sky, louder and clearer, until they are crashing into her like waves, whispering, shouting—these voices that say we we we you you you us us us.
It would be easier if it were one of these things. It would be easier if it were all of them. Wanda paddles as fast as she can and the truth is, she doesn’t know what she’s running from. Her body has made a decision of its own accord. There is no thought guiding it, no reason. Tendons pulled taut beneath her skin with a conviction that she didn’t choose. This is survival. This is how the vessel protects the mind, how the mind protects the heart, how the heart goes on forgetting that its calling is to be undefended, that being broken is part of being whole.
Wanda sprints for so long the sun is near by the time she becomes aware of what her body is doing. Her consciousness slides back into her skin; where it went she isn’t sure, but it fuses with her senses once more and she can suddenly feel the burn in her shoulders, the crackle in the back of her dry throat. She can hear the rush of hot blood pressing against her eardrums. She can smell the sweat that pours down from her forehead and taste it on her cracked lips.
The gradient of the sky brightens and brightens. Wanda stops to drink; she can’t spare the pause but she also can’t spare the moisture that is rushing out of her pores. She needs to rest, but there’s nothing here except open water and mangroves too young to offer shade. Onward. The sun crests, a molten slice of fire that gets bigger and rounder by the second. There is extraordinary beauty occurring; all she has to do is turn her head to see it, but she doesn’t. To admire is to slow and to slow is to succumb. She keeps going, letting the splendor unfold without witness. She cuts west, into the swamp. A heat shimmer begins to rise from the water, from her skin. She can’t tell if it is the light refracting or her own vision blurring, but either way the space she occupies has begun to warp all around her, the shapes to distort, the colors to burn. The prow of her canoe glides across flame, through lava. She vaguely remembers a game she played when she was young—the floor was red hot and she had to build a pathway to the kitchen with couch cushions and table mats and even, to make it those last few perilous feet, Kirby’s and Lucas’s upside-down hard hats. She remembers gingerly placing her little foot inside the crown of her father’s hard hat, the slipperiness of the plastic yellow dome against the laminate flooring, the ripe sweaty smell that all their work clothes had, and that final leap onto the cool, comforting tile: safe.
But there is no such thing as safety here. The flames lick all around her—no, the waves. She can’t tell the difference. The paddle burns her hands and she grips it tighter. Her brain is hot inside her skull, her blood steaming inside her veins. The sun is free of the horizon now, climbing and climbing, growing stronger with each minute that passes. There—a mature mangrove thicket with a broad canopy and enough soil to lie down on looms up into her blurring vision. She beaches the canoe on a tangle of roots, then hauls it up and into the underbrush. She collapses. Drinks. Sweats. And waits to see if she has pushed her body beyond what it can recover from.
When the sun sets, Wanda wakes. Surprised that she was able to sleep at all, she takes stock of herself. Her brain whirs, sluggish but functioning. Her limbs do what she tells them to, albeit very slowly. She finishes the water because her body needs it, but seeing the empty bottles glittering in the fading light makes her uneasy. When she pushes the canoe back into the water, the roots scrape against the hull. She doesn’t have the strength to lift it.