The Light Pirate(8)
Feeling good about this, Kirby lights a candle directly from the burner’s flame and sets it next to the pan, then turns off his headlamp. Work will call soon. He checks the screen of his cell phone. Probably any minute. Most people don’t realize how temperamental the flow of electricity is, but Kirby knows it better than anyone. Temperamental and deadly. He’s spent the last fifteen years climbing poles, working on lines, cleaning up after blizzards and hurricanes and tornadoes. He knows what can happen in a single moment of negligence working with electricity—people die, or they lose limbs, or they lose skin. A lot of skin. He’s seen it. When people ask what he does for a living, he just tells them he keeps the lights on, because no one seems to know what a lineman is, and they nod approvingly. They like how simple it sounds. No one wants to think too hard about how tenuous these staples really are, about the human cost of turning on a lamp or opening the refrigerator. It’s the places that know true disaster where people understand the kind of work he does. The places that are used to going without power for weeks or months or lately—years.
When he took the Puerto Rico contract, it was just another storm duty assignment. Another way to escape the prefurnished studio where he’d been spending his rare days off, after Chloe kicked him out but before they’d figured out a joint custody arrangement. Except it wasn’t just another assignment. Before his crew even arrived, they knew that the whole grid needed to be replaced. They knew that the parts being shipped over were inadequate. They knew that they didn’t have enough hands to do what was needed. Everyone did. They’d known all this since Maria and yet in the years since, billions had been spent on inadequate patches. And after Poppy, they spent even more to do even less. He’d never worked a job to run out the clock before. They worked to keep the lights on, didn’t they? But the lights weren’t coming back on, not here. The government had left this place to drown and sent men like him to pretend they’d done all they could. Kirby had never felt so useless. He’d known for years how decrepit the U.S. electrical grid had become. Every lineman knew that. But he’d imagined, as they all had, that one day the work would get done. The lights, somehow, would stay on. Turns out that in a territory where no one could vote, they wouldn’t. Somewhere in the back of his mind he knows that Puerto Rico was only the beginning, but he doesn’t dwell on that. Those worries are above his pay grade.
The eggs start to smoke. He flips them out onto plates and passes them to the boys. Running their forks through singed egg white, they make faces but eat anyway. Kirby is unaware of just how special this moment is to them. He cannot see how anxious they are that this will end too soon. The rain has begun again, thudding sideways against the house now. The soil-rich smell of humidity and chlorophyll has crept in through the cracks without the AC to strip it from the air. Shrubs knock on the side of the house with their soft knuckles, requesting refuge from the rising wind. Even so, the house is quieter than it usually is; it still feels like the middle of the night. He jots down a list of last-minute things he planned to do this morning for Frida and pins it to the refrigerator with a plastic magnet that looks like the earth: verdant green and blue.
When the phone finally does ring, Lucas reaches for it and swipes across the screen before the first trill has finished. “Hello?” he says, eager to be part of Kirby’s day. Kirby plucks it from his hands, trying not to be annoyed. It’s his foreman, telling him what he already knows. He listens anyway, then steps back into his muddy boots.
“Let her sleep, men,” he says to his boys, meaning Frida, and swings open the kitchen door, steps over the sandbags, and disappears into the predawn darkness. Just like that, the moment is gone. Later, he will wish he had said something more, had paused to hug them, to caress their soft, sleep-worn heads. He will wish he had done many things. But how could he have known?
Chapter 8
A clatter of dishes in the sink. Frida hears him telling the boys to let her sleep, and then his boots on the linoleum, his truck rumbling to life outside, the sound softening as it disappears down the length of the driveway. Is it possible he kissed her goodbye when she was sleeping? No. She’s been awake since before he got up.
She rises eventually and finds the boys taking turns with a battery-operated video game in the darkened living room. Flip’s face is three inches away from the glow of the screen; Lucas eats cereal dry from the box on the sofa.
“Morning, kiddos,” she says. She doesn’t expect them to acknowledge her, and they don’t. In the kitchen, an unattended candle burns next to a dirty pan. It occurs to her to be sanctimonious about this, but she’s too tired to care. All the anger she felt yesterday has seeped away during the night. Now there is only the fear she can’t seem to shed. She puts the candle on a saucer and lights a few more.
The morning wears on and the house stays dark. Frida contemplates the blackened window over the sink, a blind eye that can no longer look out—only in. The sound of the rain flows and then ebbs and then flows. She returns to the sink to wash the boys’ dishes, only to be reminded of the power outage when the faucet spits and runs dry. Instead, she makes herself oatmeal with bottled water, and while she stirs she wonders how to fill this day. The hurricane is too close to let the boys outside, and the thought of them cooped up with her all day, and tomorrow too, probably, almost knocks her over. Joy would know what to do with them, but Frida is at a loss. They would probably prefer she leave them alone.