The Last Karankawas(50)
As she was being prepared for transport, she lifted his hand to her cheek. Where will you go? she asked, voice raspy from the infection. He could not tell her, I’ll hunker down, querida, and I swear I’ll be fine, this storm is mine and it will not hurt me. Could not put into words what he felt in the marrow of him. So he lied to his wife of fifty-two years, who was breathing with the narrow wedge of an oxygen tube in her nose, and said he was boarding a bus to Austin. It was not the first time he had lied to her.
Ike blinks through the boom and churning spray of another wave, the barks of the Labrador. He was still that wide-shouldered pitcher, known for his riser, when he first cheated on his wife. He wore the Monterrey cap low over his eyes and swung his arm underhand—the superior way, he often thinks now, watching overhand pitchers on TV with a sneer—and coaxed the ball to start low, low, before arcing up and above a batter’s swing. He seduced women in the same way. Shadowed eyes, careful hands, first slow, then a fast rising. He considered it another ritual, one for away games, and when a woman smiled at him from the stands or bought him a drink at the hotel bar, he honored it with equal fervency. Younger Ike thought nothing of reaching for someone else, then someone else after that, one after another, so much energy churning to get out, pounding at the walls. He gave up softball in Year 5 of their marriage, and he gave up his rituals—all but this one. Year 6: a woman leaning over a pool table, watching him through the smoke of the bar. Year 9: a passenger on his southbound route who invited him to dinner when the bus pulled into Victoria. Years 13, 15, 19, 20, 22, 28, 36, 40, 44—single nights, weekend flings. Only one ever became something more—Year 22. Nena. But that was different, and long ago.
Ozone and salt sting his nostrils. He wonders if Catherine knew then, knows now. At times he recalls a tightness around her mouth after he returned from a multiday route, or a lingering over his collar when she hugged him and inhaled. Year 22 she must have seen the way his gaze flicked to the house across the street, but she never said a word. Ike has carried his guilt, felt it prickle in his throat when they attended weddings in Sacred Heart or St. Mary’s and followed along with the vows: Love and honor. Be true to you. Catherine beside him with her arm in his and her fingers gently tapping his palm. He has wanted forgiveness for years 1 through 44 but has been unwilling to face the inevitable fight. He has felt old and tired for so long. If he still bore the battle spirit of youth, he would have asked her decades ago.
Spray droplets spatter across his hair and eyes. He looks at the waves thundering into the Seawall and knows that this storm understands. His storm.
* * *
Ike is hammering the first square of plywood into place when the surge reaches Albacore Avenue. He knew it was coming. He felt the same flutter on the back of his neck that he did on the mound when he spun the ball, hurling his arm in just the right way. His fingertips tingled beneath their nail beds. Come, water, he thought, and it slithered in.
He squints behind his prescription glasses and watches the brown liquid trickle over the weed-bedraggled lawns on the north side. The surge. Ike still hundreds of miles away and its pressure so strong it raises the level of Galveston Bay, pushes the water toward the island from the bayside. The Seawall along the south edge guards them from the ocean, but not their own bay. A sneak attack, like the military formations his father watched on old movies, studied in history books. While they were watching the Seawall, the storm slunk past and approached them from behind.
The wind has strengthened, too. It whips around him and races through the high, thick-leaved palms, the mismatched houses of Albacore Avenue, over the brown bay water steadily creeping onto the street.
Since it is already here, Ike takes his time boarding the windows. He loves this house, its one story and two bedrooms, its faded blue siding and white trim, even the pink oleander trees planted in the front. They came with the house. When they moved here in Year 12, Catherine pointed to them and told him a story she’d heard, about a troop of Boy Scouts camping on Galveston who unwittingly plucked branches off an oleander tree and stripped them clean, then spiked their hot dogs and marshmallows for roasting. The next day their scoutmaster found them dead—every, Catherine said with solemn pauses, single, one.
That story’s nada, Ike responded with a laugh. An urban legend. Though it’s true that oleanders really are poisonous.
They had it confirmed the next day. They were unloading boxes when Mrs. Castillo first crossed Albacore Avenue. She walked over to where he stood beside the open tailgate of his Chevy. She took in a quick dart of her eyes the dark brown of his skin, the Aztec-warrior nose, just as he did her. When she spoke, it was in Spanish she knew he could answer.
Bienvenido, she said. Ike wiped cardboard fluff off his jeans and took her outstretched hand, her grip firm and strong. Magdalena Castillo.
Mucho gusto. Her husband was watching from the window across the street, Catherine from the doorway behind Ike.
Mrs. Castillo gestured to the rosy blossoms, the slender branches of the tree in the yard. If you handle the oleanders, wash your hands good, she said. El veneno, tú sabes, and bad spirits.
Sí, claro, he responded. She was in her late twenties, younger than him, but he recognized in her a deep respect for the old ways; he knew that if he told her of his former game-day rituals she would nod solemnly. Mrs. Castillo was short, stocky, black hair falling loose around her face and down to her wide hips. Pointed chin and high cheekbones that made her look young; black eyes that made her look ancient. Ike felt a tingling in his fingertips, beneath his nail beds. Touch, touch, let the locks slip through his hands like rain. Years from this moment, Ike will fist his hands in that hair, say her name, the shortened version of it that not even her own husband called her anymore: Nena. But in Year 12 he stepped back, proud of his control, and smiled at her.