The hazy edge of the hurricane looms just beyond the breakers. Within, the eye is cloudless and calm, a kernel of stillness held in the arms of ferocious winds. They’ve named her Wanda, but this vortex goes by many names, given over the course of many lifetimes. A she is a he is an it. The ocean is whipped to a froth. The sky seethes. Wanda hurtles forward.
Chapter 14
Flip takes a step inside the trailer. “Lucas,” he whines, “I think we should go back.” Lucas stops swiveling in the La-Z-Boy and gives his brother a cold stare. He isn’t opposed to this idea. Not exactly. He can see the sky darkening over Flip’s shoulder, can hear the rain thickening against the roof, can smell the strange scorch of the hurricane in the air. He knows that it is unwise to be here. But he also knows that the only person waiting for them at home is Frida, practically catatonic in her bedroom, while Kirby works until the eleventh hour, as he always does. Here, in this empty trailer with his little brother, what he says goes. Lucas is in charge, and he will not cede that power so easily.
“Don’t be a chickenshit,” he says. Flip is wounded by this accusation and submits instantly, which is the point. He takes another step into the trailer and lets the flimsy door swing shut. His silence is his acquiescence.
“Come here,” Lucas commands, and Flip obeys. He slumps into the other La-Z-Boy and the two boys swivel in unison for a moment, wondering what to do now. Lucas turns on the television and they watch. Flip fidgets, balancing his rear on the edge of the seat as if to leap out of it at any moment, while Lucas lounges, an extravagant splay of his limbs thrown across the sticky leather upholstery. His apparent ease is a lie, a fib for Flip’s benefit, or perhaps for his own. Lucas can feel the sway of the trailer as the wind gusts. But he is not ready to go back. Going back is giving up—and that he will not do. There is more than a little of Kirby in his stubbornness.
“Let’s see what else is here,” Lucas declares when the episode ends. He hops out of the easy chair and heads to the bedroom, where the shades are drawn and a bed made up with pale wrinkled sheets looms ghostlike in the dark. Flip follows, reluctant but complicit. They inspect the bureau one drawer at a time, rifling through clothes and socks, then turn to the nightstand. There isn’t much—a tube of hand lotion, crumpled receipts, a bottle of Tylenol, pens with chewed caps. But then in the back of a drawer Lucas finds something more interesting—a thin fold of twenties, maybe a hundred dollars, fastened with a paper clip. He holds it up, triumphant.
“Check it out,” Lucas says.
Flip looks stricken. “You should put it back,” he whispers.
Lucas did not intend to take it until Flip said this, but now he must. Something has come over him this afternoon, some primal urge to assert dominance, to insist upon the corruption of his younger brother, to make decisions for them both that are questionable. This indescribable feeling in the air that has touched them all, whether they know it or not. Whether they understand it or not. The elements may be speaking, but listening is a skill that Lucas has never been good at.
He makes a show of putting the money in his pocket. “What are you gonna do about it?” he says, and puffs out his chest like a bird trying to look bigger than it is. Flip shrinks away and turns toward the door. He does not understand any of this. He only wants to go home, for his brother to stop being a bully.
“Well,” Lucas demands. “I said, what are you gonna do about it?”
“Nothing,” he replies.
“That’s right,” Lucas says. “Nothing.”
Chapter 15
The storm will make landfall at any moment now. The wind and rain whipping around Kirby’s truck is vicious, smacking against the body of the vehicle with the force of metal chains. It will get much worse, but even now, it takes all of his concentration to keep the truck on the road. Driving through town, he sees that it’s mostly abandoned. He skims through the local AM radio stations for the emergency services updates, trying to keep his mind fastened to the question of where the boys might have gone as he wrestles with the steering wheel.
He goes to the high school auditorium first, where they’ve taped off dozens of eight-by-eight squares on the floor, a grid of displacement. There are the people who have done this before, with their tents and folding chairs and sleeping bags, and then there are those who didn’t know what to expect, who have arrived with nothing but handbags and protein bars in the pockets of their raincoats. Kirby scans the crowd, trying to be quick and thorough at the same time. A woman with a clipboard approaches and greets him with infuriating calm.
“Glad you made it!” she proclaims, as if his arrival warrants congratulations. “We still have plenty of space left, don’t worry. Over here you’ll see—”
He cuts her short. “I’m not here for that,” he says. “My boys are missing, twelve and eight. You got any strays around here?”
She scans the auditorium as if they might appear. “Oh no! I don’t think so…” she says, then looks to the clipboard. “Names?”
“Lucas and Phillip Lowe.”
They aren’t on the roster. Every second that passes in which he still doesn’t know where they are makes his heart beat faster. By now, there is a hummingbird inside his chest. She brings him to the ham radio operator who is set up at a little desk in one of the classrooms, an older man with a line of pens clipped into his breast pocket, intensely focused on the pile of equipment in front of him.
“Maybe George can help. He’s our contact from the Emergency Operations Center.” She quickly recounts the details of Kirby’s search. “Lucas and Phillip. Twelve and eight,” she says. “Wearing…” She looks at Kirby. “What did you say they were wearing?”
“I don’t, um. A red T-shirt on the youngest, maybe. And…I’m sorry, I wasn’t paying attention.” How could he not have been paying attention? How could he not know?
“That’s okay.” She pats his arm, but he barely feels it. He’s too busy staring at George, trying to disguise the panic on his face. The man isn’t looking at him anyway. He’s tuning his dials, speaking in half code into his mic, some of which Kirby understands, some of which he doesn’t. George listens for a few moments and then turns back to Kirby.
“Not accounted for,” he says. “But we’re sending out the alert to everyone. You got a phone number?” Kirby gives it to him. “Anybody’s guess how long these cell towers’ll last,” George says. “We’ll call you if we can. You got a CB?”
“Yeah, got one in the truck.”
“All right, good, well, stay on channel nine, then. We’ll find ’em eventually. You raise ’em right and they know how to take cover. Twelve and eight’s old enough to know.” Did he raise them right? Did he raise them at all? Kirby can’t bring himself to acknowledge such hollow optimism. He’s incredulous that this man could be so calm, so certain that it will all be okay, and yet it occurs to him that he’s been saying these things to Frida all along. Telling her not to worry. Telling her everything will be fine, even when it won’t be. Even when it’s all coming apart at the seams.