There is pride in staying. A certain sturdiness in his commitment to this place. To endure is to do right. His father taught him this, without intending to. But it’s more than pride, more than keeping an unspoken promise he’s outgrown. It’s the land that kept him here. The kudzu that hangs from the live oaks. The egrets that stand by the side of the road. The rich chaos of the jungle, overtaking empty lots and broken-down cars. It’s the struggle. There is comfort in staying close to the pain. When he was fifteen, his mother took him to Minneapolis to look at houses. It was his first time away from Florida. He hadn’t seen Kirby in three years and he’d only held his half sister once. Stepping out of the airport, he felt that frigid Minnesotan air sucking the heat, the wet, the swamp from his lungs, and he knew where he belonged. He knew he would fight to get back. And he did. But now?
Gillian is waiting for him at the bar. It’s a dive at the best of times, but without power, it feels almost romantic. The tables have all been dragged outside, where tiki torches sputter around the edges of the parking lot and tea lights flicker inside jam jars. A generator hums somewhere, supplying electricity to the important things: the ice machine, the beer coolers, the neon Budweiser sign that sizzles in the window. This isn’t the first time the Dog and Bone has had to make do without power—its bartenders know their way around in the dark.
He finds his high school sweetheart at a picnic table outside, smoking a vape pen and peeling the wrapper off a bottle of IPA in little strips. She gets up when she sees him appearing out of the gloomy parking lot, and they hug. It’s familiar and awkward all at once. He hasn’t seen her in a long time, three years to be exact, and the last time he held her like this they were in love. It’s hard to tell if that’s still the case—how to act if it is, how to act if it isn’t. He sits down.
“So. You’re back.”
“Hell no,” she says before she can stop herself. “Well, just for a minute.”
He cringes at the idea that returning for anything longer than a minute is so unthinkable to her, but Rudder was never something they could agree on. She couldn’t wait to leave. “What for?”
“My parents. They’re—” She stops and looks up at him, the candlelight flickering underneath her chin. He’s always found her beautiful, but she’s grown into her face in a way that he doesn’t remember and didn’t expect. She’s even more lovely to him now. He already knows why she’s here.
“They’re leaving?” he offers. “I figured. Why else would you come back?” She’s quiet, playing with the label on her bottle again. “To be honest, I’m surprised they’ve stayed this long.”
“Well, they’re already gone, actually. They haven’t lived here for a while now. It’s just the house…They didn’t…well, they didn’t want to deal with it. So that’s why I came.”
“To deal with it?”
“That’s right.”
“And so they’re in, what, Denver? Must be nice having a spare house lying around.” She stiffens. Money has always been the thing that separates them. Her among the Beachside bungalows, him tucked away in the swamp. The Intracoastal cutting a line between them. Now Beachside is mostly empty. A few stragglers, a few squatters. Beach houses don’t have the same charm without the beach.
“It is nice,” she finally says. “They’re very privileged, Lucas. Happy?” He isn’t happy, though. A waitress comes over and sets a cold bottle of Miller Lite in front of him. He looks up and recognizes her as an older woman who sometimes brings his crew water and sandwiches when they work on her street.
“On me,” the woman says. “I know you all are working hard to get the power back on. Just to say—we appreciate you.” He thanks her and looks over at Gillian, who doesn’t seem to understand this transaction. She raises her eyebrows after the waitress disappears back into the shadowy bar.
“Your new girlfriend?”
This quip bothers him. “She means the crew,” he says. “The line workers.”
“I know.” She always says it like this when she actually doesn’t know, but Lucas lets it pass.
“Most people…they think we’re not working hard enough. Or, I don’t know. That it’s our fault somehow. Everyone wants to blame someone.” He hooks his finger around the cold neck of the bottle. Is this really what he wants to be talking about? He tries to think of something else. “Anyway, why now? This isn’t the most convenient time to pack up a house, is it?”
Gillian laughs. “No, it’s really fucking inconvenient, actually. But they wanted to get it done and I have a long weekend, so.” She shrugs. “Here I am.”
“A long weekend from?”
“Grad school. I guess it’s been a while since we’ve caught up, huh. I’m just starting a grad program for psychology now. In Chicago.”
“That’s great. You always loved to psychoanalyze me, perfect choice.”
“Right, so now when I tell you you’re too good for this place, it’s a certified opinion.” She pauses. “Sorry, that didn’t come out right. I just meant—it was supposed to be a compliment. I always thought you’d leave eventually.”
“How do you like your program?” he asks her, not wanting to argue, feeling the heat rise in his chest. Because the fact is, as hard as he fought to stay, as ashamed as he is to admit it, the idea of leaving has taken root in him. But to demean this place in the process, to judge it as unworthy of himself, of anyone really, is to belittle its land, its inhabitants, its struggle, its history. He doesn’t need Rudder to be not good enough in order to go somewhere else. It occurs to him suddenly that this might be the last time he ever sees her. The thought feels tragic and correct at the same time. She was everything to him once, but now she feels like a stranger.
“I like the program. Mostly.” She goes on, telling him about Chicago, about her summer travels in Europe, about the people from Rudder she’s kept in touch with and the people she’s lost track of. He listens, is politely attentive, but none of this matters. Not really. She’s telling him stories about a world that doesn’t know it’s ending. This world is worried, of course, about climbing temperatures and vengeful wildfires and rising tides. The headlines are absolutely terrible, she says. Incessant. Exhausting. But they’re just that. Headlines. Things that happen to other people, elsewhere. The Middle East, Indonesia, Northern California, the Bahamas: those poor people. Southern Florida and the Keys, Louisiana, Puerto Rico: those poor people. The safe zones have shrunk, will go on shrinking, but the people still firmly attached to the idea that there will continue to be such lines—between safe and not safe, between us and those poor people—are determined to go on as they always have. And here is one of them. He used to think these people were lucky. Now he isn’t so sure. Lucas watches Gillian wave her hands around as she talks about her cohort. “They’re all idiots,” she says, then smiles sweetly, a little abashedly. “That sounds mean. But it’s true.”