He leaves the next morning. He hugs Kirby, then Wanda. Steam rises from the wet earth as the sun warms last night’s rain. The driveway, a mud pit now, sucks at their shoes when they’re still and spatters on their ankles when they move. The kitten, clawing up and down Wanda’s torso like it’s the trunk of a tree, stops moving long enough for Lucas to rub its tiny forehead with one finger. “Bye, little guy,” he says, and it hisses at him.
“It’s a she,” Wanda says. “Her name is Blackbeard.”
“Blackbeard,” Lucas repeats. He tries for another pat and the kitten swipes at him, needlelike claws extended. He snatches his hand away, a little too slow. “Bloodthirsty, huh.”
“No,” Wanda says, exasperated. “She’s a wild animal.”
He examines the scratch—a thin red line, about the depth of a paper cut—and shrugs. He’s willing to cede the point. Kirby tells him to drive safe, and all three of them assure one another that they’ll be together again soon. Looking back at them in his rearview mirror just before he turns onto the road, Lucas believes that it’s true.
Chapter 47
“Where will you go?” Phyllis asks. The porch light glows between them, a cloud of gnats clustering around it. Kirby waits while Wanda gathers her things inside. Conversation has never come easily between him and Phyllis, but he’ll miss her. And Wanda will be bereft without her. He tries not to think about that now.
“Mendocino,” he replies. “Next week.”
“That soon,” she says, and Kirby understands this to mean that she’ll miss them also.
“It’s time.”
“I know.” She pats his arm and gives him a smile. “It’s good. You’ll be happy there. The redwoods. They’ll suit you.”
Driving home in the dark, Wanda and Blackbeard beside him, he can hear the swish of water against his tires. In the driveway, it crests his boots. Wanda splashes up the steps in front of him, the kitten clinging to her shirt, her feet wet and wrinkled and bare. “The whole yard is a puddle,” she announces from the top step, fiddling with the door. It sticks to the frame when it’s particularly humid, which is to say, always. He reaches over her to give it a thump with his fist on the top left corner. It gives, and she stumbles inside.
“One big puddle,” he agrees. Kirby looks out at the yard from the top step and watches the water glisten, the stars reflecting off the surface like a second sky, then Wanda flicks the kitchen light on and he goes in without noticing that the sky is in fact dark and overcast, that the water does not reflect light but rather is the source of it.
The next day, when Wanda asks if she can go to Phyllis’s again, he knows he should say yes. There’s plenty for him to do here. It’s time to pack, time to choose what stays and what goes. He’s even beginning to look forward to it. He imagines them arriving on the doorstep of a house that means nothing, surrounded by trees so tall he has to lean back to see the tops. A house that is fresh, scraped clean of memories. It feels good to imagine them in a house like that. Hard, but good. It’s time to set all of that in motion.
Instead, he says no. It’s selfish, but he can’t bear to be alone today, the rain already slapping against the windows. He wants her near. Searching for a reason, a thing for them to do together, he says, “We could go to the movies. A matinee.” He can’t recall the last time he took her to the movie theater. She looks at him, dubious.
“A movie?”
“Yeah, a movie. Popcorn, candy. It’ll be fun.”
“I don’t think those are open anymore,” she says.
“Of course they are.”
In fact, many are closed. But Kirby is too attached to the idea to give up, and so he keeps calling and calling until he finds one an hour west that is playing one matinee today. It’s rated R, but he’s too delighted to care much about whether it’s appropriate for Wanda. “You’ll cover your eyes during the grown-up parts,” he tells her.
At the theater, the same man sells them their tickets and their snacks. He raises an eyebrow at Wanda but doesn’t say anything. Inside, they are the only ones. As it happens, the film is full of sex and gore and it’s well over two hours long. During a tense moment, Wanda drops half a box of Skittles on the floor, a cascade that rattles down the aisles, but there is no one to be bothered. She falls asleep somewhere close to the end. Afterward, they play the claw game in the empty lobby. Kirby supplies quarter after quarter as she fails to grasp hold of the plush pink elephant tucked among the plastic eggs filled with action figures.
“One more?” she pleads.
“One more,” he says, until he truly doesn’t have any more change. They leave empty-handed, but Wanda doesn’t mind. Outside, they run for the truck, the rain pelting them with its warm, sharp drops, and on the way home they discuss special effects.
“So they didn’t really die, right?”
“Right, no one died. It’s just tricks and makeup.”
“Hm.” The rain sluices across the windshield, so thick he can barely see. He lifts his foot off the gas and squints to make out the lines on the road. “I liked it,” she announces finally. “I thought it was a good movie. I’m glad we went. I really liked the game at the end, also, with the claw. Do you think Blackbeard is missing me?”
“For sure she is.”
“And she’ll come with us to California, won’t she?”
“Of course she will.”
The rain has become so torrential that Kirby slows the truck to a crawl. There’s no one else on the road, no hot glow of taillights to follow. If he weren’t so familiar with these curves he might pull over, put his hazards on, and wait for the rain to slow. But he knows this stretch by heart, so he keeps going, slow and deliberate. During the rainy season, the road floods quickly here where it’s low, but Kirby isn’t worried; his truck is high and they’re not so far from home.
He forges on until something stops him—there’s a thump and then a groan and when he gently lays on the gas, the truck’s wheels spin and go nowhere. He gives it some more. Still nothing. Reverse gets him nowhere, either.
“Well, that’s no good.” He looks over at Wanda, who isn’t scared. “I guess we’re all caught up.”
“On what?” she asks.
“Oh, who knows. I’m sure this rain’s been knocking all kinds of things down. It’s all right, I’ve got the chain saw in the back. I’m going to go see if I can drag it out first. Hand me the headlamp in the glove box.”
He clicks on the light and gets out, crouching down to see what’s gotten caught in the truck’s undercarriage: just a sturdy branch. He shuts the door to keep the cab dry and goes around to the front to get a better look, shining his headlamp on it. If he can get Wanda to reverse while he pushes, that’ll probably do it. No need for the chain saw.
As he calculates this, some miles away, Lake Okeechobee breaks free of its banks. It’s been brimming all day. All week, actually. The water pushes past the earthen dam, still weakened from Braylen. The rain has been too much this year, but it seemed like such a small problem compared to everything else. What is a very rainy season next to a Cat 5 hurricane? Next to the end of Miami? It isn’t the problem of a single storm—it is the pattern set by many. The people that used to watch the dam, that tended to it, have all been laid off. They kept the dam strong since 1928, but now, there’s no one left to open the gates when the water is too high. No one to reinforce the walls when they begin to weaken. Everyone worried that this would happen one day. No one knew it would be today.