A few inches of floodwater sloshes around Kirby’s ankles. He doesn’t realize there is about to be so much more. He stands up, clicking his headlamp off and thinking about how delighted Wanda will be to step on the gas while he pushes, to sit in the driver’s seat and hold the steering wheel. A fine ending to this very good adventure they’ve shared. She’ll have to stretch those short legs of hers to reach the pedal, but he knows she’ll manage somehow because she is resourceful. She is capable. This, his last thought, makes his heart ache and swell at the same time.
When the wave sweeps him off his feet he is still imagining her working the pedals, still feeling a tender admiration for his daughter. He has only a few seconds to panic before he is underwater and his temple connects with something hard, maybe a piece of debris, maybe the ground itself. He doesn’t have time to understand what has happened, or what it means, or who it will affect. There is only a cold burst of adrenaline and then there is nothing. Just a deep, dark current: a soft blackness that delivers him back to wherever it is he began.
The waves slam against the doors and sweep over the hood, the windshield, the windows, swallowing the truck whole. Wanda calls out, but there is no answer except for the murmur she used to think was trying to help her. She can see its familiar glow in the floodwater, shimmering outside the window. The lights whisper to her, loud and urgent, but the only voice she wants right now is her father’s.
It’s a sound she’ll never stop wanting. The flood moves on, holding what remains of Kirby tight and rushing away to claim new territory. The murmurs fade and the lights dissipate—for now. The water recedes, a new tide rushing out toward the coast—for now. There is no more room in the seabed, no more room in the limestone, no more room in the soil. The water bodies expand upward, outward, inward, and the rain keeps beating down. This is the way things will be from now on. The levels will rise and fall and rise, but the water will never leave this place again.
Light
The light flows in every direction. It is composed of many minds, many eyes. It is one creature, and it is many. An awareness that grows and deepens. An intelligence that is made to join and join and join. This is how life began; this is how it goes on living.
Chapter 48
So much has changed. The passage of several decades meant little to this peninsula, but it has meant a great deal to the creatures who live here. Wanda pilots her canoe between two sunken houses, slick with algae, veiled by Spanish moss. Her paddle slices the warm, sludgy water, sweeping aside garbage and leaves as she shoots forward, through the gap and out onto what was once Beachside Drive. A traffic light hangs ten feet or so above the water, dim and unlit. A relic. The sun has set, its fire fading from the sky. There’s another vessel, maybe half a mile down the way, heading toward the open water. The people who have stayed wait until dusk to move about; daytime temperatures are fatal. Wanda slips behind a ruined storefront and waits for the boat to pass. Sightings like this have become increasingly rare, which is a good thing. She breathes easier when she’s sure it’s gone.
An orange tomcat sits in the bow of her canoe, looking out over the water with a feral intensity that is reflected in Wanda’s posture as well, although they are intent on different goals. Wanda is paddling for home, while the cat eyes a squirrel scampering through a tangle of mangroves. He sinks low on his haunches, tail flicking, biding his time. The tom waits until the canoe is a few feet away from the trees, then leaps. He slips between the gnarled trunks and disappears. The squirrel pauses, alert, then vanishes also, into the bramble. Wanda paddles on. He’ll find his own way back to her—or he won’t. She can’t afford to be sentimental about animals any longer. Keeping herself alive is all she can manage. The human body is so delicate, so vulnerable. In this place, there are many, many ways to die.
After spending twelve feverishly hot daylight hours hunkered down on the second floor of an abandoned colonial, she’s anxious to get home. She was out fishing just before dawn and didn’t have time to return before the sun rose. It’s possible she could have made it, but being on the open water during daylight hours is a deadly thing. She’s seen too many lost causes to take the risk—boats that roam aimlessly with the tide, their occupants either gone overboard, thinking the water might cool them （it won’t）， or worse, still there, their flesh decomposing so quickly not much remains by the time Wanda comes upon them. It’s the heatstroke that does it. Bodies boiled from within. No, it’s best to find shade before the first rays of sunlight glimmer and to wait until the very last rays disappear to leave it. Wanda doesn’t take chances on such things; Phyllis taught her better than that.
Even now, with the glare of the sun ducked down behind the waves, sweat drips from her face. She remembers a book she read once as a girl—there was snow in that book, coming down so fast and hard it was—what do they call it? A blizzard. She’s never seen such a thing. Her catch, fat and heavy, hangs off the edge of her boat in a cheesecloth sack, trailing low in the water as she rows. This was worth the discomfort of fitfully dozing on a moldy oriental rug all day. The fish grow more and more elusive every year—living deeper down and farther out, rising to the surface only when they must. To find a school of them flitting about in the bay as she did in the early hours of yesterday was rare. A moment to be taken advantage of.
Now, heading inland, she debates whether it still makes sense to venture out to the freshwater spring tonight. It’s a long way by boat, which is the only way. A whole night’s journey there and back, leaving her no time for her other tasks. She needs to prepare the fish for drying as soon as possible. They’ve already sat too long. Gutting and cleaning and filleting and salting and setting them out—all this takes time. If Phyllis were still here, it wouldn’t be a problem. They would divide and conquer, tending to the necessities of the human body as a team. But Wanda is alone now. Just one person, surviving on instinct and maybe a sense of duty. Phyllis taught her how to live, so now she must go on living. Tomorrow night will have to do for replenishing her water supply, Wanda decides. If these fish aren’t ready to cure during the daylight hours they’ll spoil for certain. Wanda cuts long, deep strokes with her paddle, on one side, then the other, shooting through the water now that she’s on a straightaway. The sky becomes translucent above her, the universe on the other side bleeding through as the blue deepens and the stars prick the atmosphere.
By the time she arrives, it’s dark and the temperature has cooled a few pivotal degrees. Her home hangs above, scattered among the canopies, a patchwork of salvaged siding and shingles and fence posts and shutters, connected by ladders and ropes. They built it equidistant between food and fresh water, as high as the trees would allow. It’s a rudimentary structure—made to be rebuilt after the hurricanes pass through if need be. An open invitation to the winds. “Better to bend than to break,” Phyllis always said. They called it “the nest” back when they were hauling materials into the swamp. They joked that they were a pair of birds, too heavy for their own good. It’s hard having no one to joke with anymore. This life was always hard, but it’s been so much harder these past few years.