Lucas doesn’t notice—he’s too busy being the oldest, which means knowing everything. He rolls his eyes, hard, and leans out over the sandbags, gesturing at the sky. “It’s not even raining and there’s nothing to do here. Come on. We’ll be back before what’s-her-name wakes up.”
“Don’t call her that.”
“You coming or not?”
Flip peers outside. The sky is fiercely lit from within the thunderheads, but there is no wind. There is no rain. The air is hot and eerie and still.
Flip hesitates. “Not raining yet,” he allows. “Could come on any minute.”
“We’ll be back way before it starts.” Lucas scurries over the sandbags heaped in front of the door and into the muddy driveway. Flip hangs back in the darkness of the house, still uncertain. A layer of intangible information settles on his skin, moving through his nose and mouth. But its message is quiet, and his brother is loud. “For chrissakes, Flip,” Lucas says. It’s the phrase that their father utters when his temper is about to unravel. It works exactly how Lucas wants it to. Flip climbs over the sandbags and pulls the door shut behind him, careful to latch it softly.
“Fine,” he says, “but just real quick.”
Lucas is already halfway down the driveway by the time Flip catches up. On the main road, there is no one. This is unusual, but not unheard of. The birds seem to hush as they walk. The crickets are silent. Skinny pines tower on either side of the road. When they get to the trailer park it is abandoned. The usual chatter of television sets and radios and kids is absent. No laundry hangs and no cars remain, except the broken-down ones. Lucas climbs the steps to his friend’s red double-wide and tries the door. It’s locked. He jiggles the handle anyway, just in case that’s all it takes.
“Let’s try some more,” he suggests. “See if anybody left theirs open.” Lucas is already on to the next trailer, locked, and the next, locked again. His little brother toes the sand and shakes his head. “Flip,” Lucas snaps, “don’t be like that, help me.”
“I don’t think we should,” Flip says. “What if somebody’s home?”
“Nobody’s home, dipshit, they always ’vacuate the trailer parks first. Dad says ’cause they’re so light, see, don’t hold up if winds are bad.”
Flip reluctantly tries the door of the trailer nearest to him and is relieved to find that it will not open. “They’re all locked,” he declares, but Lucas pays him no mind and keeps searching.
The trailers are laid out in a grid—four rows wide and eight deep. The roads in between are sand, packed down by big tires and heavy rigs. Some of the smaller RVs have just up and driven away, evident from the empty lots and dead grass left behind. The cheerful awnings that Flip remembers from past visits are rolled up tight. The iron set of horseshoes usually scattered near the fire pit is gone. A forgotten wind chime tinkles somewhere, but the lawn furniture, the little bikes with tasseled handlebars, the potted plants, the overflowing garbage cans, the flamingo lawn ornaments, the rooster-shaped weather vanes: all gone.
A few rows down, Lucas discovers an unlocked door. It swings out into his unprepared hand and he startles, taking a step back on the porch and releasing his grip in surprise. The rising wind smashes the door up against the siding, and the gloom within seems to leak out, to mingle with the murk of the clouds that are bearing down on them. He can just make out the shapes inside—a pair of La-Z-Boys angled toward a big TV, tidy piles of magazines and books on the floor, a galley kitchen, blinds half-drawn but with slivers of light slicing through and illuminating the dirty dishes in the sink—remnants of a simple breakfast for two. Lucas leans in, curious, stubborn, aware now that he is crossing a line but incapable of leaving a discovery of this magnitude unexplored.
Down the rows, Flip sees his brother disappear into one of the trailers. He abandons his own half-hearted search and runs along the sandy road, feeling suddenly unnerved by being so far away, as if Lucas has stepped into another world and not simply through the threshold of an abandoned trailer. Flip’s sneakers slide on the sand as he jogs, his gangly arms and legs flailing, perhaps unsure of how long they are today, whether they have grown another centimeter in the night. He calls out to his brother as he climbs the steps.
Inside, Lucas is lounging in one of the La-Z-Boys, swiveling from side to side. He kicks over a stack of magazines by accident and laughs, then kicks another stack, on purpose this time.
“Look what I found,” he says, gesturing all around to this palace he has claimed.
Flip hangs back in the doorway. “We should go,” he says. There is a warning prickling against his skin. That’s what it is—he can identify it now. But Lucas is stubborn. He isn’t listening the way Flip is.
“Not yet.”
Chapter 12
On his way home from the yard, Kirby leans against his steering wheel and looks up into the sky. Its colors have ripened since he left the job site. A severe wind sweeps in from the ocean, bending the trees toward the earth, blowing debris across the road. There is no rain just now, but the air is laden.
His determination to do better is still with him, especially now that the hurricane has adjusted its angle and increased its wind speed. When he gets home, Frida will need a part of him he has been withholding, he can see that now. She needs his patience. A measure of empathy. Even just his presence, the warm bulk of his towering frame notched beside her on the sofa as she worries. He’s ashamed that he’s been so careless with her fears these past few days. Kirby is not a subtle man, but he is willing.
Watching her struggle lately has required him to notice the dissolution that is occurring all around them. She is unable to look away, and by simple proximity to her horror, he is required to observe with fresh eyes. He would like to go on ignoring this overwhelming layer of doom. There is more than enough to occupy his mind and hands as it is—daily tasks, his work, the needs of his growing family. What good is it noticing all the problems he cannot fix? Ever since they met, the structures of civilization have been deteriorating more quickly than ever before, falling to unprecedented pieces month by month. Hurricane Poppy was neither the beginning nor the end. Dire environmental reports are coming to life, political coups, humanitarian crises in every corner of the globe. It’s not just turning on the evening news that makes his heart fall anymore. It’s the sound of his alarm clock in the morning. The passage of time and the erosion it brings. Everywhere he looks—despair and poverty, unkindness and unhappiness. All of this and also: a baby on the way. The sensation of a widespread ending, eclipsed by the imminence of one new life. Kirby feels a wash of overwhelmed tears coming on and swallows a sting in the back of his throat. He realizes that this is what she’s been asking for all along. Just this. A shared understanding of everything that is askew.
The rain arrives, sprinkling his windshield at first, and then driving into it with unsettling force. Is this it, then? Has the storm finally made landfall, or is it just another rain band? He hopes that Frida got his note about the water jugs. The power lines swing, wild squiggles straining against their fastenings, and the palm trees bow down toward the road, deeper and deeper, until their fronds skim the asphalt. Wes wasn’t wrong: The work they just did won’t last the night. If that.