Pleiades: Literature in Context

_______

The wind had holed up in the lower forests, in the swamps. It roosted in the blackgum and bald cypress, waiting on warm waters to cycle in from the sea. The wind picked up the sea. It breached the seawall to drench the boardwalk and command a queen palms to its knees. Raging, the wind stormed the streets, casting about for someone to give it to and give it good. A commuter bus rolled past, and the wind pummeled. It shrieked across the windows of Immokalee High.

The girl stepped off school grounds, and the wind gust-punched her to the sidewalk. She gasped and rolled back on her heels to gape at blood dotting the threads of her cutoffs. Her hair swiveled as she lifted her face and called to the wind, "Bring it on."

_______

Black burnt eyes watched down at the girl turning the lock on the back door of her home. Womanly claws fastened onto the warped tar shingles of the roof, white satin feathers ruffling against the birch bark neck. Probably flew east from Corkscrew Swamp, but still. Wood storks were shy, stuck to their colony, not ones to rise up on slack winds that wound around a storm. Separation was suicidal. The storm was going to be bad. For luck, the girl took one of the wood stork's down feathers that had hitched on a shingle. [End Page 157]

On the other side of the door, the dogs howled to get a move on. Her dad kept retrievers, which were naturals for search and rescue. Search and Rescue was what her dad did, and she did, too. That others may live was the motto of SAR—theirs, too.

Okey nosed the girl's ankles as she jogged up the hallway. Pete sniffed the blood at her knee. She would have shut out the dogs, but her bedroom door hung by only a hinge, so the dogs squeezed in after her. Across the floor, unwashed clothes frenzied and balled. Her mom had wanted everything picked up and put away, which made it hard to find anything, but not now. Now it was easy. She snagged a shirt that didn't stink and a rain jacket that might still fit. Bras she could soak in a sink if the sheriff's department supplied a motel. Sometimes it did.

Pete nosed from a drawer an old greeting card with a felt paper cake and candles on the front. She tore the card from the dog's soft mouth. Her mom had made the card, scissoring the felt yellow tears of light. Had her mom's hands shook as she sewed the felt to the backing? Was that why all nine candles were crooked? No, her mom's hands were good and steady with needles. She must have sewed crooked on purpose, to be funny. Birthdays were funny things.

The girl stuffed the card into a duffel bag she had been using as a pillow. The duffel was always ready and loaded with her dad's sweater, canteens, leashes, whistle, whatever, whatever, fire starter.

_______

Dr. Gruel stood at his office doorway in a white lab coat stained with urine. The stain was the shape of Florida. The hurricane would hit about the third button. "Good afternoon, Christine," he said. "The storm has set down. Radio's calling it hurricane. You going to help those people on Sanibel?"

"Dad and I are," the girl said.

Dr. Gruel stared at her. He said, "Abe isn't here. Abe hasn't shown up in, gosh, a week? I assumed he quit."

She nodded and spun around to beat it out of the vet's—but the fat lab tech blocked her path.

"Easy!" the tech said, bracing a liquor box against his belly. She dodged the tech. Her flip flops slapped to the exit.

"Ah, Chris," Gruel called. "The box? Take the box. The box is Dad's."

"Sends his kid in for it," the tech mumbled and extended the box to Chris.

She did not take it. Though the box held plaques with her parent's veterinarian licenses that had once hung in the office, and news clippings of her dad and his dog working searches, even a framed photograph of her mom in bridal satin, still she did not take the box.

"I'm sorry, Chris." Gruel gave a sad face. "Don't suppose you can rescue without him?"

"Dad's just gone to Eckerd's for supplies," she said. "We're low on fire starter and I lost my whistle."

_______

The branch of a gumbo limbo knocked against Gruel's storefront window close to where Chris huddled. On the horizon, light pulsed at the grey full clouds pounding the far-off Gulf. The parking lot empty, nobody except a young woman bent over trash spewed from a can tipped sideways by wind—trash picking in this weather? No surprise there was always some poor suicidal fool to rescue. The rucksack mounted the young woman's back like a stuffed bird as she kneed along. Chris's mom had been a hunter [End Page 158] and a taxidermist before attending veterinary school. "You can't save a life," she liked to say, "if you're not willing to kill it." When her mom went three years ago, her dad had sold their practice to Gruel but had stayed as a technician. He got stuck in the job worse than quickening sand. Going nowhere, except down. Now he'd cut himself loose from Gruel. That could be a sign of something good. Her dad meant to start over. Or it might be bad. Her dad was headed the same place her mom went.

A wide light stained the sky. Raindrops gunned the concrete. A grocery cart bobbed on the water swirling up the lot, going every which way. The weather was no different. Could go a bunch of different ways. That was all right so long as it went her way. Okey's eyes drove into her. The girl's fingers tugged its ginger coat. "Things'll pick up," she told the dog. From out of the duffel, she drew her dad's sweater that her mom had purled with water-resistant Loden wool. She gave each dog a sniff. Pete's head lowered, combed over a square yard and was off. Only one option—keep up.

_______

Images of churning surf broke across the television screen behind the woman tending bar. She smiled at the girl and cracked a roll of coins against the register.

The dogs had led Chris here. The Black Duck was a favorite of her dad's.

"Don't you look more like Irene each year," Marilyn said, tossing her a stack of fresh bar towels. And each year Marilyn would tell her, given the chance.

Loud rain could not drown out a couple of older girls singing into the Karaoke machine in the rear. Girls she recognized from biology class. Not actually enrolled in the class but loitering in the corridor, twirling eyes at that boy Leonard.

"You just missed your dad," Marilyn said. "He left, oh, going on half an hour."

"We've got an hour and a half to meet up with Sheriff Holata at the causeway."

"You got less than that," Marilyn said. "My fault," she added. "I keep pouring. Sometimes he forgets how he doesn't talk about her and he talks about her. It's not like you and I don't miss your mom, too."

"I don't miss her," the girl said. What was to miss? Her mom was gone. They were the ones left churning up, the ones tossing around.

An old fellow with pearly teeth leaned across the bar to Marilyn. "I heard rumor," he said, "the gal's momma was a self-murder."

"Snatched away," said Marilyn.

White rage filled Chris. Her mom was no murderer, her mom was good with needles, good at putting animals out of pain on purpose, a regular animal undertaker. Good to herself, too, out of pain on purpose, she let the water take her.

Chris followed the old fellow's gaze to the Karaoke girls, whose mouths hovered over the mic. In windy breaths, the girls sang, "They say it's your birthday." The heavy bottomed girl's shorts burrowed into her crotch. The other girl was flat down to the bikini top over her nonboobs. Before Chris's eyes, a turquoise sports car surfaced. She drifted further down the Karaoke song, bumping up against the turquoise door of the car. Her dog Okey unlatched the door with her teeth. The Karaoke girls unfurled out the interior, clasping the mic to their mouths, singing along with the radio speakers of the sports car filling so fast with so much water. "Yes, we're going to the party party." Chris did not know if she could save these girls from the idleness of their song. She did not know. But she did know that visions [End Page 159] of rescues, real and imagined, blew brightest before a search. Like the dogs, she needed to start working. Her dad needed the work, too. A rescue would sober her dad, maybe save him.

_______

The girl waded after the dogs across a flooded thoroughfare. The sound of flapping overhead. She lagged behind to watch a wood stork's drenched feathers press for loft above the sea reaches. The wind lured the stork on a current. The stork rolled back, bring it on. The wind punched. A toy, heavy feathered wings awry. The black forest trees heaving. The black of the stork's eye unreadable as it plummeted.

_______

Music gusted out of speakers slung low over the liquor aisle of the Stop 'n Shop. Storm partiers clearing last liquids from the shelves. Chris and the dogs tracked down the aisle, just wide of the dudes with bottles fastened to their ribs. What did partiers know about mottos, about making sure that others lived? That Leonard kid was no different. Forget the dumb biology textbook. He did biology in school corridors with Karaoke girls. Whatever. Her dad was not in the Stop 'n Shop, his usual spot for cheap booze. She swung the dogs back toward the exit.

Leonard came around the aisle. A Stop 'n Shop apron ruffled his grey neck. They stared at each other. The girl blushed, as if she had conjured Leonard into this lousy grocery. The music pumped to the pound of rain. Leonard kicked toward her, hips bucking. Her eyes stormed off the boy to land on the check stand, where a man stood patting the pockets of his hospital scrubs. Those paw print scrubs hit like a punch. Both of them here? What world was she in?

"Let go yo' bitches," Leonard said, reaching for her, his knees bent low at the dogs that leaped to go dance. "Come to Leonard."

Chris let loose the dogs, and something loosed in her. She dodged Leonard and ran to her dad at the check stand. But the dogs got to her dad first.

"Been looking for you," he said, his eyes not on his daughter but on the duffel cutting into her knobbed bone. The cashier rang up his purchase. Her dad opened a wallet held together with bandaging tape and pinched out the single bill and laid it on the belt beside a fifth of Black Crow.

The girl's hand clasped the neck of the bottle. She shoved the bottle back at the cashier. "You got hot coffee brewing? You got some of that for my dad?"

"In bakery." The cashier took the fifth and stood holding it, looking back and forth at the two.

"Last Crow in town," her dad said. "Don't get between a man and his bird, daughter."

"We got a requisition," Chris said.

Her dad smiled at the cashier, but his eyes stayed on the bottle. "I've been called to duty."

The cashier took up the hand radio. "Stocker on two. Fetch hot coffees." She looked at Chris and her dad. "And a deli chicken."

In no rush, Leonard showed up with the order. "For them?"

The cashier nodded and handed Leonard the bottle of Black Crow. "Take it back."

But before Leonard could turn away with it, the girl's dad reached for the bottle.

Still Leonard held on. He looked at the girl, who nodded approval. Leonard's hips bucked at her, like dancing with him was his price. [End Page 160]

"Forget it." The girl grabbed the bottle. All three holding now. The cashier took up the hand radio and droned, "We got a situation."

"A situation!" Leonard said donkey loud. The girl laughed—and was appalled at herself. She kicked Leonard, but Leonard kicked back.

"Don't hurt it!" her dad said. The bottle slipped and he caught it midair. But stumbled into a grocery cart and the bottle shattered against the cart handle. The cashier picked up the hand radio one more time. "Clean up on two."

Her dad wiped his eyes with a soiled thumb and index finger and steadied himself, not looking at the bottle pieces at his feet. He lifted the duffle off Chris's shoulder and shrugged it onto his back and shambled out of the slot.

"Sheriff Holata said I ought to join your rescue party," Leonard sang into the handle of a broom.

"Save a life," the girl said, cutting him off. "Stay inside."

_______

Her dad did not look up from the duffel bag when she sat the bench of their Bronco. She handed him a coffee.

Her dad did not take it. She tipped off the lid. "Drink."

His light eyes flicked between her face and the duffel. He took the coffee but set it on the dash, where it leaked a thin trail. "Chris, this has got to stop. You can't keep this up," he said. "You can't keep ordering me. Can't keep telling what I can buy and what I can't. It can't be good, Chris. To think you know. Rescuers can't feel good." His voice was matter of fact, steady. He drew out the whistle from the duffel and hung it on the stem of the rearview mirror.

She plied loose the cover on the deli chicken and tore off a breast and thumbed it in equal portions for the dogs. Her dad pulled canteens out of the duffel. He pulled out the Loden wool sweater, the fire starter.

She dangled a thighbone at her dad's ear. "You need strength for the search."

"You don't quit," he said. "Not one to give up."

"Nope," she said, "I don't. You quit."

From the duffel her dad produced the birthday card from her mother. He paused. "Now this," he said, "this is a lifesaver." He took the thighbone and bit in. Chicken fat dripped onto the card, haloing the stitched candle flame. She could explain to her dad why the old birthday card was in the duffel, and she would have, really, if the wind hadn't just slung a cloud at their car. She scooted up for a good look at the cloud that pulmonated on the windscreen. In weird ocular reset, the cloud's clear pillowy middle, rimmed in black, shaped into a jellyfish.

Her dad also peered at the jellyfish flown in from the sea to suck onto their glass. He blinked. "See it?"

"It's a card from the wind," she said.

"Hmmm," he said, as if her explanation was as good as any for something so unheard of. His hand reached all the way down to the bottom of the duffel. He smiled and eased out a dull chrome flask and screwed off the lid. A crude smell of whiskey filled the Bronco as he took a long pull, topping the whiskey with a sip of coffee. She rode the image of the liquor sliding down his throat to the bottom of the duffel bag where the flask must have been stored against the reinforced seam at the base. All this time the flask had been nesting there at night while she slept against the duffel pillow, her dreams feathering the booze. [End Page 161]

Whistling, her dad twisted the steel cap back on the spout, pulled up the sweater and placed the casual flask in the secret breast pocket her mom had sewn.

"Give it," she said.

Her hands latched onto the sweater so fast. The two of them tugged the sweater back and forth, her dad for one inexplicable instant dozing off.

"Sorry, doll," he said, coming to, and yanked hard, humorously, but his elbow upended the cup and dumped coffee on his scrubs.

She pulled back on the handle and the door flew open. The dogs scrambled out after her. Catching her feet, she balled up the sweater and aimed for a grocery cart. Telling herself it was important to keep a cool head.

The sweater never struck the cart. The wind stormed into the lot and snatched the sweater. The sweater flapped across the parking lot. Lagging, toying, catch me if you can. The brick wall of a repair shop rose up. The sweater shrieked. Struck brick, slid into the yellow stained sewer. Gone.

_______

Wind slipped beneath the Bronco's tires. Lifted, higher, higher, and dropped the vehicle. Circling, it nudged and jabbed the tinny sides.

"We need gas," the girl shouted over the noise.

"My wallet was in the sweater," her dad shouted back, eyes on the road. "Coins. Collects under the seats. Enough to get to Sanibel."

She dove into the back and scooted under his seat, glad for some dumb kid thing to do. There really was coin under the seats, like he said. She picked up $3.25 in quarters. Her fingers searched between the backseats, past crumbs the dogs had failed to tongue out, and found five dimes and a couple funny shaped buttons. She pressed her cheek into the rainwater pooled on the floor and stretched under. More coin. Maybe her dad was not just keeping her busy. He had not wanted to go at first, but now he seemed to. He was ready to buy gas, get serious, go rescue.

She looked up at the dog leaning against the rear door. Okey's yellow eyes gone lambent as they watched Pete lick a paw. She grasped Pete' square head and pressed her check into the dense underfur at the jowl. She stayed pressed into the dog, quiet. But her mind did not quiet. She thought of Leonard, pictured him stuck in quickening sand. Leonard moaning, his head swaying between his shoulders. The dogs lunging at the boy while she picked up from the sompy black forest a branch to haul out Leonard from the quick. Leonard's pale hands clamped onto the branch. His torso long, hips bucking, trousers yielding. To the rattle of dog barks and the whoop of blood in her ears, she pulled Leonard out, she rescued, only she.

Something terribly cold slid along the girl's forearm braced against the seat. Okey stared at her, nosing the flask of whiskey. Must have slipped out of the secret pocket of the sweater and fallen between the seats. She snapped up the flask, scanning where to hide it, while familiar streets appeared out the back window. Her dad was navigating the tumbled queen palm fronds and trashcans of their neighborhood. One more street and they would be home.

She shot around her dad's seat. The flask kept out of sight. "There's no booze at home, if that's your plan," she said.

"My plan is to get you indoors. Safe. When did you last bathe?" [End Page 162]

He had told her to collect coins to fill the tank. But they would not need gas now, not if the mission stopped here. This was whiskey coin.

"There's like only buttons back here. No money." She dangled the flask over the passenger seat, out of reach. "This is all you got."

Her dad did a double take at the flask, but she ducked behind the seat with it.

"Turn around," she said. "Drive west. Drive to Sanibel, like you said." Their house loomed beyond the manic wipers. "You'll get your whiskey," she said, "once we get on the causeway."

"I can't use it," her dad said, stopping before their house. "Not if I have to work. Get in the house."

"You can't do the search without me," she said.

"Without you?" her dad said. "I can hardly manage the dogs with you tagging along. Daydreaming. Getting underfoot. Christ, you never even got out of the car."

"But I wanted to," she said. "And I got you to the searches, didn't I?"

He stuffed her spare clothes back into the duffel, threw open the door, dropped into the rain, swung open the back door. He leashed Okey and shoved the leash into Chris's hand. "Take her to the house with you," he said. "I'll take Pete. She knows when to quit."

"Whatever."

"I should have let Irene have her dog," he said.

"Yeah. You should have. Okey's no quitter. Okey could have saved Mom."

He looked at Chris funny. "Penny for your thoughts," he said.

"What about a nickel? A quarter?" She fisted the coins in her lap and pitched them at him. He dodged and shoved her out of the Bronco at once, but she shoved him back and got out herself.

"What do you need Sanibel for?" He thrust his index finger at her forehead. "Storm's here." He slammed shut the door and drove off slow down the flooded road.

"You won't make it past the causeway!" she screamed after him. "Holata will cut you off!" The rain was falling up from the pavement. The wind rising in the bald cypress fringing her house. Black clouds receiving the trees into their soil, and the girl screamed red into the wind. Her dad needed her. Could not do without her. Only she could save.

Her flipflop floated off on the black water. A grey Honda hatchback forded the street to drive straight at her. She gaped at the boy behind the wheel. His big teeth lit the windshield. He rolled down his window and brayed, "Got something for you."

She slapped the rear of the hatchback to shoo him off, but a sudden gust punched the girl to the ground.

The Honda humped onto the sidewalk, and Leonard picked his way out from the car. He reached for the girl. She raised a hand to slug him off. In her hand was her dad's flask. Leonard grabbed the flask, unscrewed the cap and gulped. Whiskey ribboning off his tongue, he landed his mouth on hers, shooting whiskey between her lips. She gagged. He kept kissing even as a low growl rose up from Okey beside her.

"She'll pull your head off—" she managed to say.

Leonard rubbed his forehead against the girl's. "You weren't reared up by dogs," he said. "Dogs are loving." [End Page 163]

She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand like she had seen her dad do, unzipped her jacket and shook it off. She pulled her shirt over her head.

Leonard's fingers dove under the thick elastic of her trainer bra. "What are you doing?" He craned around, pointed at the car. "Enter Honda." She undid the brass buttons of her cutoffs. Leonard's teeth knocked with cold and lust. "Fuck the auto. Probably flood. That your house?"

"The storm won't mess with me," she said. "The storm is in me."

Leonard's eyes sparked and leered. "So, you're to blame for the storm. For riling it up." He pushed his hips at her, hand pushing into her Wranglers. Okey circled the two, tighter and tighter. "We got a situation," he murmured.

The girl kissed Leonard efficiently then folded into his car, yanking a sweatshirt from the duffel and pulling it over her head. "Get me to Sanibel."

_______

Leonard's chin inched over the steering wheel held in his pale-knuckled hands. Water rumbled under the chassis. Any moment it could swallow them up. Better the water than what rumbled inside her. A meanness, big and hot, ready to swallow her and everyone around her. She tried to picture the rescue ahead, blew on the vision, but her mind played a white blank.

The rain tapped out on the roof. The girl gaped at the wipers squeegeeing last droplets. Luscious yellow light broke through bubble clouds overhead. Eye of the storm. 20-30 miles wide. They had made it just in time. But she must keep a cool head. The eye passed over fast enough.

Bridge A, the first of three that made up the causeway to Sanibel Island. Police cruisers lined both sides of the closed tollbooths on the causeway, her dad's Bronco parked at one end. No one in sight. They must have already loaded into the search vans and crossed, her dad, too. Holata had not cut him off, after all.

She scrambled out of the Honda and glared at the moody bay and drank whiskey from the flask. Leonard honked, and she flew the flask to him, but it fell short. The steel case flipflopped over the hood.

"Still time to swim across," she shouted. "Help my dad." She grabbed Okey's leash and ran down into the drainage ditch and on up across the dunes. The island of Sanibel on the other side of the bay appeared oddly close. She waded into the hot satiny sea, the dog beside her, stepping gingerly, rear pitched.

"You can't do that." Leonard called from the dunes. His hands dangling at his sides.

The water to her waist now. No waves, the bay placid. Weird, when on the horizon the backside of the storm seemed to congregate around a black forest of heavy winged women roosting on every tree limb.

"You are certified," Leonard said. "You can't swim across, not in twenty minutes, not in twenty years, fuck the eye." Leonard pulled his t-shirt over his head anyway, stumbled into the blades of a saw palmetto, shouted his pain, and hoofed into the water. He caught up with the girl though he did not stroke well. "Is Holata even over there?"

"He's there. So's my dad. You quit dicking around, we will be, too." Her tough talk sounded funny to her. She could not say what made her so sure the rescuers had crossed the bay. Surety was just another [End Page 164] habit she had picked up since her mom left them.

"Whatever," Leonard said, "lose the dog."

The girl snapped up the leash and swam to shore, parking the dog beside a buckling strangler fig on a back dune. The dog sat obedient on tense muscles. "Stay, Okey," she said, hand flat to the dog's snout. "You don't know when to quit."

The wind was picking up, denting the dog's eyelids.

Boom. Thunder cracked. The startled saw palmetto threw up a seabird that flapped downy feathers against the sudden downpour to crumple broke back on the dune.

Okey trembled with the trembling of the seabird. The dog's nose pointed at the bay.

The girl spun around. Leonard stroked toward shore. Behind him black wings rising. Leonard's head swung up. The water hit. He vanished.

She stood frozen as a wave rushed her legs. Something pushing up, swelling at the rim of her mind. Framed on the wall, a photograph. Her mother walking and walking into satiny surf and looking over her shoulder. Was she inviting her child, was that what her mother had wanted, Chris to join her? The girl's legs started moving before she did. But now the seawater spiraled back into the bay, uncovering jagged conch and coquina inching along the bottom. She chased after the water, shells cutting her ankles until she caught up and dove. The waves roiling on a high flame. Leonard's head bobbing. She stretched out her hand to him. His hand caught hers and she held Leonard's hand with relief. But the wind shoved her back with black breath. Raging, the girl punched the waves back to Leonard.

Fed up, the wind roared and rushed, picked the girl up out of the sea to carry her onto shore and dump her into the shallows. Whiskey shot out the girl's mouth. She coughed and choked as Okey's tongue dragged across her lips. She pushed the dog off and sat up, looked dazedly around. She had flown up here. The wind had made that of her. The winged.

Out of the spinning pitch, Leonard stumbled onto shore. He bent over his thighs and puked brine. She set a tender hand on the arc of his spine. "You okay, Leonard?"

The waves piled over them, driving Leonard to his knees. "Bitch," he shouted, "you let me drown." He took hold of the girl's head like a newborn and thrust it under water. The girl kicked and reeled. He held her face down.

Faint light. The roar of water.

Before her eyes, the image of Leonard's ankle. She slid up the leg to the rungs of his spine. That others may live was her motto. Her fists swung at Leonard. Gave it to him and gave it good.

"Let go, Chris." Sheriff Holata's eyeglasses gone crooked with trying to hold her from Leonard.

She grabbed the sheriff. Her dad, too. Grabbed anyone who would stop her. She would carry them off, she was the wind, yes, and this her party party.

Pain needled the soft flesh of her upper arm wrapped round the boy. Okey's teeth dug into muscle. The girl's blood flowed out the dog's mouth, spiraling up the water.

No, the wind had scoured her, feathered and claimed her. And she was happy to roost with her mother. So happy. She saw years of yellow tears of light.

But Okey pried her loose, good bitch, and the girl's head broke the surface. [End Page 165]