Firefly Island (12 page)

I registered the fact that I hadn't told Al where we lived. How did she know? Was word around town already? Were there so few newcomers here that our arrival was news, or did it have something to do with the fact that we were associated with Jack West?

“You're next door to the West Ranch?” I asked.

Al nodded. “Saw your U-Haul at the gate earlier.”

I tried to hide the note of suspicion jingling in my brain. When I'd pulled out the gate a couple hours ago, there wasn't a vehicle in sight.

“Oh,
you're
the ones moving in at the old West Ranch.” Keren seemed unaware of the undertow in our conversation. “We
are
neighbors, then. If you ever need any help, directions to someplace or anything like that, just call me. We're in the book. I'm usually home after two thirty in the summer. In the mornings I have summer enrichment with this crazy bunch.” She nodded toward the llama admirers.

“Great to meet you.” I watched Keren's students jostling for position. Nick was laughing and shoulder-butting with a little dark-haired girl maybe a year or two older than he was. “I didn't see any houses when I looked around this morning. I didn't know there was anyone nearby.”

“Our place is down in a draw.” Keren paused to tell two boys not to climb on each other, then turned back to me. “You wouldn't see it, but if you go on up the road to the west, you'll pass by our gateway. It says
Zimmer Dairy
on it. Stop over and visit anytime.” She eagle-eyed the kids again, then smiled. “Your little boy's having fun over there. You know, it's too late to officially sign up for summer enrichment class through the school, but if you want him to get to know some kids, you're welcome to bring him to the class anytime. He wouldn't be able to ride the bus from campus because of insurance, but you could just meet us wherever we go that day. We can always use parent volunteers. A lot of these kids come from home situations where they just don't get much adult time—not the kind they need, anyway. We'd love to have you and ummm . . .” She motioned to Nick.

“Nick,” I offered.

“And Nick. We do everything from gardening to nature study. It's all free. Quite a number of our kids are low-income, so it funds the program, and . . .” She paused to take stock of the group, which was starting to look like a bunch of teenagers at a Justin Bieber concert. “I'd better go get them on the bus. If we don't head out, I'll have parents all over the school parking lot, looking for their kids. Sorry I can't be more help with the tire.”

“We'll get it taken care of,” Al replied. As Keren herded her kids to the bus, Al again listed my tire-crisis options.

“I think, if you'll just give us a ride back home, I'll call the U-Haul roadside assistance number and have them come and take care of it. Surely someone from the ranch can bring us back here to get the Jeep later.” I'd finally arrived at the point where abandoning Grandma Louisa's Fostoria and riding home with a llama hardly even seemed like a wrinkle in the day.

On the way back to the ranch, Nick dozed in the backseat of Al's truck, and the llama pressed its nose against the rear window, seeming interested in the conversation as I learned more about Al Beckenbauer. She lived alone on four hundred acres she had inherited from grandparents she saw only occasionally as a child. She raised goats for milk, as well as mohair goats that were sheared periodically for their hair, like sheep. I'd never known where the mohair in sweaters came from, but now I did.

As we turned into the driveway at the West Ranch, Al fished a photo from the clutter on the dashboard and showed me what an award-winning mohair production animal actually looked like—sort of similar to a sheepdog, but with horns and dainty little feet. I wished Nick were awake to look at the photo, but he was out cold when we rolled to a stop at the house. Rather than parking beside the gate as we usually did, Al stopped the truck parallel to the fence, with my door facing it, the motion seeming to indicate that I should make a quick exit. She leaned over the steering wheel, checking the barnyard and seeming antsy as I opened my door and reached into the back to get Nick out. He lay limp on my arm, and I stood there trying to figure out how to take the car seat and my grocery sacks from the vehicle with Nick hanging over my shoulder.

“I'll get it. I'll just pile it by the fence there for you.” Al checked the barnyard again, her gaze shifting back and forth acutely. Sliding from her seat, she muttered something, but I only caught the last words. “ . . . before that old coot takes another potshot at me.”

I turned in the gateway. “What?”

“Nothin', never mind.” She waved me off, hurrying to unload my things and stack them by the fence. “I'm outta here.”

“Okay . . . well . . . thanks.” I shifted Nick on my shoulder
as she returned to her truck. With a spit of gravel and a puff of diesel smoke, Al was gone, the llama watching through the bars, looking as confused as I was.

I had the sinking feeling the old coot she was talking about was Jack West. He
shot
at the neighbors? Surely not.

That had to be just figurative language, I told myself as I took Nick to the porch and laid him on the wide wooden swing. Then I went inside and dragged the air mattress to the porch and settled him there. While bug bombs were not my forte, Dustin had given me a few tips—clear the house, close all windows, open all closets and cabinets, stuff everything you can in the refrigerator so you won't have to wash it later, and so forth. After completing all preparations, set off the bomb farthest from the door and work your way out as quickly as possible.

I moved through the steps one-by-one, just as Dustin had described. There was a sense of satisfaction in it, as if I were singlehandedly conquering the wild, so to speak. I took a photo of myself wearing the rubber gloves and the mask, getting ready to set off a spray bomb.
Only one day in Texas, and I'm a regular frontier woman. LOL!
I added, and sent the photo off to the Gymies.

By the time I'd finished setting off the bombs, then called for U-Haul repairs, all I wanted to do was crash on the air mattress beside Nick. I didn't care that some sort of menacing-looking yard fowl were pecking around in the grass not far away, or that the angel fountain by the little house made me think of Jack West's dead wife, or that scorpions had been mentioned in the hardware store.
They're mostly on the other side of the lake,
I assured myself as I let my eyes fall closed. Considering that it was only midafternoon, it had been a very, very long day.

A dream slid over me as I fell asleep, the image so clear
and potent that it seemed real, rather than a conjuring of my subconscious mind. In the flower garden of the little house, the angel statue grew in size, the wings fading, the skin losing the cold pallor of stone and taking on life, until a woman, not a statue, stood among the irises. The breeze lifted her blond hair as she walked slowly up the stone steps to the house, a white sundress swirling around her legs.

I watched her cross the porch, her body disappearing into the shadows. Before opening the door, she turned and looked at me, but I couldn't see her face.

She was trying to tell me something, but I couldn't hear her.

She opened the door to the little house, and a child's laughter spilled out, and then she was gone.

A quiet sleep slipped over me.

When I awoke, long rays of evening sun were slanting across the porch, and a chicken was watching me from less than forty-eight inches away, its head notching back and forth curiously. Nick was gone. I jerked upright, panicking before I noticed a note lying atop the air mattress.

Opened the windows to air out. U-Haul called. Trailer fixed. Sorry I missed all that. Can drive you back to town later.

Walked down to the lakeshore with Nick.

Past the barn.

Through the back gate, down the path.

Come find us.

Beneath that, Daniel had signed his name, and Nick had drawn a lopsided smiley face. Apparently Daniel wasn't in any rush to rescue the Jeep and the trailer. Surely, we should go pick it up. Evening was setting in, and Grandma Louisa's Fostoria was at risk.

On the other hand, I was sweaty and sticky, I'd been admiring the lake since our arrival, and wading in cool water
sounded like heaven. Maybe the U-Haul situation could wait. There was a pickup truck parked by the yard gate now, and I assumed Daniel had the keys to it. The Jeep and the U-Haul were probably safe enough where they were. It was a church parking lot, after all.

I followed Daniel's directions, walking past the little house, where I purposely did not look in the direction of the angel-woman statue, and then past a weathered red barn where horses watched me from dusty stalls. Beyond the barn, what looked like a wagon trail led across a field of pink wildflowers blooming in tiny bouquets beneath the dappled shade of ancient live oaks. My feet crunched on the rocky, milk-colored limestone soil as I walked, and bluebirds skipped along the path, the sun catching their feathers in impossible bursts of color before they flitted away. The air was fresh and water-scented, with not a hint of exhaust fumes or concrete—just the elemental scents of water, earth, and sky.

When the lakeshore came into view beyond the trees, I spotted Daniel and Nick in a little cove where the cedars opened along the rocky shore. The two of them were beautiful there together, Daniel immersed chest-high with Nick clinging to his neck. I stood for the longest time and just watched them, took in all the separate pieces of the picture they created together, studied them the way you'd study the brushstrokes of a master artist. The clear water sliding over skin, Daniel's tanned and ruddy, Nick's fair and fine in texture. The droplets flicking off the dark curls of Daniel's hair as he stood and shook his head, the shimmering spray making Nick laugh. Daniel's smile, Nick's smile, the ways their mouths were different and yet the same. The way their eyes met. The love between them. The evening light touching the water. Little feet kicking rapidly, big feet swishing smoothly, parting the water without a sound.

I wanted to freeze the moment, every tiny and perfect bit of it.

These are my guys,
I thought.
My husband. My son.

They swam to the shore when they saw me, and both of them tried to tempt me into the water.

“How about I just watch? I didn't bring a towel or a suit.” I fully intended to wade in the shallows, though I didn't plan to get my clothes wet.

“Awwww,” Nick complained, then ran into the water and did a belly flop with his arms spread out.

Daniel braced his hands on his hips, his arms stiff, the muscles tight. “How about you come over here.” His eyes had that smoky look.

I thought of my father dragging my mother into the pool in her fancy loungewear. Now I wondered if there had been a fight involved that evening. Were they kissing and making up?

“Promise you're not going to drag me in.” I took a step closer.

“You'd like it.” He smiled a cute, crooked, slightly roguish smile.

“I'm not kidding.” The practical side of me was already thinking about how much trouble it would be to deal with sopping wet shorts, and the fact that I was wearing the only bra that wasn't packed in a box somewhere.

Daniel's lashes lowered to half-mast. He ran his tongue along his bottom lip, as if he were considering coming after me—or at least he wanted me to think he was. We stood at a stalemate for an instant. Then he broke it with a wink. “All right. I don't want you mad at me anymore.”

Somehow, in the weird way that you know things when you have a connection with someone, I knew the fight was over. Despite the advice of talk show hosts and relationship books that say issues should be talked out, I just wanted the
big, ugly cloud between us to be gone. I crossed the empty space, kissed him, felt water dampening my clothes.

“Although you're cute when you're mad,” he murmured against my lips.

“Don't
even
 . . .” I considered giving him a shove and sending him stumbling back into the lake. He would come after me for sure if I did, though.

His eyes caught the light. “You are, you know.”

“C'mon swimmin' wit' me, Tante M!” Nick called, oblivious to the ongoing dance of reconciliation. He repeated his invitation a second time, but Tante M was busy at the moment. She was learning, right there on the side of the lake, all about kiss and make up. A drop of water slid over her chin, then raced down her neck and under her shirt, tracing a line down her ribs.

It didn't feel one bit cold. In fact, it sizzled all the way.

Maybe, she decided, a dip in the lake didn't sound so bad after all.

No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main.

—John Donne
(Left by Clay Hampton, in town for an overdue family reunion.)

I
n my first month on the ranch, I developed an addiction to email, texting, and long-distance phone calls—three things I'd considered largely time wasters in the past, outside of doing office business. For years, I'd admonished my nieces not to clog my inbox with email jokes and cute photos of puppies wearing Halloween costumes. Who had time for such things? Why would you want to make time?

Now I knew the answer: Because you felt like if you didn't talk to someone, the men in white coats would soon find you babbling unintelligibly, bubbling out mad laughter and gut-twisting sobs, all while finger painting your name on white walls with white caulking and tossing bits of steel wool in the air, just to watch them drift slowly downward in the window light.

I was, quite literally, losing my ever-lovin' mind, and the mice knew it. They, and the roaches, and spiders the size of my fist, and finally the scorpion that was staring at me from the opposite pillow one morning—they sensed that they were close to winning the war. I was on the verge of cracking and
abandoning the house, married life, Texas, and the whole frontier adventure thing, in general.

My sisters had almost laughed me off the planet when I'd mentioned the long-distance Binding Through Books idea. They were too busy for something like that.

Little by little, even Trudy, my favorite sister of all, was trying to gently abandon me. “I love you, but you're filling up my email inbox, and I can't be checking my phone and clearing out texts all day long, Mal. Come on, a few months ago you would have told me the same thing.”

“No, I wouldn't have,” I whined, sitting at the dining room table with my feet curled into the chair after my scorpion wake-up call. The worst thing was that in my panic to get out of the bed, I'd flipped the invader off the sheets, and I had no idea where it was now. “
I
wouldn't do that to
you
, Trudy.”

“Oh,
puh-lease
.” Trudy was in a mood today. Hormones again. “How many times in the past couple years did I call you about doctor's appointments, and you were like, ‘Hey, Trude, I'm in the middle of something, can I call you back?' And then you'd never call back?”

“Yes, I did. I called back.” But Trudy was right. I'd been a lousy comforter and counselor when people needed me. I was used to being the focus of family attention, the baby girl who could do no wrong. I'd never had to focus my attention on other people.

“You know what you need?” Trudy asked, and I sensed another lame brush-off coming. “You need a journal. You should write all this stuff in a journal. Maybe you'll turn it into a book someday—like Swiss Family Robinson, only you're marooned on a lakeshore in Texas. Just think how funny that scene of you putting on the rubber gloves and the medical mask or dragging the stuffed deer head and the bobcat to the garage would be. Or that business about thinking
you had ghosts and finding out it was squirrels in the attic. Now, that was a riot. If you wrote it down, you could keep it all in one place.”

“I don't
want
to write a book.” A prickly lump, much like the ones that had stuck to our socks when Nick and I walked to the creek the day before, rose in my throat. A cocklebur of emotion. My moods were all over the place. I barely recognized myself anymore. “I just want to
talk
to somebody. It's so . . .
lonely
out here. Daniel works all the time. Jack treats him like he's some sort of personal assistant—or slave. Slave is more like it. Like Daniel is his minion, 24/7. Jack goes off on these bizarre tangents about weird new inventions, but he doesn't ever
show
Daniel anything. It's like he's paranoid that Daniel will steal his technology. The longer we're here, the more I'm sure the man is nuts, and not in a good way. Honestly, it scares me. On top of that, there's the birdbath statue out back. I'm telling you, Trudy. It's like it's watching me when I go out there. And there are yellow butterflies sitting on it every time I look, and then I've had, like, five dreams about the blond lady.”

I paused to take a sip of my coffee, trying to clear my head. Trudy didn't interject. She was only halfway listening, but she hadn't hung up on me yet, so I went on. “The only good news is that Jack left town this morning, for his offices in Houston. It sounds like he'll be gone for a while. Maybe we'll finally have some time to try to figure things out. It's like there's not really any job here for Daniel. Even the ranch hands avoid us. There's this weird sense that everyone is . . . waiting for something to happen—the ranch hands, the people in town. Everyone. Daniel's starting to worry that these bio-crop patents Jack hired him to work on are just a fantasy. I mean, when they're together Jack blathers on about powering cities with giant replicas of this tide wheel thing he built on the lakeshore. And
then there are his theories on cattle genetics, and the whole Firefly Island thing. Did I tell you about Firefly Island? The other night when Nick and I drove out to the pasture to look at the moon, I swear I saw lights moving around down there on Firefly Island. And then when I went to bed, I dreamed that the blond lady was out there. She was trying to get me to swim across to the shore, but my legs were like lead. Daniel woke me up, just as I was sinking underwater. He said I was talking in my sleep, saying all kinds of strange things. He said I didn't even
sound
like myself.”

“ . . . or a blog,” Trudy answered, as if she hadn't heard a word I'd said. She was working as we were talking, her fingernails clicking on the keyboard. “You should write all of this in a blog—well, not the personal stuff about Daniel's boss, maybe, but the stuff about the mouse wars and your walks with Nick. Then we could all read it and send you comments and stuff. And then Mom would stop calling me, asking what I've heard from you. She's trying to go by her Non-interference Newlywed Rule, but that just means she calls me constantly for information. I don't have time to do the binding book . . . book binding—whatever that's called—sisters book club thing, but I'd read a blog. You could get information to all of us at once.”

“I don't want a
blog. . . .”
I spit out the last word. Blogs were for people who liked to write. That wasn't me. “Now you sound like Kaylyn. She and Josh made me this goofy-looking cyber-page with some of the pictures I sent them. They put my head on this cartoon body that looks like Annie Oakley and called me The Frontier Woman. It's funny, but . . . ummm . . . no way.”

“At this point, I think it's either a blog or professional therapy, and where are you going to find a shrink in Moses Lake?” Trudy's store phone rang in the background.

“I don't want a shrink. And I don't even do Facebook, for heaven's sake. I'm not a techno nerd.” Even Trudy, my favorite sister, didn't love me anymore. The world really was coming to an end.

“But you just said your friends will help you. Your little Gymies. They would rather read your frontier stories all in one place instead of getting nine million texts and emails all day long. It'll be like Green Acres meets Wild Kingdom.”

“It's just not
me
,” I muttered, uncoiling my legs. Sooner or later I'd have to go tear the bedroom apart, find that creature that was loose in there, and dispatch it. Fortunately, Nick was outside, as usual, happily playing in the dirt underneath a tree with Pecos the dog. “I
hate
it here.” The words gurgled out in a partial sob. I was having that urge again, hearing the voice that said,
Just get in the car and go. Just leave before you're in any deeper.

Outside the window, the sunlight stroked Nick's hair, painting it a soft spun gold. How long would it take for him to forget me, for even the memory of me, of us, to no longer exist?

“Hang in there.” Trudy's voice was warmer, the words not just an effort to put me off. “Everyone goes through adjustment problems in the first months of marriage. And you've got more than the normal stuff to handle, and you've had a whole life of your own before now. Plus you're dealing with parenthood, a move, and job problems. It's normal to feel a little lost.”

It's not normal,
I thought.
It's not. I've lost me. I'm losing my mind.

But I didn't say it. I couldn't confess, even to Trudy, that I'd had the urge to run away. I couldn't confess that to anyone. I was ashamed of it.

This marriage thing, this forming of a new life, was so much harder than I'd ever thought it would be. It was like
walking into the lake in my dream. The water was filled with bands of hot and cold current, the bottom under my feet invisible, littered with obstacles, hiding crevices I couldn't see until I got there. Love skimmed over the surface like a sailboat, grabbing me up and carrying me along one minute, the speed dizzying, the view passing by so quickly I couldn't take it in. The next minute, my little love boat was swamped in a storm, overturned, the sail pointing toward the murky depths, everything upside down. I was trying to swim with legs of lead. I'd never thought of love this way—as something that moved with the ebb and flow of currents. Push and pull. Joy and pain. Fear and trust. Falling, and trying to balance, and falling again.

Conflicts crowded my mind as I said good-bye to Trudy, then ransacked the bedroom, searching for the terrifying, whip-tailed invader now lurking somewhere in our house. I couldn't find it, of course. I imagined it hiding in my shoes, Nick's pajamas, my clothing—which was still hanging in wardrobe boxes because I refused to put anything in the closets until I'd solved the mouse and bug problems. As far as I could tell, I'd made only a small dent in it with all my steel wool stuffing, caulking of cracks, and the little box-like mousetraps Dustin had sold me at the hardware store. I used them to capture the mice and then take the tiny doe-eyed creatures far from the house, where they could be released into the wild. The place where mice were supposed to live.

Each time I went through the process, standing in one of the pastures where the tumbledown remnants of an old homestead dotted the top of a barren hill, I gazed at the view in all directions—the lake glittering below, its watersheds and inlets hidden in thick folds of green, the mountains of Chinquapin Peaks melting skyward in the distance. Around me, spiny prairie grass waved softly, dotted with wildflowers, prickly
pear cactus, and sword-like yuccas with tall stalks rising from the centers, last spring's flowers now only dried bell-shaped remnants. I took it all in, all this strangeness, all this foreignness, while Nick investigated blue-tailed lizards, lines of red ants walking along the ground, or wild turkeys foraging in the ravines. And I thought,
Is this me? Could this ever be me?

I felt like I was watching a movie sometimes, superimposing my face onto a character's body. Occasionally, I wondered about the people who had come here first, who'd built the tiny, square house, the outhouse in back, the barn that now leaned against a mesquite tree, the old windmill and the stone tanks that held the water it pumped. What were they thinking when they arrived? Why did they come? Who was the woman, the sturdy pioneer wife who kept this house, who probably raised an entire family in such a small space? Was she ever lonely? Did she spend long days with only the mice and the scorpions for company? Did she struggle with it?

Did she ever think of leaving? Did it ever cross her mind to break the ties, to run away?

A mouse dashed across the bedroom, and I hardly even noticed. I imagined it and the scorpion having a facedown like gunfighters in a miniature OK Corral. I took note of the spot beneath the ancient closet wallpaper where the mouse had disappeared. I went after the steel wool. I stuffed and packed. Fifty years of dust and mildew puffed out in little clouds each time I disturbed the old cheesecloth backing.

I thought about my apartment in DC. That clean, orderly, and cheesecloth-free apartment. No stowaways. No men and boys dropping trails of shoes and laundry as they passed through the house . . . laundry that would have to be picked up with two fingers, carried to the bathroom, and shaken vigorously over the bathtub, because who knew what might take up residence in a shirt left lying on the floor?

I hadn't put on a pair of shoes without first checking inside them for a month.

I looked across the room at the wardrobe box with my suits and pumps still nicely packed inside, and the next thing I knew, I was sitting on the edge of the bed, gasping out great, wrenching sobs. The emotion, the despair welled up and was overwhelming, a tsunami of grief that was frightening in both its intensity and its very existence. Just last night, I'd decided I was over all this. Daniel and I had sat on the back porch, listened to coyotes singing a chorus in the distance, and watched as a massive full moon outlined thready clouds in glistening silver. Inside the house, I'd heard Nick talking to his toys in his little race car bed as he drifted off to sleep. It was the most perfect of perfect nights, the heavens a blanket of stars, the waters of the lake casting off a cool, moist breeze.