Blaze Island

by Catherine Bush

“What can we do?” her father asked Anna in the room below. “That’s the question.”

  “And so —?” Anna said quietly.

  “Anna,” said her father. “Do you ever think about having a child?”

  Anna gave a startled laugh. “I’d say it’s highly unlikely.”

  “Are you with anyone these days, the Welshman —?”

  “That was long ago.”

  “I never thought I would have a child,” said Miranda’s father in his own soft voice. “I never thought I wanted — Jenny wanted a child. Love changed me. There’s hope even if a child increases the terror exponentially.”

  His words entered Miranda, lodged in her like a bubble of air.

  “Having a child increases your carbon footprint, doesn’t it. And you need to work a lot harder to hide your despair.”

  “Cynical Anna.”

  “Last month I went to meet my sister and nieces in London,” Anna said. “Margot says she wants to show her daughters the world while she still can. They’re eight and ten. I was describing to them how scientists have discovered ice sings at extremely low frequencies, these deep vibrations that make a sound, it’s quite fantastic, isn’t it, though when the ice warms it grows silent. I want them to know something about what’s happening. But before I could say anything more, Margot stopped me. She told me not to speak of such things and asked Sofie, her oldest, to describe the paintings they’d just seen at the National Gallery.”

  “I’ve begun modelling,” said Alan.

  “Modelling for what?” asked Anna.

  “Lowering the solar constant. The modelling’s primitive, though I’m running as much RAM as I possibly can out here.”

  “How would you lower solar energy?”

  “Right now I’m not modelling for that, only to see what happens if you do block the sun’s rays, but I imagine by injecting something into the atmosphere. Some kind of reflective particulate. Say regionally, in the Arctic, even the eastern Arctic, you might use extremely long, thin pipes running skyward, suspended in the atmosphere attached to balloons, and pumps to propel particles up and out, create a haze that blocks sunlight, cools things down, helps preserve the ice.”

  “Alan, no.”

  “That’s a blunt assessment.”

  “It’s a pipe dream, literally. It’s madness, bonkers, it does nothing to address the real issue of how to get the carbon out. It simply masks the problem. I know others are looking into this, but don’t try to play God. Please.”

  “So you’d rather I sit by and watch my daughter’s world burn? Not God, Anna. We’re human, and we may need to throw everything we can at the problem. We don’t even know yet what we might need, so why not at least pursue the thought experiment?”

  “Because it’s dangerous and illusory. There are other things we should be thinking about — and doing.”

  “You’re implying I want to be doing this? What about the people dreaming of an ice-free Arctic, Anna. You know they’re out there. The pipes and balloons, they’re no substitute for changing human behaviour. I get it. I am saying they may be a useful tool in a desperate tool kit.”

  “I don’t know,” said Anna. “I don’t know that I want to hear this.”

  “We don’t know, Anna, that’s the point. Listen, I can’t go on living a quaint little off-grid life by the sea and that’s it. All I’m thinking about for now is remote access to a mainframe. But I need a frontperson, a way to go in as someone else, because as far as the scientific world goes I’ve vanished. Right now I have no wish to reappear, in fact I’ve gotten very good at encryption and going in back doors since being out here. I’ve built a small place off in the woods specifically to do this work. It could be a new kind of collaboration. Don’t say anything more, not now. Tomorrow I’ll show you what I’ve been up to and you can tell me what you think.”

  . . .

  The day after the storm, Miranda stood beside Leo Borders, near the brook as it rushed out of the spruce forest. A brown froth tossed itself over rocks and boulders and chunks of road tarmac, breaking open the known world. The wreck of Frank’s car made goosebumps ripple down her neck. But the water was lower than it had been earlier in the morning and the tide was lower now, too. She lingered at the raw edge where, in the night, the force of the water had ripped through the road and left a gaping hole, while the sea, swollen by storm and tide and full moon, had rushed landward. Usually the brook ran through two drainage culverts. The collapsed road had crushed them both.

  “Is the beach still under there somewhere?” Miranda asked Leo, gazing into the flood. How to connect this day to the one that had gone before? That had felt real. This did too.

  “Or out in the cove.” Leo shifted the brim of his ball cap. “Wind will bring the sand back if we’re lucky.”

  Ella tugged at Miranda. She’d clipped the dog to her leash for the ride from the house in the cab of Leo Borders’s truck, Leo and his quiet brother Tom in the front seat while she’d sat with Ella in the back. Her father and Frank came roaring up behind them on the quad, Frank behind her father, wearing Miranda’s borrowed helmet.

  Tom and Leo were clambering cheerfully into their orange rubber overalls. At the edge of the road, spikes of goldenrod shivered, the September sky a wash of cirrus cloud. Clusters of red berries trembled on a dogberry bush. Rubber work gloves tucked under her arm, Miranda pulled off a sprig of berries and wondered what colour of ink she might make from them.

  That morning, on her way back from the village, she’d thought she heard the buzz of a drill from across the cove. Caleb would scarcely be working on the house today, would he? Unless there was damage. When her father arrived back from the cabin, he’d been anxious to know if either Miranda or Frank had seen Caleb, if Caleb had returned from whatever errand he was supposed to be running. But Frank said there’d been no sign of him while he’d been at the house on his own, and Caleb certainly hadn’t shown himself since Miranda’s return.

  Whenever he could, Caleb spent hours working out at Cape House. Sometimes faint sounds blew across the cove or Miranda caught a glimpse of his small figure moving purposefully on the far side of the water, hauling pieces of wood or setting up a sawhorse. He never looked in her direction now. At least not when she was darting a glance at him. The work proceeded slowly because he was meticulous and only had so much time. And money. At this rate the renovations would take years. Since he’d left school, he’d been doing more work for her father, as well as everything he did for his mother, tending the garden and animals, setting wood in for winter, for his own house, theirs, her father’s cabin.

  Sometimes her mind carried her across the cove to where Caleb was. Sometimes, when she knew that Caleb was far away, when her father sent him off-island, say, she crossed the cove and set off along the lane to Cape House. This had to happen when her father, too, was far off, in at the cabin, working away on his weather-monitoring experiments.

  Spruce trees hid the house from any far-off person who might have been passing on the road. Each time she snuck over to Cape House, Miranda knocked quietly, heart rocketing, and waited for the anticipated silence, before opening the door and slipping inside. She’d been coming to the house since childhood, long before Caleb had taken possession of the place, back in the days when the house had been inhabited by his uncle Charlie’s sheep. As children, she and Caleb had wandered inside, hushed and excited, the rooms dark behind boarded-up windows, the sheep sometimes squeezing into the crawl space under the house, making a racket beneath the floorboards.

  These days, she stayed only long enough to inspect whatever work Caleb had done since she’d last visited. In August, she’d stood at the parlour window, facing the lavender water, her eye caught by the distant breath of whales, a black fin breaching. To be able to see all this from your living room, that would be something. Was it longing or disquiet that shot through her then?

  Caleb had begun stripping the wallpaper from the kitchen, layers and layers of it. In places the walls were already
taken back to wood. It was impossible to be in the house and not be aware of his presence. Months before the break between them, Caleb had told her how, when the house first became his, he used to walk from room to uninsulated room, watching the wind move beneath the wallpaper. Being in the house filled Miranda with confusion. Her father had demanded that she stop talking to Caleb and she’d acquiesced. In the first weeks, her own anger and fear still high, the separation had felt justified. Later, she could have protested. Guilt touched her like sand. Sometimes missing Caleb gripped and shook her.

  You can farm on this side of the cove, Caleb had said early the previous summer, his manner hesitant yet underscored with yearning. We’ll farm together, Miranda. Yet when he tried to take her hand, she’d pulled back. Alone in the kitchen of Cape House, she poured a glass of spring water from the jug that Caleb kept on the kitchen counter, then used the dish towel hooked through a cupboard door handle to wipe all trace of herself from the glass. She returned the cup to the cupboard above the sink. Her hand hovered there. From outside, Ella gave a soft bark.

  A noise at Miranda’s back startled her. She was by the ferocious brook. Pat Green had just pulled up in his big grey truck. When she turned, Pat and his bristle-haired brother Brian were leaping out of the cab. The men gathered at the broken edge of the road, conferring, talking of dump trucks and earthmovers and how long it would take to get new drainage culverts, how much gravel infill would be needed. Tall and ungainly, Frank stood by himself staring into the gap, and though Miranda could have approached him, she didn’t.

  “Soon as the phones are working we’ll be on it,” said Leo. Miranda sometimes saw him in yellow hard hat and orange safety vest, directing a road crew, on her occasional trips to Pierce’s supermarket in the middle of the island.

  Frank’s car was more exposed than it had been when Miranda and her father had peered at it that morning through binoculars. The wreck lay atop one of the crushed culverts, the windshield smashed, driver’s side tilted in the air. Somehow in the wild dark of the storm, Frank’s reflexes had been quick enough to open the window. He’d swum out through all the water heaving around him. Admiration travelled through Miranda as well as sympathetic fear, as if for an instant she’d been there with him.

  From the cab of his truck, Leo Borders ordered Miranda to stand back, and reversed the truck close to the road’s jagged edge. From the truck bed, Tom Borders and Miranda’s father pulled a wooden frame made of two-by-fours and a pair of long metal ramps. Tom lowered himself implacably into the water, which rushed around his legs as he found his footing among the rocks. Alan followed, agile, then long-legged Pat and Brian, whose every movement had a sturdy roll. When Frank offered to help, the men shook him off. They set the metal ramps against the road’s edge, Pat and Brian searching for purchase among the rocks, grinding the ramp ends until they were steady. When Leo’s truck rolled forward, the others pushed at the car.

  Haul, haul, haul, they cried, all of them loving a good emergency. And in this way the present continued to remake itself.

  “Not sure you’ll be able to resurrect this one,” Leo Borders called once the wreck, streaming water, slid off the ramps and onto the road. “Looking at a car funeral, I’d say.”

  Beside Miranda, Frank pulled a key fob from his pocket. When he aimed it at the car, nothing happened.

  “Strange the air bag didn’t inflate. By the look of it you hit something in your tumble,” said Alan.

  “Good thing it didn’t. Some hard to swim around an airbag, boy,” said Pat Green, pulling off his gloves and rustling a hand through his greying hair. “Let’s call it luck.”

  Streams drained from underneath the car. A submerged bag of some sort lay flung across the front passenger seat. When Frank tried the actual key in the lock, it wouldn’t turn. Even when Miranda reached in through the window, the water cold through her rubber work gloves, and tried the door latch from the inside, the door didn’t open. If it had, it would have released a flood. The men were talking about a file, wire, something to pry the door open, the problem with electronic systems. The car was not just a wreck but a ruin, sliding into the past. Pushing up his sweater sleeves, Frank leaned through the open window. Black characters wound up the paler skin of his left inner arm. A tattoo. What were they called? Not letters.

  As he reached into the silty water, a bright strip of exposed skin and band of black underwear opened on his back. Miranda stepped back as if burned while Frank lifted out a soaked satchel with a long shoulder strap. He dropped the dripping bag with an air of self-consciousness as if, while being exposed, he was also trying to hide something.

  Flipping the front seat forward, he tugged, through the driver’s seat window, at something wedged behind it.

  “Let me help,” Miranda said. “I have gloves and they’re probably too small for you.” Once again her eye was caught by the tattoo, the black row of characters running over the soft skin towards Frank’s wrist. What did they say? Her gloves were useless, given the depth of the water. She managed to find purchase, cold water oozing around her fingers. When the swollen bag released, the force sent her stumbling into Frank.

  The men had found a wire and were approaching as, together, she and Frank struggled to squeeze the black canvas overnight bag through the driver’s window. Sliding the wire through the top of the back door frame, the men jimmied the back door open. Water gushed onto the road. By now, the car seemed something ancient, accidental, like a dropstone.

  “See you next time,” said Leo Borders. Frank wiped his arms over his jeans before taking Leo’s outstretched hand. He thanked all the men. Both sets of brothers climbed into their respective trucks and drove off, in the direction of Pummelly and civilization, leaving Miranda, her father, and Frank to themselves.

  “I’ve another errand to run, if you don’t mind,” Alan said as soon as the others had vanished.

  “Where?” Miranda asked, taken aback. She wanted her father to leave and she did not want him to go. His presence, alongside Frank’s, made her feel acutely observed, yet the thought of being around Frank’s curiosity, his persistent questions, and his body, without the security of her father, flustered her. She hadn’t yet had a chance to talk to her father about Frank’s questions.

  “I’ll try to get as far as Tom’s Neck, see if I can locate Caleb.”

  “That’s the next village?” Frank said amiably. “Can I come with you?”

  For some reason, her father seemed caught out. “Best you stay here with Miranda. Stick close to the shore paths. Not sure what I’ll find out there. I might not be able to get through, anyway.”

  “Is there another, um, quad we could use to do some exploring on our own?” Frank asked. “Accidentals could be any­where.”

  “There’s no other quad,” Miranda said. Shouldn’t Frank want to stay near the shore, if he was searching for blown-from-away birds? Then again, they had once come upon a scarlet tanager, a bird very far from home, in the woods after a storm. Another time, they had lifted an exhausted petrel from beneath a dogwood, taking the bird home and tending its small body in a bowl over warm water before releasing it back to sea.

  “Miranda’s likely got things she needs to do. Storm clean-up. Partridgeberries are ripening up in the hills. Isn’t that right, Miranda?” said her father.

  What about what she wanted? She was aware of all the hidden layers in her father’s words. He didn’t want Frank to accompany him. There were other people out there, the ones who’d flown in the day before, whomever he’d spoken to on the phone the previous evening — it was likely that he was trying to reach them. For his own reasons, he didn’t wish Frank to know. There was no way for Miranda to say, and she hadn’t had a moment alone with her father since his return from the cabin in which to ask, What do you want me to tell Frank if — ? Or to inquire what her father was up to.

  “I’ll be back as soon as I can,” Alan said. He kissed her cheek. “Take care of our guest. Good luck with the birds, Frank, and try not to
walk into any more door frames.”

  Then her father was a disappearing sound, roaring into the woods, a little loss. Frank, with his dripping bags, cocked his head at her like a curious bird.

  Miranda spoke to forestall him. “What was it like driving here, trying to keep ahead of Hurricane Fernand?” When she released Ella from the bush where she’d secured the leash, Ella shook herself, as if casting off pent-up energy. Watching her made Miranda want to shake out all the strange new currents running through her as well.

  Frank picked up his drenched bags. “There weren’t really traffic jams, most people were not driving up the coast. I did have the thought, what if I got overtaken? By the hurricane, I mean. It was colossal on maps, I’d watched insane videos of its destruction of, you know, whole cities, and the sky was already gloomy and clouds were racing. Mostly I kept thinking how when I came back, nothing would look the way it did now. That felt eerie.”

  “Do you know if your roommates are okay — and your house? Can I carry something?”

  Frank shook his head. “Haven’t heard a thing — I can only hope. At least they’re inland.” He was staring into the distance and didn’t seem all that interested in talking about his life.

  “You know those micro-cells that sometimes blow through when weather fronts shift?” he said after a moment. “Those insane winds that don’t last long but everything goes crazy. Maybe you don’t get them out here but where I live they happen more now. Last summer one uprooted all these trees on my street, including the one in our yard, crushing cars, exposing root balls as big as, well, cars, which I guess is some kind of pointed message. Anyway, I expect whatever happened in the last couple of days, it’ll be worse. Much worse. Won’t it? Every now and again I wonder if I should have stayed.”

  Stayed? There was a drowned world out there, in Boston, and closer than Boston. That world pressed close. It was like someone laying a hand on Miranda. A hot touch. After a breath, she pointed to the alder saplings quickening on the low hills beyond the house, told Frank she and her father had planted all of them, and this seemed to make him more cheerful.