Firefly Island

by Lisa Wingate

  Aside from that, there was the whole question of Daniel’s new boss being an accused murderer, which I hadn’t even brought up, because things in the car were tense enough already.

  In a map-dot town in East Texas, we stopped for gas at an old station with a rusty Gulf Oil sign swinging gently in the breeze. The station owner, Baby Ray, promised he could fix the Jeep’s lackluster air-conditioning system right up. “Hoo-eee! You’re gonna need it,” he added. “It’s hotter than who’d-a-thought-it down there already. My cousin has his headquarters over that way—leads game hunts and fishin’ trips all over the state of Texas, though. Took a fella down the Trinity River last week, and the fella got a fourteen-foot alligator. Now that’s some good eats, and …”

  Baby Ray was my first refresher course in the taffy-like consistency of Southern language. It reminded me of childhood visits to Grandma Louisa’s house in Charleston, where summers were sticky-hot and the livin’ was slow and easy. Words rolled off Baby Ray’s tongue laced with colorful metaphors like, “Don’t that just put the socks on the rooster?” and “When we fried that thang up, I was full as a tick on a back porch hound, I’ll tell you what …” As he talked, Freon continued pumping into the Jeep.

  Meanwhile, I was thinking, Somewhere around here, alligator-hunting people capture giant alligators, man-eating ones. We’ll be living on the shores of Moses Lake. Surely there are no alligators in Moses Lake. Right?

  When it was time to go, Nick didn’t really want to leave Baby Ray behind. Ray patted him on the head and gave him a lollypop with greasy fingerprints on the wrapper. After we got in the car, I opened it with a wet wipe and swiped off the stick.

  Daniel rolled his eyes. “He’s a boy.” As if somehow that made the consumption of toxic petroleum products okay. He smirked playfully at me and flipped on the air-conditioner as we rolled out of town, leaving Baby Ray behind.

  Thirty miles down the road the Jeep’s compressor froze up, promptly choking the life out of the engine. We spent the afternoon sweltering with the windows open, while searching for another mechanic who might be working on Sunday.

  Daniel was mad, then irate. I’d never seen him like that—red-faced, tight-lipped, a little muscle twitching in his jawline. He looked violent and dangerous. Nowhere in my basket of preconceived marital worries had I imagined that Daniel, my Daniel, might have a side like this hidden beneath the surface. Before long, even Nick was upset. I climbed into the backseat and helped him start a book on CD. Daniel complained about the noise. I clenched my teeth, wet-mopped my skin and Nick’s with a rag, and tried to keep from throwing any more tinder on the situation.

  By the time we finally found a mechanic and had the Freon level properly recalibrated, my stomach was roiling and the sun was slowly sinking on the horizon. All three of us were exhausted, smelly, and teetering near the breaking point.

  “Maybe we should just grab a hotel room, have a nice dinner, and go the rest of the way tomorrow,” I suggested as we drove along a narrow two-lane, snaking our way through hills thick with live oak and cedar. The idea of arriving at our future home at night scared me. If there were monster gators, I didn’t want them sneaking up on me in the dark.

  Aside from that, I didn’t even have the faintest mental picture of the place. Daniel had asked Jack West for information about the house, and Jack’s only response had been, It’s just yer regular ranch house.

  Ever since then, I’d had an unsteady feeling about what “just your regular ranch house” might be like. On Google all I’d found was a fuzzy satellite image—massive lake, miles of undisturbed country, a tiny cluster of buildings shrouded by old-growth trees. A mystery, like everything else about Jack West and this job.

  “We need to push on and get there tonight,” Daniel insisted. “Besides, we shouldn’t blow money on another hotel. We’ve already spent too much, thanks to Baby Ray.” He sneered when he said it, the twitch in his jaw returning.

  I sighed, admonishing myself to let it go. “Want me to drive for a while?” I was hoping Daniel would nod off, then wake up in a better mood. This don’t-look-at-me-don’t-talk-to-me persona was unsettling. It reminded me that, like the mail-order brides in days of old, I was married to a man I barely knew, and headed into the mysterious frontier hundreds of miles from all that was familiar.

  We made a quick stop, and I took over the pilot’s chair. Daniel was asleep in less than ten minutes. Nick eventually crashed, too, and I sank into the quiet of my own thoughts, strumming a tune of self-assurances to calm my ruffled spirit. I was a DC girl. If I could survive in the city, I could survive here. I wasn’t some fragile little hothouse flower. I’d lived in six foreign capitols. I was …

  Something large and shadowy bounded across the ditch and walked into the road. I jerked my attention back to the driving. A dog … no … deer. A deer. Adrenaline zinged through my body, hot like a lightning strike. I gripped the steering wheel, hit the brakes, felt the Jeep begin to slide, the trailer protesting the sudden change in momentum, skidding side to side.

  Daniel bolted upright, blinking in confusion. Nick’s car seat buckled forward against the seat belt, then snapped back with a pop. Daniel grabbed the dashboard. “What in the …”

  Possible endings raced through my mind, rapid fire—overturning and rolling into the ditch, flying end-over-end, the trailer crashing through the tailgate, hitting Nick, the Jeep flying headlong into a tree. My parents getting the news …

  And then, just as quickly as it had sauntered into the road, the deer calmly moved to the opposite lane, leaving room for our vehicle to slide past before finally coming to a rest, the trailer cocked sideways across the center line.

  We sat in momentary silence, not a vehicle or a street lamp in sight, stressed pieces of metal in the car’s undercarriage letting out soft crackles and pings, as if it were catching a breath along with the rest of us.

  “Is a doe-deer like at Grampy’s house, Tante M!” Nick twisted to see out the side window. “And a baby one, too!” He pointed as a smaller deer scampered across the pavement to join the first one, unaware that tragedy had been only an instant away.

  “Man, that was lucky.” Daniel blew out a puff of tension, his hand resting on my arm, where the muscles were still trembling.

  “Uh-huh.” In the fringes of the headlights, I noticed a small white cross in the ditch—the kind that people plant at the site of a tragic accident. It simply read, Blessing, with no further explanation. Suddenly that seemed to fit the moment. Not a random stroke of good fortune, a blessing. A reminder that time was too precious to be spent fighting.

  Daniel squeezed my hand and kissed me on the cheek, as if he were thinking the same thing. “I’ll take over the driving, if you want. Moses Lake can’t be much farther.”

  I didn’t offer any argument. I’d seen my life flash before my eyes in the last three minutes. My fiercely independent streak was ready to curl up in a corner and lick its trembling paws. I was happy to go back to being a co-pilot.

  We switched places, Daniel limping stiffly around the back of the car and me dragging my tired body around the front, and we were off again.

  “Last leg,” Daniel promised as the trailer righted itself behind us. “I’m ready to get there and get out of this car.” He laid his hand on the console, palm up, and I slid my fingers into his, then leaned back against the headrest.

  “That sounds so good,” I murmured. “When we do get there, I vote we just grab the air mattress, Nick’s sleeping bag, and the sack with the pillows and blankets. Everything else can wait until morning.”

  Daniel nodded. “Yeah.”

  We drove along in silence for a few miles, until finally Daniel lifted my hand and brought it to his lips, kissing my fingers. “I love a woman who can handle a U-Haul, by the way.”

  My sticky, road-weary skin came alive with goose bumps, and the apprehension that had been haunting me drifted out the window. “Now you’re trying to flatter me.”

  “Is it working?”
/>
  “Maybe.” I smiled at him, filled with the returning warmth of adoration.

  “My guess—in a half hour or less, we’ll be pulling into our driveway,” he offered.

  The words our driveway were just settling over me, a warm and sweet-smelling bubble bath, when Daniel hit the brakes, snapping me forward against my seat belt.

  “There’s another one.” Leaning close to the window, he peered into the night, pointing.

  I turned just in time to see a deer amble into the road and stop.

  “Is a doe-deer! ’Nudder one!” Nick announced gleefully.

  “You’ve got to be kidding.” I felt my mouth hanging slack. “You think it’s the same deer? Maybe it’s, like, messing with us.”

  “Can’t be.” Daniel shifted his hands on the steering wheel, and we proceeded slowly forward on what would forever be known as The Night of the Kamikazi Deer.

  Sometime later, after having passed through one small town and watched every four-legged wild animal in the county cross the road, we topped a hill and spotted what had to be Moses Lake. Around us, the moon cast a faint glow against waxy live oak leaves as we wound into the valley. Some sort of massive bird swooped across the car, then sailed over the dark expanse of water, following the moon’s glistening path toward the horizon.

  “Wow,” I whispered, watching branches play a hide-and-seek game with stars and moon and water. Lights glittered on the lake’s surface here and there, seeming to float free in the blackness—boats, I supposed. Houseboats, perhaps. I hadn’t thought of the lake as being big enough that people might live on it, but Daniel had mentioned that the ranch included miles of lakeshore. I guessed it made sense that the lake would be huge.

  An unexpected tingle rushed over my skin as we descended a small hill into the utter darkness, Moses Lake dipping out of sight. An aura of romance and danger simmered through me like a trail of smoke, scented with an intriguing fragrance I couldn’t quite place. For the past month, Kaylyn had been sending me bits of mystery and lore pertaining to Moses Lake, and now all of it was churning in my head. I felt the history of the place slipping over me, drawing me into a mix of past and present. Comanche hunting ground, pioneer settlement, site of a secret gathering of Civil War dissenters determined to join forces with the Mexican army and cause the South to rise again. Location of a mysterious frontier settlement where all the residents had vanished one winter. To this day, no one knew what had happened to them.

  Though the river had been here since time immemorial, the lake was manmade, a product of the Corps of Engineers during the building boom of the fifties. The water’s surface hid what was left of towns, farms, homes, and an old Spanish mission run by monks who came to the area with dreams of enlightenment, but eventually abandoned their vision.

  “This is it. This is our road,” Daniel said, turning off the highway. Gravel rumbled beneath the Jeep’s tires, and when we’d bumped and bounced our way to the top of the next hill, I could no longer see lights in the distance. Except for the glow of the moon, everything around us was impossibly black, the thickly wooded hills filled with shadows that shifted as we drove. Tiny pinpoints of eyes glittered in the fringes of the headlights here and there. I didn’t want to think about what those might belong to.

  Were Baby Ray’s giant alligators out there somewhere, just waiting for a chance to avenge the cousin who’d been hunted down and fried up into gator nuggets?

  A sense of solitude cloaked the car, the weave thick and tight, shutting out sound, giving the feeling that we were stepping off the edge of the world. My lust for adventure wavered, and I found myself again wishing for a hotel room.

  Daniel rested his elbow comfortably on the window frame, seeming completely at peace with the lack of civilization.

  “Are you sure it’s okay for us to show up so late at night like this?” I shivered as the water-scented breeze worked its way down the neck of my T-shirt.

  “I gotta go tinkie!” Nick’s unceremonious announcement interrupted the flow of conversation.

  Daniel reached back and patted Nick on the knee. “Hang in there, buddy. It can’t be far from here. Just a few minutes.” He held up the paper with the directions, squinted at it in the dash light, then set it down and turned left at an intersection where one gravel road looked about as dark and unwelcoming as the other. “Here we go. Say, see ya later, stop sign.”

  Daniel and Nick fell into a game I’d heard them play before, talking about things as we passed, so as to make the miles speed by.

  “Later, gad-or,” Nick chimed in.

  I wished the subject of gators hadn’t come up.

  “You cold?” Daniel asked, and I realized I had my arms clutched tight. All the blood had moved to the center of my body in an instinctive flight response. “Not sorry you threw in with us blokes, are you?”

  “No, of course not.” Don’t complain. Don’t complain. Don’t be a party pooper, fun killer, namby-pamby little fraidy cat. “But what if some … security guard mistakes us for prowlers and shoots us or something when we get there?”

  “The place is so remote, I don’t think there’s any need for security. That’s why Jack has his research facility and crop plots there. He’s pretty paranoid about people trying to spy on his work. The only houses close to ours are a little guest cottage of Jack’s and an old cabin on Firefly Island. Jack has a bigger place and a ranch headquarters on another piece of land twenty miles down the county highway. His house there is massive, actually. At the symposium, he was showing pictures of the generator. Solar and wind systems power the house and barns, and he uses modified geothermal units for cooling and heating. Seriously innovative. I’ve never seen anything like it. He designed the whole system himself.”

  The two of us fell silent as an imposing white limestone entranceway came into view, dwarfing the Jeep and the U-Haul. The heavy wooden gates were closed like the barriers that protected the old Spanish missions. Daniel exited the Jeep and punched the magic numbers into a keypad inside a metal box, then slid back into his seat as the gate swung open, letting us through. We proceeded along the narrow drive toward what appeared to be a grouping of buildings ahead. Oddly, there seemed to be no lighting of any kind, other than what the moon afforded. I had the disquieting thought that maybe we really weren’t expected here at all.

  Corbin’s story swirled through my thoughts, and I considered asking Daniel what he knew about Jack West’s sordid past, but I didn’t. Daniel wouldn’t have brought us here if he thought we were in any danger. I had to trust in that.

  “Yup, there it is.” He pointed as the headlights outlined a simple, one-story Craftsman-style house with clapboard siding. The structure appeared to be of forties or fifties vintage, with a fence around it made of painted iron pipe and wire. It wasn’t the sort of fence built for decoration, but more for function, to keep something in or out. What? I wondered. Livestock? Wild animals? The gates had been adorned with welded-on pieces of old farm machinery, as if to dress up the place a bit.

  “Why aren’t there any lights on?” I’d waited as long as I could to bring up the obvious.

  “Not sure …” The hint of uncertainty in Daniel’s voice was disquieting. “But that’s the house—first building on the left. Jack said there are some barns and whatnot out back, and Jack’s little house. I get the impression he doesn’t use it anymore. The greenhouses and the lab building are a couple miles down the ranch road.”

  “Oh.” I couldn’t think of much else to say as we rolled to a stop by one of the yard gates. All three of us sat in silence, nobody willing to make the first move. The darkness was incredibly thick, the low-hanging moon hiding behind a cloud. Some sort of night-flying creature strafed the car again. It looked like a bat. The fine hairs rose on the back of my neck.

  “Where is everyone?” Scanning a 180-degree circle, I could only see one set of lights that might belong to a house—one sign of civilization far in the distance, floating beyond a swath of fathomless blackness that was either
a deep canyon or part of the lake. The air smelled of water and wet limestone. “Didn’t they know we were coming?” I’d expected a welcoming of some sort; Daniel’s new boss or a caretaker with a key, at least. Instead, I felt like someone, or something, might be lurking out there in the darkness, waiting for us to step out of the car.

  Daniel leaned over the steering wheel, squinting beyond the headlights. “I left a message on Jack’s voice mail saying we’d be later than we thought, but he never answered.” Squaring his shoulders, he fished a key ring and a small penlight from the console. “Guess I’ll go unlock the door and see what I can do about finding some switches.”

  “Okay.” On the one hand, I was exhausted. On the other hand, I was petrified. The two opposing forces clashed like Titans inside me. It was hard to say which one was winning. “We’ll wait here.” I reached for Nick, who’d managed to unbuckle his seat belts and climb onto the console to follow his dad. “Hang on, Nick. Let’s just stay here and wait for your dad to figure things out.” As much as it pained me to do what my mother would have done in this situation, I was happy to let Daniel venture forth while I stayed behind to protect the young. Nick squirmed into my lap, and I hugged my arms around him, resting my chin against his silky hair.

  Daniel hovered half in and half out of the car, messing with the pen light, which was shuddering and blinking, threatening to fail us when we needed it most. “At this point, I’m ready to lay that air mattress down anywhere, as long as I can sleep.” He swung the door shut and walked off into the night, his flashlight beam crossing the yard and bobbing up a couple steps to the house. Moments later, the glow of the penlight moved from window to window inside the house, but no lights came on.

  A full fifteen minutes had ticked by before Daniel returned. He’d found plenty of switches, but none of them worked. With the penlight quickly losing steam, we had little choice but to give up on electrical power and just move in anyway. We were too exhausted to care anymore.