Reckoning

Hiria Dunning

Ko wai ka kite i te hua o te kuaka? / Who has ever held a godwit’s egg?2

 

Not I. And I never will, I expect.

This whakataukī about having faith in unseen forces has become a bitter pill for me to swallow. The godwits lay their eggs in Alaska, then summer in Aotearoa from September to March every year. And in the time of Te Rāhuinui, also known as the Global Ecological Restrictions, we flightless birds are constrained, never to see Alaska, or Morocco, or anywhere else.

I shouldn’t be watching Casablanca tonight. It’s fouling my mood, despite today being the start of my doctoral research term at the Kuaka Coastal Recovery Centre. Even in a film about struggling to escape a place amidst a terrible war, the people on the screen had more freedom to move then than we do now. We must curtail frivolous luxuries for the good of Earth’s systems, I know. Yet I cannot avoid the twin pangs of want and guilt when I see the pamphlets on screen: Free France.

Not too long ago, I was walking through Rangipuke Park by the uni (Dad still calls it Albert Park by accident). Someone shoved pamphlets under my nose: Free Aotearoa! End the Unjust Rāhui! Despite part of me wanting to explore the idea of a legal challenge to open the world up, there was something about the woman holding the pamphlet. It was in her eyes, a rabidness that turned me off. I scurried away before I got drawn in. When I walked past the park later, wardens were chastising the pamphleteers for wasting resources.

“My dear Rick, when will you realise that in this world today isolationism is no longer a practical policy?” Preach, Signor Ferrari.

Teagan, fellow doctoral candidate, enters our shared bedroom, immediately scoffing. “That’s right. They warned me: ‘Ingrid watches the same damn films all the time.’”

“So? Watch. You never know, you might enjoy it.”

She does so, hunched beside me on my bed so she can see the tiny screen of my laptop better. But after a while, something stirs her from her seat. “Sorry, ‘Grid. I can’t do it. I can’t watch things from that long ago. It always makes me wonder . . . didn’t they see this coming? Doesn’t it make you mad?”

“I’m allowed to like what I like. My Dad’s an old film buff. It rubbed off.”

“Fair enough.” She slips over to her bunk and chooses a heavy tome from her bedside nook. For all she mocks me, her taste in books seems equally continental and twentieth century. Tonight, she’s reading something called Love in the Time of Cholera. Pleasant.

Much like having to put up with Te Rāhuinui, I’m going to have to put up with Teagan for the next six months. That’s a sacrifice I’m willing to make, to be with the creatures I’ve devoted my doctorate to: the Eastern bar-tailed godwit, or kuaka.

 

SEPTEMBER

They arrive with tired, heavy grace, in a huge formless mass like static on an old TV screen (something Dad explained to me, when it happened in an old movie, because I had no idea what the fuzzy black and white meant). With their wings spread in the air, their shape makes sense: the darkness on the wings balancing the white underbelly, the spread of wing-to-tail-to-beak an elegant, pointed geometry.

Then they land, and it is all comedy.

Wings drooping on the ground, they sweep around the shore like dowagers and old maids entering a ball, the excitement of their arrival all gone. We workers are the suited-up gentlemen awaiting these feathered dames, excitement coursing through us as they land. We can only watch, for now. Later, the real work will begin, treading gently in the dance.

It is my job, once the new arrivals have settled in for the night, to walk around following the quiet ping of my sensor. There is an old saying that the kuaka carry a stone in their mouth which helps them find their way back here every year. I don’t know about that, but some of them do carry a secret. Certain birds have data pegs tucked away in their tags, replete with communications from the teams in China, Japan and Alaska. The files on the pegs can be gathered from two metres away. Once all the pings on the sensor have vanished, I’ve collected all there is to collect, and I head in for the night.

In the morning, I analyse the data collected. Plenty of it has been sent over the academic web already, backed up on the pegs to ensure the message comes through correctly; this hen was injured by illegal fishing nets in the Huang Hai Sea, but made a full recovery; that male has an aggressive streak, proceed with caution; records of diseases and injuries; breeding statistics; nicknames, even, for individual birds.

Then something unexpected catches my attention. A video file labelled Hello from Alaska. I open it up to see a tanned and freckled face under a shock of red-brown hair. The man breaks into a smile that transforms his whole face from boyish to bright. When he speaks, his voice is loud, with an accent I’ve only heard in old movies.

“Hey there! I have no idea who this message is going to reach, but I don’t know, I just feel kinda compelled to reach out across the world and say hi from the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta in Alaska. My name’s Noah, I’m twenty-six, and I’m a biologist—well I mean, that’s obvious, probably, to my audience, whoever you are. Hopefully you speak English, because I highly doubt my message will find a Yup’ik speaker across the world . . . .  But anyway, I wanted to reach out across the GER, say Hi, get to know someone who lives different from me, because life is awful protracted around here. Anyway, what to say . . . uh . . . . ”

He shifts in his seat, uncomfortable, and I’m nodding along as if to give him a positive social cue, keep going.

“To be more specific, I’m a Research Team Lead here in the Yukon Delta Reserve. Because of the protected status of the teguteguaq—the godwit, that is, in my indigenous language, Yup’ik—because of that I’m one of a very small bunch of people allowed to live in this place on the Delta. I winter nearby too, living on reclaimed tribal land.”

He shares some photos of the birds in situ. The images are a window into another world, where the grey birds are transformed. When breeding season hits, they turn reddy-brown. It’s funny to think how the same birds we both care about are so different in the two places.

“So, I love birds, obviously. Godwits are just . . . like, do you get what I mean when I say I love how stupid they look sometimes? That way they drag their wings after landing . . . .  It’s enough to make my eyes water, trying to keep myself from giggling in front of my colleagues. It’s like they’ve got big sweeping skirts on, don’t you think?”

He’s looking off past the camera, his eyes bright, his smile wide again. I’m nodding along and laughing. I do think they look like big sweeping skirts!

“Anyway, what else to say . . . I play guitar—not well, but I enjoy it. I love old music. I mean like, stuff that’s coming up on its second centenary. Don’t judge me. But ooh, let’s see, can I recommend anything, in case you’re interested. Well, all right, let’s start really 101 beginners here, some classic Rat Pack, and say . . . Frank Sinatra. If you can get your hands on some of his music, I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised.

“So, uh, yeah . . . if you find this, whoever you are, why don’t you consider saying Hi from your side of the world? I’d love to get to meet someone I’d never meet otherwise. So, piuraa! Which means goodbye, or ‘stay as you are’.”

 

MARCH

“Hi Noah, kia ora. It’s nice to meet you. My name’s Ingrid Rawiri, and I’m twenty-four. I come from Tāmaki Makaurau, Aotearoa, but while I’m doing my doctorate, I summer with the godwits down the coast.”

I’ve watched Noah’s message again and again, all three minutes and fifty-six seconds of it, who knows how many times since that day, over the weeks and months intervening.

I agonised over months about what to say to him. Would it be too weird if I went all out? Too late. I’m going all out.

“So, this is labelled video #1, even though I’m recording this just before the godwits take off. After I saw your message in September, I started collecting stuff to show you. It’s all numbered chronologically, but you can ignore that if you want and just browse.”

There was no rush to respond in September, no way to rush anyway. He’d sent it over the data pegs, without backing it up on the web. He hadn’t attached an email address or any other way to get in contact. Nor should he have, given the academic nature of such an address. We are supposed to conserve international web resources for essential things. Random pen pal relationships are not included in that. So that meant I’d have to rely on Air Godwit to deliver my response to this contraband message of Noah’s.

With all that time between, I collected images and short videos of the godwits, of our work, the land, even our parties. I curated an interesting package to send across the world. I even had all my colleagues wish him a Happy New Year on video.

“I managed to find some Frank Sinatra.” Dad had complained about the hassle of hunting in old music archives and mailing the data peg to me through the university’s internal system. “Actually, it became a whole rabbit hole for me, chasing down the whakapapa—the ancestral lines—of the different songs of his, because it seems like those guys back then were always covering each other’s music. I ended up falling in love with Bing Crosby’s version of I’ll be Home for Christmas. You should check that out.

“Anyway, would love some more music recommendations if you’ve got any. As for me, I’m an old film buff, so I’d like to recommend some classic cinema if you’ve got the time for it. Bear in mind, please, some of these are very ‘of their time’. But I would have to recommend Casablanca, definitely—I was named after Ingrid Bergman—and I suppose Singing in the Rain, Wizard of Oz and Seventh Seal are big favourites of mine too.”

I worked the intervening months between September and March, caring for any ailments of the godwits, tracking their numbers, health, growth, and various other important stats we want kept. And I took lots of photos.

“We call the GER Te Rāhuinui here. I wonder how tough you find living under it? I wish I could travel the world, like our feathered friends. Still, in the absence of that option, I guess I’m going to make sure they can keep on keeping on!

“Oh, and by the way, we have something like ‘piuraa’ for goodbye down here too. It’s ‘E noho rā’ which means goodbye, but also like . . . ‘you keep sitting there’.” I’m laughing at myself. I have to turn this damn camera off.

The godwits are already exhibiting pre-flight behaviours. For a few days now they’ve been fluffing up their feathers, calling to each other in that certain way that means, “Oi, let’s get on with it.” I leg it down the dunes, my sensor tuned to find the bird that carried Noah’s message before.

There she is, with a mate, stocking up on rich pipi under the sand. Not that I can see past where her beak is dug in, searching. I stand as close as I dare, hoping not to spook her, sending my video sailing invisibly onto her data peg.

They take flight the next morning. I stand amongst my own human flock, blending in, my secret message hidden so well I can’t even tell which one of those hundreds of birds bears it. After the party that night, and the clean-up the next morning, we board our transit and hover back to the university. I’ll spend the next six months doing the other half of my duties for my doctorate in kaitiakitanga, including education and promotion of the kuaka and protective measures.

 

SEPTEMBER

Half a year later, I watch the arrival again with more experienced eyes. The numbers in the flock are growing. Our work here and across the globe is making its mark.

I’m so caught up in the energy of the arrival that it’s not until the next day I notice the package on the data peg of a bird nicknamed “Ginny”. Hello again from Alaska. It’s big, a compressed file filled with a whole series of videos. I open #1.

A year on, not much has changed about Noah. His hair is longer, his freckles a bit darker this time. “Hi, uh . . . Ingrid. I gotta tell you, I almost forgot I even sent that message a year ago, so to get a response . . . and damn, the effort you went to, all those photos and videos? I’m totally grateful. Really nice to meet you.”

There is something different about him knowing my name this time. This isn’t just some random greeting across the world. This is him, talking to me.

“So, I watched the films you recommended. Singing in the Rain was pretty good, and Wizard of Oz, like . . . wow! But my favourite is definitely Casablanca. It’s shot up pretty high in my personal movie rankings. Thanks for introducing me to it.”

I’m smiling, and I’m clutching my elbows, and my heart is doing a flip in my chest. This is silly. I’m silly.

“And uh . . . maybe you get the joke, about what I named our bird. Ginny. Do you get it?” He pauses for effect, and I blink back, blank. “Out of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world . . . . ” His laughter is music to my ears. “Get it? Ginny, gin joint . . . . ” He sighs, his embarrassment at himself leaking through the screen.

No, go on Noah. I get it. I get you.

“I sure wish we could meet in real life.” He sighs, and my heart sighs along with him.

This video is a long one. I listen to his descriptions of what the GER is like up in Alaska. It turns out there are extra layers of difficulty in North America. The attempts to find a path to co-governance were harder there. Even between well-meaning parties, everything got to be a bit of a bureaucratic tangle, and that’s before the Republic of Calvary rose up and threatened everyone else with their extreme demands for a return to “liberty”. I would laugh, if not for how serious Noah is about it. To me, this all sounds like the politics of decades ago, but to him it’s still so real, so close to home.

He’s kept a whole string of video logs and photos. I’m treated to greetings from most of his colleagues; long panoramas of the huge delta mudflats stretching far to either horizon with cinnamon-plumed godwits busy raising the next generation; and little slices of Noah’s life. He fills me in on his year since his first message and regales me with tales of his favourite godwits. I note the names down to track them later.

In one of the videos he starts a rivalry with me, calling the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta the godwits’ “real home”. “Excuse me,” I say in a cheeky video back to him, “but the godwits summer in Aotearoa for a longer period of time than they spend in Alaska, I will have you know.” But I already know what he’ll say back next year: they make their babies in Alaska, so that makes it really home, their birthplace. Fair enough.

I hunt down his music recommendations. In return I recommend another run of old cinema, bringing the focus back to Aotearoa by suggesting the works of Taika Waititi and others.

The video file which gets the most replay is his final video. Instead of a simple goodbye, he grabs an acoustic guitar from off-screen. He starts to sing in this clear tenor, so different from the deeper drawl of his speaking voice. “You must remember this . . . a kiss is still a kiss . . . a smile is just a smile . . . The fundamental things apply, as time goes by . . . . ”

I can’t help it. By the time he finishes the song and bids me goodbye—“Here’s looking at you, kid”—I’m smiling, laughing, and there are tears in my eyes.

MARCH

I may have annoyed Teagan by playing all this old-fashioned music recommended by Noah. For Kirihimete, she gave me headphones.

“So . . . what are you sending back to gorgeous Noah, hmm?” I ignore Teagan, but this is a mistake. “He could be a deep fake, you know. You might not be talking to some cute Alaskan. He could be some filthy old guy.”

“Teagan . . . . ”

“Shouldn’t send nudes, in case Ginny gets intercepted—”

“Auē, Teagan. Will you shut up!”

Teagan cracks up, and rolls over, eyes still trained on her book. “Oh, I’m sorry, after being subjected to hearing his music all season, I’m not allowed to comment? Putting up with you mooning over this unattainable guy for the last six months—”

“I’m not mooning—”

Oh no. I really have been, haven’t I?

She can see from my face that she’s touched a sensitive spot. “’S’all good, ’Grid. Forget I said anything.”

I wait until she’s gone to record my message to Noah, too raw to speak in front of her. I’ve got a bit of a script, some bullet points I want to hit in response to his last message. I don’t trust my memory, especially not after what Teagan has made me face. I tell him all about my year, give him a little rundown of the other files on the peg. I don’t have a talent to share with him, nothing to make his heart soar like mine did at that song.

“If only we lived in another time, huh? Maybe we could have met in person.” My cheeks are burning, and I’m laughing at myself. I hope this comes across as normal, not creepy. “Pity about being half a world away from each other. But I just wanted to say, I really look forward to your messages, so . . . please keep sending them. Ka kite anō.”

SEPTEMBER

Six months of burning with embarrassment and frustration and ennui, and here I am again, stalking the dunes for Ginny—1 new packet.

The computer room is blessedly empty. No one to hear me come crashing in, shoving the sensor’s connectors into the first computer by the door, breath hot and heavy from running in the brisk night air by torch- and moonlight. I’ve forgotten to turn the lights on. With just my torch and the screen to show me the way, I click down the path that leads to the face I want to see.

For Ingrid is the title this time. As if to tell all others with access to the data peg to stay out of this.

His face is not smiling as brightly this time, his eyes furtive. “Ingrid . . . hi. Well, I hope this is Ingrid, anyway, because I’ll be mighty embarrassed if this makes it into someone else’s hands . . . . 

“Listen, Ingrid . . . would you consider . . . maybe trying . . . to come up to Alaska? I don’t know how you’d manage it, obviously. I looked into options for me to come down to Aotearoa—” I wince at the way he wraps his American mouth around the unfamiliar syllables “—but movement here is really restricted. I wasn’t able to find out much about the travel options from your country, but . . . well, what I’m trying to say is that, in the world before this one, I would have tried to meet you, to see if this thing I feel going on between us is something that could . . . you know . . . Because really, in-person chemistry is where it’s at, but I feel a connection to you already . . . .  Anyway. Sorry, maybe this is all just a one-sided thing for me, in which case, just forget I asked.”

No, Noah. I want to see you too.

He continues in a lighter, smilier vein, telling me all about his year. He’s trying to ignore the heavy weight he just dropped. It’s not until the end that he even dares to hint at anything else, when he signs off: “Well . . . here’s looking at you, kid.”

What he asks is impossible.

MARCH

No matter how many photos I take, videos I share, moments in my life I give to him, I feel as if it all hinges around that one little sentence. I try to brush it off, contain it in just a few seconds amongst many other minutes of happy times, so it doesn’t linger or taint the rest of this package I’ve put so much care into.

“Hey, I’m sorry Noah, but I can’t leave Aotearoa.”

That’s it.

Te Rāhuinui rankles. And time . . . time goes by.

SEPTEMBER

I stare at the sensor with dead eyes.

Ginny—no new packets.

MARCH

The reason why he didn’t send anything is not the one I first thought. It’s worse.

There’s a war on. The Republic of Calvary sent their army and navy up to Alaska in their latest bid for North American reunification. Of course Noah can’t send me a message back. Maybe he never even got my message, though in the news that I can scrape off the academic web, the war didn’t start until February.

I research, I fill in applications, and after that flurry of activity, I have to sit down and ask myself—because I share these thoughts with no one—do I even want to go to Alaska?

My maunga, my awa, my whānau is here. Kuaka Coastal Recovery is here, my university is here. Everything that I have learned about kaitiakitanga is specific to here. And I would be a fool to leave. Aotearoa has it so much better than so many other places in the world, thanks to our geographical isolation. Not to mention there’s a war!

I mull over these doubts as I tend to our birds, maintain their environs, monitor pest defences, and wait for word to come from the Ministry of Transport.

I watch Casablanca. “With the whole world crumbling, we picked this time to fall in love.” Yes, thanks for the reminder, Humphrey Bogart. My favourite film has me in tears now. Great.

I wish I was with Noah. I’m glad I’m not. To assuage my guilt and worry, I send as much of my paycheck as I can to Alaska to support their defence. I even rally others at the Centre, and in the surrounding towns, to do the same.

I get told off. Either because I was annoying people, or because I was wasting work time and resources. The centre manager warns me that I might not be invited back next year unless I clean my act up.

Instead of getting bitter about it, I pull my weight. I get all my work done on time, I contribute to the social life and the cleaning around the Centre. I make my apologies to anyone I have offended. Whenever my feelings get the better of me, there is Teagan to talk it through with me. By the end of season, I’m astounded to be rewarded for my efforts with a permanent position. No having to beg next year. I’ll be back to see if Noah messages, if he’s still alive.

I hold off on filming, waiting for my letter to arrive from the Ministry. When it arrives, the birds are already well fattened up and ready to take to the air.

“Kia Ora Ingrid,

Thank you for waiting for the results of your application to travel to Yukon Delta National Wildlife Refuge, Alaska. Our office is busy, and we apologise for any distress the long wait may have caused.

Your request has been marked as Personal, Non-Urgent. The Ministry would also like to make you aware that the region of the world you wish to travel to is currently considered dangerous for civilians due to military actions. This does not mean you have been refused, but due to the nature of your request, you will be subject to a wait time convenient to the Ministry. This could be up to twelve months under current wait list conditions.”

All right, so they haven’t refused me. Free Aotearoa are wrong: the government does let people move, but it is heavily regulated travel. Our rights have not been completely shut down. The scientist in me was trying to say this all along: the government isn’t fascist; they are just asking us to make sacrifices to save the vulnerable species and environs around us.

This is fine, right? So why is there a pit growing in my gut?

“For your information, here is the estimated cost to the environment of your Personal, Non-Urgent trip:

• Enough fuel to heat an urban school for six months
• Significant risk to seals around Aotearoa and the Northern Pacific Rim (estimated death count: three adult seals)
• Risk to migratory birds (estimated death count: at least one bird, e.g. one toroa or one kuaka)

If you decide to confirm your trip and join the waiting list, please—”

I can’t see through my tears anymore.

The Ministry’s letter is on the desk before me as I try to hold it together in front of the camera and not cry about this man who might not even be alive to see this message.

“I’ve been trying really hard not to regret not coming when you invited me. Especially with the war. Sometimes I wonder, should I just go? Find out if you’re alive or dead? Can I live without knowing that?”

I can barely see the blip of Ginny on the sensor when I’m searching for her to tag the video to her data peg.

I can’t go. Not at that cost. Not even one godwit.

Not even with the famous line from Casablanca ringing in my head: “ . . . you’ll regret it. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but soon, and for the rest of your life.”

 

SEPTEMBER

Te Rāhuinui continues.

It will continue for the rest of my life. I will never get to enjoy the freedoms I am working so hard to realise.

The godwits arrive, cresting over the grey bulk of the dykes protecting the Hauraki plains from the encroaching sea. Ginny bears no news for me at all.

I make a decision. I won’t be such a wreck this year. To quote my favourite movie, “It doesn’t take much to see that the problems of three little people don’t amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world.” I will stay strong and make a happy home for these birds who fly halfway across the world twice a year.

The godwits, and every other creature on this planet, had to put up with a couple of centuries of us utterly ruining their world. Now it’s our chance to experience some fairly reasonable deprivations. I will let that be the love we send each other, from across the world. I’ll show my aroha for Noah in making sure these little guys get through the Antipodean summer. I hope if he’s alive, he’ll do the same up in the Arctic. For now, I guess that’s going to have to be enough.

 

DECEMBER

He kuaka māranganga, kotahi manu e tau ki te tāhuna, tau atu, tau atu, tau atu. / The flock of godwits have swooped up into the air, one lands on the sandbank and the others follow.3

 

They say that the godwits could have been integral in leading the people who became Māori to find Aotearoa. The continuity of the flock has become my guiding star. Part of my whakapapa, my purpose in life. Doing everything I can for them takes the edge off.

I’m listening to my Kirihimete playlist when Sinatra’s smooth tones jump out at me. “ . . . I’ll be home for Christmas / if only in my dreams . . . . ”

This is prime tear-jerker territory. Maybe I need to take this one off the list.

Teagan comes crashing into my room—my single occupancy room, now that we’re no longer students—and drags me out to the canteen. Everyone there stares at me as I enter. What have I done now?

She has the screen paused, ready for me to see the news item. She hits play, watches my face.

The images of a snowy war-torn place blink by without my comprehension, then footage from a refugee boat. There is a man in a huge puffer coat, handing out food to his fellow passengers. A shock of red-brown hair. Smiling despite it all.

I have not held a godwit’s egg.

But I know. That’s enough. For most of human history, that’s all any of us get. For the kuaka, summer here, summer and eggs there: that’s all they ask.

Where the godwit lands, let the others follow.

 

 

“Love in the Time of Te Rāhuinui” originally appeared in Headland Journal in December, 2023.

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Kevin J. Binder

I meet Tara once and only once, on my last trip to Rose Isle, two days before Hurricane Zeta hits. The Category 4 storm is still spinning somewhere beyond the southern horizon, hundreds of miles offshore, as my crew and I reach the bridge from the mainland. Out the windshield, I can see the occasional cloud pushing past, and if I try hard enough, I can convince myself that each one’s isolated, with no connection to the others.

We’re crammed three to a cab in our F-650, me and the boys, a dozen yards of sand and polypropylene bags tarped down in back. The boys want to hightail it as soon as we drop off the sandbagging supplies, but I made up my mind well before we left Texas. So long as volunteers are out preparing for Zeta’s arrival, I plan on being one of them. The boys seem to think this goodwill of mine is just some PR stunt, me angling for the next deal. I’ve never pulled this kind of shit before, they say, so why now? And I’m trying to tell them: I feel like I’ve got unfinished business here, like I owe this place something, though I’m not sure what.

To say we’re swimming against the current would be an understatement. Every other car is headed off the island, practically bursting with suitcases and valuables. Beyond them, the island’s stilted structures—houses, restaurants, and hotels—line up like dominoes. In five days, when the first helicopter news crews can make it out to survey Zeta’s aftermath, I’ll see for myself how few of them remain standing, the rest strewn as splintered wood across an island torn in two. But for now, Rose Isle’s still whole, its buildings intact.

We keep arguing, my crew and I, until they begrudgingly drop me off at a volunteer tent halfway down the island. As they unload supplies—having long ago learned to swallow their gripes within earshot of clients—I hop out to introduce myself to the on-site coordinators. And that’s when I see Tara.

Of course, I don’t know her name just yet. Right now, she’s merely the woman fiddling with a shovel outside the volunteer station, watching my crew dump sand onto the bluff above the seaward beach. And though I can only see a sliver of her face, angled away from me as she is, I can tell at first glance that she’s got this effortless grace to her, like she could be running on two hours of sleep and still look this poised. I try ignoring this thought—having as little time as I do for casual courtship—but by the time I’m done convincing myself I’m not attracted to her, I realize one of the volunteer coordinators is leading me her way.

“Hope you don’t mind working with the other out-of-towner,” he says, “All the locals got started at dawn, so y’all seemed the logical pair.”

I hope the shake of my head isn’t too enthusiastic in communicating that no, I don’t mind. She seems not to notice as we approach, but I offer her my right hand all the same.

“Hey there,” I say. “Name’s Randy Kirk. Guess we’ll be sandbagging together.”

The moment she turns my way, her brows flash with what I interpret as interest. But the look’s gone in a second, replaced by a blank stare that considers my outstretched hand before she shakes it. In the wind, strands of jet-black hair stream diagonally across her face. She seems a couple years younger than me—perhaps just shy of thirty—and has one of the weaker handshakes I’ve ever encountered, the type that goes dead in your hand. No ring. And her eyes are dark, cheerless, like they’ve already ceded victory to the hurricane.

She gives her first name in reply, but beyond that she’s silent. Says nothing as the coordinator leads us to our workstation on the bluff, and once we’re there, it’s he who does the talking.

“As y’all can see, we’re doing whatever we can to protect the levee hidden in this bluff.” He points one arm to the ground beneath his feet and sweeps the other along the beach, where volunteers are lining the bluff’s southern flank with sandbags. Throughout the day, I’ll learn that the island’s “burrito levee” is essentially a long sandbag, fifteen feet thick, hidden in the man-made bluff and spanning most of the barrier island’s eight-mile length. At times, I’ll spot it peeking out where its cover has eroded away, and it’ll remind me of a dead, black snake. The coordinator continues, “Add as much as y’all can to what’s already there. Pack the bags in real good, so the surf can’t sweep them away. General evac’s in four hours—we’ll come get y’all then.”

Then he’s off. I try catching Tara’s gaze, but it’s fixed on the supplies my guys dumped here. She toes an empty bag, half scowling at the thing like it wronged her in a past life.

“He said you weren’t from around here either.” I jerk my head at the departing man.

She tosses me the husk of a sandbag. “Drove down from New Orleans.”

“Didn’t expect to meet another out-of-towner today,” I say, confused by her gesture but willing to let it slide. “You got family here or something?”

“Work used to take me down here.” She jabs her shovel into our sandpile and swings a spadeful of it in my direction. It takes me a second to understand what she’s doing, but then I fuss with the bag to get it open. She drops the sand inside before digging in again.

I wait for her to return the question, but we’re wordless for two, three shovel-and-fill cycles. “I’m from Dallas, by the way,” I say. “Here on business a lot—this here’s my sand, actually.”

“Your sand?” she repeats, cocking an eyebrow as a breath of wind crescendos.

“What I mean is, I’m in sales. I sell sand, gravel, and related accessories.” I give the bag I’m holding a shake. “Like these durable rascals.” From there, I tell her the whole story: how the mayor of Rose Isle called me up two days ago, desperate for supplies when Zeta’s path changed. How my crew and I managed to round up a few truckloads of material from West Texas and cart it here just in time. How I decided to help with the readiness efforts along the way. I expect at least a lick of positivity in response, but as Tara shovels, I notice she’s glancing now and again at the beach below.

“See, we don’t recommend using local materials in these situations,” I add. “The erosion’ll be bad enough as is.”

“Better to burden more than one ecosystem.”

“That’s what I’m saying. Speaking of, I’ve got quite the history with this place. A couple years back, after the last storm, this beach had pretty much eroded away, so my team helped restore it. Desert sand’s no good for beaches, of course—too fine—but I brought in the arm of our business that does dredging services, and they scooped up sand from beneath the Gulf to fashion a new beach out of. Pretty neat, huh?”

“Neat indeed.” She gives me a once-over. “I imagine that was fairly complex to pull together. You must be quite the smooth talker.”

“I suppose,” I answer, my words tentative. In any other situation, I’d think she was flirting, but there’s no playfulness to her, the face before me as stony and unreadable as one of those carved ancient glyphs. “I mean, there were limited funds and a competing project someone else was trying to push through. But when you’ve been at this for years, building relationships on the coastal protection authority and town council, you learn how to grease wheels and dance around the typical proposal process. So, in the end, we got the contract, and the town got its beach back. Win-win.”

It’s here I finally get a reaction from her besides the typical deadpan, a single-syllable cackle escaping her lips. Stunned to silence, I question her with a look, and she says, “No such thing as a win-win. Someone’s always losing out.”

I consider contesting the point but don’t feel like picking an argument so soon. “Fair enough,” I say instead. “I mean, that’s life, isn’t it? For better or worse, I’ve got a long history of disappointing competitors and those Greenpeace types.” We’re silent a few beats, and then something clicks. “Is that you? One of those bleeding-heart conservationists? If you were competition, I’d sure as Hell remember.”

“Sure, a conservationist.” She stabs the shovel deep into our sand. “Isn’t that what we’re doing today? Conserving?”

“I knew it,” I reply. “There’s always one of you lurking about, trying to gum things up before my projects even get started. All for the sake of the birds and turtles. But come on, let’s take the example of this island’s beach restoration: what were we supposed to do? Let the shoreline disappear? Towns like this live and breathe tourism, and money buys answers. Once you’ve got the local economy up and running, you’ll have tax revenues enough for your whole eco-friendly wish list. But we had to fix the beach first.”

“So you offered them a stop-gap solution.”

“Exactly. You get it. That’s what I’m always telling my clients: I’m a solutions guy. Got a gap in need of stopping? I’m your man.”

She says nothing further, the slightest smile creeping onto her lips, and this time I let the conversation ebb. A couple seconds later, though, she stops working, forehead creased with thought. I watch her study the waves, sandbag still cradled between my hands, and say, “What’s the matter? You want to lecture me about the birds and turtles?”

“No.” She resumes shoveling. “I’m just wondering how much of this beach will be gone again once Zeta’s had her say.”

I have no answer, reluctant to admit I hadn’t yet connected those dots. At least, not consciously. But the more I churn through her words, the closer they’ll ring to that feeling of indebtedness that drove me onto this bluff today. And thirty-six hours later, I’ll obsess anew over that connection while watching coverage of the storm from my hotel room a couple hundred miles inland. By then, news networks will have just received word of Rose Isle’s destruction. Reports will be fuzzy at that point, cobbled together from whatever details will have trickled out from beneath the oppressive blanket of a raging cyclone, so the channel I’ll be tuned into will illustrate the devastation using a hastily prepared, computer-generated image.

The animation will show the island from above, as a sliver of brown—only 3,000 feet at its thickest—amid a menacing field of blue, with the burrito levee appearing as a thin red line running along its seaward side. As the reporter yammers on about a breach, a gap will appear in the line, near its middle. He’ll note that once the levee’s synthetic exterior is compromised, the sand inside does nothing to stop the storm. He’ll compare the emptying levee to a packet of sugar poured into swirling water. And then, we’ll all watch the gap grow wider and the brown give way to the blue, begging me to imagine the island’s silty soil eroding into the furious Gulf, wave by wave.

I’ve never seen a town come together as it does on the brink of disaster. The entire island buzzes with frantic energy: trucks shuttle-running the length of it to top off supplies, volunteers carrying sandbags every which way. I’m admittedly worried by the sheer number of people who haven’t yet evacuated but remind myself that hurricanes are a part of life here. Some of the older residents have probably ridden out several, through choice or necessity. They’ll be okay, I tell myself. They’ll all be okay.

Tara and I get into a decent rhythm, too, filling bags at a healthy clip once we’ve worked past our initial friction. Along the way, I manage to coax some halting conversation from her, and before I know it, she’s even volunteering information unprompted: about her life in New Orleans, about the city planning job she started a year back, about how she lives with “roommates” (and, therefore, not a boyfriend). And sure, she’s still hard-to-please as ever, but I don’t mind. Compared to all the fake personalities I deal with in sales, her frankness strikes me as refreshing.

After an hour, we’ve built up a decent reserve of ready-to-deploy sandbags, and I start hauling them to the beach. It’s there I come to understand what the coordinator meant by “pack them in.” At the base of the bluff lies a tightly set row of 3,000-pound bags, from a contract that isn’t ours, put there by the National Guard and its heavy machinery. Wedged between them and the bluff’s steep, seven-foot incline are piles of sixty-pounders, like mine and Tara’s, but this backup layer’s a complete mess, each bag evidently flung there. People have even taken to throwing large rocks into the gap, apparently unaware that their sharp edges can tear into sandbags and render them useless.

I tell Tara about the stones on one of my trips back up the bluff. “There aren’t enough to make a huge difference. I just wish it was something people knew not to do.”

But she only shrugs, looking out to the ever-roughening seas. “Doubt it’ll matter. Hurricane-force waves can exert what, over 4,000 pounds per square foot, pressure-wise? And these bags are—” she kicks a full one “—fifty pounds each?”

I blink at her, a silent correction the first thing that comes to mind: Sixty, actually. But then the meaning of her words sinks into my brain folds, and I feel this sickening warmth rising inside me, like shame and nausea had a baby. “But I’m packing them in,” I stammer. “Like the coordinator said. Behind the wall of 3,000-pounders.”

“Yeah, and once the waves get past that, these little things will be as good as useless.” Her gaze flits to our supplies, and her face furrows just like before, back when she first looked them over.

“You knew as soon as we started working, didn’t you?” I ask. “The second you saw what I brought, you thought all this was pointless.”

I take her silence as confirmation.

“What about them?” I add, pointing to the townsfolk scurrying to and from the beach. “Do they know? When the mayor called, I told him what I was bringing. Said I sure as Hell couldn’t get an excavator for more of those 3,000-pounders. You think he—”

“I’m sure he knows. He’s probably desperate and working with the best he’s got. Same with the volunteer coordinators. As for the rest of the locals, well—” she pauses to watch them work “—why bother with security theater if the audience doesn’t believe?”

I turn to the town as well. At the next sandbagging station over, two middle-aged women swap jokes as they shovel. “Look,” I tell Tara, “I sold all this stuff at cost. Paid for the shipping out of pocket, too. So, it’s not like I’m profiting off—”

“I never said I blame you. Not for today. Not for these.” She lifts an empty bag with her shovel and drops it. Midway through its descent, a gust grabs it, opens it like a sail, and sends it cartwheeling into town. We watch it go in a private vigil that ends when it disappears beneath a stilted home. And I worry our partnership’s over then, that there’s nothing to do but pack up, but when I turn back, Tara’s nosing her shovel into our sandpile. “Well,” she says, “here’s to the illusion of control.”

So I, too, resume my work. And though I no longer have the same spring in my step, in time I find a whisper of hope still inside me, claiming she’s nothing but a doomsayer. As today bleeds into tomorrow, that voice will stay with me. Even as I watch Zeta’s news coverage, rife with those cheaply rendered graphics, I’ll cling to the possibility that the early reports are overblown. But in the days following the storm, videos of it captured by survivors will surface online, and my last strands of optimism will snap. Each clip will be dark, shaky, and horrific, illustrating the carnage in a way death tolls and property damage estimates never can. From one, I’ll even learn what it looks like when soil slips out from beneath a home. At the beginning of the video, the house’s stilts will have already started their slide. The whole structure will remind me of an alien creature, maybe some long-lost relative of the giraffe, learning to walk as it meanders gulfward. There will be a certain grace to it, even, and for a moment you’ll think everything will be all right: it’ll find its sea legs and root down somewhere new. But then the stilts will hit something solid beneath the storm surge and break row by row, sending the whole structure tumbling into the waves. From there, its remains will keep skating, keep sliding, as the current pulls it to sea. And all throughout, you’ll hear someone screaming over the sound of wind and water, “My God, that’s the Landreaus’! They’re still in there! They’re still in there!”

But this will be before I’ve memorized the exact count of Zeta’s victims: twenty-seven on that island alone. Their names and faces will not yet be seared into my brain—Ally Landreau, 7 years old with a gap-toothed grin; Ellison Chambers, 72, chess FIDE master; Karleigh King, 33, bank manager, pregnant with twins. No, this video will be posted only days after my trip to the island, and at that moment, though my grief will be guilt-tipped, I’ll still be shielding myself with a warm cloak of good intentions.

After our heart-to-heart, conversation comes easier to Tara and me. It’s not all smooth sailing, of course; her answers are cryptic whenever I ask about her work on the island or how a city planner knows so much about hurricane waves. I don’t force the issue, though, and she, in turn, uses a lighter tone when she disagrees with me, so the push and pull to our relationship feels healthier, necessary even.

We keep working for three hours more, and then, once the thicker bands of clouds have reached us and waves have almost swallowed the beaches, coordinators in pickup trucks swing by to relay the final evacuation order. By this point, I’ve become the embodiment of my profession: sand in my socks and shoes, sand coating every inch of my clothes, sand gritted between my teeth. Tara’s in the same position, though, and not making a show of it, just picking the gloves off her fingers as she gazes to the horizon. So, I stand shoulder to shoulder with her and do the same.

“You know,” I say, “I was thinking about everything you said, what little we could do today, and it reminds me of a joke we tell on my crew. We always say we should offer our clients unlimited time. Then, all we’d have to do is take one of those old-fashioned hourglasses and jerry-rig a contraption that automatically takes sand from the bottom and puts it back up at the top. Boom, unlimited time.” I sigh. “If only we had something like that now.”

“And then, let me guess,” she replies, “your solution would be more sandbags?”

“Why not? Big ones, this time. Enough to cover the whole island.”

This draws a chuckle. “You’re a model salesman, Randy. A sandbagger through and through.”

At this, she makes like she’s about to go, grabbing the day pack she left a few paces away. And though I’m not sure what she meant by that comment, or where things stand between us, I choose then to forge ahead with an idea I’ve been considering all day: the only way I’ve thought of to continue unspooling this absolute riddle of a person.

“So, hey,” I say.

She turns to me, a twist of confusion on her face. “You need something?”

“Look, I know we didn’t get off to the best start. And I certainly don’t get the impression you’d ever need a few yards of sand or related accessories. All the same, I was wondering if you might consider giving me your number. I’m by New Orleans a lot and can be quite the gentleman in more everyday circumstances.”

She doesn’t speak for a few seconds. She seems to be smiling, which I interpret as positive. But when I look into her eyes, they remind me of burning coals, and if there are patterns to read in their smoldering, I don’t consider myself oracle enough to try.

“You already have it,” she says, patting me on the shoulder as she walks past. “Nice working with you this time.”

I have no response, confused as I am, but I’ll do a lot of thinking about that line in the coming weeks. That night in my hotel room, I’ll check every pocket of my sand-covered clothes for some stray note she might’ve slipped in there. The whole time, I’ll be thinking about what a fantastic story it’ll be when I find her number among all that sand, the kind worthy of a Hollywood romcom.

But there won’t be anything there. I won’t figure out what she means until weeks later, when restoration work has already started on the half-sunken island. One morning, I’ll be sitting in my Dallas apartment, cleaning up my inbox before work. There’ll be an email from my manager sitting there, and I’ll discover—to my annoyance—that it’s about Rose Isle, about Zeta. His first on the subject because, to him, my only connection to this place boils down to a few figures on a quarterly spreadsheet. And sure enough, the email will say, “really sad to see,” and “makes you stop and think,” but also, “might be good to reach out, when the time feels right, and see if our services might be of value.”

But the article he’ll link to will pique my interest, and as I read it, I’ll remember my boss’s habit of skimming past important facts. Because below its report on Zeta’s havoc, the article will detail a “series of missteps” committed by the state Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority in the lead-up to the storm. Its author will allege that an internal memo from within the Authority, written three years ago, acknowledged that the island’s levee wasn’t strong enough to withstand anything harsher than a Category 2 storm. The article will describe an ambitious project the Authority considered as a result, to revamp the island’s defenses by reinforcing the burrito levee and installing breakwaters offshore. It’ll note that the plan gained traction early on but was ultimately shelved in favor of what the author will call “vanity projects and patchwork repairs.”

As I read on, one other aspect of the column will catch my eye: a last name I’ll be positive I’ll have seen before. Overland. She’ll be the article’s main source, someone who worked closely on the levee revamp project. Someone who resigned in protest when her brainchild was scrapped. And when I scroll back up to find her full name, there it is: Tara Overland.

By this point, with my mind connecting dots it would rather leave disparate, I’ll search my inbox for her and unearth an email from two and a half years ago, one confirming all the dark possibilities sprouting in my brain. In some ways, its tone will be unfamiliar, belonging to a less jaded woman than the Tara I met, but the voice will be unmistakably hers:

 

Hi Randy,

You don’t know me, and I feel like a fool writing this, but my superiors seem to value your opinion quite highly. So, here we are.

I know you’re trying to build momentum around a beach restoration project on Rose Isle, and I’m sorry to say we’re on opposite sides there. There’s some important, potentially life-saving work that needs doing on that island concerning its hurricane defenses, which likely won’t go through if your beach deal does.

I understand you’re a businessman, with your own priorities, but I imagine we can reach a win-win arrangement here. So, please give me a call. I’d appreciate the chance to work together.

Best,

Tara Overland

Project Manager, Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority

O: (504) 555-9230 C: (504) 555-3422

 

For the first few reads, I won’t believe it’s real. I mean, sure, it’ll look familiar, but the implication behind her tactfully chosen words—that she would’ve brought me in as a supplier if I’d endorsed her project—will be so clear I’ll have difficulty accepting that I could’ve just ignored her plea. The evidence in front of me will leave no other possibility, yet that logical conclusion will be so repulsive, so contrary to everything I’ve thought myself to be, that I’ll reread her message seven, eight times in search of some complication or catch within it to explain away my actions. But no. I’ll find no such salvation. Instead, the more I stare at the email, the more I’ll realize just how easy it would’ve been to see it appear in my inbox, skim it over, and pay it no mind. How logical it would’ve been, then, to ignore her number whenever she called to follow up. How inevitable that this entire episode would slip from my memory in time.

I’ll consider calling her then. To apologize. I’ll think about it a good long while, in fact, dialing half her number several times. Eventually, though, I’ll realize I’d be doing so for my sake, not hers. So, instead, I’ll head to my apartment’s second-story balcony. It’ll be raining that day—another of those isolated thunderstorms we’ve been getting more of—and I’ll stand out there for hours, missing work entirely, searching for a rainbow that’ll never appear.

But right now, I’m on the bluff above the levee, stretching out my final moments on this doomed island to watch the Gulf dance. Behind me, some locals congratulate each other on a job well done, and my boys are yelling for me to get in the truck, but for all intents and purposes I’m alone. I find myself thinking about my hourglass joke, and I know it’s stupid, but I wish more than ever I had something like that. Because then, I could keep sandbagging as long as I need. I could fix just enough of our mistakes to help the island’s defenses hold. And maybe, if I do it all correctly, the storm would keep spinning beyond the horizon, a monstrous force forever held at bay.