Getting a flashlight out of my bag, I went outside and stood on the steps, waiting until Crockett got out of his truck.
‘There’s going to be a lot of commotion here soon,’ I said.
He stared at me as if I might be mad, and in lighted windows I could see the faces of people peering out. I went down the steps, to the fence at the edge of the yard, around to the front of it and began shining the flashlight inside the cubbyholes where Pruitt had sold her recipes. Crockett moved back.
‘I’m trying to see if I can get any idea how long she’s been sick,’ I said to him.
There were plenty of recipes in the slots, and only three quarters in the wooden money box.
‘When did the last ferry boat come here with tourists?’ I shone the light into another cubbyhole, finding maybe half a dozen recipes for Lila’s Easy Soft-Shell Crabs.
‘In a week ago. Never nothing since weeks,’ he said.
‘Do the neighbors buy her recipes?’ I asked.
He frowned as if this were an odd thing to ask. ‘They already got theirs.’
Now people had come out on their porches, slipping quietly into the dark shadows of their yards to watch this wild woman in surgical gown, hair cover and gloves shining a flashlight in their neighbor’s cubbyholes and talking to their chief.
‘There’s going to be a lot of commotion here soon,’ I repeated to him. ‘The Army’s sending in a medical team any minute, and we’re going to need you to make sure people stay calm and remain in their homes. What I want you to do right now is go get the Coast Guard, tell them they’re going to need to help you, okay?’
Davy Crockett drove off so fast, his tires spun.
9
THEY DESCENDED LOUDLY from the moonlit night at almost nine P.M. The Army Blackhawk thundered over the Methodist church, whipping trees in its terrible turbulence of flying blades as a powerful light probed for a place to land. I watched it settle like a bird in a yard next door as hundreds of awed Tangiermen spilled out onto the streets.
From the porch, I peered out the screen, watching the medical evacuation team climb out of the helicopter as children hid behind parents, silently staring. The five scientists from USAMRIID and CDC did not look of this planet in their irtflated orange plastic suits and hoods, and battery-operated air packs. They walked along the road, carrying a litter shrouded in a plastic bubble.
‘Thank God you’re here,’ I said to them when they got to me.
Their feet made a slipping plastic sound on the porch’s wooden floor, and they did not bother to introduce themselves as the only woman on the team handed me a folded orange suit.
‘It’s probably a little late,’ I said.
‘It can’t hurt.’ Her eyes met mine, and she didn’t look much older than Lucy. ‘Go ahead and put it on.’
It had the consistency of a shower liner, and I sat on the glider and pulled it over my shoes and clothes. The hood was transparent with a bib I tied securely around my chest. I turned on the pack at the back of my waist.
‘She’s upstairs,’ I said over the noise of air rushing in my ears.
I led the way and they carried up the litter. For a moment, they were silent when they saw what was on the bed.
A scientist said, ‘Jesus. I’ve never seen anything like that.’
Everyone started talking fast.
‘Wrap her up in the sheets.’
‘Pouched and sealed.’
‘Everything on the bed, linens, gotta go in the autoclave.’
‘Shit. What do we do? Burn the house?’
I went into the bathroom and collected towels off the floor while they lifted her shrouded body. She was slippery and uncooperative as they struggled to get her from the bed inside the portable isolator designed with the living in mind. They sealed plastic flaps, and the sight of a pouched body inside what looked like an oxygen tent was jolting, even to me. They lifted the litter by either end and we made our way back down the stairs and out onto the street.