around New Orleans had lost two thousand square miles of coastal wetlands. According to the experts who had briefed Jerusha, for every 2.7 miles of wetland, hurricane storm surge could be reduced by one foot. Therefore, to protect the city from future disasters, it was vital that the wetlands be restored.
That was backbreaking, hard work. Silt had to be hauled in to be dumped in the open water to make it shallow enough to allow the plants that had once flourished here to grow again. Jerusha’s part came when the silt had been dumped and the margins of the lake were ready to be replanted. There, her wild card gift could make short work of what would otherwise take months or years.
Yesterday, it had been bulwhip; today Jerusha was spreading cordgrass- Spartina spartinae, specifically, Gulf cordgrass, with its ability to grow rapidly and to thrive in water of varying salinity. Without Jerusha, teams of volunteers would have been brought in to plant mats of seedlings in the mud and silt, which in time would grow into dense, tough plants high enough to hide a person entirely.
Today was also Thanksgiving. There were no teams out here today. Jerusha was working alone. Everyone else had somewhere to go, somewhere to be: with family, with friends. She tried not to think about that, tried to forget the frozen Swanson turkey dinner waiting for her back at the empty apartment or the call to her parents she’d make while she was eating, listening to their voices and their good wishes and the laughter of their friends in the background, which would only make her feel more alone. Jerusha’s seed belt was full of cordgrass seed, and it needed to be planted. Today.
She stepped out into the knee-deep muck of newly dumped silt, her boots squelching loudly as the mud sucked at them. She plunged her hand into one of the pouches on her belt and tossed handfuls of the tiny seeds onto the ground in a wide arc in front of her. She closed her eyes momentarily: she could feel the seeds and the pulsing of nascent life within them. She drew on the wild card power within her, Gardener’s power, funneling it from her mind into the seeds. She could feel them responding: growing and bursting, tiny coils of green springing from them, roots digging into the soft mud, tender shoots reaching for the sun. She led the cordgrass, feeding the power slowly and carefully.
She was the cordgrass, taking in the nutrients of sun and water and earth and using it, her cells bursting and growing at an impossible rate, forming and re-forming, new shoots birthing every second. She could see the grass rising in front of her, writhing and twisting, a year’s growth taking place in a few moments. As the grass lifted higher, Jerusha laughed, a throaty sound that held a deep, strange satisfaction. There were a few people who might recognize that laugh-it was the same laugh she sometimes gave, involuntarily, in the midst of sex: a vocal, joyous call that came from her core.
Gardening as orgasm.
The cordgrass lifted, writhing and twisting-and atop a cluster of stalks a few feet away something floppy and brown was snagged, bending the grass under its weight.
She let the power fall from her. She felt her shoulders sag: using the ability the wild card had given her always tired her. Usually, after a day out here, she would go back to her apartment and just fall into bed to sleep twelve hours or more. That was most of her days: wake up early, come out here and spread seeds to restore the marshland until near sundown, then back to the city for a quick bite in a restaurant or in her apartment (but alone, always alone), then sleep. Rinse and repeat. Over and over.
Jerusha waded through the mud to the new cordgrass. She pulled the sopping wet piece of felt from the stalks. It took a moment for Jerusha to unfold it and see that it was a hat-a battered, moldy, and filthy fedora, the lining torn and mostly missing, the band gone entirely. A mussel shell clung stubbornly to the fabric; it reeked of the swamp.
She shook her head: Another fedora. We’ve sent Cameo at least a dozen hats we’ve found out here, hoping it was the one she lost. The only way to know for certain was to send this one to her also: a Thanksgiving present. She’d do that when she got back.
Jerusha sighed, glancing at the sun and the clouds. The storm was rolling in. It was time to head back unless she wanted to be caught in the weather, which would only make an already miserable Thanksgiving more miserable.
Holding the sodden hat by the brim, she made her way back to where she’d tied up her boat.
The Winslow Household
Boston, Massachusetts
“Son of a Bitch! I can’t believe he dropped that pass!”
Noel Matthews was jerked back to his surroundings by the shout from his father-in-law. He couldn’t believe he was sitting in front of an entertainment center that looked like it should be the command deck of an aircraft carrier while his American in-laws watched football and shouted at the big-screen television.
Of course it wasn’t really football. It was that turgidly slow American game where extremely large men dressed in padding and tight pants jumped on each other and patted each other’s asses. For a country that was so uptight about fags this seemed an odd sport to be the national pasttime.
Noel reached for his bourbon and soda, and groaned faintly as he shifted on the couch to reach the glass. It felt like a cannonball had replaced his gut, and he surreptitiously undid the button on his slacks. It was Thanksgiving-that peculiar American holiday that seemed to be a celebration of gluttony and taking advantage of the Indians.
But there had been no choice. He and Niobe were living in New York because of fertility treatments at the Jokertown Clinic. Her parents were close by in Massachusetts. And Niobe was determined to show off her famous and successful husband to the old money society that had shunned her when her wild card expressed and she became a joker. Noel had consented to be displayed like a prize Scottish salmon because they had treated Niobe so shabbily, and gloating was a perfectly acceptable response.
Murmuring about “needing the lavatory,” Noel made his escape from the company of men to go in search of his wife. In the kitchen he discovered hired help busily washing up the dishes and packaging the leftovers into plastic containers. Noel was rich now, but he hadn’t been raised rich. They had lived modestly on his mother’s salary as a Cambridge professor. In his house there was no hired help.
He paused in the hallway and listened. The soprano piping of women’s voices in the living room vied with the basso shouts and bellows from the den. As he walked down the long hall, past a rather impressive modern art collection, he buttoned his pants and suit coat.
The living room was done in shades of gold and green, and a fire in the large marble hearth made the room seem cozy and warm. Outside, the big pines in the front yard groaned in the wind. It would snow by morning. Thank God they had a way home from this circle of family hell even if they closed the airport.
Arranging his features into a pleasant smile, he approached the women seated on sofas surrounding a low table that held a silver tea and coffee set. The scent added to the feeling of conviviality, as did the staccato of conversation. He was pleased to see that Niobe was chattering with the best of them, and that her chic equaled or excelled the other women.
It was amazing what a year of contentment-and the tender care of hairdressers in New York, spas on the Dead Sea, and couture in Paris-had done for her hair, skin, and wardrobe. The only jarring note was the thick tail that wrapped around his darling’s feet. At least the laser treatments had removed the bristles.
Their eyes met, and Noel was pleased to see the triumph brimming in hers. He came around behind the sofa, leaned down, kissed her on the cheek, and made a single white rose appear. Niobe blushed, and he was pleased to see her cousin Phoebe look down and frown into her tea. The woman had spent the afternoon placing her fingertips on his forearm, leaning forward so her breasts would be displayed, and generally making a fool of herself.
“You’re not watching?” his mother-in-law said.
“Forgive me, but they’re fools. They’re watching large men grunting and falling down in the mud. I, however, am no fool. I would rather spend my time with the ladies.”
Their laughter fell like ice around him. Niobe wasn’t laughing. He knew her husky little chuckle. She was looking at him, wide-eyed and questioning. He gave her a reassuring smile.
He studied his mother-in-law’s profile, and briefly regretted he’d abandoned his previous profession. If ever a person deserved killing it was Rachel Winslow. When Niobe’s wild card had turned, she had tried to pass her off as a cousin’s child, and when Niobe had been driven to attempt suicide her parents had sent her away to a facility where she was treated like a cross between a lab rat and a sex toy.
His wife handed him a cup of tea. The china was so thin and fragile that it felt like a cricket’s wing in his
