Wind Bitches Mary Kuryla (bio) "I got into search and rescue," the girl said, "on account of being reared up by bitches." The students stared as if this were the first they had seen of this 7th grader enrolled in their Immokalee High biology class—the bowl haircut and Wranglers cut at the knees rendered the girl too low in sex appeal. But one boy was alert to the light behind her green eyes. "Your parents know you call them bitches?" he asked the girl. "Chris is referring to dogs, not parents, Leonard," Sheriff Holata said as he wiped off eyeglasses gone fogged. "Her dogs are certified with the state of Florida." "The owner's certified, too," Leonard said loud. The students laughed, and the girl slammed her textbook down the throat of her backpack and hooked the strap onto her shoulder's knob. Her flip flops slapped up the aisle between desks, but Sheriff Holata grabbed the girl's arm before she cleared the door. "Chris," he said, "all SAR units meet at the Sanibel causeway at 1600 hours. We've put out calls to your dad about working the storm. Didn't catch him." He set the requisition in her hand. "Give him this when he picks you up." Chris stared almost dumbly at the requisition then lifted her head to shout over the rattling window frames, "The storm is the crazy one. The storm eats up heat from the ocean and goes crazy and crazier." "Now, it's not so bad," Holata said, like this girl might jinx them all. "C'mon now." _______ The wind had holed up in the lower forests, in the swamps. It roosted in the blackgum and bald cypress, waiting on warm waters to cycle in from the sea. The wind picked up the sea. It breached the seawall to drench the boardwalk and command a queen palms to its knees. Raging, the wind stormed the streets, casting about for someone to give it to and give it good. A commuter bus rolled past, and the wind pummeled. It shrieked across the windows of Immokalee High. The girl stepped off school grounds, and the wind gust-punched her to the sidewalk. She gasped and rolled back on her heels to gape at blood dotting the threads of her cutoffs. Her hair swiveled as she lifted her face and called to the wind, "Bring it on." _______ Black burnt eyes watched down at the girl turning the lock on the back door of her home. Womanly claws fastened onto the warped tar shingles of the roof, white satin feathers ruffling against the birch bark neck. Probably flew east from Corkscrew Swamp, but still. Wood storks were shy, stuck to their colony, not ones to rise up on slack winds that wound around a storm. Separation was suicidal. The storm was going to be bad. For luck, the girl took one of the wood stork's down feathers that had hitched on a shingle. [End Page 157] On the other side of the door, the dogs howled to get a move on. Her dad kept retrievers, which were naturals for search and rescue. Search and Rescue was what her dad did, and she did, too. That others may live was the motto of SAR—theirs, too. Okey nosed the girl's ankles as she jogged up the hallway. Pete sniffed the blood at her knee. She would have shut out the dogs, but her bedroom door hung by only a hinge, so the dogs squeezed in after her. Across the floor, unwashed clothes frenzied and balled. Her mom had wanted everything picked up and put away, which made it hard to find anything, but not now. Now it was easy. She snagged a shirt that didn't stink and a rain jacket that might still fit. Bras she could soak in a sink if the sheriff's department supplied a motel. Sometimes it did. Pete nosed from a drawer an old greeting card with a felt paper cake and candles on the front. She tore the card from the dog's soft mouth. Her mom had made the card, scissoring the felt yellow...