I wandered through every room in her house, rooting through every wastepaper basket I could find. But it was the one in her living room that was the saddest. In it were several handwritten recipes on strips of paper, for Easy Flounder, Crab Cakes and Lila’s Clam Stew. She had made mistakes, scratched through words on each one, which was why, I supposed, she had pitched them. In the bottom of the can was a small cardboard tube for a manufacturer’s sample she had gotten in the mail.

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.

Nine

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 inflated orange plastic suits and hoods, and battery-operated air packs. They walked along the road, carrying a litter shrouded in a plastic bubble.