Elizabeth Hand - Generation Loss

…all that bleak shit you like? Well, this is it , Phil had told me.

He was right.

There wasn’t much there. DownEast Marine Supplies, a lobster shack that was closed for the winter. A streetlamp cast a milky gleam onto a broken sidewalk. On the hillside above the harbor, lights glowed in scattered houses. There was a small crescent-shaped gravel beach and a long stone pier that thrust into the water, dinghies tied up alongside it. Farther out a few lobster boats and a solitary sailboat. It smelled like a working harbor: that is, bad. I looked for a place that might be the harbormaster’s office—a building, a sign—but found nothing.

There was no mistaking the Good Tern, though—a tumbledown structure a few yards from the pier, gray shingled, with a torn plastic banner that read budweiser welcomes hunters beneath a weathered painting of a seagull. There were pickups out front, along with a few Subarus, and I could glimpse more cars parked around back. The lid of a dumpster banged noisily in the wind.

I parked, stuck the copy of Deceptio Visus into my bag, and got out. The wind off the water was frigid. In the seconds it took me to run toward the building, I was chilled again.

The entrance was covered with photocopies advertising bean suppers, a used Snocat, snowplow services. Yet another flyer looking for Martin Graves, the same faded image of a young man in wool cap and Nike T-shirt. Wherever he’d run off to, I hoped he was warmer than I was. I went inside.

The open room had bare wood floors, wooden tables with miniature hurricane lanterns holding candles, walls covered with faded posters advertising Grange dances. A bar stretched along one wall, where six or seven people hunkered down over drinks. No TV. Blues on the sound system. Several couples sat at the tables, old hippie types or maybe they were fishermen; rawfaced women with long hair, bearded men. A man by himself reading a newspaper. One or two of them glanced at me then went back to their dinners.

I couldn’t blame them. The food smelled good. A middle-aged woman wearing a bright Peruvian sweater showed me to a table along the far wall.

“Cold out tonight!” she said, sounding shocked: Maine, cold? “What can I get you?”

I ordered a shot of Jack Daniel’s, a beer, and two rare hamburgers. I knocked back the shot and ordered another, sipped my beer. When my burgers arrived, I wolfed them down then ordered another beer. That ache you get after doing crank, the sense that your brain has been walled up behind broken rubble—that began to subside, replaced by the slow pulse of alcohol.

I nursed my second beer. I was in no hurry to head back to the Lighthouse, though the thought of hiding dirty Kleenex from Merrill Libby did have its appeal. A nearly full moon crept above the black harbor. It wasn’t yet seven o’clock. I angled my chair so I could catch the light from the hurricane lantern on my table and opened my copy of Deceptio Visus .

I turned the pages carefully—it was probably the most valuable thing I owned—until I reached Kamestos’s brief introduction.

I have called this collection of photographs Deceptio Visus , “deceiving sight.” But there is nothing here that is deceptive. Our gaze changes all that it falls upon. Within these photographs, I hope, the discerning eye may see the truth.

It had been a long time since I’d read those words. Once they had seemed to explain the world to me, the way I saw things; the sense I had that someone, or something, watched me. But I had lost that way of seeing or feeling, if indeed I’d ever possessed it; if it even existed.

Now it all just seemed like shit. I looked around for my waitress to order another beer.

Two of the people at the bar were watching me. One was a solid-looking man with a graying beard and close-cropped brown hair. A rat-tail braid dangled across his shoulder. As he cocked his head, light glanced off a jeweled stud in one earlobe. He wore a red flannel shirt, stained jeans, heavy workboots. He had a cigarette tucked behind one ear and a yellow pencil behind the other.

Beside him sat the man I’d run into at the Lighthouse. He stared at me, frowning slightly. Then he stood, picked up his wineglass, and walked over.

“Can I see that?” He pointed at my book.

Before I could say anything, before I could even remember the stolen photograph inside it, he picked up Deceptio Visus .

“No,” I said, but he had already opened it. He glanced at the copyright page then handed it back to me.

“My copy’s signed,” he said.

I grabbed the book and shoved it into my bag beneath the table. When I looked up, the other guy had joined his friend.

“Did he try to steal your book?” he said. “Because I can call the police if you want me to.” He plucked the cigarette from behind his ear, bent over my hurricane glass, and lit it. His hands were crosshatched with scars, and the tip of one thumb was missing. “Smoke?”

“No,” I said.

As if by magic, the waitress appeared and set down two more beers and a glass of red wine.

“You know you’re not supposed to do that in here, Toby,” she scolded.

The bearded man smiled sheepishly, pinched out his cigarette, and stuck it back behind his ear. His friend stood, silent, beside him. The sleeve of his suede jacket had ridden up so that his wrist was exposed, the scar grayish in the dim light.

I looked at him uneasily. I hated that he’d seen me before I saw him. The sense I’d had earlier, that overpowering taint of fear and damage—it wasn’t gone, but it was definitely subdued. I thought of how he’d jumped away and cracked his head on the door.

I’d surprised him. Now he’d surprised me. I picked up one of the beers and took a long pull.

“I’m Toby Barrett,” said the bearded man. He picked up the other beer and raised it to me. “I hear you’re looking to get to Paswegas.”

“How’d you know that?”

“Everett told me there was a lady looking to get over.”

“Oh yeah? Is he here? He fucking bailed on me when I called him this afternoon.”

“You mean he wouldn’t take you over in the dark?” Toby Barrett seemed amused. “You’re lucky he answered his phone.”

He pulled out the chair across from me and sat. “You’re from away, aren’t you? Not me.” Toby cocked a thumb at his friend. “Not him, either.”

I finished my beer. “What about Everett Moss?”

“No. Not Everett,” conceded Toby. “Everett was squoze from a rock.”

“You know her?” His friend pointed to my bag beneath the table. “Aphrodite Kamestos?”

“Yeah. Sure I do.”

He stared at me coolly then smiled, his teeth white and uneven. “You’re lying.”

I set one booted foot atop my bag. He finished his wine, set down the empty glass, and pushed the full one toward me.

“I’m outta here,” he said. “You can drink that, if you want. In case all that Jack Daniel’s isn’t doing the job for you.”

I said nothing. He turned and walked away. I watched him hand a few bills to the bartender then head for the door. He had an odd loping pace, his head thrust forward and staring downward, hands shoved into his pockets. At the door he turned and stared at me. He smiled again, his mouth moving silently, but I could read what he said.

Liar .

A blast of cold air rushed into the room as he disappeared outside.

“The fuck,” I said.

“I beg your pardon?” said Toby Barrett.

“Nothing.” I desperately wanted to leave, but I didn’t want to run into that guy again. Whoever the hell he was.

“Gryffin,” said Toby. “With a Y. Don’t mind him. He’s always like that.”

“Like what? Fucking rude? And who the hell names their kid Gryffin?”