Elizabeth Hand - Generation Loss

“Lucien Ryel?” I looked up in surprise. “Yeah, sure.”

“He lives out there—”

Toby pointed to a low gray shape on the horizon. “Tolba Island. I’ve done some work for him over the last couple of years. He doesn’t winter over. He’s got a power boat, a Boston Whaler.”

“Lucien Ryel,” I said. “No shit.”

In the early 1970s, Ryel had been the force behind the English prog rock band Imaguncula. He was famous for performing in drag, something between that guy in A Clockwork Orange and a Balinese temple dancer. He left Imaguncula in 1980 and went on to produce house music in Manchester before becoming an expat in post-Wall Berlin, where, as far as I knew, he had disappeared.

“What the hell’s he doing up here?”

Toby shrugged. “He’s only here a few weeks every summer. He’s another one came to the commune for a while, before my time. He even wrote a song about Oakwind. Liked it here enough that he bought an island too. I was never into his music. I had one of his albums when I was in college, but I never played it.”

The boat hit some choppy waves, and I clutched at my seat. “You okay?” asked Toby. “You could go below if you feel bad. You look a little green.”

“I told you, hangover.” I waited until the sick feeling passed, then said, “What is it with people buying islands?”

“They used to be cheap—you could buy an island for, I dunno, fifty thousand dollars. Maybe less than that. Not anymore. Lucien’s place, Tolba—back in the nineteenth century they quarried granite there. Cut columns and blocks for some big cathedral. When that was built, they cut it for houses. You’ve heard of a company town? This was a company island. One day someone showed up and told everyone they were shutting down the quarry. So everyone had to leave the island.”

“You’re kidding.”

He turned, adjusted the tiller, and blinked into the sun. Ahead of us the harbor of Paswegas opened up. Neon orange and red and green floats bobbed in the water. A small bell buoy clanked as we passed it.

“There were quarries on a lot of the islands here,” said Toby. “Vinalhaven, that’s where they got the stone for the Brooklyn Bridge. In the 1890s they were paving city streets, New York, Boston. They didn’t have asphalt back then, so they used stone. On Lucien’s island, you can see all these great big blocks of granite they left and quarry holes everywhere. He bought that place cheap and hired me to do his heating system. A real big modern-looking place—folks call it the Stealth Bomber. But he’s easy to work for. And he’s got deep pockets, and he only comes at the end of the summer so I see him maybe once a year. He lives in Europe the rest of the time.”

“Doesn’t this seem like a weird place for someone like that?”

“What’s weird about it? You’re here.”

I gave up. After a few more minutes we entered the harbor, passing a solitary lobster boat moored alongside a red float.

“Everett’s boat,” Toby said.

He brought the Northern Sky to a mooring and dropped anchor. I retrieved my stuff from the cabin.

“Weather’s changing,” Toby said when I got back on deck. He untied the dinghy and motioned for me to climb into it. “See those clouds? That’s a front coming in. You’re not planning on leaving today, are you?”

“I don’t actually have a fucking clue what I’m doing.”

“That’s the spirit,” said Toby.

He rowed toward the pier. The harbor was even smaller and grungier than Burnt Harbor’s. Busier, too. Paswegas may only have had thirty year-round residents, but half of them seemed to be hanging around the dock. Two derelict pickups were parked in front of a boarded-up building with a sign that read live bait coffee. One truck had cardboard covering half its windshield; another had no windshield at all.

“Beaters,” Toby explained as the dinghy drew up alongside the pier. Pilings black with creosote poked from the water. Budweiser cans floated past a ladder where a cormorant stood with wings outstretched, its eyes dull as uncut garnets. “No ferry service here, no mailboat anymore cause there’s no post office. Everyone shares those trucks. You keep your good vehicles in Burnt Harbor.”

“What about groceries?”

“You got the Island General Store. Or you bring stuff back from Burnt Harbor.” He lifted his chin toward the men in the harbor. “That’s why they’re looking at us.”

He tied off the dinghy, and we walked down the pier. The men leaned on a rail, observing us as they smoked and talked.

“There’s your friend Everett Moss.” Toby cocked his head at a burly man with a white beard, wearing stained coveralls and an orange watch cap.

“Toby,” the man called. Toby headed toward him, and I followed. “That the young lady I was supposed to bring over this morning?”

“This is her.” Toby halted and lit a cigarette. “Cass Neary.”

“Hello there.” Everett looked at me and nodded. He had bright blue eyes in a sunburnt face, an easy smile. I waited for him to apologize for not waiting for me.

Instead he turned back to Toby. I glanced at the other men. They quickly looked away, stubbed out their cigarettes then wandered in the direction of the closed bait shop. Everett glanced across the dark waters of the reach to the mainland.

“You haven’t seen Mackenzie Libby?” he said to Toby. “Merrill called me this morning. She didn’t come in last night. My granddaughter Leela told me they’d been emailing earlier, Kenzie said something ‘bout going into town.”

Toby frowned. “Mackenzie?”

“Merrill’s daughter.”

“Oh.” Toby tugged at his braid. “She run off?”

I snorted. “I would, if that was my father.”

The two men looked at me, Toby amused, Everett Moss less so.

“Cass Neary,” he said, as though he’d just figured out who I was. “You stayed there last night, didn’t you. She told my daughter she’d been talking to you.”

I had a sudden flash of a white face in the night, black branches. I shifted my camera bag from one shoulder to the other and looked at the sky. A wheel of gray cloud had escaped from the dark ridge that was blowing in. As I stared, the cloud began to turn, like a clock’s mainspring unwinding. I heard a low buzzing like a trapped fly and dredged up the image of the girl in the Lighthouse, the way she peered shyly into my room, as though I had something special hidden among the shabby furniture and plastic mattress cover.

There’d been no reek of desperation about her, no fear, just a kid’s longing for something she couldn’t put a name to yet. She was bored; she dreamed of waking up somewhere else. Her father might have been an asshole, but he didn’t beat her or abuse her.

That’s why she hadn’t interested me. No damage.

“Merrill’s wicked pissed off,” said Everett.

“Yeah. Now he’s got to clean the motel rooms,” Toby said. They both laughed.

“Well, he’s all worked up, no doubt ‘bout that.” The harbormaster slung his hands into his pockets. “John Stone told me Merrill called him this morning too, got him out of bed. John told him she aint’t back by sunset, then he should call. Or maybe little miss went on down to Florida, see her ma. Anyway, you see her, tell her to get herself home.”

He began walking down to the water, stopped and looked back at me.

“You too,” he said. His gaze wasn’t threatening. It was worried. “You see her, call me or John Stone, he’s the sheriff. Don’t like these kids running off.”

He lifted a hand to Toby and headed off.

“Come on,” said Toby. “We better get you up to Aphrodite’s house.”

We walked through the village. The bait shop, a mobile home with a bunch of large, scary-looking dolls standing in the window. The Island General Store, a clapboard building covered in flaking rust-colored paint, with a low wooden stoop and a gas pump with a trash bag tied over it. A bunch of flyers flapped from the store’s walls and screen door.