Elizabeth Hand - Generation Loss

We’d reached the Island General Store. Gryffin held the door for me and we went inside.

Reggae music blasted from the kitchen. An enormous Newfoundland dog lay on the floor, sound asleep.

“Hey, Ben.” Gryffin reached down to rough the dog’s head. Its eyes remained shut, but its tail moved slightly. “Where’s Suze, huh? Where’s Suzy?”

I looked around. A woodstove with no chimney hookup was covered with coffee thermoses and Styrofoam cups. I could smell pizza baking, and stale beer. There were shelves of canned goods and boxes of pasta; in a smaller back room, cold cases of beer and milk. An ice-cream freezer. Behind the wooden counter, cartons of cigarettes; on a high shelf accessible by a stepladder, bottles of rum, whiskey, brandy, sake. An open doorway led into the kitchen.

“Sake?” I said.

“Summer people,” said Gryffin. “Suze’s got a pretty good wine list too.”

I eyed the comatose Newfoundland. “What’s with all the big dogs? I thought this was golden retriever country.”

“That’s Southern Maine. This is the Real Maine—Rotweilers and half-breed wolves. You can ask Suze. Hey, Suze!”

A petite woman walked out of the kitchen, wiping her hands on a dishcloth. She was obviously Paswegas Island’s groove supply. I pegged her to be about my age, bleached blond dreadlocks streaked pink and green, windburned cheeks, pale blue eyes, a front tooth with a tiny chip in it; gray cargo pants and a multicolored cardigan over a T-shirt that read they call it tourist season: why can’t we shoot them? She had the kind of milk-fed face that would have seemed open if it wasn’t for a deep wariness in her eyes, the web of broken capillaries around her upturned nose.

“Hey, Gryffin. What’s up?” She had a raw, husky voice, as though she spent a lot of time shouting. When she noticed me she did an exaggerated doubletake. “Whoa. Incoming stranger.”

“No shit, Sherlock.” I went over to a beer case and grabbed a 16-ounce Bud. Suze scowled. Then she started to laugh.

“Nice manners.” She turned to Gryffin. “She with you?”

“Kind of.”

“Figures.” She glanced at the counter. A set of keys rested beside a stack of paper plates. “Shit. Tyler left his keys again. He’s gonna be wicked pissed if he gets all the way over to town before he notices.”

Gryffin looked toward the harbor. “Want me to go yell at him?”

“Nah. He’ll figure it out. What you up to, Gryff? Seeing your ma for the weekend?”

“Maybe. A few days.”

“Gonna go see Ray?

“Yeah. How’s he doing?”

There was a blast of cold air as the door opened. Two guys entered, eighteen or nineteen, wearing Carhart coats and reeking of cigarette smoke. In the kitchen a phone rang. Suze went to answer it. Gryffin followed her. So did the big dog. The newcomers walked past me, heads down, and went to the beer case. One of them looked curiously at my camera.

“Hey, Suze, you got a pizza going yet?” he yelled.

Suze’s voice echoed from the kitchen. “Yeah, in a minute—”

The new customers went into the back room and studied the beer cooler as though it were a Warcraft cheat sheet. Otherwise the place was empty.

I picked up a bag of Fritos and bellied up to the counter. Keeping an eye on the back room, I palmed the forgotten keys, slid them into the pocket with the sea urchin, then set my beer and the bag of Fritos where the keys had been. Then I stepped over to the window and picked up a copy of the local paper.

It wasn’t that local—the Bangor Daily News —but at least it was that day’s news. With no mailboat, I figured Everett Moss must bring the papers over from Burnt Harbor. I scanned the headlines—national news mostly, none of it good, and some cautiously optimistic predictions about the state’s deer season. I flipped to the local section. A bean supper in Winthrop, an investigation into welfare scams, more bad news for the Atlantic salmon fishery.

And, at the bottom of the page, a brief item.

body washed up at seal cove

The body of an unidentified man was found washed up on a private beach just north of Seal Cove in Corea. The body was discovered just above the high-water mark by an appraiser working on a neighboring house. Cause of death will be determined following an investigation by the State Medical Examiner.

“Hey, Suze.” One of the customers ambled back to the counter. He plunked down a six-pack and a box of Little Debbie Swiss Cake Rolls. “I’ll take a couple slices of pepperoni or whatever you got going.”

I replaced the newspaper and wandered toward the register. A glass case under the counter held nothing but bottles of Allen’s Coffee Brandy—pints, liters, big plastic gallon jugs. The guy with the beers noticed me eyeing the case and shot me a grin.

I nodded at him, hoping this wouldn’t be misconstrued as part of a Maine courting ritual, then crossed to the other side of the room and pretended to look at a shelf of rental videotapes and DVDs. A darkened doorway opened onto a set of stairs. Beside it a curling bit of cardboard read paswegas historical society. I peered up the steps, but it was too dark to see anything.

A few other customers entered and made a beeline toward the back room. I waited to see if one of the newcomers was keyless Tyler. So far, no. After several minutes Gryffin reappeared.

“I ordered us both a turkey sandwich. That okay? She’s making them now.”

“Yeah, sure. Thanks.” I inclined my head toward the little crowd around the counter. “Lunchtime rush?”

“You got it.”

The door opened again. A young woman came in with two small children. The kids ran over to the ice-cream freezer and began rooting around inside it. The woman walked over to one of the young guys.

“Hey, Randy. You seen Mackenzie?”

Randy shook his head. “Kenzie Libby? No. What’s going on? I heard she was missing or something.”

“Her father hasn’t seen her. Someone said she was down to Burnt Harbor last night.”

“At the Good Tern?’

“I don’t know.” She looked over at the kids. They were both facedown in the ice-cream freezer, their feet dangling behind them. “Brandon! Zack! Get your butts outta there—”

The kids extricated themselves and ran to their mother. Suze came back out of the kitchen, carrying sandwiches and slices of pizza. The woman with the kids bought a pack of cigarettes and left. The remaining customers filed over to the register, paid for their food, and did the same. When they were gone, Gryffin placed a bottle of apple juice on the counter.

“You hear about that? Mackenzie Libby’s gone missing,” said Suze.

“I heard,” said Gryffin as he paid for the sandwiches. “I saw her last night, at the Lighthouse. She checked me in. She was there too,” he added, cocking a thumb in my direction. “Not with me, though.”

“You see her?” Suze said to me. “She’s usually in the office there after school gets out.”

“Yeah, I saw her. Gothy little Suicide Girl type?”

“Yup. That’s Kenzie.” Suze took note of my camera. “You from a newspaper?”

“No.” I looked at her T-shirt. “I’m a tourist. But I’m out of season.”

“Always open season on tourists.” Suze shook her head. “I just hope she didn’t get messed up with one of those kids running a meth lab over by Cutler.”

“You get a lot of that?” I asked.

“Yeah. It’s all over the state these days.”

“Any around here?”

“Here on the island? God, I hope not.”

“Hey, never hurts to ask,” I said.

Suze snorted. “Nice.” She bagged our sandwiches, a bottle of juice for Gryffin, and my beer. “Well, have fun. That may be work if you’re hanging out with Gryffin.”