Elizabeth Hand - Generation Loss

He tried to stand then sank back, staring at me with glazed eyes. “You.”

“It’s okay, Toby.” I poured myself some more Jack Daniel’s. “I can wait.”

He closed his eyes. I waited.

It didn’t take that long. When I thought he was out, I crouched at his side.

“Hey, Toby,” I whispered then raised my voice. “Toby, man, wake up.”

I shook him gently. He snorted, and I lowered him onto the chaise.

Down for the count. I folded my anorak and slid it under his head. His eyes fluttered open. He gazed at me blankly then began to snore.

I looked outside. It was almost three o’clock. The sun would set in an hour. I had ninety minutes before nightfall, tops. I went into the kitchen and yanked open drawers and cabinets until I found a flashlight. I pocketed it, got some water and swallowed one more Adderall. I only had two left.

My instinct was to bring the Konica. But I didn’t want to risk losing it. If I made it back safely I could retrieve it then. If not…

I stood and zipped my leather jacket. I pulled on the orange watch cap, grabbed the boat hook, and headed for the door. As I did, I caught a glimpse of myself in a dark window: a gaunt Valkyrie holding a spear taller than I was, teeth bared in a drunken grimace and eyes bloodshot from some redneck teenager’s ADD medication.

“Hey ho, let’s go,” I said, and went.

Christine once showed me a quote from Nietzsche: “Terrible experiences give one cause to speculate whether the one who experiences them may not be something terrible.”

“That’s you.” She shoved the book at me. “What happened to you in the Bowery that night—”

“Shut up,” I said.

“I’m right! You know I’m right! You can’t let go of it, you can’t even think of letting go of it or grieving or doing any goddam thing that might help! So you better just hope nothing else bad ever happens to you. Because you know what, Cass?”

She stabbed a finger at my portfolio on the table: Hard To Be Human Again. “You’ve got so much rage in you, you’re hardly even human now.”

I walked until I found the road Toby had spoken of, an earthen track covered with chunks of stone. Far below, the wind roared off the gray Atlantic; to either side, cat spruce thrashed and moaned like something alive.

The speed made me even colder. My fingers on the boat hook were almost numb. I slid on wet rocks and struggled to keep my balance as the sky darkened. It was difficult to believe there had ever been sunlight at all. My lower abdomen burned as though I’d been branded. I slipped my hand beneath my T-shirt and felt the familiar ridge of scarred skin.

I thought of Kenzie Libby. Studs in her chin and ear, a necklace of weathered glass and aluminum. That childish face and the bad dye job on her cropped hair.

People make themselves spiky for a reason. Maybe being stuck in Burnout Harbor was enough, watching the trickle of rich strangers grow to a torrent and wash away your world, with no hope of anything for yourself but a job at Wal-Mart or—maybe, if you were lucky—someone from away who’d take you with them when they left, spikes and all.

But those spikes don’t do anything to protect you. I remembered what Toby had said about the fishers—how they’d flip a porcupine over then rip its belly out.

They think nothing can kill them .

Fishers never came to the islands, but I’d seen one.

Denny never leaves the island.

I kept climbing. It felt strange to walk along a road without houses or telephone poles or utility lines. Ragged thickets covered the thin soil, along with dead ferns, scattered birch and maples. Bushes thrust from cracks in moss-covered granite. A crow flapped up from a tree, screaming, and disappeared into the shadows.

But after a while I began to see signs of former human habitation in the underbrush. Crumbled stone foundations; fallen chimneys; cellar holes filled with rubble. A few minutes later I reached the first quarry.

It was set off from the old road, a miniature lake cut into the hillside. The water looked solid and cold as obsidian. Wiry, leafless trees clustered at the water’s edge.

I used the boat hook to keep from sliding on loose scree, grabbed one of the trees and bent it toward me. It had smooth, silvery brown bark covered with tiny bumps that looked like insects. Dozens of blood red shoots sprouted from its trunk, like a hydra. It looked malevolent, and more alive than anything in that frigid landscape.

I clambered back up the slope and kept walking. I passed two more small quarries, and more cellar holes, but nothing that even a hermit could have lived in.

Eventually the road curved. I found myself looking down across crowns of cat spruce to an expanse of rose-colored rock that gave way to a muddy beach. Blocks of granite were scattered across it, like giant dice. In the center of the beach stood a ramshackle wooden pier. Tied up at the end was a motorboat: Lucien Ryel’s Boston Whaler.

I saw no other signs of people. My forehead grew clammy with sweat. I swallowed a mouthful of Jack Daniel’s and kept walking. A few more minutes, and I reached the big quarry.

It was about the size of a baseball diamond. Sheer rock walls rose thirty or forty feet above the waterline. I didn’t want to think how deep it was. A crow swooped down, flew croaking above the black surface, and landed in a dead tree on the opposite shore. I stared at it and frowned.

There was something in the tree, a ragged mass like a squirrel’s nest, but with something snarled in it, something blue and white. A plastic bag, maybe, or a balloon. It was impossible to tell from where I stood. But if I wanted a better look, I’d have to walk all the way around the quarry then fight my way through the underbrush. I didn’t want to do that.

I continued on up the road. It was nearly full dark, but I was afraid to use my flashlight and draw attention to myself. Beyond the quarry, I could just make out the remains of several buildings, worksheds or barns. Still nothing that looked like where someone might live now. An icy mist blew up from the shore. The air grew hazy, the ruins insubstantial as paper cutouts. I couldn’t stop shivering. A few minutes later, I stood on the crest of the hill.

Around me the island dropped down to the sea. Fog rolled across the water and up the hillside. I could just make out the Boston Whaler. I turned to where the road began its descent.

Through the dusk, lights gleamed. A group of small buildings stood behind the quarry, tucked between spruce and more remnants of Tolba’s abandoned industry—broken statues and granite columns, piles of rubble that gleamed in the yellow glow from a small house with smoke coiling from its chimney.

The sight of those glowing windows made me sick. I clutched the boat hook, leaned over and spat up a thin string of bile, waited for the feeling to pass.

It didn’t. I swallowed another mouthful of Jack Daniel’s.

Fear and whiskey, I thought. Run, Cass, run . Light guttered from a broken streetlamp. So you’re really from New York, huh? That must be really, really nice .

I saw her stumbling through the cold dark toward Burnt Harbor, then down toward the beach, hands shoved in the pockets of her hoodie. Trying to get up the courage to go into the Good Tern and talk to a stranger from the city.

I would love to go to New York .

Yeah, well maybe I could fit you in the trunk on my way back .

Whose voice did she think she’d heard as she walked on the beach by the Good Tern?

My fingers tightened on the boat hook. I took a few steps toward the lights when I heard the crow again. I looked up.