Deprivation

by Roy Freirich

  On the bridge of Sea Mist 2, (U.S. Navy-ret) Shell Point-to-Carratuck Ferry Captain Doug Ostermeyer is bent over laughing and doesn’t know why. The joke Bob Estes has just told him seemed funny, but what was it again? Estes rocks forward and back in front of the radar and Concord displays, making a helpless little hooting noise, his shoulders quaking.

  Fog is condensing on the wheelhouse plexiglass, little rainbow droplets threatening to gather in windblown rivulets; it’s thick out here like weather service said, but since yesterday’s scrapped run from Carratuck, he’s been politely encouraged to deal with it, revised schedule, late start and all. No problem, really; with Loran and full radar up, Ostermeyer judges them good to go at fifteen knots, halfway there, which is funny too, because every day in every way he’s somewhere and back in an endless round trip, so even when he’s in one place or the other, he’s still halfway there, right?

  It’s all funny anyway; the all-nighter last night had him kind of in that window of urbane, cavalier irony he sometimes finds between vodka tonics two and three, before it all goes vague and hopeless. And then he spotted the VM from the Ferry Service calling him in, smack in the middle of three days off. For time and half, who wouldn’t sober up? He sways a little, reaching for the chart table, knocking over a pile of weather or shipping lane advisories or whatever, but what was the joke again? The bird from the pet store, or the night golfers, or the guy waiting online in heaven?

  The first thing he sees of the blue water Chris-Craft fishing rig ahead is a foot of flying bridge UHF antenna a fraction of a second before his bows lift screaming as they smash through and over the smaller boat, crushing the fiberglass hull, freeboard and cabin decks in a shredding, shuddering screech of torn metal and terrified human screams.

  The moment shatters into pieces too: ferry passengers are thrown off their feet; near the rail, those clinging see a severed limb float by, shockingly pale in a patch of black water. A spark from the impact ignites the smashed rig’s fuel, spreading flames along the roiling surface. Mouths open and close, gibbering sounds emerge, stunned eyes rolling wide at others as some run to the stern to see the props fouled with debris, sucking half a corpse below, one arm waving lazily as it rolls and disappears beneath the churn.

  In Suffolk County windbreakers, county police search team members Bill Helke and Scott Ledding scramble to their feet, one helping the other up.

  Nearby, Anne Datz, M.S.W. is on her knees in a dark summer weight pantsuit, clinging to a briefcase bearing the insignia: Suffolk County Child Services.

  In the stern, Bishop-Merigen Pharmaceutical tri-state area sales account executive Sue Menniger staggers in less than sensible shoes, stumbling over her roll-on suitcase full of bulk bottles of Ambesta.

  In the starboard bow, dabbing his bleeding forehead with a handkerchief, Harvard Psychology Department Co-Chair Professor Malcolm Hale climbs to his feet, gasping. He sees a few others step from the rail, faces white with shock, and a mother pulling her little girl to her feet and into a quick embrace, murmuring, “You’re okay. Are you okay? You’re okay.”

  He pulls his little cell from his pocket to try Sam Carlson again, and curses softly—still no service bars.

  10

  Entering Howard’s Odds ’n Ends, Chief pauses to wipe at his eyes and try to clear his vision; spots have begun to float in the periphery, afterimages seem slow to fade. Down at the far end of a narrow aisle, there’s a jumble of color as tourists crowd together against the pharmacy counter—the khaki of shorts, pale blue jeans, multi-colored tank tops and rock tees. The smell of old sweat and musty dirty hair, like a nursing home room with the windows and doors shut too long, makes him wince, and the crowd of Sleepless barely budges to grant him passage.

  “Coming through, okay? Excuse me . . .”

  A few finally step aside, muttering furiously down at their cell phones, cursing and stabbing vainly at buttons and touch screens. One looks up and around: “Bars? Anyone?”

  “Uh uh. You?”

  “—signal?”

  “Fuck’s sake. No one?”

  Chief wedges into the frontmost dozen to see Howard’s dead landline dangling from the counter, swinging by its cord. Wide eyes darting, Howard is backing away from the anxious crowd, and from one man in particular—gray-haired, in wire-rims and surgical mask.

  “Look,” the man pauses to read Howard’s nametag, “Howard. We’ve been over it. These folks need medication whether they have a scrip or not. I’m a doctor, I’ll take full responsibility for dispensing it.”

  Chief edges clumsily around a tall gawky kid into sight: “Hold up! What the hell is going on?” A little attitude can establish much in crowd control situations, or it used to; he puts a hand on his pistol’s stock, protruding from his holster. It’s an old, spare .38, enough to send a message, usually all that’s required.

  The gray-haired man turns to him, oddly calm, maybe even smiling behind his weird surgical mask. “Officer, good. I’m Doctor Fleisher, attending at Mercy Pediatric in New York, and I believe we’re all—”

  “Hold up, please. A doctor, good, okay. Let’s take this whole discussion to Doctor Carlson, where it belongs.” He lets his gaze sweep the room, taking in the crowd. “And the rest of you folks go on back to wherever you’re staying. Let’s clear this area now.”

  Fleisher lifts an eyebrow at the chief. “I’m not so sure this crowd will be easily persuaded, Officer. Nor that they should be. Things have gotten needlessly out of hand, and perhaps another professional’s point of view would be helpful.”

  Chief hesitates. The guy looks and sounds the part, and though it’s not great to wonder, maybe Carlson is in over his head.

  The surfer Chief has known for years steps up and lowers his voice, as if there’s a confidential chat to be had in front of these forty or so anxious tourists. “Chief, dude, come on, man. No one has to know you were even here. Don’t you want a pill? Half one? Catch a few hours’ worth?”

  Chief blinks, trying not to imagine it. Holding his shoulders up against so much gravity has been such an effort; his eyes are burning and his brain is filled with a noise like something frying. Why not imagine an hour of relief from it all? Or even just a single blessed moment of finally letting go and giving in?

  Fleisher steps closer to Howard: “Exactly what meds have you been dispensing?”

  Howard’s mouth opens and closes, soundlessly.

  A sallow-faced middle-aged woman steps up, dressed absurdly teen, her palm out, revealing three little white pills. “They’ve been giving us these.”

  Fleisher actually bows, ever so slightly, with exaggerated courtliness. “May I?”

  She thinks, or appears to, before she shrugs and he plucks a pill from her palm, lifting it close, squinting.

  He laughs. “You’ve been duped. These are aspirin.” He bites into it. “Over-the-counter, coated, small dose.”

  A cry goes up, barely intelligible, of incredulity. A weathered local shouts the general sentiment,“No fucking way!”

  A young mom in garish makeup brays, “I got a kid who needs to sleep! I’m not going anywhere until I get him something!”

  A frat guy tries to push by. “They’re just holding out. They have ’em, in back, somewhere, they—”

  Chief pushes him back, pulling his gun. A surge from behind pushes another Sleepless into him, and as he stumbles, his arm is jerked backward by recoil from the deafening sudden whip-like crack he only now realizes is a gunshot.

  Off to one side, a barbecue propane tank seems to levitate and expand, making a large complicated noise, a kind of shriek with a low concussion, as lawn chairs and chaises burst into flame and go flying, igniting a display, a tourist, and a medicine cabinet behind the counter.

  The crowd surges again in a din of shouts and screams of unrecognizable bits of words, as unrecognizable bits of objects appear at their panicked feet and on their
heads and shoulders like burning, flung confetti. The crowd breaks apart, fleeing in confusion, pushing one another aside.

  Singed, Howard swipes at the burning medication shelf, but his own sleeve goes up.

  Chief spots him and hops the counter to roll him on the floor, dousing the flames, while almost everything else seems to have ignited at once, fire climbing the walls in flickering, blinding sheets—roaring, it turns out flames do roar—and crackling with sharp reports like more gunshots.

  Chief yanks Howard to his feet, pushing him stumbling out the door between the plateglass windows and burning displays, after the last fleeing Sleepless. Behind them the plate glass breaks into sharp, shining slivers as a flash of blackish flame reaches through for them and they stagger forward to their knees.

  Chief looks back at the pharmacy. Flames pour upward from the windows into roiling blackness; the tinkling of glass continues from somewhere inside; another, smaller explosion pushes the burning air outward, hot on his face. Still on his knees, he looks the other way at the Sleepless backing away across the lane, manic, shrieking, laughing. They shout like drunks, stumbling, hooting:

  “Lyin’ motherfucker!”

  “I’m getting on that ferry, steal a boat if I gotta.”

  “I’m coming with!”

  “The marina, let’s do it!”

  Chief watches them as he climbs to his feet, and he understands everything in a prickly rush, all at once.

  He backs away, turning finally, running for his Jeep.

  11

  Rushing along the Lighthouse Lane boardwalk toward the beach, Cort tries to slow herself down, to stop and breathe, but things are spiraling the way disasters do on TV, when every moment is more likely to bring something scarier than the one before. If there’s one bomb, have they ruled out two? If there’s one shooter, is he acting alone?

  This is some completely new thing: just weirdness spreading, overwhelming people. Mom, and the little boy’s mother (though if Cort had shown up that may have been different), and others, too: the couple shouting at each other on their share house porch, the families sitting on the sand staring out to sea, the old guy laughing so loud at nothing. Nobody has slept, it seems like, and everybody’s going crazy.

  Two kids, maybe twelve years old, look like they’ve just awakened in their clothes, bed heads and wrinkled shorts and Ts, standing dumbly with upturned faces. Beside them, three ladies in bathing suit tops and shorts who could be wearing more turn in place, looking up behind Cort and then back at each other with their hands floating up.

  What is everybody gawking at? Cort turns and sees it: a smear of oily smoke staining the sky over Pines Beach, turning the daylight dim and orangey. Ashes float down like gray leaves onto the rooftops and porches, dunes and bramble. The smell of burning reaches her, some shocked low voices, some curses as a few continue to stab pointlessly at their cells.

  Her ears feel hot. A hissing sound like static closes in and then fades. The surf a half a block away? A few tourists take off toward town, jogging and shouting at each other. One almost trips, laughing. A family steps slowly out onto their porch, shielding their eyes, pointing, mouths slack.

  Tay, Mom, where are they?

  Mom would still be in the unit two miles up the beach, where else, so okay. But Tay, who knows? With some new girl from Five Towns or Westchester, in their same little boat shack, getting her high and making her laugh until she lets him feel her up, for starters, anyway.

  Two older guys march by, their heads twitching with anger or panic, clutching dead cell phones. Behind them, past the worn boardwalk steps that climb the last dune to the beach, Cort recognizes Sioux’s gray cedar and glass beachfront house where they all took X last year and ended up huddled in Sioux’s bedroom laughing and crying until finally they crashed, thank God, sprawled across each other with sweaty hair and blotchy skin and sour breath from the awful speed rush of it.

  Cort crosses the lane and heads up the wooden steps to the landing by the glass front door. She peers through the sidelight at the skylit foyer, past the broad stretch of light wood floor to the kitchen where she remembers everything possible was made of stainless steel, like a chem lab or a slaughterhouse.

  Halfway down the gallery, it looks like a painting has fallen from the wall, one of those big rectangles of solid color that cost more than Cort’s whole house. Cort drops her gaze to the door in front of her and sees now it’s actually open a few inches.

  “Hellloo?” she calls out, nudging it open a few more inches.

  A whisper, a giggle, like children hiding.

  Cort steps carefully inside, wary.

  Sioux Klein and Madison Schone are standing on the granite kitchen island counter in their underwear, toes painted alike with dumb glitter polish, giggling hysterically, dirty hair hanging in their faces. Their bodies look loose and blotchy beneath orangey tans. On the floor, a bottle of vodka lies spilt sideways, a puddle shining.

  Cort slows, finally seeing the single clothesline they have draped over an overhead beam, the ends tied into rough nooses around their necks.

  “Hey, what are—let me—” Cort rushes forward, but Madison stops giggling long enough to slur:

  “No, we’re doing this. Get away!”

  Sioux fights a blurt of giddy laughter, loses. She sways, her shoulders shaking, straightens, sways again, the rope tightening with a faint creak, the flesh on the side of her neck bulging around it, reddening.

  “Owwww,” Madison whines, clawing at the rope around her neck, the slack gone as Sioux staggers. “Wait . . .”

  Cort’s already clambering up the counter, grabbing Sioux by the waist: “Wait, stop. Let me, okay? And then, you know what? We just leave.”

  Sioux tries to pull away, tightening the rope around Madison’s neck again. “There’s no ferry!” Her voice is a shrill, wet sob.

  Cort shakes her head, tightening her grip. “There will be.”

  “It’ll be too late! It’s already too late! We stopped the game, but we can’t sleep. We can’t!” Her mouth twists into an ugly smile as tears begin to stream.

  Cort counters, “What about the boats, the marina? Somebody will give us a ride.”

  “To where, somewhere we aren’t? Where is that place? To someplace, but why, when we would be there, just the same, with this light. This noise. With my stupid fucking brain frying!”

  Madison shouts, “Shut up! Jump! Now! Or I will!”

  Sioux twists out of Cort’s grip and simply steps off the countertop. How can she be so heavy that she falls so impossibly quickly, like some huge, invisible thing has smashed her downward from above?

  On the countertop beside Cort, Madison gasps and sputters, arching up on her tiptoes as Sioux’s counterweight pulls the rope taut. Her hands scrabble at the noose that has become too tight around her neck for her clumsy fingers to grab. Her nails claw at her skin, streaks of blood appearing as she sputters, eyes bulging.

  Where is—something—anything—to cut the line? Cort’s eyes dart over the cabinet faces, drawer fronts, countertops. There! A wooden knife block offers up black handles. Cort leaps down and pulls one, which turns out to be a bread knife, but there’s no time to turn back for another. She rounds the island and grits her teeth and stands on her tiptoes to reach above Sioux and saw at the rope—some kind of boat rope, thick and braided, it turns out, not clothesline—and slick and waxy enough for the blade at first to skid rather than bite.

  Seconds are all. How many does anyone have without breathing?

  But even with the rope laid out like a loaf on a cutting board it would take a good minute to saw through with a bread knife, and meanwhile Sioux’s feet have begun to kick against Cort’s shins, heels hard, searching for purchase. One of her hands claws Cort’s hair and face, the other stabs at the air like a terrified blind girl’s. Cort dares to look upward, and Sioux’s swollen face is a light
purplish color, her lips white.

  Cort drops the knife with a sob to grab Sioux around her waist again, trying to lift her to create some slack, but there is none, by a missing foot or so of clothesline, there is none.

  The sound that comes from Cort is lower than a scream, a long senseless shout that begs and denies and climbs as she struggles to lift Sioux higher into the impossible air.

  They embrace, slow dancing. Sioux’s feet never touch the ground, kicking at nothing, and her hands find a will of their own to grasp trembling at the clothesline choking the life from them.

  Hold her, Cort thinks. Just hold her up. Just long enough for her to get her fingers under the noose.

  Behind them, above, Madison has grabbed the line just above her noose and has pulled herself upward, like climbing rope hand over hand in gym class, but without the wrap and belay around the leg. Her toes dangle just above the counter; slack sags the line between her grip and the noose, and she lets out a startled grunt, as if at her own good idea.

  But then her arms begin to quiver and twitch against failure, failure surely killing her a fraction of an inch at a time as gravity wins and she drops slowly back, the rope tightening again.

  Cort has Sioux in an upward bearhug, like a clumsy skater’s lift, but Cort’s arms, too, begin to shudder until the taut desperate urging of Sioux’s body against hers stops, and a new unmovable heaviness prevails.

  Behind her, toes skimming the countertop, Madison makes a last sound like a thick, wet sigh, and dangles limply to one side, turning ever so slightly, one eye still seeming to gaze at some distant point, the other simply empty.

  Cort’s arms give way now, too, and Sioux’s feet ghost the floor, one foot sideways, the other straight and so lightly barely touching down just ahead of her, a marionette’s.

  Cort stays bent, squeezing her eyes shut.

  Now, this is the time to finally wake. With a start, gasping to catch your breath while everything returns to the way it was before.