Deprivation

by Roy Freirich

  Is he smiling behind the surgical mask? His eyes gleam wetly with an unwholesome light, like an adolescent fighting laughter at an obscene joke.

  Sam pretends to think, eyeing the crowd, seeing more makeshift gloves and masks. No help for the fear spreading, far and fast as any disease. “I have your word you’ll be responsible for the boy?”

  “Of course.”

  −−−

  Back inside the clinic, all eyes turn to him. A few nod gratefully, almost smiling. A strangely reverent mood has settled over this group, with the sense they are joined by something truly greater than them all, by some unearthly, historic phenomenon with unimaginable consequences.

  Sam tries to smile back, but it’s shaky. “Folks? I think we can all agree things are getting a little strange out there. Anyone who wants to stay in here and ride this out, welcome. Everyone else, now’s the time to leave, and best luck. But I need a hand with these hurricane shutters.”

  Everyone trades looks, uncertain.

  Paula moves beside him, pitches her voice low. “Fleisher? Come back for the boy?”

  He nods. “With fifty or so friends.”

  “So . . . we hole up in here?”

  He thinks, or tries to; too many scenarios present themselves, with too many possible consequences that don’t bear study. But what choice? Hand the Boy over and trust Fleisher, with his borderline-compulsive chuckling and rheumy eyes and sociopathic self-assurance?

  “Sam, you sure?”

  “Maybe. Almost.” He turns quickly from her, back to the crowd in the waiting room. “Everyone? I’m going to ask a few of you to help me. We need to step outside and as quickly as possible lower the hurricane shutters, step back inside, and close off this entrance.”

  A guffaw sounds from the back of the room, cut short by an embarrassed silence.

  In his chair, the Boy bends closer to his little handheld game again, his lips moving soundlessly, as if davening over a sacred relic.

  As if every outcome were his to determine, in the shining light of this little box.

  18

  With the dock lights out too, it won’t help matters, since darkness favors attackers in any engagement. Even worse, if it’s some kind of island-wide blackout, fear will spread quickly and dependably, and more might become desperate enough to toss dollars at an impromptu charter, or maybe just outright commandeer a vessel.

  “Chief! Come on, man! You can’t stop all of us!” A boater’s shout rings out across the shut storefronts along the quay, and Chief holds his breath to listen for footsteps.

  Redoubts should provide cover and field of fire, and this makeshift version barely offers either, but it does block the bottleneck of the dock gate and ramp down to the floats of the marina. Piled two and three deep, commandeered life preservers might slow buckshot. Coiled line, stacked ship-to-shore radios, empty jerry cans—all of it at least helps provide something to duck behind, if and when it comes to it.

  It’s all temporary, anyway, just until word arrives and provides clear, straightforward guidance for another course of action, with more manageable consequences—standing down, for instance, with apologies and handshakes all around, maybe a money claim or two and some complicated paperwork, and a dressing down from the aldermen. It’s a fond hope.

  As if in argument, Linda’s face comes to him. She taught him to FaceTime and it’s funny now, because when he sees her in his mind, she’s leaning into that little window on his desktop computer screen.

  He thinks of her easy, melodic laughter, and her expensive, perfect teeth—her orthodontist’s office wall shrine to his European vacations. Well, doctors deserve it, even if their parents likelier than not put them through college and med school, silver spoon-style. Money begets money, even if Sam Carlson wants to play working-class hero and salt of the earth, slumming at the Pier View with his local girl.

  Whispering? Some faint, stuttery hissing floats in from nowhere, tightening his grip on the Benelli.

  Maybe the suicide gunman overspent on this fancy black shotgun, but for home defense or loaded with grape for riot control, the inertia recoil operating system makes it the quickest semi-auto on the market—not that it really bears on the situation now, when it looks as all-business as any other model, all it should need to do—or used to need to do, back when common sense was common.

  Which it will be again, of course, since the marina’s floodlights will snap again on in a moment, service bars will blip into being on his cell phone screen, and people will step sheepishly from shadows and share houses and motels. Embarrassed, they’ll be neighbors all over again, at least for another day or two before the ferry back to Greenport or Hyannis and the silent rueful drive back to their own homes and jobs.

  Shadows, now. The darkness almost visible between faintest gleaming, from where? Spots appear like fireflies, dim at the edges of everything.

  Forgiveness: it was a sermon once, in a movie or a dream, a stern Lutheran minister booming from his ship’s prow pulpit. Jan will forgive him. Linda too. Every neighbor who has family on the mainland will, and who doesn’t? The island’s children have all gone, for the schools and the smart wild boys in the city.

  Somehow he has become gatekeeper again, between the dying and the living. His again to close the door on the last voices, to suffer so much thanklessness, though the doorway he guards here is as real as any between air and water.

  But this time will be different. This time the dying will run from the storefront porches, from the boatyard and the dry dock, fleeting footsteps in the gravel to meet him.

  19

  “That’s three. Can we get a fourth?” Sam tries to smile; it’s just doubles at the club, round robin, sudden death. The room tilts a little, rights itself.

  Like a student unsure of his answer, a guy in a crewcut and sleeveless tee raises a shy hand.

  “Okay, good.” Sam nods toward a corner of the waiting area, and they gather there to huddle and agree: they’ll move fast, opening the front floor-to-ceiling sliding doors, stepping through to reach up, quickly lower the hurricane shutters and duck back inside, hopefully before Fleisher and his group can stop them.

  These shutters are just one-by-four-inch painted fir planks, crossmembers nailed back and front at the bottom and top, but to Sam they might provide enough of a barrier to make someone second-guess a poor impulse. The locks are marine hardware-style, tarnished brass rotary latches—something the chief had apparently insisted on when the pharmacy was robbed a few years ago.

  Paula, as always, is slow to believe: “Sam, but what if—”

  He cuts her off. “Just be ready to lock up as soon as we pull them down?”

  Paula hesitates but gives him a somber nod. His volunteers trade looks and follow suit.

  Should he count down, to be sure they’re ready to move? He can’t imagine it. Instead, they simply shove open the two big sliders and step out, already reaching up to free the hurricane shutters.

  The first and second pair have unhooked theirs and are already swinging them down behind them as they step back inside.

  Sam’s partner unhooks his, quickly freeing the galvanized hook from the eyelet, waiting on Sam.

  Sam’s eyelet fights him; a stubborn burr of corrosion won’t give as he wraps his fingers around the hook and yanks, again and again.

  In the waiting area, they’re already locking the other dropped shutters from inside. Click click, snap, a military sound somehow, of readiness, of securing a redoubt. Shhht-clunk, the sliders shutting now.

  Anxious faces crowd Sam’s open slider doorway, peering out. He tries not to glance at them as he pulls.

  “Uhhh . . . Doctor Carlson?” Sam’s partner is little more than a kid, really, and uncertain how edgy to be.

  Sam dares a glimpse over his shoulder across the lane, at Fleisher and his group staring in flatfooted disbelief. Snatches of argument
cross the lane:

  “You wanna stop them? You go.”

  “What if they got—”

  A few of these start across, glaring, and Sam flexes his fingers, tightens his grip and yanks again on the corroded hook. Nothing.

  “Hold it, Carlson!” Fleisher shouts. He turns to point the others forward. “Move it, now, don’t let them—”

  “Doctor?” Sam’s partner shifts his weight from leg to leg, a hand hovering.

  “Go in. Right with you.” He yanks again, two fingers curled aching around the rusty hook’s shaft as a flurry of footsteps begins behind him.

  Free! The hook slips from the eyelet, the shutter slams down, and Sam almost trips on his volunteer’s heels as he dodges a blur of movement and flings himself through the doorway, dropping the shutter banging against the sills. Some are already reaching, turning the last rotary latch. Shhht-click.

  From outside, shouts:

  “Hand out the fucking pills!”

  “Not fair, man!”

  Shhht-clunk. The slider is shoved shut, barely muffling the manic voices of the deluded, the regressed, bitter as aggrieved children.

  With three tourists pitching in, Sam wordlessly enacts active shooter protocol. They shove a bookcase and cabinet in front of the locked sliders and drag a heavy melamine cabinet across the linoleum to stand against the last unblocked slider, just left of the entrance they’ve already blocked with a tangle of piled chairs.

  The front waiting area seems to shrink without the darkness visible outside, without the shadowy lane and vague rectangles of other storefronts.

  Sam turns to seek out the Boy and, between milling panicky Sleepless, glimpses him, perched on a chair by the back wall, clutching his game like a rosary. He should go to him, should join him resolutely as they head together into their own trackless night. He should grab him and flee, find Kathy and return them to his boat, cast off and convey them to safety.

  Instead, he steps to an exposed few inches of locked glass slider and spots a tiny gap between two planks of shutter, dim light gleaming through, flickering.

  He leans and peers out into the dark.

  The motion of figures seems jittery, like an old film reel. Thrown by the light of flashlights and hurricane lanterns, shadows cross where the mob has gathered, eyes shining like mad parishioners, staring enthralled at Fleisher in his surgical mask.

  Fleisher has raised both hands above his head, a gesture of surrender, or triumph. His eyes gleam as he lowers a hand to point at the clinic, at Sam himself, it seems, for a frightening moment. Sam nearly steps back.

  “We have our answer! Inside? They have light, and sleep, and maybe even a way to reach their families and know how they are.” Fleisher lifts his voice, searching for the pitch and rhythm of crowd-pleasing rhetoric. “Out here? What do we have? Darkness, uncertainty, unending, unbearable exhaustion. They get theirs, and they pull up the ladder! It’s the same, the same old story.”

  The Sleepless seem to waver. One does a half-turn in both directions, squinting. Another shrugs theatrically. Vagueness ripples through the crowd, murmurs.

  Fleisher pauses, his head shifting slowly side to side, reading the restlessness. He shifts his tone, searching for a theme. “You paid for that clinic, your taxes, your hard work, and now they close the doors on you? Our government in action, of the people, by the people, for the people?”

  Already bored, a tourist stabs his dead cell phone’s screen with an index finger and another closes in to watch. A woman near the back of the group sighs and shakes her head, too tired to track it. A random giggle erupts.

  But Fleisher clears his throat and tries again: “And for this they tell you that you can’t believe in what you believe in? We remember when a few determined the fate of so many, when our tallest towers fell . . .”

  The muttering dies. Stillness spreads now through the crowd, faces slacken with a kind of worshipful longing.

  “Can we let it be forgotten?”

  Sam can feel the treacly thrill surging, the prickly electricity of the mob’s struck nerve. Behind him, his own Sleepless moan and mutter. Can they hear Fleisher?

  Tears seem to fill Fleisher’s eyes, a gleam as light flashes from his smudged designer glasses; his white, germaphobe freak mask creases as his voice lifts into a cry of peroration: “We remember so that our children will never forget! Our voices will be heard! At a time and place of our choosing, freedom shall prevail!”

  It’s all a bad joke, of course. Some sensible person will step from the mob and challenge Fleisher and his nonsense demagoguery.

  A man does step forward, and flashlight beams converge on him, his bald-spot a floating paleness. “I got a shotgun in my garage. That’ll prevail!” he offers.

  A grizzled local shouts, “There’s a crowbar in the bait shop!”

  Inches from Sam’s, another eye suddenly appears, rheumy, wide, rolling. Sam rears back. From beyond the locked slider and shutter comes laughter, more shouting: “Peek-a-boo! Shut-eye! Get some!”

  Manic nonsense: a harbinger of worse, dependably.

  Pale, Sam reassures everyone, “No worries. They’re bluffing.”

  They stare back at him, eyes round with fear.

  “But I’ll look for a hammer, some nails, or . . . something.” Dizziness grips him, the room moving sideways, slowing, stopping again. Absurd, he hears himself asking no one, anyone, “The . . . ferry?”

  Paula is peering at him, her hair awry, her face lined. Sam smiles and turns away down the hall to the storeroom. “I’ll look for a hammer, some nails.” Why, again? “Nails.”

  Halfway down the hallway, the hallway seems to flicker once, return to itself, then dim again, narrowing. Tilting.

  It’s another hall now, one his eyes burn at seeing. His heart twitches like a torn muscle in his chest, desperate to stop and never know the place again.

  The door ahead ajar, revealing a small part of a bright room.

  The bright room.

  20

  Between the heavy tarp draped above and the hard damp of the boat’s floor on their knees, Cort and Tay kneel, bent. Her voice breaks, dry and halting, as the story’s unimaginable end spills from her in a rush: “Sioux first, then Madison, I couldn’t stop them, I couldn’t help them. I couldn’t cut through in time. It happened so fast. And then after, I got them down, they were so heavy, how could they be so heavy? I only wanted them to look peaceful, like . . . like . . .” she chokes on the word, “ . . . asleep.”

  His whisper is warm breath in her ear. “Don’t now. They would’ve found another way. People are too far gone, too fast. I saw some things too.” With the soft roughness of his boy’s first stubble, the side of his face touches hers.

  Her throat constricts, she nods, starting to reach to wipe at her tears, but his other hand comes down suddenly, hard, trapping hers. Tense.

  “Shhh.”

  He pulls an inch away, revealing a sliver of gap between tarp and rail, a tilted view of the boat-shed door.

  A shadowy form hesitantly creaks it open. Another mouth-breathing, conformist jock troll, of course, high on the cheapest thrill of all—making someone feel helpless and afraid.

  The same sadist moron, from always.

  Why doubt what he might do? What anyone might now? Her shoulders hunch, neck contracting as she tries to make herself small. Not breathing is an ache that grows, a burning from chest to throat; but the real urge is to spit out the poison a trapped breath becomes, before we ever take another.

  But when? When will this jock lowlife back up through the door and find his jock lowlife crew and move on? Or will he lift the tarp an inch at a time to find them, and bring the others with a shout?

  Blood to the brain, hammering inside. Weight on one arm, burning.

  Lowlife turns. Head tilted, listening. Turning.

  Tay’s hand grippin
g hers, hard and dry. Until Lowlife weirdly, as if thoughtfully, closes the door behind him as he sways out.

  From outside, further on, more muffled footfalls approach, villainous B-movie laughter, an evil witch voice cackling, “And your little dog too!”

  More jock razzing: “Blow me, Hespeth.”

  “Your dreams.”

  A girl whines and giggles, “Jim-meeee!” Echoes of shouts, fading.

  Only the surf now, always, endlessly, as if asking for silence: Shhh. Shhh.

  Tay sighs, a held breath they both let go, softly.

  A surge of dizziness spins the darkness, which seems to breathe and shift with floating smudges of disappearing color. Moments pass, unmeasured, and then more, until the fear of these last few feels more imagined than remembered.

  Which world is this? A girl’s, on vacation? In a boat shed with a boy?

  It is, it must be, because she desperately makes it so, pulling him closer as he pushes her gently back, moving against her, and her fingers are fumbling at the zipper of her cutoffs. Suddenly, none of it can happen soon enough: her hand, finding and gently touching, guiding; his, urging her knee sideways, trailing upwards.

  They take sharp sips of air, heat blooming where they meet and slip onward, carefully pushing, carefully yielding, until their bodies are barely their own.

  But here is a thought to forget, to push back into frantic glimpses of others: the sad little room in their same rental, Mom in the slant light of the doorway with her same bitter smirk at everything, her voice coming up out of a sound like static:

  “He won’t love you, really. Just like your dad wouldn’t love me. They say they do, but don’t, they never do.”

  Cort shuts her eyes again because rising now out of shapeless blotches of color, out of nothing and nowhere, comes curled, black edges at the edges of paleness which is flesh charred by flame, and the perfect ashes of a boy’s hair, his body slumped beside others in the burned-out beach taxi.