by Clive Barker
He’d always felt that her grief was more complicated than the accidental death of their son. And now he knew that his guess had been correct. In addition to loss, she was dealing with a kind of guilt he couldn’t imagine.
“You just thought I was in the backyard.”
For the first time she turned and looked at him, her face in shadow. “But you were in the backyard.”
“True. But only for a while. I heard him scream, too, I ran around to the side of the house. I was going to save him. That was all I thought about. But then I stopped myself. I started thinking—you know how in just a few seconds you can have so many different thoughts—I started thinking the same things you did. I loved him but we’d created a child who just couldn’t compete. Who’d never be able to compete.”
She clutched his arm. “Are you lying to me, Kevin?”
“No. I’m telling you the truth. And I’m telling you that we’re both equally guilty—and that we’re not guilty at all. We made a terrible mistake. We didn’t listen to our counselor. We designed our son badly. It wasn’t his fault and it wasn’t ours. I mean we had the best of intentions.”
“But we let him die.”
“Yes, we did. And you know what? We did him a favor. We’d already seen how mediocre his school work was. What kind of future would he have had? He wouldn’t have had any kind of enjoyable life.” He drew her close to him. “But now we have another chance, Jen. And this time we’ll listen to our counselor. Dr. Carmody will help us. We’ll create the kind of child we can be proud of. And when Stortz and everybody at the office starts bragging about their kids, I’ll finally be able to brag about mine.”
She fell against him. This time joy laced her sobbing. He could almost psychically share the exuberance she felt knowing that he was as much to blame for Kevin, Jr.’s death as she was. There was such a thing as the saving lie and he was happy to relieve her of at least some of her guilt.
A numbing wind swept up from the river. She shuddered against him.
“We need some coffee,” he said. He slid his arm around her shoulders and together they started walking back toward the center of the city.
“We never did decide if we want our daughter to be blonde or brunette,” he said.
“Or a redhead,” she said. “I’ve got an aunt with beautiful red hair.”
An image of an ethereal red-haired girl came into his mind. One who inspired lust and myth in equal parts. That was the kind of daughter they’d create. He couldn’t wait to see the envy on Stortz’s face when the daughter was fifteen or so. The envy would be something to exult about for weeks.
A Lonely Town in Alaska
Darren Speegle
“What’s your name?” said the woman through the open passenger window of the weathered Jeep Cherokee.
“Hunter,” said the man at the wheel.
“Hunter? That’s a bit obvious, isn’t it?”
“Not if you’re from my generation.”
“Your generation? How old could you be?” she said. “Thirty?”
“Actually, I’m forty-seven. Call it living well.”
“Yeah? What do you do, bathe in the blood of infants or something?”
“Why? Are you an infant?”
She hesitated a moment, searching his face, and then, seeming to trust what she saw, said, “Not after the journey I’m returning from.”
“Well, get in and tell me about it.”
Again the hesitation. Again the look that said, He’s one of us…whoever the hell we are. She had that air about her. That of the lonely spirit.
“Where are you headed?” she asked.
“Hooking up with the Alaska Highway eventually.”
“You must have just gotten off the ferry.”
“Do I have the look of the lower forty-eight states, is that it?”
“Where else would you be coming from? Road ends not three miles beyond the terminal.” She smiled, and he thought, She herself has a trustworthy face. Clear and open without being naïve. He wondered if it was a universal Alaskan trait.
“Yes, I remember that now. When I look at a map I tend to look in the direction I want to go. Never backwards.”
“Wise man,” she said, idly fiddling with the strap of her backpack. “The Alaska Highway, huh? To get there, I suppose you know, you have to go through Chi Bay.” Now the shadow lingered a little longer, bringing out lines in her face that had previously been invisible.
“And?”
“And nothing. I’m going there myself.”
“Well hop in. I could use somebody to point me around. I plan to spend the night there before heading on in the morning.”
“My backpack?” she said, pulling the strap forward with her thumb.
“Of course. Let’s put it in back.”
When that was done and she’d settled into the seat beside him, he put the Jeep in gear and glanced through the side view mirror before pulling onto the road.
“I tell you there’s nothing back there, man,” his passenger said. “The kids party at this camping spot at the end of the road, but that’s on weekends. If you were the only vehicle off the ferry, you’re the only one this side of Chi Bay. You might catch a cop out here pretending to be busy, but that’s about it on a Monday afternoon. People in Chi Bay don’t wander much. And the kids, well, they go in packs.”
“So where are you coming from then? I didn’t see you on the ferry.”
She pointed over her shoulder with her thumb. “The trail.”
“Judging by the size of your backpack, you’ve been at it awhile.”
“Since Grant’s Cove.”
“And how far’s that?” He tried to remember another town on the map. Considering his way with maps, he wasn’t surprised when he came up blank.
“Thirty some miles. A few nights under the stars. I’m used to it. Spent the last year and a half backpacking around Europe.”
“Yeah? I’ve spent some time abroad myself. What is it the Germans call it? Wanderlust? But this is Alaska. A whole other animal.”
“That it is. But you came at the right time of year. This is your best month in Southeast Alaska. It’s why I decided to return home in May. It can still be a little cool at night. But at least you get a break, if you’re lucky anyway, from the otherwise constant precipitation.”
“Chi Bay’s home then?” Hunter said.
“I guess you could call it that. I prefer Juneau where I went to college, but this is the area I grew up in. Honestly I don’t really know why I’ve come back. I ran away at sixteen, haven’t seen the place since.”
He nodded, watching the road and wondering if she saw the empathy on his face. He said, “I’ve given you my name, but you haven’t given me yours.”
“Huntress,” she said. And smiled that clear smile of hers.
“First name or last name?”
“Middle.”
“Ah.”
“Okay, enough with that. Call me Von. My parents called me Vera. My foster parents insisted on using my full name, Veronica. I like Von.”
The road was narrow, cutting through fir woodlands when it wasn’t hugging the rocky beach. He was driving through forest now, the path before him a shadowy tunnel through the dense trees. Where the sunlight filtering through the canopy drew designs, there was possibility, a sort of hope amid the muddle.
A little vignette by Hemingway came to him. An example from a college writing course of a short story of perfect brevity. For sale: Baby shoes, never worn. Nothing muddled in its spare words.
“Your parents…”
“They died. When I was fifteen. They hiked up Harrow Mountain to one of the Forest Service’s remote cabins for the weekend. They never hiked back down.”
“That was here in Chi Bay?”
Von looked at him oddly. “Funny you put it that way. Here in Chi Bay. There’s not a hint of the town in sight.”
“The sign at the terminal said Chi Bay Ferry Terminal. These are the outskirts, right?”
&
nbsp; “Yes, but…it’s the way you said it. Like the place already had you. Chi Bay—not the town itself but the area—has that kind of effect on strangers. I remember my father talking about it once. He did these backcountry tours and was always coming home with little stories for my mother. Odd remarks the tourists and out-of-towners had made. He said the strangers were more at home in Chi Bay than the residents. They were, quote, ‘in touch’ with the same loneliness that alienated the locals.” She paused, then looking at the road ahead said, “He’d know about alienation. He was a master at it.”
Unsure how to respond to that, Hunter pursued the less personal point. “Do you get a lot of strangers?” Though Von had set the precedent, the word “strangers” felt awkward off his tongue. Visitors would have seemed the better description.
“I don’t get anything. Remember, I’m a stranger too.”
He detected the suggestion of something in her voice, though he could not have named what. Maybe the clarity about her was an illusion. Maybe there was a muddled quality here after all.
The road in front of him curved to the left, and the sea was visible again. The slate beach strewn with boulders. A bald eagle perched on a lip of one of those boulders, watching the vehicle pass.
People in Chi Bay don’t wander much.
He had the sudden compulsion to ask her how her parents had died. What is it about your Chi Bay, Von, that inspires these expressions of yours? You seem disturbed in your homecoming. Haunted. But he refrained. For maybe it was the tragedy itself that had seeped into the environment. Again he empathized with her. His own parents, who to his knowledge had yet to be covered in earth, were nonetheless as dead to him as if he’d committed the act with his own hand. And maybe he had. Maybe they were the infants that had kept him young. Certainly they had never grown up enough to raise two children. Ask his twin Hannah, who’d made sure no one could question whether or not the earth had come shoveling down on her. Leaving behind an example of brevity to rival Hemingway’s own. Its very words: You want a note? Fuck you.
A house came into view. An impressive A-frame set in a crook along the shoreline. Its seaward-facing façade boasted windows from floor to rafter. A handsome hand-carved wooden bear stood on two legs in the yard, its maw open wide. To the left of the house a trailer on which rested an expensive-looking motorboat was parked. A Hummer sat inside a carport. The next house, nestled among the trees on the opposite side of the road, was much more modest. In its gravel drive was a battered Toyota pickup. Its bear was a porcupine, one of those knick-knacks for brushing off shoes. It rested by a front door whose aged paint was flaking away in leprous patches. Hunter wondered which situation Von had come from. Had her people been affluent or had they struggled as his own parents had? Struggled without really struggling as they partied themselves to oblivion every night of every week into infinity. What did a backcountry tour guide earn for a living? Enough to estrange himself from his child, apparently. Always enough for that.
Von spoke, and in a faraway voice, and Hunter wasn’t sure as she returned to the subject whether it was one he’d really wanted to tackle after all.
“Aren’t you going to ask me about my parents? Aren’t you interested in knowing how an expert on strangers could be a stranger to his own daughter? Easy. You see her as a nuisance, a thing to be swatted away for her familiarity, for the mistake she was.”
Which said to Hunter that strangers were actually not the less personal point.
“My mother, though, she was acceptable to him,” his passenger went on. “Because she helped him with his work. Once upon a time she’d been something of a local celebrity, a poet ‘in touch’—yes, there’s that expression again—with dark and mysterious Chi Bay. It’s what drew him to her, I’m sure. He was already involved in his work when he met her. You see, he was what you might call an occultist. Eventually they both were. I don’t doubt it’s what delivered them to their end.”
Hunter looked at her, wondering just why she was opening herself up to him like this. Was that the way it was with strangers and wanderers who’d mutually acknowledged the fact? Was there a brotherhood? Stranger yet that the conversation had taken this turn; that the word “occultist” had been thrown out there as though it was an everyday word. And yet somehow it was not so strange. Hadn’t there been something peculiar about this whole encounter from the beginning? The way she’d turned and simply stared at him when she’d heard the Jeep round the bend? The way he’d almost automatically applied pressure to the brakes then pulled up beside her as though it was the most natural thing in the world to offer a ride to someone who was clearly not hitchhiking, judging by the nature of the bundle she carried, bedroll and tent attached. How strong she must be beneath her khakis, he’d thought at the time, to carry such weight. And now…to know she’d hauled her load across thirty some miles in “a few nights under the stars.” Where’d she get the strength for the other? The demons surrounding her homecoming?
“No, Hunter, in case you’re wondering,” she said. “I do not spill my life to every stranger I meet. You just happen to be here when needed. Do you think that’s the right word? ‘Happen?’”
“Strangely, no,” he said. Meaning it.
“Do you believe in fate?”
“Today I ‘happen’ to.”
She smiled, and yes, it was the clearest thing in the world.
More houses appeared, a mixture of modest and not so modest as she went on, in a less faraway voice now, with her sharing. “I did my thesis at Southeast Alaska on the Chi-Ikuk, the native Alaskan tribe the town was named for. The instructor allowed me to change my subject matter before failing me for what she referred to as ‘pure and inappropriate fantasy.’ I knew it wasn’t fantasy because I’d taken my material from my father’s own notes, and my father, well, he was obsessed with accuracy when it came to this his one passion in life. So in a way I suppose you could call him a historian, though that’s not to replace the term occultist. Chi Bay has been a breeding ground for the sort of material he immersed himself in for longer than it’s been Chi Bay.” She paused, gesturing ahead. “And here the devil is now. Welcome, my stranger Hunter, to one lonely town in Alaska.”
As the view opened up before them, the trees falling back to allow for the tableau of town and bay, Chi Bay was as one might have expected of a seaside Alaskan village. While more worn by the elements, it reminded Hunter vaguely of some of the towns he’d seen in Maine during his wanderings. Its dwellings were mainly scattered along the base of a mountain, with a few along the near waterfront, while the commercial and municipal buildings were clustered near a bridge that crossed to an island running generally parallel to the mainland. Between the two the wider bay funneled into a channel at whose mouth were harbored an array of boats, a newer-looking marina standing in the foreground. Rolling his window down, Hunter partook of the air of the place. As expected, it had its own charm, the brine a pleasant assault on the senses in spite of the underlying odor of fish.
“That delicious taste in your mouth is from the fishery,” Von said, pointing to the left at a long aluminum structure. “The ancient building beside it, the one that’s on stilts, is the cannery. Like the mine on the far side of town, it’s just an attraction now. Fluffed up with the brown historic signs for the cruise ship tourism we got over a few summers before the locals decided they’d had enough of being overrun by gawkers. This back in the late nineties when I was still devising a way out of this place.”
“You’re telling your age,” Hunter smiled.
“What’s to hide? I’m twenty-nine, and aging as fast as you are de-aging. That’s what you’re doing, isn’t it? You’ve reached a plateau and now you’re aging backward and I’m the truth you missed on your way up the hill. The truth that age itself is an illusion. That there are still places on this earth like Chi Bay.”
She looked at him as if expecting an answer. Since he had none, he went with the thought that failed at obscuring his own questions. “Are you sure you’re n
ot the poet in the family?”
“I don’t have a dark enough soul for that task.”
“You do paint a picture though.”
“It’s easy when you’re a Chi-ite. But where was I? Oh yes, the tourism. The natives weren’t as happy about dropping the cruise ship traffic as the rest of the town. They didn’t like losing all that business. They didn’t have much ground to stand on, though, considering that the death toll among our eager visitors had reached a half dozen over those summers. You can warn an outsider only so many times to stay on the trail, lose the perfume and loud deodorants in bear-populated areas—which is everywhere—and treat this particular Alaskan town with a modicum of respect. Chi Bay is not Juneau or Ketchikan or Haines or any other place you can name. It’s built on a fault, so to speak, and that fault tends to yawn open when it’s hungry.”
Hunter stopped at one of two visible traffic lights on this side of town, eyes drawn to the sparse afternoon foot traffic along the street while his mind tried to make sense of what was being generated by this special clarity of Von’s.
“If the townsfolk seem zombies to you,” she said, “it’s because they are. Oh, there’s no shortage of hospitality, or that pretense anyway, but you’ll find a blankness in the eyes of Chi Bay residents that you’ll not find elsewhere. It’s the only substitute, in the end, for the terror.”
“Terror?” he said, emphasizing each syllable.
“Sound extreme? I guess it would to an outsider.” She smiled mirthlessly as she added, “An outsider coming home again.”
As he looked around at this ageless town of hers he found himself feeling precisely that way. Like an outsider coming home again. He’d have thought a little conversation with the locals, some immersing in the culture would have been required to validate her father’s observation. But no, just being here did the trick. And not necessarily as pertained to the town itself, but rather, as Von had suggested, the environment in which the town’s props had been erected. There was a nostalgic flavor to being surrounded by the stage pieces, certainly. But there was a deeper something involved, an older, almost primal something. While many places he’d visited had inspired a certain bittersweetness, an indefinable yearning, a sense of filling up while emptying out, this was something different, something more. A strange wind blew in Chi Bay; there was no denying its delicate caress.
