At the center of the heaving ocean, something forced its way up through the waves. The peak of an undersea mountain, rising to the sun: that was still Ransom’s first impression. Niagaras poured off black rock. His mind struggled to catch up with what stood revealed, to find suitable comparisons for it, even as more of it pushed the water aside. Some kind of structure — structures: domes, columns, walls — a city, an Atlantis finding the sun again. No — the shapes were off: the domes bulged, the columns bent, the walls curved, in ways that conformed to no architectural style — that made no sense. A natural formation, then, a quirk of geology. No — already, the hypothesis was untenable: there was too much evidence of intentionality in the shapes draped with seaweed, heaped with fish brought suffocating into the air. As the rest of the island left the ocean, filling the view before Ransom to the point it threatened to burst out of the curtain, the appearance of an enormous monolith in the foreground, its surface incised with pictographs, settled the matter. This huge jumble of forms, some of which appeared to contradict one another, to intersect in ways the eye could not untangle, to occupy almost the same space at the same time, was deliberate.
Ransom slid his chair back from the table and stood. The crab’s legs dinged on the stainless steel sink. Picking up his mug, he turned away from the window. “That was the extent of my interactions with Gus. To be honest, what I knew of him, what Heather had told me, I didn’t much care for. He was what I guess you’d call a functioning alcoholic, although the way he functioned. he was a whiskey-drinker, Jack Daniels, Jim Bean, Maker’s Mark, that end of the shelf. I can’t claim a lot of experience, but from what I’ve seen, sour mash shortcuts to your mean, your nasty side. That was the case with Gus, at least. It wasn’t so much that he used his hands — he did, and I gather the hearing in Rudy’s left ear was the worse for it — no, the whiskey unlocked the cage that held all of Gus’s resentment, his bitterness, his jealousy. Apparently, when he was younger, Rudy’s little brother Jan had liked helping their mother in the kitchen. He’d been something of a baker, Jan; Rudy claimed he made the best chocolate cake you ever tasted, frosted it with buttercream. His mother used to let him out of working with his father in the garage or around the yard so he could assist her with the meals. None of the other kids — there were six of them — was too thrilled at there being one fewer of them to dilute their father’s attention, especially when they saw Gus’s lips tighten as he realized Jan had stayed inside again.
“Anyway, this one night, Gus wandered into the house after spending the better part of the evening in the garage. He passed most of the hours after he returned from work fixing his friends’ and acquaintances’ cars, Hank Williams on the transistor radio, Jack Daniels in one of the kids’ juice glasses. In he comes, wiping the grease off his hands with a dishtowel, and what should greet his eyes when he peers into the refrigerator in search of a little supper but the golden top of the cherry pie Jan made for the church bake sale the next day? Gus loves cherry pie. Without a second thought, he lifts the pie from the top shelf of the fridge and deposits it on the kitchen table. He digs his clasp-knife out of his pants-pocket, opens it, and cuts himself a generous slice. He doesn’t bother with a fork; instead, he shoves his fingers under the crust and lifts the piece straight to his mouth. It’s so tasty, he helps himself to a second, larger serving before he’s finished the first. In his eagerness, he slices through the pie tin to the table. He doesn’t care; he leaves the knife stuck where it is and uses his other hand to free the piece.
“That’s how Jan finds him when he walks into the kitchen for a glass of milk, a wedge of cherry pie in one hand, red syrup and yellow crumbs smeared on his other hand, his mouth and chin. By this age — Jan’s around twelve, thirteen — the boy has long-since learned that the safest way, the only way, to meet the outrages that accompany his father’s drinking is calmly, impassively. Give him the excuse to garnish his injury with insult, and he’ll take it.
“And yet, this is exactly what Jan does. He can’t help himself, maybe. He lets his response to the sight of Gus standing with his mouth stuffed with half-chewed pie flash across his face. It’s all the provocation his father requires. What? he says, crumbs spraying from his mouth.
“Nothing, Jan says, but he’s too late. Gus drops the slice he’s holding to the floor, scoops the rest of the pie from the tin with his free hand, and slaps that to the floor, as well. He raises one foot and stamps on the mess he’s made, spreading it across the linoleum. Jan knows enough to remain where he is. Gus brings his shoe down on the ruin of Jan’s efforts twice more, then wipes his hands on his pants, frees his knife from the table, and folds it closed. As he returns it to his pocket, he tells Jan that if he wants to be a little faggot and wear an apron in the kitchen, that’s his concern, but he’d best keep his little faggot mouth shut when there’s a man around, particularly when that man’s his father. Does Jan understand him?
“Yes, Pa, Jan says.
“Then take your little faggot ass off to bed, Gus says.
“What happened next,” Ransom said, “wasn’t a surprise; in fact, it was depressingly predictable.” He walked into the kitchen, deposited his mug on the counter. “That was the end of Jan’s time in the kitchen. He wasn’t the first one outside to help his father, but he wasn’t the last, either, and he worked hard. The morning of his eighteenth birthday, he enlisted in the Marines; within a couple of months, he was on patrol in Vietnam. He was cited for bravery on several occasions; I think he may have been awarded a medal. One afternoon, when his squad stopped for a rest, he was shot through the head by a sniper. He’d removed his helmet. to tell the truth, I’m not sure why he had his helmet off. He survived, but it goes without saying, he was never the same. His problems. he had trouble moving, coordinating his arms and legs. His speech was slurred; he couldn’t remember the names of familiar objects, activities; he forgot something the second after you said it to him. There was no way he could live on his own. His mother wanted Jan to move back home, but Gus refused, said there was no way he was going to be saddled with an idiot who hadn’t known enough to keep his damn helmet on. Which didn’t stop him from accepting the drinks he was bought when Jan visited and Gus paraded him at the V.F.W.”
Behind him, a pair of doors would be opening on the front of a squat stone box near the island’s peak. The structure, whose rough exterior suggested a child’s drawing of a Greek temple, must be the size of a cathedral, yet it was dwarfed by what squeezed out of its open doors. While Ransom continued to have trouble with the sheer size of the thing, which seemed as if it must break a textbook’s worth of physical laws, he was more bothered by its speed. There should have been no way, he was certain, for something of that mass to move that quickly. Given the thing’s appearance, the tumult of coils wreathing its head, the scales shimmering on its arms, its legs, the wings that unfolded into great translucent fans whose edges were not quite in focus, its speed was hardly the most obvious detail on which to focus, but for Ransom, the dearth of time between the first hint of the thing’s shadow on the doors and its heaving off the ground on a hurricane-blast of its wings confirmed the extent to which the world had changed.