I told him about my conversation with Phil. “Didn’t you used to go up there?” I asked. “Fishing or something?”
“Sure. Fishing and hunting. Up in the Allagash. I used to go with your grandfather. We’d stop in Freeport in the middle of the night and ring the bell at the little L.L. Bean store, and they’d let us in so we could buy our gear. Beautiful place, Maine. I haven’t been since your mother and I made a few trips down east,” he said, his voice suddenly sad. “That was before you were born.”
“Do you know how to get there? I’m renting a car.”
“Maine?” I heard the rattle of ice in his highball glass. “Sure. Drive to the New Hampshire border. Then turn right.”
We spoke a little longer, catching up. Catching up with him, I mean. I had nothing else to report.
“Well, Cassandra, I wish you luck,” he said at last. “Anything comes up, call Ken Wilburn. He’s in South Salem now. Here, I’ll give you his number—”
I wrote it down then said good-bye. Two days later I received a check for a thousand dollars, along with a note.
buy yourself some gum boots. love, dad
I blew a big chunk of the money on a pair of Hedi Slimane drainpipe jeans. I do have my little luxuries, and I figured the investment would pay off if I actually sold a story. The rest I stashed in my wallet.
That night I took out my copies of Deceptio Visus and Mors. I’d bought them cheap in a used bookstore in the city in 1978, when Kamestos’s reputation was in deep decline. Now I thumbed through Deceptio Visus, hoping to find some hint as to what the island might be like in real life, or where.
It was like trying to get a compass reading from a postcard. So I went back online, poking around till I hit www.maineaway.com, Your News for The Paswegas Peninsula And Beyond! The site banner showed a scroll of cloudless sky and a windjammer racing across a cobalt sea. There were lots of pictures of romping Labrador retrievers, autumn foliage, children eating corn on the cob and lobster, snow-dusted spruce, healthy-looking couples in canoes, loons and moose.
The headlines told a different story. A rash of teen suicides; support groups for people addicted to Oxy-C and vicodin; two big heroin busts. Another bomb scare at the high school. Another confirmed case of West Nile Virus. A missing persons alert for someone named Martin Graves, last seen August 29th. The police log listed three arrests for domestic assault and another for possession of crack cocaine. A body washed up in Burnt Harbor had been identified as a fisherman lost at sea the previous winter. More bodies were missing from another boat presumed lost in a recent storm. There was also a feature, “The Facts About Bear Baiting,” and notice of a Benefit Bean Supper for the Prout family, who had just lost their home to a fire. Someone was still looking for her husband, last seen driving home to Machias after work at Wal-Mart a month before.
So much for Vacationland, I thought, and went to bed.
7
It was the second week of November; the beginning of the Maine winter. I was naive enough to think it was still fall.
For a couple of months I’d saved a small stash of crystal meth. Becoming an addict takes a certain amount of organization to dedicate yourself to your need to get high. In this as in other matters I’d lacked ambition. Crank was intermittently fun and useful, but I never could make a serious commitment to it. The afternoon before I left, I picked up my Rent-a-Wreck then went home and packed a map, the directions Phil had given me, a few clothes and my copies of Deceptio Visus and Mors, my old Konica, a few cassette tapes. I went to the fridge and opened the freezer, took out the small Ziploc bag of crystal and another, larger bag. In this was a piece of paper with blurred writing on it—july 2001—along with two plastic canisters of Tri-X film. The date was when I’d bought them; it was also the last time I’d done any serious shooting. They went alongside my camera in the chewed-up leather satchel I’d had since high school.
Even traveling light, there was room for more. Problem was, I didn’t have much more. I had an old computer, but no laptop, no cell phone. No digital camera or iPod. I never had much spare cash, plus I just hated the stuff on principle: it made everything too easy.
“You’re a fucking Luddite Looney Tune,” Phil said once. “You got a microwave in that dump of yours?”
I shook my head. “I don’t eat.”
Now I went over to my old vinyl records and pulled out a portfolio wedged between The Idiot and Fear And Whiskey. It was filled with plastic sleeves holding dozens of black-and-white 8x10s. Not the pictures from Dead Girls; the stuff I’d been working on after that, the photos Linda Kalman had turned down. I still couldn’t bring myself to look at any of them, just stared at the cover sheet, a white page with my name typed on it and the title I’d given the collection: Hard To Be Human Again. I put it back, turned and found my bottle of Jack Daniel’s. Very early the next morning, while it was still dark and I was still drunk, I began to drive north.
The buzz from the Jack Daniel’s got me about an hour out of the city before it wore off. Just past the wooded exurban badlands where I’d grown up, I pulled over and snorted the remaining blue-white crystals from my stash, then shot back onto the interstate.
At some point I must’ve stopped for gas, but I didn’t have another fully conscious thought until I looked up, blinking, and saw brilliant sun, the span of a bridge before me and a broad, glittering blue sheet of water below. A sign at the highway’s edge read leaving new hampshire. I was halfway over the bridge, reading another sign—welcome to maine, the way life should be—before I began to wonder what had happened to Connecticut and Massachusetts.
That was my crossing into Maine. What little thought I’d ever given to the place was faintly contemptuous: Vacationland, snow. I didn’t understand yet how this place works on you, how it splinters your sensorium. All I knew was that it was midmorning of a November day, and I was fucking freezing.
Somehow it had never crossed my mind that it might be cold. Back in the city it was Indian summer. Here it felt like midwinter. Even with the heat cranked, the little Ford Taurus exuded only a thread of warmth that smelled of antifreeze. The rear windows wouldn’t close completely, and frigid air whistled through.
By the time I was fifty miles north of Portland my hands were numb. I pulled over and rummaged through my bag, pulled on a long-sleeved T-shirt, a moth-eaten black cashmere sweater, my battered motorcycle jacket. I replaced my sneakers with my old black cowboy boots. This was my entire wardrobe, except for socks and underwear, another T-shirt, and a backup pair of black jeans nearly indistinguishable from the ones I’d blown a small fortune on.
I had no gloves, no boots save my ancient Tony Lamas, no winter coat. Over the years, I’d spent a few Thanksgivings with my aunt’s family in Boston, chilly days, nights warmed by firelight and Irish Mist. I figured Maine would be like that. I was wrong.
I drove for another hour before forcing myself to stop and eat at a convenience store. A table full of old men in flannel shirts and Carhart jackets glanced up when I entered then returned to low conversation. There was a sheet of orange poster board behind the cash register, two columns neatly written in Magic Marker:
Jeff Stonestreet Buck
Missy Weed Buck
Brandon Johnston Doe
Barbara Johnston Buck
Wallace Tun Doe
“Hunting season?” I asked as I handed over my money.