And Trip gazing upon it all unperturbed, unmoved. Unknowing? wondered Martin. But could not bring himself to ask, could not bear to think what answer he might receive: that the boy had seen it all before, that the drowned kingdoms were not new to him, or strange; that the scoured ruins of the earth belonged to Trip more than they had ever belonged to Martin.
One night they anchored in mid-channel. After a makeshift meal of spongy fried potatoes and the last of Diana’s rosemary they sat on deck, facing shore and watching the sky convulse above them, a slowly turning wheel of purple and indigo and a bruised red that was almost black. Martin had Mrs. Grose’s farewell bottle of brandy beside him, and every now and then poured a jot into an enameled mug. He poured some for Trip as well. The boy didn’t drink it; he balanced the cup on his lap, every now and then raising it to his face to sniff it warily. The air felt dank and viscous. It wasn’t hot, but Martin still broke into a sweat.
Maybe that was the brandy, he thought, or just fatigue. He took another sip from his mug, and winced. A strange indefinable smell hung in the air, like burning dust or gunpowder. In the distance a silvery flare leapt from a high promontory, as though something there had exploded soundlessly.
“It’s getting worse, isn’t it?”
He nestled the mug against his chest and glanced at Trip. “What?”
“The sky.” Trip’s voice was subdued. He stuck his chin out to indicate the lurid tableau above them. “It’s not getting better. It’s getting worse.”
Martin looked up. He shrugged, feeling a sliver of cold where the heavy night air nosed down his shirt. “Is it? I guess I can’t tell, anymore. Maybe we’re just getting closer to the city—you know, more houses, more lights…”
“No.” Trip raised the mug to his lips and took a sizable mouthful. “Ugh—!”
Martin laughed. “It’s not beer. You’re supposed to savor it—”
Trip swallowed and took a cautious sip. “Okay.” He grimaced.
Martin leaned back, gazing into the sky. “How much worse could it get?” he said. “Diana was talking about those space stations they’re sending up at the end of the month—I mean, joint Japanese/American technology, how can we lose?”
Trip shook his head. “I don’t know.” His eyes in the infernal light seemed translucent. “It’s like it really is the Rapture…”
“The Rapture?” Martin stared at him. “You mean the end of the world? You think this is the end of the world?”
Trip nodded. “The Last Days. That’s what John Drinkwater used to say. My choir director,” he added at Martin’s quizzical look. “And my grandmother—”
He took another sip of brandy. “—she totally believed in all that stuff. If she could see me now—”
Trip traced the outline of the cross branded on his forehead. “Man, if she could see me, she’d definitely think this was it. The end of the world. The end of the fucking world.”
Martin listened, fearful lest the boy stop: it was the most he’d heard Trip say of himself since he’d found him on the beach at Mars Hill. Beneath them the Wendameen rocked gently. Finally he asked, “Is that—is that what you believe?”
Trip gazed upward. Streamers of gold spun from the ominous spiral, slid down to disappear behind that far-off promontory where something burned, smoke like dark thumbprints against the lurid sky. After a moment he shook his head.
“I don’t know. I guess. Or no—no, maybe I don’t.” He frowned. “I mean, if I really thought that, probably I wouldn’t be doing this—”
He opened his hands, cradling the mug of brandy. “I mean, I wouldn’t be letting you take me to New York,” he said. “To look for her. If I really thought it was the end, I guess I wouldn’t care.”
Martin looked away. Because Martin did think it was the end—for him, at least—and somehow that didn’t stop him from caring at all.
“She’s your girlfriend, then? This person you’re going to find in the city?”
“No, she’s not my girlfriend,” he said “Actually, I hardly even know her.”
“Was she—is she someone you knew from—well, your church?”
“My church?” Trip drank the rest of his brandy, then reached for the bottle and poured more into the mug. “No. She wasn’t exactly a churchgoing girl. I mean, I doubt she was saved or anything like that. She was foreign, for one thing. Russia or someplace, I forget.”
“But—so you want to save her? That’s, um, thoughtful.”
“No, I don’t want to save her. I just want to—to see her again. That’s all.”
He turned away. His profile against the burning sky looked sharp, almost cruel, the hollows of his cheeks touched with flame, his eyes colorless. Martin’s heart clenched. He tried desperately to think of something to say, something that might redeem the moment, save him from looking pathetic as he sat there staring at this boy as though he were the Rapture, his last best hope of sunrise.
Trip only shook his head. “Thanks for the brandy,” he said, easing himself to his feet. He stretched, looking down at Martin, and smiled; but the older man could see that it was forced. “I’ll do first watch, okay?”
“Okay. Thanks.”
“No prob.” Trip turned and walked away.
The night passed with no more talk between them. Trip woke Martin to stand his watch; then, as night soured into dawn, he brought him a mug of hot tea on deck.
“Thanks,” said Martin, feeling hung over. “We should be shoving off, I guess.”
Unexpectedly, Trip smiled. “It’s been kind of cool, hasn’t it? I mean this whole thing with the boat? ’Cause like you got it all fixed up, and into the water, and—”
He spun on his bare foot, letting his arm swing out to indicate the rainbow sweep of sea, the jutting headlands beyond. “And we made it! We’re there!”
Martin smiled. “Yeah,” he said, gazing into Trip’s blue eyes. “We really have almost made it.”
That night, they came to the East River: College Point, Rikers Island, South Brother Island. To starboard the horizon stretched green and yellow, a waste of spartina and cattails, reek of mussels and mudflats and red crabs like scorpions that nudged up against the Wendameen’s hull upon mats of seagrass. Martin had thought, at least, that he could point out to Trip the glory that was Manhattan.
But from here the island seemed nothing but marshland. A glittering haze hung above the fens, sparked here and there with blue or red. It took Martin some minutes to realize that this was the New York skyline, not so grand a thing as it had been; more a memory of a city moored there above the restless grasses. As they drew nearer the marsh gradually gave way to decrepit waterfronts where buildings had tumbled into the channel, some frozen in mid-fall, beams and flooring and stairs like the gears of an unsprung clock hanging above the water. Pilings, black and reamed with rot, thrust dangerously close to the little boat as it made its passage. Now and then a dinghy or barge, men and women fishing or dragging seines through the ruddy waters. Once they saw three dirigibles in formation above the river, towing something behind them. On shore people moved, the same slow dance of making and unmaking: fires, food, children, shelter; between and behind and atop broken buildings, under tarps, in cars, in houses and apartments and trees. Martin thought of Calcutta, of children living in oil drums along the canals in Djakarta—how quickly New Yorkers had caught up. Odors wafted out to the Wendameen, so that Martin would suddenly grow faint with hunger. Frying fish, chapati, garlic and onions, woodsmoke, meaty reek of unwashed clothes, excrement, incense, disinfectant, autumn leaves: he breathed it all in where he stood in the cockpit, motoring now, a sign of journey’s end; breathed it all out again, saying good-bye.