Children of the Island

by Wright, T. M.

  The two had been together for over a decade, and they were inseparable. Marsh very much liked the idea that they'd "grow old together." He had even fantasized that they'd be buried side by side in the same coffin (a fantasy he'd shared with his sister, Margaret; her reaction, he thought, had been typical: "That's obscene, John!").

  "I think I got six months, Joe. I think it's all we need."

  Joe made slight, rasping noises deep in his throat, as if clearing mucous out; it was his way of showing pleasure.

  Marsh scratched the dog's ear harder; the dog grinned.

  "Maybe we don't need even that, Joe. 'Cuz I think we got him this time. I do think we got him."

  Marsh wasn't sure if he really believed that. It was something he had believed several times, and very strongly in the past fifteen years, and he'd been wrong more than once.

  Like the time he'd "tracked" Seth Freeman to a one-room apartment in Albany, only to find the apartment empty. "Ain't no one lived here for a long time," the janitor had told him. "Shit, who'd want to?!" Marsh had been running on his feelings then, his instinct—an instinct nurtured by several years of tracking the man and getting to know his ways and just missing him each time. "He wouldn't mind," Marsh told the janitor. The janitor merely shrugged—This old man for sure had gone round the bend.

  And then, several years later, from a dirt road overlooking a farmer's newly harvested cornfield, he had actually caught a glimpse of Seth Freeman. He was at a distance, it was true, but there was no mistaking him: No other man could move so gracefully, and so quickly, the wildness in him as clear and unmistakable as his nakedness. Marsh's glimpse of him that time had lasted a couple seconds, no more. Then Seth Freeman had merged with the yellowish stubs of cornstalks surrounding him, and had vanished. If, Marsh realized, he had brought a pair of good binoculars along with him and knew precisely where to look, he might have seen the barest hint of a shadow moving swiftly through the field—if he'd been very lucky. But though he'd kept watching for another half hour, Seth Freeman had not reappeared.

  Marsh had caught glimpses of him five times since then.

  And once during those years he had spoken with him—in a little farmhouse ten miles from where he was now. He still called that farmhouse his home.

  It had been late evening. Winter. A heavy layer of snow had built up from a two-day storm, and Marsh had just finished shoving the last of his firewood into the Franklin stove that heated the house (his pickup truck was useless in the deep snow and he hoped that by daybreak someone would come by).

  Very quickly and very quietly, Seth Freeman appeared from a darkened corner of the room. He stood ten feet away from Marsh, who was kneeling in front of the stove. He wore a long gray wool jacket (Marsh thought it looked like a woman's jacket and he imagined that Seth had stolen it), and heavy, Timberland boots that were obviously several sizes too large. He appeared to be shivering. He said, his tone merely one of curiosity, "Why do you follow me?"

  Marsh answered immediately, his voice quivering, "I . . . have to."

  "You don't have to." Seth's tone now was instructional, as if he were talking to a very young child. "You are in the last of your years. Enjoy them while you have them."

  Marsh stood and took a step toward Seth. Seth's face went blank, he took one step backward, not in fear, but, ironically, in warning. "I know what is in your head, and in your heart, John Marsh. You want to destroy me." There was no anger or animosity in his voice—his tone was still one of instruction—but now it was mixed with rebuke. "And you cannot destroy me, unless I wish it.

  And I do not wish it." He raised his arm slightly to indicate the Franklin stove. "I need that heat."

  "So do I," Marsh said.

  And Seth grinned very slightly, with only one side of his mouth. It seemed unnatural—and it was chilling. He said, "I believe there is enough for both of us." Then he backed up several steps, into the darkness at the edges of the room, and was gone.

  "What do you think, Joe?" Marsh said now, and Ire reached over and scratched the dog's ear affectionately. "You think we got him?"

  Joe moaned deep in his throat, in pleasure. Marsh took it as an affirmative, and it sent a shiver of happiness and expectation through him.

  Chapter 28

  In the Bowery

  At the opposite end of the room Whimsical Fatman sat in, there was a huge dark chest of drawers six feet tall and three feet wide. It was missing all but its bottom drawer, and inside that drawer a small, rangy Calico cat had made a nest for itself and its six recently born kittens. Whimsy, in an old gray wing chair, could hear she kittens purring softly. He had the knife that he'd taken out of Merlin O'Dwyer in his right hand, blade pointing downward, and his feet were propped up on the chair's matching ottoman, which was minus most of its stuffing. He was remembering his wife and his children, and finding himself in awe of the fact that somewhere in his quickly atrophying gray matter his son's name still lurked. But he could not, for the life of him, fish it out. He could remember his daughter's name—it was Melissa, a name his wife had chosen, over his objections that it was too "fussy," but which he had slowly come to accept. But his son's name eluded him, and it made him angry.

  He ran his thumb along the blade of the knife, opening a tiny slit in the skin. He studied the finger for a moment, but no blood appeared. Ivan, he thought suddenly. My son's name is Ivan! He chuckled low in his throat; it became a quick, gurgling cough.

  "Ivan!" he grumbled, when his coughing fit finally ended. "Shit! Ivan!" His voice, a low tenor, had once been comforting, almost sweet, but over the years, and after countless gallons of lousy booze had snaked down his throat, it had become harsh and ragged; and now, the Calico cat, hearing it, leaped from the chest of drawers, one of its kittens still clinging to a nipple. The cat ran for the open front door, then through it. The kitten fell off halfway to the door and lay on the scarred old wood, mewing pathetically.

  "Ivan!" Whimsy growled. His gaze settled on the kitten. "It's not 'Ivan,' cat!" The kitten's head bobbed about in a blind search for the source of the voice.

  Whimsy chuckled again, and again it became a quick, gurgling cough, the kind that seems the distinct province of old, unhealthy men and of bums. And when it ended, a name floated up to him, as if it had been anchored under black water and the coughing fit had set it loose: The name was "William, Jr." and it made him angrier still. A loud, brittle curse erupted from his throat, which made the kitten mew more quickly, in panic. And then he let the knife fall over the arm of the chair, to the floor, buried his face in his hands and wept.

  "I am an educated man!" he said into his hands, through the weeping. "I am an educated man!" And somewhere deep inside him, in some small, cluttered back room of his brain, he thought that that fact, the fact that he was educated, was very, very funny, because it really didn't make any difference now.

  The kitten continued mewing. Whimsy continued weeping. At last the mother cat reappeared, approached the kitten very cautiously, sniffed it a couple times, picked it up by the scruff of the neck, in the time-honored manner of mother cats, and carried it back to the nest.

  A half hour later, Whimsy pushed himself, with effort, out of the wing chair, went over to the dresser, peered down blankly at the mother cat and its kittens and said, "I wish I could tell you it's been nice." He left the room quickly, favoring his left leg—because of a touch of arthritis in his knee—and made his way out of the building.

  He wondered about making it all the way to 181st Street, through Harlem, to the George Washington Bridge.

  He wondered how long it would take him to walk to North Carolina.

  He wondered if anyone there would recognize him after so many years.

  And he wondered, most of all, why he gave a damn.

  Chapter 29

  Ten Miles Southeast of the House on the Island

  Jim Hart could smell pungent, Sicilian-style pizza baking and he knew that he was near home because Nino's was just a few doors down from where he
lived. He saw the tip of the Empire State Building far in the distance, the gaudy, brightly lit Con Ed Building off to the right.

  And so, through Jim's eyes and brain, did Seth.

  And Elena too, through Seth.

  Jim murmured, "You can take the city dweller out of the city"—he chuckled quickly—"but you can't take the city out of the city dweller." Dimly, it made good sense.

  Because, dimly, he knew he was not in Manhattan at all. Dimly he knew he was on a narrow path in the Adirondacks, that he was several miles from Fred's car, that all around him, hidden by the darkness, there were things watching him, sizing him up, and waiting.

  He knew all this.

  But just dimly. As if it were some long-suppressed memory from childhood trying to creep back. He knew, much more concretely—with confidence—that he was actually in Manhattan. And that he was near home.

  Seth's big, powder-blue eyes followed the long, slowly merging vertical lines and the contours of the great buildings around him. The lines undulated, as if he were seeing merely some reflection on swiftly moving water. He recognized the buildings. He recognized the city. It was a black splotch on his memory. It smelled bad, and the air moved leadenly about in his lungs, as if it might solidify. It was a place of death.

  Not the kind of death that serves and nourishes the Earth. But the kind that is sudden and needless; the kind that leaves behind it a heavy, and sweltering grief—an emotion which Seth had felt in others more than once, and had found confusing.

  There were a thousand similar places on the earth, like the place which this man—Jim Hart—called home.

  The island.

  Manhattan Island.

  The place which, before the buildings had been put up to cut the sky apart, and before the subways sliced through the earth, and before the dark blanket of streets and parking lots smothered the soil, had been the place of their birth. The place where they had first sprung up. The place which had nourished them, and given them pleasure. And watched them die. And then spring up again. And die.

  The place which, at last, men had found and driven them from and claimed for their own. The place which men had changed into something foul, something that hurt underfoot, and assaulted the ears, and had a strange, harsh unliving pulse all its own.

  "It burned down. It didn't burn up, it burned down."

  And suddenly Seth was listening to the voice of his memory; listening to his "Grandpa" talking to him. Fifteen years ago.

  "Huh?" Seth had responded.

  And "Grandpa" repeated himself.

  "Oh," said the boy Seth. "Anybody get killed, ya think?"

  "You're a morbid sort, aren'tcha?" "Grandpa" asked.

  That had been only minutes before Seth had found out what, and who, he was. It had leaped out of him like a scream, and then had come back on him like a hungry animal.

  He hadn't understood it then.

  It had taken him five years to understand it.

  But he understood it fully now. And he understood that there were others like him. Fully grown.

  The survivors.

  The children of the island.

  The first to whom the Earth had given life, a half a thousand years ago.

  Ten thousand of them, or more, in that first season. And all but a handful dead with the first winter.

  And in that second season, another ten thousand, twenty thousand. Stronger. And swifter.

  In that second winter, all but a handful dead.

  And in that third season, thirty thousand. All but a handful dead with that winter's passing.

  But some had survived.

  Some had survived to this moment. And they were waiting—as confused and as terrified as he had been fifteen years ago—to be told what they were, and what their purpose was.

  Waiting, Seth was certain, to take back the island that had given them life.

  Jim Hart saw faces in the windows to his right and left, faces that were as blank as water. They came and went quickly; they watched for a moment, the span of a heartbeat, then they dropped, as if the dark body beneath were dropping to the ground again. And again. Dropping to the floor of some lousy, cluttered, and expensive apartment—little more than a cell, really, a place to peer out of and watch the taxis go by, and the hookers, and the dealers and users.

  A place to watch Johnny Carson reruns.

  A place to make love. To fuck.

  A place to eat.

  And a place to wait.

  A place on the island. A couple hundred square feet on the island.

  Home.

  Jim Hart began to laugh. Low at first, down deep in his belly, as if his stomach were turning over and complaining about a bad meal. And then louder, so his throat got involved, and his mouth. And quickly it became manic, shrill, and the faces in the windows heard it. The faces in the windows repeated it.

  And a quarter of a mile away, a hiker bedding down in his lean-to for the night heard it. A chill moved down his back. His testicles tightened up in fear. A sudden sweat started in him, despite the cold air.

  He listened for ten minutes, until the laughter slowly faded, and the other sounds of an Adirondack night returned.

  Chapter 30

  The seventeen-year-old trying to force his way into Winifred Haritson's apartment did not mind pain too much. There were times, in fact, when he almost enjoyed it, when he bore it as a kind of badge of honor.

  His mouth, for instance, was an area of agonizing desolation. For the past several years he had been able to eat only the softest and mushiest of foods (though he occasionally braved a Wendy's Double with fries). He was, at the time of his takeover of The Stone, suffering from several virulent gum diseases at once, though he was not aware of it because the constant pain, caused by his chipped and decayed teeth, dominated. As a result of these various conditions, it was not a pleasure to be close to him and to have to talk to him, as did the sixteen-year-old who'd fetched the "can opener."

  Together, they had wedged the huge blades of the awkward device into the doorknob side of Winifred Haritson's door and were now trying to get some kind of bite on the door itself. They weren't having much luck, so the seventeen-year-old was cutting loose with a constant string of spittle laden curses, and, at the same time, subjecting his friend to a virtual fog of disease-caused bad breath. Despite himself, the sixteen-year-old was becoming nauseous.

  You got bad breath—it smells like somethin' died inside ya! he wanted desperately to tell the seventeen-year-old, just as a matter of self-defense. But he knew that the seventeen-year-old would beat the hell out of him for it.

  The seventeen-year-old stopped cursing for a moment. He closed his mouth. The sixteen-year-old breathed a small sigh of relief.

  "This ain't gonna work!" said the seventeen-year-old. "Yeah," agreed the sixteen-year-old.

  "'Cuz you're a pansy!" observed the seventeen-year-old.

  The sixteen-year-old stayed quiet. He lowered his head a little. He tried holding his breath against the fog of halitosis spreading over him.

  "You know you're a pansy, ain't that right?!"

  The sixteen-year-old murmured, "Yeah, I know."

  "Your old man's a pansy, too, and your brother's a pansy, and your sister's a whore. Ain't that right?!"

  "Yeah, that's right."

  "That old fuck inside there—she could probably wipe yer ass all over the street. Am I right? Am I right?"

  "Yeah, Snipe, you're right."

  "Snipe" was the seventeen-year-old's nickname, but he was hard put to remember how he'd acquired it. As close as he could recall, his father—dead several years then—had been the first to use it. He wasn't sure what it meant, but he liked the way it sounded, the pointedness of it, and he thought that it fit him.

  Snipe stepped back from Winifred Haritson's door, leaving the sixteen-year-old to hold up the heavy "can opener."

  "We're gonna wait her out," Snipe said.

  The sixteen-year-old struggled with the can opener, freed it from the door,
and let it drop heavily to the floor. "Wait her out?" he asked.

  "Sure, she's gotta eat, don't she?"

  "Yeah," nodded the sixteen-year-old.

  "So we wait her out."

  "Then what we gonna do with her, Snipe?"

  "'Do with her'? We ain't gonna do nothin' with her. Whatcha think, you think I'm some kind of pervert-asshole?"

  "No, Snipe, I don't think that, you know I don't think that."

  "We're gonna make her sign her checks over. Like all the rest are gonna do."

  "Oh," murmured the sixteen-year-old dimly. "Yeah."

  "And maybe we'll have some fun with her, too."

  The sixteen-year-old grinned expectantly. "Are we gonna throw her down the elevator shaft, like we done with the super?"

  Snipe grinned back. He stayed quiet.

  "Is that what we're gonna do, Snipe? We're gonna throw her down the elevator shaft after a while?" The idea excited him; he remembered the way Lou had fallen—quickly, and solidly, like a large sack of meat, which, he thought, was exactly what Lou had been.

  "Sure," Snipe answered finally. "Why not? We'll throw 'em all down the elevator shaft after a while. How's that sound?"

  The sixteen-year-old did not answer immediately. He was imagining trussing up each of the dozen or so people that lived in The Stone, carting each of them to the brink of the elevator shaft, giving each of them their "last words," and then, whoosh!—tossing them in. "It sounds good, Snipe!" he whispered, as if he were tasting something exquisite.

  Snipe grinned again. The sixteen-year-old stared at the desolation that was Snipe's mouth. He thought suddenly that Snipe sure was a damned beautiful son of a bitch!

  Nine people stood side by side in The Stone's lobby. Most of them were well into their sixties and seventies and they looked very tired and resigned to whatever The Ravens had planned for them. Mrs. Dyson, a thin, balding woman of seventy-two, was there. She'd been coaxed from her apartment with graphic threats of starvation and violence. Beside her stood a tall, silver-haired, and normally very distinguished-looking man named Wanamaker, who had once been a pediatrician. Now he looked decidedly foolish, dressed only in a pair of white boxer shorts and a ruffled white dress shirt (it had been Snipe's idea. For all his shortcomings, he was an excellent judge of the way people thought of themselves. He had seen that Wanamaker thought of himself as "aging and poverty stricken but, above it all, distinguished," and so had decided to take that away from him. He knew that if you took away a person's dignity, you took away his willingness to fight).