On Such a Full Sea: A Novel

by Lee, Chang-rae

  The problem was the money; there was no way they could purchase the inn, not with their pathetic store of cash, not with their car, which wasn’t as good as the one Dale and Landon already owned, not even, they coldly calculated, with their lives, i.e., giving one of themselves over to be done with as the innkeepers wished. Glynnis was obviously not of interest to them but neither was Quig, for Dale and Landon would probably never countenance such a thing, which was not unheard of out here in the counties but clearly not truck for decent fellows like them. The only scenario they could come up with was that Dale and Landon mortgage the business to them and that Quig and Glynnis agree to pay all the profits until a certain sum was satisfied. For as long as they could feed and clothe themselves and maintain the property to an acceptable level, what more could they hope for?

  They slept late and while the others were having the breakfast buffet (freshly baked scones, soft-boiled eggs and toast, good strong coffee), Quig and Glynnis and Trish sat down with Dale and Landon in the office and made their pitch. Surprisingly, it was Dale who was sour on the idea, his face screwing up as they outlined their proposal. Landon asked what they were thinking in terms of a price, but Dale immediately pointed out that they had zero experience and stood up, saying he had to go clear the dining room. Glynnis started to cry and Quig, realizing that within a mere hour they’d be out on the road again, clueless and wandering, said they had no idea and that he should just name one, that they’d agree to anything that was doable. They would work for free while getting tutored in the operation to show that they could do it, clean the rooms and wash the linens and do whatever else was needed around the property.

  Landon asked them to wait outside while he and Dale discussed it. This is going to be history’s shortest conversation, they heard Dale say, as Landon shut the armored security door. They could only hear faint murmurings through the fortified panel but the murmurings went on, taking a higher pitch before they went silent for what seemed a telling amount of time. Almost but not. Quig regarded his wife’s desiccated expression and thought he could see in her widened eyes the darkened wells of their future. But it was also clarifying; immediately he felt that they should quickly gather their things and leave behind forever this lovely but false dream. This was not their station because such a station was not to be bestowed or bought or discovered. It was up to them to fashion one, this was the only way. They would either forge a living according with their character and capability, or soon suffer.

  The office door opened and the two men emerged, Dale going straight for Glynnis and embracing her.

  It’s all yours if you wish, he said, holding her by the shoulders, and seeing her face light up, he embraced her again.

  We will have to discuss terms, Landon said to Quig, who was speechless. Quig needed to pry Glynnis from Dale but she was shuddering with tears of exultant relief and his present resolve was now dissipating in his own eyes that were welling with gratitude and love for his fragile wife. In fact, he was about to collapse fully inside and take her up in his arms when they heard a blast, like a backfire, and then a sharp, yawing scream coming from the other end of the building: it was the voice of the Danish girl, Caroline, whose name Trish now muttered.

  Trish instinctively rose to go toward the ruckus, but her mother cuffed her. Trish begged for someone to go see what was wrong and Quig said he would, Landon already retrieving an old pistol from the office desk and ordering Dale to lock himself inside, along with Glynnis and Trish. Glynnis didn’t want Quig to go but they both knew that he probably should, given what they’d bargained for.

  Landon and Quig stopped and crouched in the corridor before reaching the dining area. Through its wide opening they could see the salesman, or what was left of him, shot in the neck and lower face and slumped backward in his chair. Caroline sat beside him, her face and shirt brightly flecked with blood and bits of flesh, as a lean, bearded young man pushed the nose of a shotgun barrel into her temple, manically threatening to shoot her and everyone else if she didn’t shut up, while his accomplice, similarly scraggly and youthful, picked through the jewelry and handbags and wallets that had been tossed into the center of the table, a pistol tucked into the back of his jeans.

  But Caroline couldn’t stop spastically huffing and crying, and her father, Jørgen, was going on in what came across like a clipped, haughty tone (it was his accent plus high breeding plus extreme duress expressing themselves in this unfortunate way), arguing that the gunman think about what he was doing, that there was no reason for further violence, that they were all “in compliance,” but the young man was clearly drugged up and getting unhinged by the girl’s crying, and perhaps even more so by her father.

  Yo! Didn’t I just shoot that guy’s face in half when he got mouthy? You want to see this girl look like that, too?

  Jørgen said of course he would not, and might have continued had Ursula not told him to quit talking right now or she’d kill him herself, adding that he was already to blame for letting these boys into the building. How insanely stupid could he be! The gunman hollered at her and she insisted she was on his side, and he said, Shut up now! and she said, But really I am! and he said, No, you’re not! and shot her point-blank in the chest, instantly killing her.

  His partner in crime, who was serenely inspecting the loot right next to her, hardly seemed to notice. Everybody else then went perfectly silent, if you didn’t count the crying. And from the corridor Quig and Landon kept quiet, too; Quig, who we must note again was then much younger, and Charter-raised, realized he had lost feeling in his hands and legs, crippling fear as he had never known it. Landon pulled him back into the corridor and motioned that they should retreat to the office, which Quig was all for, given his palsy and Landon’s frozen visage and the fact that Landon was gripping the pistol so tightly it felt as if he might accidentally pull the trigger.

  They got on their feet ready to sprint back to the safety of the office, but Quig stubbed his half-numb foot on the edge of the carpet runner and toppled like a headstone. The thud brought out the quiet accomplice, who walked straight up to Landon with his gun drawn and told him to put his down, which Landon did.

  I think you two own this place, he said, neither Landon nor Quig able to speak.

  It was soon thereafter that everything went to hell. Surely we can imagine how horrible it was, how utterly debased and hideous, the senseless waste and loss that is an ever-present counties possibility and that in one swift, complete act remade Quig. Which was this: the whole dining room was shot dead. Then Landon and Quig, after being badly pistol-whipped, were pushed to the office by the youthful robbers.

  They’re gonna get it if you don’t open up, the hyper one bellowed at the armored door. He had already attempted to shoot out the lock, but it was a custom-made blast door that magically absorbed the pellets.

  Don’t open no matter what, Landon shouted. They’ll kill us anyway, like they did everyone else.

  That may be true, the quiet one muttered. But it won’t be quick. He then took hold of Landon’s hand and shot it, blowing off parts of some fingers. Landon screamed as he fell to his knees and you could hear Dale’s muted cries of his partner’s name. This only prompted the young man to tap the door with the butt of the pistol and say, Listen, and then he shot Landon again in the hand, ruining what was left; the poor fellow wailed again but much more weakly, overcome by shock as Quig braced him.

  Dale was now frantic and pounding on his side of the door. Quig hollered for him not to open it, his fear now replaced by fury, at the marauders but also himself, for literally falling down in every way. He had committed a crime, yes, but it was never one of malice and so what greater transgression had he done to bring such profound misfortune upon his beloved? He had only done fine veterinary work, with caring and integrity. What was otherwise so wrong with his character and life? These were his instant, infinite-sided thoughts while entreating Dale at the top of his lungs, bu
t all at once he was prone, bludgeoned with the butt of the shotgun. He was losing consciousness, the world going milky. The door then swung in, revealing Dale lamely holding a knife, Trish and Glynnis barely shielded behind him. And before he could say a last good word to them, the one with the shotgun stepped over the threshold and began blasting away.

  For us B-Mors it’s difficult to accept such a transformation, being as willingly cloistered as we are, even our entertainments and tours designed to take us the middle distances, the thrums never so intense as to invite anything more than the standard extrapolations. What’s the point? In essence, people don’t want to go too far, at least not for long. It’s too much for the mind. Charters are equally sheltered, but whether they wish to recognize it or not, the native fuel of their society is risk, and when they fall, they fall from heights that very few can survive.

  Fan, gentle-hearted girl that she was, couldn’t bear to ask what the scene was like when Quig came to. She thought she could see it anyway, flashes in the cold screen of his eyes, burned in. For Quig didn’t quite survive, Fan knew that. The robbers left after a futile search of the office for cash, leaving him and Landon alive, he later realized, only because they’d run out of ammunition. So instead they set fire to the inn, Quig roused out of his unconsciousness by the heat and choking smoke. The office, with its tragic hold, was already aflame. He managed to drag Landon a safe distance from the building but realized once in the clear that he had lost too much blood and was dead. Quig lay down again, spent by vertigo, and for the rest of the night felt the heat of everything torching. In the morning it was a stand of char. But his sense of balance was back, and he walked to his car, the keys in his pocket and the contents of the vehicle the only possessions he had left.

  Fan drove for another stretch, having no trouble. But Loreen woke up to see her at the wheel and cried out in terror for Quig, which caused Fan to cross the roadway and head straight at a car that happened to be coming in the opposite direction. Had Quig not grabbed the wheel to make a split-second correction the collision would have been surely head-on. Instead, their front bumper glanced the back end of the other car at an angle that had little effect on them but sent the other vehicle into a wild spin, kicking up a huge cloud of dust before it suddenly straightened and ran off the embanked road, disappearing. Fan slowed down and stopped and looked at Quig, and after a pause, he had her turn around. Loreen was woozy but livid and saying how she was going to throw up any second. They let her out and then drove back to the spot where the tire tracks left the road, and when they looked down, they saw the car, a wagon, on its side in some high weeds. It sat, ticking. Then passengers calmly climbed out of the windows. They kept coming out and coming out, and before they knew it, a near-dozen of them had exited the car, among them a middle-aged couple and an elderly man wearing a tattered straw cowboy hat and an assortment of children of various heights and ages. Save for the couple, who were fleshy and plump though not quite as big as Loreen, they were lithe and muscular, and every one of them wore a clingy burnt-orange-colored overall, some with T-shirts underneath and others with no tops at all, a few of the younger girls included.

  With a nod, the man of the couple acknowledged them for having come back, and as they stepped down the brief slope, Fan noticed that Quig had a small hunting knife tucked in the back of his trousers; out here it was always best to be prepared, especially in a chance circumstance. The couple shook hands with Quig, who apologized for the accident and suggested they set the car back upright to see what kind of damage there was. The man agreed and he whistled at some of the larger children, who immediately took their places about the vehicle and with him and Quig rocked the wagon and gently eased it back down on its tires. There were long fresh scratches on the side of the car but no serious damage otherwise, as it had tipped over and slid a couple of lengths in the weedy vegetation. The man didn’t seem concerned about the scratches—the car was ancient and rusted about the wheel wells—and hopped in to start it. But as much as he tried, it wouldn’t turn over. It was agreed maybe the engine was flooded and they ought to wait for a while, during which time the couple talked with Quig and now Loreen, who had walked back from where she had gotten sick.

  The couple was relaxed and cheerful, not at all as if they had just been in an accident in which they might have been badly hurt. This seemed to unsettle Loreen, who couldn’t quite suppress a slightly scowling expression, as though the faintest funny smell hung about them. Quig mostly listened to the chatty couple and spoke calmly and evenly in reply to their queries. Their surname was Nickelman. Meanwhile the children plus the very old man crowded around Fan; they appeared related enough, their features mostly elfin and birdlike, golden haired to the last except for the old man, whose long bristly hair poking out from beneath his hat was silvery white.

  Because of her looks, they wondered if Fan was from one of the facilities, and when they found out she was, they asked her all about what it was like there, though by custom not inquiring about how she had come to be in the counties with Quig and Loreen, as that was nobody’s business and, besides, wholly moot. The old man said he remembered visiting a B-Mor–like settlement as a child on a school field trip, their group touring the production facility where they made specialty sweet baked goods, things like egg custards and tea cakes meant to be shipped back to New China, and how they got to put on gloves and hairnets and were even allowed to take a fresh warm almond cookie as it came off the line.

  You told us that story like a billion times already, Pappy! one of the little girls cried. Now just let her talk!

  The others chimed in the same. Fan patiently answered every one of their questions about her work and her household and her favorite things to eat and do with friends, leaving out, of course, certain details about Reg or anything else that might reveal her true age. They were genuinely excited to hear about whatever she described, their eyes ready and bright, and their mouths of typically awful open counties teeth all yellowed and crooked or plain missing now agape with the yearning wonder of children. They would have queried her for hours had not the adults begun trying to start the car again. But it wouldn’t turn over, and after some discussion, it was decided that they would tow the car back up onto the road and then to where the Nickelmans lived, which was apparently about five kilometers away. The Nickelmans invited them to stay the night, if they wished, which you would think was not something offered casually out in the counties but which was, in fact, pretty much customary, an odd instance of expected etiquette. Of course, you could always decline, but the offer had to come, maybe because in the complete darkness of the nighttime roads (no streetlights or working streetlights), it was easy to blow out a tire in a deep pothole or, worse, run into a large fallen rock or downed tree, which would leave you vulnerable to opportunistic parties. It was different at the Smokes because that was a business operation and there was no expectation of any quarter. Quig said thanks but no, thanks, that they had camping gear for the night and anyway should drive some more.

  They hitched the Nickelmans’ wagon to theirs with a length of thick nylon rope and all the Nickelmans quickly crammed back inside except for the very old man and one of the boys, who rode with Quig to show the way. They hadn’t seen any houses back in that direction as they’d passed and they didn’t see any now, just the dense, weedy brush and knotty vines that were a pox upon the beleaguered trees with the ever-lengthening season of high heat. At an otherwise nondescript bend in the road the old man told Quig to stop and stepped out. He removed some large fern fronds and pine branches from the weeds, revealing the start of some rutted tracks through the undergrowth. He motioned for them to take them, which they did, and once the Nickelmans’ wagon trailed past the entrance, he replaced the camouflage and then ran up in front to guide them in, going maybe another fifty meters through the vegetation until the tracks opened onto a very large clearing, where there was an extensive vegetable garden and a mini-grove of fruit trees and a wire pen
containing several goats and a chicken coop with chickens loitering inside and out. A stout black and brown rottweiler wandered out to greet them, wagging its tail. The dog followed closely alongside Mr. Nickelman, and Fan noticed the man had a very small brass whistle on a lanyard around his neck. In the clearing there was a pickup truck set on concrete blocks and a washing machine and what looked to be the head of a working water well, all of it looking rustic but still quite orderly and neat. There was also a tiny guard post–like outhouse at the far end of the clearing, from which, when the breeze was right, issued an odor so vigorous it seemed alive. But there was no house.

  The Nickelmans streamed out of their wagon, and without instruction, the old man and the teenage boys unhitched the vehicles and rolled theirs beside the pickup truck. They propped the hood to start working on it, while Mr. Nickelman ushered Quig and Loreen and Fan to one of the picnic tables to have a drink and snack before going on their way. Soon enough the engine was running again and everyone cheered. He nodded to his wife, and she and a few of the older girls walked to the edge of the clearing and then disappeared through an arched passage in the dense, weedy bower of the forest. Loreen asked Mr. Nickelman where they went and he said to prepare a small supper, which didn’t quite answer the question. Loreen then asked what they did for trade and he said they were entertainers; in fact, they were returning from an overnight gig up near Niagara Falls where they put on shows at a big regional fair. They—now really just the kids, each of whom they had trained from the time they were walking—were acrobats, doing a cheer routine with synchronized dance moves and power lifts, throws, and flips. They ended their performances with a medley of old-fashioned country songs. Counties people all over loved their show, and they were paid well, considering, though in the winter there were hardly any fairs and festivals, and they made just enough to get them by until spring, when the bookings started coming in again. They were flush now, he said, not with pride but a wistful relief, the disclosure itself a clear endorsement of the trustworthy character of his guests.