Far Gone

by Alex Myers

It was a couple of days after the towers fell that Bryan called his brother, the first day that Bryan felt like he could talk without choking up.  Outside, it was beautiful fall weather, just like that day had been.  When Jim picked up the phone with a gruff “Yeah,” Bryan closed his eyes.  The sound of Jim’s voice made him feel alone; he wanted to call anyone else, but there wasn’t anyone else.

“Hey, Jim,” he said, seeing only the red-black of self-imposed blindness.  “It’s Bryan.”

“I know who the hell it is.  How are you?”

Bryan let out a rush of rehearsed lines.  “I’ve been thinking it would be nice to see you, to get out of Boston.  Would you mind if I visited soon?”  The green leaves of a maple rubbed against his living room window as he waited for his brother’s reply.  

“Give me a week to get your room ready.  I’m up to my eyeballs in work. ”

Bryan couldn’t quite imagine what his brother was busy with, living out in the sticks in northern Maine, but he just said, “Okay, sounds good,” grateful that his brother was willing to host him.  

Jim cut in, “By then it’ll be moose season.  What do you say to some hunting?”

Bryan felt his delicate balance falter, his chin quiver slightly, set off by God knows what, the idea of hunting?  His brother’s voice?  The thought of planes and office buildings that he couldn’t get out of his mind?  Moose hunting.    

“That sounds great, Jim,” he said finally, hoping his voice sounded steady.

“Alright then.  See you in a week, bro.”

Bryan folded the phone closed, relieved that Jim hadn’t said anything about the attack.  But of course, it was entirely possible that he didn’t even know what had happened; he lived so far out there, who knew what news reached him.

On the eleventh, Bryan had been gazing through his office window when he heard someone scream.    He ran out to the hallway where the whole law firm was crowded around a TV.  A plane slamming into a building. It made no sense.  Bryan was confused and shocked, nothing more, until the newscaster, his suit not yet covered with dust, gripped his earpiece and ran.  Then the world fell apart.  

That night at home, Bryan sat glued to the TV.  He wept whenever they talked about the last cell phone calls that the victims had made from the planes or the towers.  Then the news reports would shift to analysis of the suspected attackers, and the quivering pity drained away, replaced by rage that also left him in tears.  Jerked around to the edges of hysteria, Bryan wanted to turn off the TV, but he found himself utterly transfixed. 

Bryan left his phone on the dining room table.   His gaze lingered on the flat gray of the TV screen, but he forced himself back to the kitchen, where no screens tempted him to catch the latest news.  He picked up the sponge from the sink and began to scrub the stovetop, scarcely conscious of the fact that he had already scoured this surface yesterday.  His boss had shut the office for the remainder of the week, urging his employees to spend time with their families; the city was a mess anyhow.  Without work, Bryan felt dislocated, adrift.  In a normal state of mind, he never would have called Jim.  But his older brother was all he had left since the grandmother who raised them had died almost three years ago.  Since her death, he and Jim had drifted apart; there was nothing really to hold them together.  But seeing the news reports on the dead and the missing had made Bryan call his brother.  Besides, a week up in Maine would be perfect, Bryan thought.  He could wrap up what was on his desk at work, really clear his mind.  Then he’d be ready to get back into the swing of things. 

The week at work went slowly—the forced cheerfulness, the careful avoidance of all topics that might be sensitive, the jitteriness as plane flights resumed overhead.  Bryan sat in his office uneasily.  The tinted glass of the window no longer felt empowering but exposing; his business suit felt like a combat uniform.  

Early Saturday, Bryan hit the road, Route 95 for over two hundred miles.  Mindless driving, a route he had taken four times a year up until his grandmother’s death.  She’d raised him and Jim in Far Harbor, Maine, a bastion of barnacled rocks, voluminous tides, and utter hopelessness, the northernmost point on the coast.  What a place to grow up.  They lived on the top floor of a small house on Far Harbor’s main street; the ground floor was a dry goods store that their grandmother ran—basic groceries, nothing fancy.  

As a child, Bryan thought that someday he and Jim would run that store.  They spent much of their summers out on the front porch, in shouting distance from the wharfs where fishermen stood and talked shop amidst the stink of diesel exhaust and ancient nets. This seemed like the perfect pace.  But then he went to high school, turned fifteen, and abruptly Bryan outgrew that dream, and he outgrew Far Harbor, too.  Good at school, an avid reader, he looked around one day and realized that everyone else was standing still, talking about cars they hoped to buy, boats they hoped to work on, the price of lobster.  It started as a possibility that became a drive: to get out, to be better.  He set his sights on college, began to envision a career.

Jim had absorbed Bryan’s plans with indifference.  Always one step ahead of trouble, Jim nodded impatiently whenever Bryan talked about the future.  Then the spring had come when Jim was done with high school.  He would graduate in a week and, as far as Bryan could tell, had no plans for the future.  Bryan had been sitting at the table, finishing his homework.  Across from him, Jim shuffled a deck of cards incessantly, dealing out hands for cribbage, then scooping them up as Bryan ignored him. 

Finally Bryan had had enough, “Knock it the hell off, Jim.  I’ve got to finish this.”  He shoved the cards away.  “You might not care, but I want to get the hell out of here.”

Jim dropped the deck on the table and stood up.  “If you’d stop being so stuck up, you’d see what’s going on,” he said.  “You keep busy with your schoolwork.  I’ve got to make ends meet right here.”  He left the cards in a messy pile and went off to their bedroom.

The next morning, Bryan awoke to find Jim already gone and rode the school bus by himself for the first time.  When he got home that afternoon, his grandmother was talking in the store with a clutch of old men who stopped by for no commodity except the day’s gossip.  He slid along the side of the store, heading for the back cooler, and he heard someone mention Jim’s name and Tibbett’s Packing, one of the local sardine factories.  Bryan opened the cooler door, lifted out a soda, wondered what his brother was up to.  

That evening, he waited upstairs for Jim’s return, like a wife for an unfaithful husband.  He expected to see an exuberant Jim, flush with tales of new experiences.  Instead, his brother came dragging home just before dinner, rubber boots slapping on the steps, fish scales glittering in his hair.  Bryan opened the apartment door, letting the light from the entry flood the stairs ahead of him.

“How was it, Jim?” Bryan asked, but he knew the answer from his brother’s tired face.  

“Shut it. I don’t need you looking down at me.  You know what it is.”  Jim tried to push past Bryan.

“I’m not trying to be condescending.  I’m just curious.  How was it?”  Bryan insisted.

Suddenly Jim launched a punch that hit Bryan square in the face.  The two of them tumbled down the stairs, Jim slippery and smelling of fish, Bryan beneath him, helpless to stop Jim from hitting him again and again.  Then Jim got up, stepped over his brother, and trudged up the stairs.  He shut the apartment door behind him, and Bryan was alone in the dark.

Route 95 through New Hampshire.  You blink, you miss it.  Bryan sped through the tiny strip of that state and was brought up short by the toll booths marking the entry to Maine.  It was a sunny Saturday morning and all around him, waiting for their turn to pay the toll, were tourists looking forward to a last weekend before the winter weather set in. Americans hoping for some family time, desperate for a sense of togetherness and relaxation, something that was beyond everyone’s reach at the moment.

Through the tolls, the Maine turnpike began in earnest.  A cluster of exits around Portland and then nothing for a long while.  Jim didn’t live in Far Harbor anymore; he’d moved after their grandmother died, but he still he lived way up north on some property that their great-grandfather (long dead before they were born) had purchased on a lake.

The pine trees rolled by his car window; Bryan found it soothing, empty.  Just north of Portland he saw the first hillside where the leaves had already turned, the birches yellow and a few sugar maples flaming red.  Looking at them, Bryan couldn’t wait to get out into the woods.  It had been years since he had done any hunting with Jim.  Back then, when they were both in school and just old enough to get a permit, their trips were mostly long walks in the woods, patient sitting, and hushed conversation.  They cradled the guns in their arms but seldom took many shots until they got bored and started shooting at random targets.  As the ragged edges of woodlands sped by, Bryan was satisfied with this vision.  Quiet but purposeful time, the peace of nature but also the poise of hunting.  He didn’t want to admit it, but the idea of holding a gun both excited and comforted him.  

Past Bangor, Bryan’s car was the only one on the road.  The familiarity of the drive made Bryan feel as though he were heading towards Far Harbor, that his grandmother would be waiting for him at the end of this journey.  As he approached the exit that he would normally take to see her, he felt as if she were watching him, as if she knew that he hadn’t seen Jim in two years.  His ambition had taken him out of Maine, far away from her; and Jim, still in the same sardine factory job, had been left to care for her. Going home had become a guilt-ridden affair, especially when the last sardine factory shut and Jim was stuck there with a dying woman, running a store in a dying town. 

Bryan jabbed a finger at the radio and set it searching for noise.  The music pushed away the thoughts that had been gathering, like flies on a carcass in Bryan’s mind.  Instead he thought about Jim, wondering whether two years would have changed him and what the lake house would look like. It must be twenty years now since he’d been there. As kids, he and Jim had gone almost every summer. Some uncle who materialized in July or August would come to Far Harbor and pick up Bryan and Jim. The uncle was skinny, a bit twitchy around his mouth. He was clearly more interested in filling his trunk with beer from their grandmother’s store than with either Bryan or Jim.    

As a kid, the ride felt interminable to Bryan.  Up front, their uncle seemed to be of the same mindset.  “East Bumblefuck, Nowhere,” he’d mutter to himself as they passed through a small town, just a gas station and a church.  The road turned to dirt.  The beer bottles clanked together in the trunk.  At the lake house, Jim and Bryan fished or swam while their uncle drank beer, lining up the empty bottles and shooting at them with a pistol.  The boys would float lazily in the water, listening to the sound of breaking glass, which grew more infrequent as the afternoon wore on.  At night, they slept in the loft of the cabin their great-grandfather had built, the musty air rank with the smell of mothballs radiating from their wool blankets.  Jim always fell right asleep, snoring, but Bryan stayed awake, trying to listen for sounds from the lake; the call of a loon or, if the night was really quiet, waves lapping on the shore.   

No, Bryan could not imagine Jim living there.  What were the winters like?  Wasn’t he lonely?  After their grandmother died, Jim had been eager to move out to the lake.  Bryan hadn’t asked at the time, wasn’t sure what Jim was running from in Far Harbor or what he thought he was going to get at the lake.  At the time, he hadn’t really cared; he’d wanted to settle matters quickly, cleanly.  If Jim wanted the rotten old cabin by the lake, then he could take it.  Bryan had work to do down in Boston; he’d driven back from the funeral in a rush, intent on some upcoming case.  Jim’s life was unimaginable but also uninteresting, of no consequence.

At last, Bryan saw the big green exit sign looming ahead.  He steered up the ramp, drove past the few stores that serviced the highway travelers, and then turned on to a twisting, narrow back road. “East Bumblefuck,” he murmured happily.

An hour or so later, his car bounced down the last dirt road to the lake.  The log cabin was still there, its front porch sagging near the shore, and it looked like Jim had built a new garage.  Bryan stepped out and had a sudden urge to kick off his shoes and plunge into the lake, submerge himself, float for hours on its sparkly surface.  

But then he saw Jim coming out of the garage towards him, Jim with a tangly head of hair and reddish beard, Jim with a sawdust covered sweaty T-shirt, wiping his hands on a rag.  

“Bry-bry. Glad you could make it,” Jim said, clasping him in a brief embrace that overwhelmed Bryan: the smell of Jim unchanged since childhood, the scent of fresh-cut wood, gasoline, the sound of his long-unused nickname.  “C’mon in,” said Jim, leading the way to the cabin porch.  

Inside, the cabin no longer smelled musty, which startled Bryan—he had thought the smell was permanent, almost structural.  Jim had left the same Adirondack chairs on the porch, and Bryan could see the old wood-fired cook stove in the kitchen, but otherwise it was entirely Jim’s house.  In the living room, two La-Z-Boy recliners were parked in front of a big TV; in the kitchen at the rear, a microwave and a coffee pot showed signs of frequent use.  Bryan tried to take it all in without seeming nosey or condescending, while Jim kept up a steady stream of comments: “I wired up the electric last year.  Makes a big difference, huh?  I moved that table over from Far Harbor—you remember it?”  

Bryan recalled the cabin as cave-like, perpetually damp and dim, but somehow it was lighter now, and not just because of the electric lamps.  He craned his neck up and saw skylights in the roof.  

Jim smiled. “First thing I did here, practically.  Got up there to fix that leaky roof and put in those skylights.  Makes it so you can see inside.  Kinda opens it up.”

The cabin did feel larger, the opposite of how childhood places revisited are supposed to feel.  Jim went on, “I fixed up a bedroom over the garage for you.  Figured you’d be more comfortable over there than up in the old loft.”  Jim nodded at the slanting ladder that rose towards the loft above.  

Bryan climbed up first, saw the same four narrow beds that had always been there.  “If it’s okay with you,” he said, “I’d rather sleep up here.”

Jim helped Bryan bring in his bags.  As soon as he’d dropped them on the cabin floor he said, “Now that your shit’s unpacked, let’s get going.  I told Joe I’d be over this afternoon.”  Bryan had been standing on the porch, looking out over the lake.  He’d been thinking of taking out a canoe and was annoyed by Jim’s insistence.  

“What’s the hurry, Jim?”  

“We need to get a truck from Joe to go hunting.  Tomorrow’s going to be perfect weather, so let’s go.”  

It was easier to go with the flow, Bryan decided.  They walked to Jim’s truck, which looked fine to Bryan.  The bed was full of tools, a chainsaw, random ends of logs and lumber, but everything seemed to be in working order; the engine started right up and ran smoothly as Jim pulled out of the driveway.  They bumped their way down the driveway and then along an old logging road.  Jim talked incessantly about the projects he was working on.  Bryan had forgotten how much Jim could talk; he let the chatter wash over him.  There was no mention of their grandmother, no mention of current events, just nice and easy.  

After several miles on dusty roads, Jim pulled the truck up in front of a trailer.  Several cars and trucks, even one RV, were scattered around the trailer; a few had four tires.  

“This is Joe’s place,” said Jim, stepping out.  

Joe turned out to be a Passamaquoddy, rather laconic.  He pointed to two trucks parked at the edge of the clearing, both dented and rusty, one blue, one red.  Jim went over and started each of them in turn, driving in small loops around the trailer.  Bryan watched the trucks rattle and wheeze.  The red one had its bumper tied on with rope; both had tires as bald as eggs.  Joe nodded his head, watching Jim drive.  

  “This is the one we want,” said Jim, leaning out the window of the blue truck.  Joe nodded.  “A real beater,” Jim said to Bryan with a wink.  He was grinning ear to ear.  “I’ll lead the way home.  Just don’t rear end me if this thing dies.”

Bryan tailed the lurching blue truck, breathing in the exhaust it belched, wondering what was going on in Jim’s mind.  Back at the cabin, Jim was still grinning broadly, walking around the truck.  “She’ll do,” he said.  “Now let’s eat.”

After dinner, Bryan stood up and stretched. “Is the outhouse still in the same spot?” He asked.  

Jim smiled.  “Brand new outhouse, and the garage has a real bathroom, if you’d prefer, Mr. Cityslicker.”  

Bryan stepped out and walked around the side of the cabin away from the lake.  He saw the outhouse but decided to piss in the bushes.  There’s nothing like pissing outside.

Bryan leaned his head back, looking at the boughs of the pine trees dancing across the blue-gray dusk above him.  Before he knew it, he was crying.  Christ.  These last two weeks had wrecked him.  He was a grown man taking a whiz against a hemlock tree and he was crying, looking at the trees and the stars and the emptiness.  He zipped up his fly and wiped his eyes on the corner of his T-shirt.  Christ.  All day he’d made it—no talk of the planes or the towers.  No terror alerts or false alarms.  No TV news, no radio, no newspaper.  Somehow, he thought as he moved through the thick shadows back to the cabin, somehow Jim knew what was bothering him.  His avoidance of all current event-related topics was not out of ignorance; his ceaseless chatter was an attempt at distraction.  This whole moose hunt was Jim’s plan to snap him out of it.  Somehow Jim knew.  He was the older brother, after all.

The porch light had drawn a few moths, and Bryan stood watching them for a moment before going in. Around him the trees heaved and sighed, waited as if for him to say something.  He cleared his throat.  No, nothing.  So he stepped inside, where Jim shuffled cards at the table, the dinner dishes cleared away.  

“Hell of a long piss, Bry.  Hope you haven’t forgotten how to play cribbage.”  

The TV’s gray screen mocked him from the living room as Jim shuffled and dealt.  There could be war, more bombings, and he wouldn’t know until it was too late.  Watching his brother squint at his cards, Bryan wondered what Jim could have been. While Bryan admired the simplicity of Jim’s life, he was baffled by what it meant and why Jim lived like this.  Maybe it was better than the sardine factory.  Jim slapped his cards on the table, grinning.  And Bryan thought, maybe he’s never been unhappy.  Maybe I’m the one who’s dissatisfied.  

The next morning, Bryan awoke disoriented as Jim shook him by his shoulder.  He saw the murky skylights above him; it must be early.  

“Truck’s all set,” said Jim.  “Let’s go.”  

They climbed into the blue truck Jim had bought yesterday.Yellow foam spilled out from rips in the seat and the floor was littered with soda cans.  Jim thumped the dusty dashboard.  

“A real beater,” he said with approval.  Amazingly, the truck started and they rolled out of his driveway.  

“We’re going to Turner’s Swamp,” Jim said, “You remember that spot?”  

“Maybe,” Bryan replied, unsure.  “What’re we shooting with?” He looked around for the guns.

Jim smiled.  “No shooting today.”

“What?  I thought we were moose hunting.”

“We are,” Jim paused; the truck’s engine pinged and popped.  “Just not shooting.  I didn’t get a permit.  They lottery the permits, so fat chance I’d even get one.  And if I did, that thing would cost four hundred dollars, so no way.  This truck was two hundred—a bargain.  You’ll see.”

Bryan looked at his brother’s hand gripping the wheel, the foggy woods around them.  It didn’t make any sense to him, like some riddle that Jim knew the answer to and was teasing Bryan about.  “Jim…” he started.

“Almost there.”

The truck had no shocks; Bryan felt each rock in the road as if it had been thrown at him.  If someone could be said to drive with a swagger, that’s what Jim was doing, grinning, one hand swinging the truck to avoid the worst potholes.  They crested a short, steep hill and Jim stopped the truck. 

“Sit tight.  I’ll be right back,” Jim said.

  At the bottom of the incline, the road curved out of sight.  Jim disappeared around the curve, and Bryan felt uneasy.  He had imagined a day or two in the woods; part of him craved to be armed and shooting, not sitting in a rattling, smelly pickup truck.

Jim reappeared, moving quickly, making an effort to be quiet.  “We’ve got to be quick,” he said.  From the back, he pulled two helmets.   “Strap it on good,” he said to Bryan. Jim put his on first, then looked at Bryan, who was dubiously fixing his seatbelt.  “C’mon, there’s three of them, so we’re bound to get one.  Set?”  

“Jim…” Bryan began, but his words were cut off as Jim released the handbrake.  The truck lurched forward and Jim pounded the gas.  They plunged down the hill.  The tires skidded and slipped on the dirt.  Around the corner, Bryan barely registered the three moose in the road.  Long legs with knobby knees, shaggy brown coats.  He bounced uncontrollably on the seat as the truck hit a pothole, took to the air, landed hard.  Two of the moose jumped away.  The third turned and broke into a gallop, but Jim bore down relentlessly. Bryan gripped the dash board as the truck closed in, and Jim screamed, “You goddamn fucking terrorist!” his hands on the wheel, setting the course, with Bryan as the helpless copilot.