The Year's Best Science Fiction, Vol. 20

Lanark had lurched to his feet and was staring out into the storm, and I guess he was thinking how he could have made a try of it in the Sada if she hadn’t been rotting up on sawhorses ever since he’d lost his arm. Miss Harlan had put her fingers in her ears and was rocking back and forth, and I didn’t blame her; she didn’t take death too well. I was crying myself, and so was Aunty Irina, wringing her hands, and she was staring up at Uncle Jacques with a pleading look in her eyes but his face was set like stone, and he was just shaking his head. They murmured back and forth in what I guessed was their language, until he said “You know we can’t, Rinka.”

He sat her down and put his arms around her to keep her there. Lanark and I took a couple of lanterns and went out into the street, but the wind nearly knocked us over and there was nothing to see out there anyway, not now. We got as far as the path down the cliff before another burst of lightning showed us the sea coming white up the stairs, and the old platform that had been below torn away with bits of it bobbing in the surge, and the spray jumping high. I think Lanark would still have tried to go down, but I pulled him away and the fool paid attention for once in his life. Coming back I near broke my leg, stepping in a hole where a plank was gone out of the sidewalk. We were gasping and staggering like we’d swum a mile by the time we got back up on the porch here.

It was lovely warm in the bar, but the voice on the radio had stopped. All that was coming through the ether now was a kind of regular beat of static, pop-pop, pop-pop like that, just a quiet little death knell.

I said, “We all need a drink,” and poured out glasses of applejack on the house, because that was the only thing on earth I could do. Miss Harlan and Lanark came and got theirs quick enough, and he backed up to the stove to warm himself. Uncle Jacques let go of Aunty Irina and stood, only to have her reel upright and slap him hard in the face.

He rocked back on his heels. Miss Harlan was beside her right away, she said, “Oh, please don’t-it’s too awful-” and Aunty Irina fell back in her chair crying.

She said she was sorry, but she couldn’t bear sitting there and doing nothing again, when somebody might have been saved. Lanark and I were in a hurry to tell her that nobody could have done anything, that we couldn’t even get down into the cove because the stairs were washed out, so she mustn’t feel too bad. Uncle Jacques brought her a glass, but she pushed it away and tried to get hold of herself. Looking up at us as though to explain, she said, “We had a child, once.”

Uncle Jacques said, “Rinka, easy,” but she went on:

“Adopted. My baby Jimmy. We had him for eighteen years. He wanted to enlist. We thought, well, the war’s almost over, let him play soldier if he wants to. He’ll be safe. There wasn’t any record-but we didn’t think about the Spanish influenza. He caught it in boot camp in San Diego. Never even got on the troop carrier. They had him all laid out in his uniform by the time we got there… Only eighteen.”

Real quiet, Uncle Jacques said, “There was nothing we could have done,” as though it was something he’d repeated a hundred times, and she snapped back:

“We should never have let him go! Not with that event shadow-” And she started crying again, crying and cursing. Miss Harlan offered her a handkerchief and got her to drink some of her drink, and when she was a little calmer led her off to the ladies’ lavatory upstairs to powder her nose. They took one of the kerosene lanterns to find their way, because it was pitch-black beyond the bar threshold. A fresh squall beat against the windows, sounding like thrown gravel.

Uncle Jacques dropped down heavy in his seat, and gulped his drink and what was left of Aunty Irina’s. Lanark drank too, but he was staring at Uncle Jacques with a bewildered expression on his face. Finally Lanark said, “Your kid died during the war? But… how old are you?”

And I thought, oh, hell, because you couldn’t trust Lanark with a secret when he drank; that was why we’d never told him the truth about Uncle Jacques and Aunty Irina. Uncle Jacques and I looked at each other and then he cleared his throat and said:

“Irina was talking out of her head. It was her kid brother died in boot camp. We did adopt a baby once, but he died of diphtheria. She went a little crazy over it, Lanark. Most times you wouldn’t know, but tonight-”

“Oh,” said Lanark, and I could see the wheels turning in his head as he decided that was why Uncle Jacques and Aunty Irina lived up there alone on Gamboa Ridge, and never had visitors or went up to the city for anything.

I said, “Have another drink, Tom,” and that worked like it always did, he came right away and let me fill his glass up. It never took much to get that man to stop thinking, poor thing. Just as well, too.