Age of Unreason Read online

  X was my best friend. He didn’t care that I was gay; he didn’t care that I was a fuck-up. But he could just glance at me with that laser-beam look, and I’d catch my breath and the universe would immediately be in a state of upheaval. Since grade seven at Holy Cross, when he introduced himself to me in the school gym at lunchtime. It had been like the moon revealing the sun after an eclipse: it was a big fucking deal for me when we became best friends.

  I loved him and he pissed me off, all at the same time, you know?

  X was Mr. Straight Edge — no drugs, no tobacco, no booze, no nothing. Me? There wasn’t much I wouldn’t snort, swallow, or shoot up.

  Don’t get me wrong: it wasn’t that X judged me, but he also kind of did. It wasn’t that my best friend would act like he was superior or anything like that. But deep down, I think I actually wanted him to judge me, to yell at me. I wanted him to realign the aforementioned universe for me. I wanted him to fix everything. Because I didn’t know how. Not anymore.

  The room whirled around me, a merry-go-round off its axis, the phone on the dirty carpet making that jarring hang-me-up sound.

  I squinted at the little baggie of junk beside it, pondering.

  “Let’s fuck one last time.”

  CHAPTER 3

  X called me back the next day to make sure I was okay. I told him I’d see what I could do about getting home. I’d have to pry some dough out of my dad. He wouldn’t be happy.

  When X told me he was with Patti and Betty in the Kowalchuks’ basement, I could picture it, every single detail. Over against one wall the puny amps the girls had picked up in a garage sale and a near-useless drum kit they’d found on someone’s curb on garbage day. The amps and drum kits were covered in skull-and-crossbones stickers. There were some old Fender copies, too, but they didn’t look like they’d been used in a long time. The Punk Rock Virgins had graduated to better instruments — real Fenders, real Mosrites. Beside all that were some dusty boxes that their dad had brought home years earlier and forgotten about. He was a marine biologist or something. Someone had written “TTX” on the side of one of the boxes, which Sister Betty had actually turned into a song, “True to X”; she called it a funny punk-pop number about her sister’s true love for my friend X. Next to that, an old typewriter on top of some suitcases, and a stack of plain white paper and maybe a box of envelopes beside it. This, I knew, was the typewriter the Upchuck sisters used to hammer out lyrics for their songs, most of which were about feminism. I loved that the Virgins typed up their lyrics. Unlike the rest of us — in the Hot Nasties and the Social Blemishes. We’d just scrawl out some words on bits of paper. But the Virgins — mainly Sister Betty, I think — typed them up and kept them in a three-hole binder. I loved that.

  After occasional fights with my mom, I’d crash on the old couch, the one where X and the Upchuck sisters were probably sitting.

  Anyway, bottom line, I wasn’t there, but I should have been.

  X hung up and looked at the Kowalchuk sisters, aka Patti and Betty Upchuck. They were sitting on the dilapidated old couch in the basement of the Kowalchuk family home on Sandy Road in Portland.

  “Is he coming back?” Sister Betty asked. “Kurt’s coming back, right?”

  X looked away. “He says he is. But he has to get money from his dad first.”

  Sister Betty wiped streaks of smudged mascara from her face. “I can send him money,” she said. “I can wire it to him from the Western Union …”

  X looked at her and shook his head. Sister Betty nodded sadly. “Right. Sending Kurt money directly is a bad idea.”

  “I did this,” Patti said suddenly, covering her face.

  X looked at her, then at her sister.

  Sister Betty explained to X that they’d found out that Nagamo thought she was pregnant. Being a recent transplant to Portland, Nagamo had no other friends in town, so she’d confided in them. She said she was late and didn’t know where to turn.

  Patti told her to go to the Y on Forest. “They’re amazing, and they won’t give a shit that you’re a teenager or that you’re from Canada,” she’d told her. “All you need is what they call informed consent. You’re informed, and you consent. So go.”

  Patti didn’t mention to Nagamo how she knew about the clinic, but X knew. Long before they’d become friends, Patti had been raped late one night near the Maine Mall after she’d finished her shift at the Orange Julius and was waiting for the bus. Two guys had pulled her into their car and assaulted her. When they were finished, they pushed her back out onto the ground of the parking lot, laughing, and drove away.

  Patti had been terrified she was pregnant, so she made the journey downtown twice to the Y and the family planning clinic. The women there had been wonderful and kind, and they were the ones who had finally confirmed the good news: she wasn’t carrying a rapist’s baby.

  Sister Betty said she was a bit surprised when her sister had given Nagamo a big hug. The two had never been close. In fact, when they first met — at the Horseshoe Tavern in Toronto, when Nagamo’s all-girl punk band, Tit Sweat, had been doing a sound check — Nagamo had made a move on X, telling him, as everyone, including Patti, stood at the Horseshoe’s bar, that she wanted to screw him. Just like that. When X didn’t say anything right away — like, for example, “no thanks” — Patti had taken off to stay with a friend who lived in Toronto. Patti at that point had probably totally hated Nagamo’s guts.

  “Does Eddie know?” Patti had asked her.

  Nagamo nodded. “Yeah. He’s actually been awesome. Said he’d back me whatever I decided. Every step of the way, whatever happens.”

  Patti laughed. “Eddie Igglesden — who would’ve expected that?”

  Nagamo laughed, too. “Yeah, from a punk rock drummer from Maine,” she said, “it’s something I never expected either.”

  Patti gave Nagamo the clinic’s address and phone number, and another hug. Nagamo had asked to use Patti and Betty’s phone and called right away to book an appointment for the following Monday at 9:00 a.m., when the clinic opened.

  Patti started weeping again. “Fuck, X,” she said. “They’re dead because I told them to go to the Y. I fucking killed them.”

  Sister Betty got up and knelt down beside her sister and hugged her. X reached over and put an arm around Patti, too.

  CHAPTER 4

  Can a punk rock star be washed up at the age of twenty-one?

  I sure as shit was.

  I mean, there I stood at the pay phone in the parking lot at Huxter’s on Periwinkle, a stack of quarters resembling the barrel of a gun balanced on top of the phone.

  Even wearing my knock-off Ray-Bans, the south Florida sun stung my eyes. I looked down. I was wearing a pair of cutoff jeans and a stained yellow Sanibel Island T-shirt I got for a buck at a tourist trap down the road. Above “SANIBEL ISLAND” I had written in marker “I HATE.” The jeans were too big on me because I’d lost so much weight. As I waited for my dad to come back on the line, I notched my belt tighter.

  It was the second call I’d made to my father. On the first, he’d sounded more sad than mad. As expected, he had politely declined to wire me money to buy a plane ticket. He didn’t say why, and I didn’t ask. We both knew all or part of the money would just go in my arm or up my nose. So, he said he’d try to arrange for the ticket to be waiting for me at the Fort Myers airport. But he needed time to arrange that, he said. I said I’d call him back.

  Between calls, I’d gone into the convenience store side of Huxter’s. Usually, I only frequented the side where they sold booze and where I’d sometimes buy Sibirskaya Strong vodka, the cheapest shit they had. Today, however, standing on the store side, I squinted at the papers stacked beside the cash register. The clerk, a leathery old reptile snapping gum and dead-ending a butt, regarded me with undisguised disgust. She asked me what I wanted. I ignored her.

  I examined the papers instead. There was the Fort Myers rag, the News-Press. They also had one copy left of the previous day’
s USA Today and a few copies of the New York Times, also from the day before. “WHY?” the gargantuan headline on the front page of USA Today screamed: “Over one hundred dead, hundreds hurt in Portland YWCA massacre.”

  The New York Times offered what you’d expect — restrained prose, no adjectives, and the national angle: “President denounces Portland bombing; scores killed or missing, approximately 300 injured.” Their story recounted what the authorities knew, which it seemed wasn’t much. Identification of the bodies was also proving difficult. I shuddered a bit.

  All the papers had run similar photos: just a pile of brick and rubble where the YWCA had been; twisted rebar reaching up to the flat Portland sky like a witch’s fingers; the blackened, burnt-out shells of cars covered in dust and bits of brick. One photo, on the front of the Fort Myers paper, showed a sidewalk with maybe a dozen bouquets of flowers on it. I hurried back outside and into the blinding sun, shivering.

  Back in the phone booth, I dialed the number for my dad’s office at the naval base in Kittery. He picked up right away. “Kurt,” he said, his voice sounding concerned. “Kurt, your mother told me your friend Eddie is missing. Is that true?”

  I didn’t want to cry, so I bit my lip. “Yeah,” I said to him, wishing I was high for the millionth time. “X called and told me they think Eddie and his girlfriend were there for an appointment. They …” I trailed off.

  “Oh … I’m so sorry, son. I didn’t know.” There was a pause, and I figured he was trying to think of something profound to say. Instead he said, “The bombing … it’s … it’s just so … so terrible. It’s just beyond description. My god, who could kill children like that?”

  I stiffened. Children? I hadn’t seen anything about that in the papers. “There were kids, too, Dad?” My voice croaked. A junkie Lazarus.

  “Yes.” His voice was thick. “There was a daycare there.”

  My options at that point were to either return to Motel Shithole and crawl back into the heroin cocoon or get as straight as I could and get my stuff and me across the causeway and to the airport for my flight back to Portland.

  Surprising even myself, I opted for Portland.

  APRIL 14

  Driving up and down their turnpike, smiling up at their cameras, it was like running my finger along the taut belly of the snake. But the snake didn’t even notice, David. It didn’t strike back. It continued to consume its own tail.

  Are they truly this incompetent, Mr. Dennison?

  I was ready to be stopped and detained. I was ready for my close-up, you might say. But the succubus, the gorgon, remained preoccupied with itself. I should have expected that.

  She is the bard’s Queen Margaret, rubbing her hands with the blood of a boy, just as she orders the beheading of the boy’s father. She is Satan’s bride.

  The manuscript is mostly complete, ready to be shared. But they didn’t catch me, so I will stay here in the woods, and I will finish it. It will be addressed to you, for reasons you can guess at.

  There’s still time. For weeks, they’ll be busy building their funeral pyre, the one that reaches to the blackened sky.

  I did that.

  APRIL 15

  Robert Frost wrote about his great affection for the woods, about how they were lovely and dark and deep. They are. That is why I love them, David.

  I prefer them because they are pathless and lonely, like Lord Byron said. I choose them, because of their melancholy and the patches of grace scattered between the trees. I love the broken sorrow of some fallen birch. I want to live a deliberative life. If I do not learn what the forest has to teach me, like someone once said, then I will have never lived.

  So, I am here, in a world where I can breathe, and where I can see with the eyes of a newborn. My lungs are full of the sweet stillness of the air. I will lose the woods, eventually, but not before I grind America’s face into the ashes of their narrow, soulless, stillborn lives.

  I am hunched over this page, sweating, and I am savoring the woods — the only true place for the few remaining men.

  CHAPTER 5

  The Hot Nasties’ practice space — before, during, and after the Stiff Records deal and their too-brief flirtation with punk rock fame — was the basement of a second-hand record shop in downtown Portland called Sound Swap.

  It wasn’t much to look at. It had a too-low ceiling, dirt floor, dirty brick walls, and a broken-down couch propped up against a post. The acoustics sucked, too, and the electrical system periodically whipped jolts of electricity through the crappy old microphones and straight into whoever was foolish enough to get too close to them.

  Present that day was half of the Hot Nasties — lead guitarist Sam Shiller and bassist Luke Macdonald. The Punk Rock Virgins had come, too — lead singer and guitarist Patti, bassist Sister Betty, and the Virgins’ drummer, Leah Yeomanson. Also there was Mike, the big biker who worked as a bouncer at the bar that was the mecca of the Portland punk scene, Gary’s. Mike had been the bands’ security guy, van driver, and occasional roadie.

  X, of course, was there, too. X was the human center of the Portland punk scene.

  X had called around and quietly suggested to everyone that the X Gang needed to gather in the basement at Sound Swap to talk about what had happened. To talk about Eddie and Nagamo.

  Luke had brought along a case of Bud, and everyone except X had grabbed one — X drank cola, never booze.

  It was Sam who spoke first. “Are we sure that they were even there, X?”

  X was sitting on the basement steps, looking down at the tops of his Converse. “Yeah,” he said. “It’s been three days, and still no word from them. Plus, that’s where she told Patti they were going.”

  Patti, sitting on the crappy old couch beside Mike and Betty, started to cry again. Her eyes were red and puffy from crying so much. Betty put an arm around her. Mike reached a big arm across and patted her back. “It’s not your fault, kid.”

  Patti covered her face with her hands and let loose these deep, raw sobs that sounded like they were being twisted out of her guts. “It is,” she said. “It fucking is. I told them to go there.”

  It was quiet again, except for the sound of Patti weeping.

  Luke, sitting on Eddie’s drum stool, wanted to change the subject. “X, man, what can we do?”

  X looked at Luke, his face expressionless. “Not much. The cops told me it’s a recovery. No rescue. They say it could go on for weeks, maybe months.… They don’t expect to find any more survivors.”

  They all let that soak in.

  “How are Eddie’s parents doing?” Leah asked. “Have you talked to them?”

  “Tried,” X said, looking down. “His mom sounded sedated and his dad didn’t say much when he got on the phone. He seemed angry, mostly. I think they’re still in denial.”

  “Has anyone been in touch with Nagamo’s family?” Leah asked.

  Sister Betty spoke, but it came out like a croak. “Patti and me called yesterday,” she said. “They still live at the Six Nations reserve we were at last year outside Toronto.… It was a hard call to make. Brutal, actually.”

  Patti started to sob again.

  “Did the cops say if they have any idea who did it, the …” Sam’s voice trailed off. Nobody wanted to say it: bombing. Nobody wanted to say that.

  X shook his head, his long hair covering his face. “They wouldn’t say. Said they didn’t want to speculate.”

  Everyone had read the papers, however, and there had been no shortage of speculation offered up by “anonymous police sources.” In the Daily Sun, one nameless cop said they were looking at the possibility it was done by some “far-left radical organization,” like the Black Panthers. Another, in the Press Herald, had implied it was the work of an agent of a hostile foreign power, like Iran or the Palestine Liberation Organization. One police source, though, had suggested to the Associated Press that there had been a single witness, a security guard who worked at the Y. And an anonymous FBI source was suggesting that
someone saw a man get out of the rental truck.

  “The witness described seeing a tall young white man wearing aviator sunglasses and a dark ball cap. His description matched that of a young man who had earlier rented a van that matched the description in Newport, Vermont,” our old nemesis/ally Ron McLeod had written in an Associated Press dispatch. “Police are increasingly of the view that the bomber was not a foreign national. He was Caucasian, the source said, but his motives remain unknown.”

  The magnitude of the crime was “well known,” however; it was being called the biggest peacetime mass murder that had ever happened in the U.S. More than a hundred dead, over three hundred wounded.

  “Who the fuck would do this?” Sam asked, not really expecting an answer. “This is the kind of shit that happens in the Middle East. Not here.”

  Patti had stopped crying, and Sister Betty spoke next. “Kurt is getting in around midnight. Anyone want to come to the airport with us to get him?”

  Mike and Leah said they’d go.

  X and the two remaining Hot Nasties shook their heads.

  CHAPTER 6

  The Casco Bay Recovery Center was located on Forest Avenue, just a mile west of where the YWCA had stood.

  For a two-block radius around the demolished, charred remains of the Y, Portland police had set up roadblocks, and the forensic teams had descended on the scene to search for evidence and victims — what was left of them, anyway.

  Betty told me that on the first day, crowds of people gathered outside the caution tape to watch the forensic teams as they did their gruesome work. But the crowds had drifted away. I guess it just got too fucking depressing.