Read Generation Loss for Free Online Page B

splinters your sensorium. All I knew was that it was
midmorning of a November day, and I was fucking freezing.
    Somehow
it had never crossed my mind that it might be cold. Back in the city it was
Indian summer. Here it felt like midwinter. Even with the heat cranked, the
little Ford Taurus exuded only a thread of warmth that smelled of antifreeze.
The rear windows wouldn't close completely, and frigid air whistled through.
    By
the time I was fifty miles north of Portland my hands were numb. I pulled over
and rummaged through my bag, pulled on a long-sleeved T-shirt, a moth-eaten
black cashmere sweater, my battered motorcycle jacket. I replaced my sneakers
with my old black cowboy boots. This was my entire wardrobe, except for socks
and underwear, another T-shirt, and a backup pair of black jeans nearly
indistinguishable from the ones I'd blown a small fortune on.
    I
had no gloves, no boots save my ancient Tony Lamas, no winter coat. Over the
years, I'd spent a few Thanksgivings with my aunt's family in Boston, chilly
days, nights warmed by firelight and Irish Mist. I figured Maine would be like
that. I was wrong.
    I
drove for another hour before forcing myself to stop and eat at a convenience
store. A table full of old men in flannel shirts and Carhart jackets glanced up
when I entered then returned to low conversation. There was a sheet of orange
poster board behind the cash register, two columns neatly written in Magic
Marker:
     
Jeff
Stonestreet
Buck
Missy
Weed
Buck
Brandon
Johnston
Doe
Barbara
Johnston
Buck
Wallace
Tun
Doe
    "Hunting
season?" I asked as I handed over my money. The girl behind the counter
stared at me. "That's right." I bought a pair of heavy yellow work
gloves. They made my hands feel clumsy and thumbless, and they weren't even
very warm. But they were better than nothing. I bought a beer, too, then
started for the door. There were a bunch of notices tacked to it: snowplowing,
firewood, Little Munchkins childcare, along with numerous photocopies for Lost
Cats. Beneath the missing cats, someone had taped another photocopy, of a young
man in a Nike T-shirt and woolen watch cap.
    HAVE
YOU SEEN MARTIN GRAVES? LAST SEEN AUGUST 29 SHAKER HARBOR REWARD FOR INFORMATION
PLEASE CALL 247-9141
    I
returned to the car, sat inside and drank my beer, watching as two guys in
orange vests wrestled a buck from their pickup and weighed it on a hook outside
the store.
    "Supposed
to have snow up to Calais," said one of them.
    His
friend lit a cigarette. "Good place for it."
    I
set my empty bottle on the ground and drove off.
    The
road began to veer east. After two wrong turns, I realized the MapQuest
directions Phil had given me were useless. I pulled over and opened my map.
    On
the page, the road appeared to hug the coast. In reality the sea seemed distant
and ghostly, hoving in and out of sight like mist. Now and then I saw the raw
wood scaffolding of a McMansion-in-progress, its mammoth exoskeleton dwarfing
the trailers and modular homes beside it, or mobile-home churches with signs
reading DON'T WAIT FOR 6 STRONG MEN TO TAKE YOU TO CHURCH. TO BE ALMOST SAVED
IS TO BE TOTALLY LOST.
    But
after a while, even these reminders of the encroaching world disappeared. I
finally found the turnoff and passed through a town consisting of a general
store with a single gas pump, a shuttered antique shop, and an abandoned gas
station. Two boys in baggy pants and T-shirts were riding a Toro lawn mower
down the middle of the street. The boys pulled over to let me by, and I turned
onto a pocked road with a sign that said PASWEGAS COUNTY LINE and another
marked BURNT HARBOR.
    That
was when I really began to feel like I was driving off the end of the earth.
Now, at last, there was the ocean. The coast fell away and the sea opened like
a huge blue eye, lashed with black islands and rocky outcrop-pings. I switched
the car radio on and picked up a weak signal that seemed to come and go with
the waves, an alternative station playing snatches