Mr. Cannyharme: A Novel of Lovecraftian Terror by Shea Michael

Author:Shea, Michael
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Hippocampus Press
Published: 2021-08-20T00:00:00+00:00

XVI

Reminiscences

Britt and Aarti have spent the day together—much of it sleeping in the sun on the grass of Dolores Park, and the rest of it walking around the city, Britt pointing out, as to a small apprentice vagabond, all her little routes and havens, all the little tricks and techniques essential to a streeter’s life. A phone call to Marni, when night had fallen, directed them here.

They’re out on the bayside patio of the Mission Rock Café. Dinosaurian cargo cranes unload a freighter docked downshore of them, arc-lights blooming around the work as night falls on the Bay. The City’s all lights now too, and the Bay Bridge, a river of headlights, marches titanically across the water to Treasure Island and beyond. The girls are on the bench by the patio’s railing, Britt with an arm around Aarti against the growing chill. That freighter’s black hull looks ten stories high, and the Bridge’s piers twenty higher still. Britt feels desolated by the brutal vastness of the world—all stone and steel, all cruel heights and abysses. Is it really just people controlling all this colossal machinery, just pint-sized men and women? Where do they get the courage? A few yards downshore of the patio is a series of corpse-piers, skeletons missing half their planks. Perched here and there on them, lone fishermen sit with their lines in the water. These people are more on Britt’s pathetic scale. She picks her way among the world’s big bones, staying low and sticking to the waste areas, finding little perches—and now she has this girl to look out for.

At least tonight they have a protector. Marni’s behind the bar inside—easily spotted through the window because her billowing Hawaiian shirt is a riot of color. It’s all macaws, palm trees, pineapples, seashells, monkeys in screaming colors. It hides her big breasts, probably still hides that pistol too in the back of her belt, but it is definitely not a hideaway shirt. It’s an up-yours-buddy shirt. She and the blue-collar crowd she’s serving seem to get along fine.

“Brittany?”

“Yeah, hon?”

“Brittany . . .” Britt knows what’s coming before the kid gets it out. “I’m so afraid.”

Britt hugs her a little tighter, but her own fear is coming up fast, along with exhaustion and resentment. What does this kid want from her? All day long, Britt hasn’t popped one pill. And now, getting on for eleven p.m., all she craves is a bit of a blankie to wrap around her cowardly heart. Surely, for the deep of night, she has a right to that much.

But the kid can’t let it go. “I want to help them, but I’m too much of a coward to help them. I’m too afraid to go back there.” Her voice is wavering and she’s spilling tears, but she’s still holding on, not letting the sobs break out. To the shame of craving her pills as the child weeps, Britt adds a new shame: that the child weeps for those she loves, and all her life Britt has only wept for herself.

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