into greenhouse gases. He couldnât do it. The mathematics were beyond him. He drank some more scotch that he did or didnât order and then woke up the next morning on a bed with no sheets.
The smell of re-reheated coffee arose from a machine programmed to begin brewing at six A.M . and it roused him fromanother disturbing dream. Action movies of his own subconscious invention still flickered on his mind. Details gelled into focus. A foreign army had occupied his hometown. Some faceless regiment had appeared by rail in steaming sixty-foot-tall locomotive behemoths as streamlined and fearsome as the Italian futuristsâ protofascist visions. The entire town had been conquered, the women raped and children forced into slavery. Smoke rose from what had been the church he had attended as a kid and where he and Helen got married.
His dreams were getting worse. The late-night alcohol wasnât helping, but neither was its occasional absence. A full month of sleep: that was what he needed. A self-induced coma free from his own imagination.
His eardrums pounded hard enough to drive a galley of rowing, half-naked slaves over the horizon of the flat earth. He spent an hour adrift, clinging to the bare mattress for dear life while the coffee burned again.
III .
He woke up around dawn, or he thought he did. From inside a cloudbank it was impossible to guess the time of day. It felt like early morning, but it was just as likely four in the afternoon. Maybe it didnât matter. Ray had no need to go anywhere or do anything and so spent his first morning at Barnhill in bed. The house creaked and moaned around him. Waves of rain splashed against the windows. He fell back to sleep for another hour. His thoughts turned again to that putrefying animal on his doorstep. He pictured it starting to move and squirm back to life. At some point, he pulled himself out of the dirty sheets and padded downstairs. The curtains were open, but the house remained dark. He balled up some newspaper, got a fire going again, and put a pan of tap water on top of the stove.
He filled a big stew pot with water at the kitchen sink and put it on the fireplace. It would take a while. In the meantime, he went upstairs and turned the bathtub faucets all theway on. If he could carry the boiling water from the sitting room to the bathroom fast enough, he might be able to get a decent bath. He slugged back a dram of scotch while the water boiled. Then he drank another one and carried the pot upstairs. The bath was hot enough to set his blisters blazing, but it felt so good to scrape off some of the dry earth.
The rest of the morning or afternoon or whatever was spent drinking whisky and staring out the windows. That woman who had given him a ride on Islay was right: he didnât need his wristwatch anymore. Time operated differently on the Hebrides. It didnât matter what time it was. Every so often the wind would push the clouds aside long enough to offer a view of the sheep that grazed around the house and were impervious to the weather. It felt so â¦Â so â¦Â
right
to not be at work. Ray could picture the flocks of businessmen and bicycle messengers and nannies back in Chicago racing in straight lines in adherence to the tight ant-farm grid of those claustrophobic city blocks and reporting their precise whereabouts every five minutes to concentric circles of online friends they had never met. He was free of it now. He had sold his truck and everything else he ownedâfurniture, flat-screen, turntable, everything. What he couldnât sell, he donated. What he couldnât donate, he hurled into the dumpster behind the dry cleanerâs. His smartphone was at that moment leaking persistent, bioaccumulative, and toxic chemicals into Lake Michigan.
A shelf in the kitchen contained a row of guidebooks, histories, pamphlets, and a detailed survey map of Jura. The islandlooked to be about five miles wide and was shaped like a
The smell of re-reheated coffee arose from a machine programmed to begin brewing at six A.M . and it roused him fromanother disturbing dream. Action movies of his own subconscious invention still flickered on his mind. Details gelled into focus. A foreign army had occupied his hometown. Some faceless regiment had appeared by rail in steaming sixty-foot-tall locomotive behemoths as streamlined and fearsome as the Italian futuristsâ protofascist visions. The entire town had been conquered, the women raped and children forced into slavery. Smoke rose from what had been the church he had attended as a kid and where he and Helen got married.
His dreams were getting worse. The late-night alcohol wasnât helping, but neither was its occasional absence. A full month of sleep: that was what he needed. A self-induced coma free from his own imagination.
His eardrums pounded hard enough to drive a galley of rowing, half-naked slaves over the horizon of the flat earth. He spent an hour adrift, clinging to the bare mattress for dear life while the coffee burned again.
III .
He woke up around dawn, or he thought he did. From inside a cloudbank it was impossible to guess the time of day. It felt like early morning, but it was just as likely four in the afternoon. Maybe it didnât matter. Ray had no need to go anywhere or do anything and so spent his first morning at Barnhill in bed. The house creaked and moaned around him. Waves of rain splashed against the windows. He fell back to sleep for another hour. His thoughts turned again to that putrefying animal on his doorstep. He pictured it starting to move and squirm back to life. At some point, he pulled himself out of the dirty sheets and padded downstairs. The curtains were open, but the house remained dark. He balled up some newspaper, got a fire going again, and put a pan of tap water on top of the stove.
He filled a big stew pot with water at the kitchen sink and put it on the fireplace. It would take a while. In the meantime, he went upstairs and turned the bathtub faucets all theway on. If he could carry the boiling water from the sitting room to the bathroom fast enough, he might be able to get a decent bath. He slugged back a dram of scotch while the water boiled. Then he drank another one and carried the pot upstairs. The bath was hot enough to set his blisters blazing, but it felt so good to scrape off some of the dry earth.
The rest of the morning or afternoon or whatever was spent drinking whisky and staring out the windows. That woman who had given him a ride on Islay was right: he didnât need his wristwatch anymore. Time operated differently on the Hebrides. It didnât matter what time it was. Every so often the wind would push the clouds aside long enough to offer a view of the sheep that grazed around the house and were impervious to the weather. It felt so â¦Â so â¦Â
right
to not be at work. Ray could picture the flocks of businessmen and bicycle messengers and nannies back in Chicago racing in straight lines in adherence to the tight ant-farm grid of those claustrophobic city blocks and reporting their precise whereabouts every five minutes to concentric circles of online friends they had never met. He was free of it now. He had sold his truck and everything else he ownedâfurniture, flat-screen, turntable, everything. What he couldnât sell, he donated. What he couldnât donate, he hurled into the dumpster behind the dry cleanerâs. His smartphone was at that moment leaking persistent, bioaccumulative, and toxic chemicals into Lake Michigan.
A shelf in the kitchen contained a row of guidebooks, histories, pamphlets, and a detailed survey map of Jura. The islandlooked to be about five miles wide and was shaped like a
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