On Such a Full Sea by Chang-rae Lee Read Free Book Online

out the contours of his face under the dark shadow of his baseball cap’s bill. He was bearded and had a wide frame to his jaw, and his nose looked like it had been broken multiple times, and the expression in his eyes was that of someone who has seen the worst of this life and would not be disturbed to see whatever measure more.
    Let’s go! We have another three hours’ driving at least, and I’m starving!
    Be quiet, Loreen.
    Something in his tone silenced her, and when he reached down to Fan with his rough-hewn hands, both the woman in the car and Fan flinched, for what he might do. But instead he cupped her beneath the knees and arms, and lifted her swiftly enough that she didn’t have time to resist. With one arm holding her, he lifted the rear hatch of the station wagon and then laid her in beside a greasy tangle of ropes and tools. She tried to kick at him but a shot of pain in her thigh practically choked her and she lost consciousness as he shut the tailgate.
    When she came to, it was darkest night. They were still driving, a bump or deep rut having jarred her awake. The car air was humid and smelled of mildew and chain oil and of the two counties people, who didn’t wash as regularly as B-Mors, their clothing as well as themselves. Their odor was so keen and alive it was as though they were twinned and sitting on either side of her. Plus, everything was damp where she lay because of her soaked clothes and the steady drip coming from the top of the tailgate. Her right leg felt like a twenty-kilo sack filled with broken glass but it was her head that hurt even more, the whole side of her face clanging with every mar in the road. She told them she was going to be sick and the woman cursed her but the car braked and the man opened the hatch and tugged her by the hair so she could throw up onto the ground. She splashed his boots but he didn’t seem to care. When she was done, he shoved her back in and Fan fell again into a daze as they drove on in the steady rain northwestward, up and through the lightless hills, toward where once Maryland had become West Virginia had become Pennsylvania, a huge swath of open counties land where no B-Mors have ever gone.
    Their destination was the hilly, sparsely populated “county” referred to as the Smokes. We did not know about it then but of course do now. The origins of the name are unclear, but most say that it derives from the name of a once prominent local family, Smolk, whose people used to own a great deal of the land and many various small businesses; others simply point to the fact that nearly every present inhabitant, whether adult or child, smokes a locally cultivated weed that is supposedly a powerful antioxidant; the rest will note the prevailing practice of cookery there, which is to smoke everything they eat, and even drink, the favorite beverage being a homemade beer made from smoked grains.
    The drive that night took longer than even Loreen had estimated due to their having to take detours around impassable roads, and it felt to Fan, drugged by an injection that Quig administered mid-trip when she could not stop moaning—and then shouting—from the sawing pain in her thigh, that it was a journey of days. For someone born and raised exclusively in B-Mor, there’s really no occasion for making trips of such duration, and it’s amazing to consider that this was the circumstance of her first true venture beyond the gates: sopped to the core, a ringing in her ears, perhaps a hairline fracture in her hip or leg, and being taken by strangers to a place that promised only hardship, or worse.
    And enveloped in the strange, cool oil of the man’s drug, Fan must have dreamed. She dreamed hard and vividly, as we have, that the thick ropes on which she lay were the fronds of a sea plant that ensnared her as she drifted to the bottom, this willowy tangle of arms that now cradled and fed her. Kept her alive. There was a taste in her mouth like sour almonds. She nestled