Shining Sea (14 page)

He popped the tab on another Bud and watched the evening star grow in the waning light, lay back to soak in the warm Southern California nightfall. Only later did he hear what Eugene was really saying:
And I never got picked for any teams
.

It really wasn't a joke that asthma had kept Eugene off every team when they were growing up but not out of Vietnam. It turned out not to be funny in the slightest. The army in Vietnam: the worst team of all.

What happened?
people asked afterward.
Why?
Why'd he
do
it?
Eugene's mother clung to his arm, her worn face swollen from crying:
Eugene must have said something to you. You were best friends since forever
.
You were like brothers.

Eugene did say something to him, something else earlier that same last evening. But not until it was too late did he hear him.

After the funeral, he borrowed a girl's car and drove to Patty Ann's. It was a terrible place, where she and her kids were living. They didn't talk about his plans or about Eugene; she talked about music, about some jewelry she was making, about her sons. They shared a joint and a bottle of cheap wine. But she knew he'd come to say good-bye.
I'll always be your big sister. I'll always be here,
she said when he left. He went from there to the TWA ticket office and bought a round-trip ticket to Paris, because it was the cheapest flight for Europe available and round-trip cost less than one way. The return half of the ticket, long expired, sits at the bottom of his pack.

Over here no one asks him,
What happened?
He's almost learned how not to ask himself.

“Sure. Dinner at seven,” he says, although he has no intention of going.

The sun is still high when he heads back toward the abbey, but a hazy pink film hugs the dark blue edge of the horizon. In June, the sun sets late up here. He passes the four pale green eider eggs, still unguarded. Perhaps a gull caught their mother.

Back in his makeshift bedroom, he lies down and closes his eyes, drawing in the day's tender, salty scent of sea, the flinty embrace of the June sun, the hours of solitude. He falls in and out of sleep, but as peace grows within him so does a hollow feeling. He has no oatcakes left and no food in his room, and he's told the Community he won't be eating with them tonight. Neither of the women he's befriended on the island has invited him around this evening.

On Iona, that doesn't leave many options. There's the Argyll and then there's…the Argyll.

Fuck it.

He draws himself up from his cot and pulls his jacket on.

The air is silvery with the sound of singing from within the abbey. A lone cow lopes its way down craggy Cnoc Mor, the hill behind the tiny island school. He makes his way down and around the short row of waterfront houses. Inside the Argyll, Rufus and the two others are installed around a wooden table.

“Hello!” Rufus says, waving to him. “Sit down! I've already ordered for everyone.”

He slips into a chair at the table, checking to see who else is in the tranquil dining room, evening sun streaking its windows. No one tonight. A plate of mutton pie appears before him.

“What's your name?” The girl in Rufus's group has a slight accent he can't place. She's dark-haired, sleek, and good-looking in an unfrivolous way. “I am Ghislaine.”

She doesn't offer her hand. He likes her matter-of-fact manner. “Francis.”

“Ah, Francis! And this,” Rufus says, introducing the thick-necked, flat-headed boy who completes their trio, “is Eamon. Eamon from Belfast.”

Eamon nods at him.

“So, Francis,” Rufus says, “you are wondering what we are doing on Iona.”

“No, not really,” he says, cutting into his pie. “Lots of people come to Iona.”

“Last December,” Rufus says, “right after the Harrods bombings, I woke up, made a cup of coffee, and thought: this is madness. We need to reach out across the water.”

Rufus stops and looks at him expectantly.

He swallows a forkful of warm, savory pie. It's good—better than good. Surely worth having to sit through this.

“
Across the water!
We're going on a mission of conciliation,” Rufus says, “one that we hope will be heard by both Protestants and Catholics, by both Ireland and the UK—by the world, even. Next weekend is the anniversary celebration of Columba's arrival in Scotland. We're going to undertake his two-hundred-kilometer journey
in reverse,
from Iona to Northern Ireland. The twist is that half of
our
crew will be Catholic and the other half Protestant. You see the symbolism, I'm sure. We're pulling
together
. I've had an old currach shipped, refitted, and kitted out here on Iona, and we've been training in another one off the coast of Devon. And—very important—I've reached out to as many newspapers and television stations as possible. Maybe you've even heard about us.”

He's seen a currach. It stuck with him because it seemed such an unlikely sea vessel—something between a rowboat, sailboat, and canoe. These three red-jacketed knuckleheads are going to row all the way from Iona to Northern Ireland, over open sea, in a boat that's little more than a wooden butter dish?

He shakes his head. “No. I haven't heard anything.”

“The thing is,” Rufus says, unfazed—it's hard to imagine what would faze Rufus—“we have a little problem.”

“Not so little,” Ghislaine says.

“We've lost one of our crew members,” Rufus says. “Our Irish Catholic.”

He lays his fork down.

“It was a bit of a freak accident. We were training in a borrowed boat in Oban yesterday. He slipped on a mound of harvested seaweed and knocked his head against a pier. He's laid up in a hospital bed for the foreseeable future.”

Rufus stops again to look expectantly at him.

He picks his fork back up. “Must have been a nasty fall.”

Ghislaine frowns. “Rufus insisted we continue on to Iona. He said he was sure something would come up.”

“And by God, it has!” Rufus says. “Will you believe this, Francis? Our lost crew member is six foot one and weighs one hundred and eighty pounds. Exactly. You'll fit his kit perfectly.”

He wipes his mouth with his napkin. As he inclines his head, he catches sight of Moira—or Muira?—walking into the kitchen. The one who isn't a postmistress. She flashes him a glance before disappearing behind the kitchen door.

“
You're
Irish-American,” Rufus says. “It isn't Irish-Irish, but it's close. You look very fit. You obviously have no commitments to keep you from stepping into the boat when we push off tomorrow morning—you wouldn't have been sitting out there in the middle of the day playing your guitar if there was someplace you had to be.”

He takes a last bite of the mutton pie. The meat falls apart on his fork, soft and tender. He tears off a piece of bread and mops up the remains of the cheddar–mashed potato topping, gravy squeaking up over the all of it. Perhaps Moira/Muira is waiting in the kitchen, hoping he'll leave with her. Suddenly, there isn't anything he wants less. What's more, for reasons he can't quite put his finger on, the idea of Rufus seeing him leave with her turns his stomach.

“Well, that was good,” he says. “Thanks for the meal. Best of luck on your journey.” He squeezes his napkin into a ball and drops it on the table. Maybe he can sneak out before she comes back.

“I do not think he is interested,” Ghislaine says.

“Where are you from?” he asks her.

“Bordeaux, in western France,” she says. “My family has owned vineyards there for centuries. We're Huguenot,” she adds. “That means I am Protestant. That's how I can add the second Protestant to the crew.”

“You are a sailor?”

She smiles, catlike. “I have a wall of trophies at home.”

“Of course he'll do it,” Rufus says. “We'd have to cancel otherwise. And look at him. Not just the right size, the right religion, and available, but
beautiful
. It's like a gift dropped right down from the skies. They'll put him on the front page of the
Times,
the
Guardian,
and the
Daily Mirror
. He looks like a rock star.”

“I don't want my photo on the front page of the
Times,
” he says. Georgina doesn't read the
Times
or the
Guardian
and certainly not the
Daily Mirror,
and no one reads any of them in the United States. But someone who does might recognize him. Not that he's an outlaw. He just likes to live under the radar. That's his way.

Ghislaine tilts her heart-shaped face to one side. Her hair, black and straight, cut along the length of her jaw, swings against her pointy chin. “No. Not a rock star. Jesus, maybe.”

“Well, isn't that what the handsome rock stars look like? Jesus Christ with a hard-on?” Rufus says.

“You're an ass,” he says.

“Come on, man. Don't be offended. It's a good thing.”

“Oh, for Christ's sake, show some fucking class.”

At this, Rufus and Ghislaine burst out laughing. Eamon says nothing. God only knows how Rufus bullied
him
into being part of this venture.

Through the kitchen door, Moira/Muira reappears. As far as he's heard, she doesn't work in the restaurant, but she fiddles with the salt and pepper on an empty table until she catches his eye. He shakes his head. She returns the salt and pepper to their places and slips back into the kitchen.

“Nice people on this island,” Rufus says, watching. “Friendly.”

“Nice enough.” He can't leave, with Moira/Muira hovering. How the hell can he not even remember which one was named what? The two of them weren't
that
much alike. Truth is, he decided he couldn't be bothered and never even tried. “You know, I saw the three of you boarding in Mull this morning. I thought you were Jesus freaks.”

“You saw us all the way from Iona? You could make us out?”

He shrugs. “Yeah.”

Rufus and Ghislaine exchange looks.

“Francis,” Rufus says, “I thought you're a pacifist. Isn't that what you told me down at the seashore this morning? You would never hold a gun because you are a pacifist?”

Moira/Muira on one side. Rufus on the other. Eugene would have had a field day with a predicament like this. So would Georgina, for that matter—she's the only other person he's ever known with an equal appreciation for irony. Maybe Molly.

“And what of it?” he says. “I don't need to prove it to you.”

“No. Not to us. But how about to the world? Or prove it to yourself. Or don't prove it to anyone and just come along for the hell of it. Come along because it will be a great story to tell your children someday. We're going to do something really important together, something you'll remember all your life.”

“Maybe I don't need to do something important I'll remember all my life. Maybe I'm not looking for that. Anyhow, I don't know anything about the sea. I've probably never even rowed a boat.” He looks at his hands, tries to remember if they've touched oars. “This is just stupid.”

“You look strong,” Ghislaine says. “You work in manual labor?”

“Trust me, man,” Rufus says. “We know what we're doing, and we will carry you. You just give us your body and your looks.”

It's like being punched in the gut. When he first discovered girls and what he could do for them, he felt like a wizard. Every encounter felt like a little miracle, an escape to a place where no one could catch him. He was set free and, at the same time, made powerful. Almost like a hero. That was a long time ago now, though.

The emptiness of his life hits him with the force of a heavy wave. Here he is, in his thirties, tossed about like dreck on the sea, sleeping wherever he can find a welcome pillow, fucking women whose names he can't even keep straight. What the hell does that make him? Whom is he kidding? No one would recognize him. He's not anyone's memory.

Rufus's and Ghislaine's faces look so hopeful. If he's nothing more than a body, maybe it is time to find a better use for it.

Except—they'll end up in Northern Ireland, where they pop bombs off like they're lighting candles on a birthday cake. They killed fifteen in one day three weeks ago.

If he's going to be flotsam, at least he doesn't need to wash up on
those
shores.

He rises. “Sorry, man. The world needs people like you. Sincerely. People ready to get involved. It's just not my bag.”

Rufus stands up, too. “Are you scared?”

From behind the kitchen door, Muira/Moira reappears. Their waitress follows close behind her. They pretend to fuss over the salt shakers again, but the waitress is a bad actress. He can feel her give him a careful once-over.

“Okay,” he says, because fucking fuck.
Fuck.
“When and where?”

At 2:50 a.m., the water is shiny and black, and the white trim along the boat's top edge reflects the rays of the moon. There is no sound apart from the voices of Rufus and the man who refitted the boat, come down to see them off, and the rippling of water. They need to depart just before high tide at 3:29 a.m.; his pack was bundled, his sailing attire in order, and his guitar enveloped in a plastic sleeve within a large plastic barrel before he had time to think twice about having agreed to the journey.

I won't get to tell the groundskeeper at the Community I'm off.

They'll be following you via the news,
Rufus said.
They'll be cheering for you.

You can send them a postcard from Northern Ireland,
Ghislaine added, with an edge that lets him know she realizes he's not the type to send postcards.

The boat is about twenty-five feet long and narrow, with high sides and one blunt and one upturned pointy end. It slides sideways in the water while Ghislaine restrains it with a rope and Eamon trundles small plastic barrels containing their clothes, rain gear, and sleeping bags out of a cart, setting one under each of four wooden benches. Another, medium-sized barrel, with food, tools, and cooking supplies, goes in the blunt end of the boat, by a fifth bench without a foot brace. A larger barrel holding his guitar is tied down in the other, pointy end of the boat. The mast for the sail, plus what looks like a spare oar, lies lengthwise atop the benches, along one side.