Shining Sea (20 page)

“
Find
it,” she says, grasping his shoulders, squinting into the miasma.

He squints, too; first here, then there, then there. The rain is still heavy, flooding his face; the sea choppy now, large, spiky peaks. His eyes are leaking water, his own or the sea's—there is so much salt they sting. The only sure thing he can make out is Katie's face, even whiter, now bluer.

“For Christ's sake,” she shouts. “Find it! Do you want to die?”

His body is becoming less and less his body by the instant. Is this what death is like? Is this it? Soon his arms will no longer belong to him. His hands will have stiffened. He will let go of Katie, let go of the waves, let go of his fight. He will float, carried along by his life jacket, until he feels nothing at all, swept farther and farther out into the Atlantic, becoming nothing, finally, definitively, nothing at all.

Katie kicks him.

He kicks back hard. Not against her but against his weakness. He has no idea what the right way is, but any direction is better than no direction. He releases Katie's waist and grabs hold of a strap of her life jacket. Still pumping against the sea with his legs, he ties it to his own strap. The sea is shaking them around, knocking them against each other, pulling them apart, but he will not let go of her. He will not let her get lost. The boat has to be somewhere, and he is going to get her to it.

They swim awkwardly, he dragging, she bumping against him. The rain slows, more a downpour than a torrent. He stops and looks again.

“There!” he says, catching a glimpse of hard against the liquid.

They begin their fight again, clinging to the hope of his miraculous eyesight. That God-given eyesight, which Luke said would get him killed in Vietnam if he let on he had it. Now it will keep him alive, him and Katie both. There's that flash of something concrete again. They struggle on, and suddenly he sees the prow pointed directly at him, Katie, Eamon, and Ghislaine on one side of the boat, Rufus on the other, creating ballast.

“I cannae breathe,” Katie gasps.

They stop for one moment, floating in place, expending only one or two kicks as necessary. Another fifty feet and he and Katie will be with the boat. They will get Katie in first, then Ghislaine, then Rufus. He and Eamon are the largest. They'll have to pull themselves in at the same time from either side of the currach. It has to be soon, though. The feeling is beginning to go in his arms now.

“Almost there,” he says.

Katie's cold fingers press into his neck. “I, I…” she whispers, her voice fainter. Her lips have turned blue. Her kicking is slowing.

“Here,” he says, doing his best to support her. “Kick off your boots.”

“Uh-uh.”

“Do it!”

“Okay. Okay.” Boots off, she throws herself forward. They swim again, battling the disheveled sea. It sweeps them past Ghislaine and Eamon. They paddle and turn. From the other direction, a huge swell, a mountainous swell, lifts the empty currach right out of the water. The currach comes down with a violent punch. Ghislaine is chucked in their direction. Eamon, holding on to the boat by its cord, is thrown backwards and submerged.

He wills Katie the last several feet forward. She grabs for the side of the boat.

Ghislaine splashes up beside her. “Katie!” she shouts. “Katie!”

Ghislaine's lips are purple. Eamon resurfaces, the rope still wrapped around his wrist, his face strange. They need to get back into that boat fast to survive.

“I'm going around the other side,” he says to Ghislaine. “Rufus and I will hold it down, while you and Eamon help Katie in.”

An odd sensation of calm slips over him. Is this hypothermia? The waves are still heavy, the air viscous, but the rain has stopped, and he no longer feels as though he is drowning above water. Rathlin has come into focus, too, not so far off. The storm is ending. As long as they have even one set of oars left, and don't freeze first, they can make it.

He works his way around the bottom of the boat, keeping a careful distance. Without their weight inside, the boat is dancing on top of the sea, bobbing up and down. If another swell hits, he doesn't want the boat to come down on him. He swims hard, and with his last strokes gets around to the other side.

There is no one there.

Damn Rufus! “Rufus,” he yells, “come back 'round this side!”

But he's heavy enough to hold this side of the boat down while the girls climb in the other, even without Rufus's weight to help him. He can do it. He
can
. He lurches out of the water and grabs on to the edge. “Now!” he shouts, putting dead-man weight on his side, pulling down with whatever strength is left in him. He feels a countertug from the other side but holds his own.

Katie's white face flashes in front of him as she flops into the boat. She immediately turns to pull Ghislaine up. All he can see is the broad of her back.

The boat swings precariously back and forth, up and down; it wrenches his arms. Still he holds on tight. Ghislaine's face appears over the side.

She looks down toward him. Her mouth opens in horror.

“Rufus,” she whispers.

He whips his head around. But Rufus hasn't come back to his side.

“Rufus! Rufus! Rufus!” Ghislaine screams.

She stands up in the boat and trips. Grabbing for her, Katie looks over the side of the boat, too. Her broad face crumples. Her mouth forms a wide O.

“Rufus!” Ghislaine screams again, drawing herself back up. “Rufus!”

And, in that instant, he understands.

“Oh, my fucking God.” Still holding on to the boat, he turns southward to scan the horizon. The sky has cleared, and the sea has flattened. He can see cliffs, can make out a white-and-blue striped lighthouse. To the north is Islay. He can't quite settle it in his vision, but he can distinguish the Mull of Kintyre peninsula to his right. And there to his left is the open sea.

He can see everything now. Everything but Rufus.

“He's on the other side,” he says to Ghislaine, as though saying it will make it true. “He's with Eamon.”

Ghislaine shakes her head. She is shaking all over, her teeth chattering convulsively.

Katie's face reappears. “Eamon's arm snapped when the boat jumped. The rope snapped it.”

Rufus is gone. Floating away, swept out toward the open ocean. Had he only arrived on that side of the boat a few moments earlier, maybe he would have been able to grab Rufus and save him. Or maybe it would have been he whose head was smashed when the boat flew up over the enormous swell. Or maybe both of them.

“We have to get Eamon into the boat,” Katie says, pulling on Ghislaine. “Now.”

“Pull Eamon up,” he says. “Ghislaine! You're strong. You can do it.”

Ghislaine nods, sobbing. His own face is soaked. This fucking life. This fucking life. He keeps holding on to the boat, feeling the tug and the jerk, hearing Eamon grunt with pain, until he's the only one left in the sea beside the boat.

Katie and Ghislaine reach their arms down for him.

There are no oars left. They float, helpless, huddled together for warmth, he and Ghislaine on one bench, Eamon and Katie on another, the island within sight but not within reach. All the barrels are gone except for the one containing his guitar, which was strapped down. They are shivering so violently that their bodies sway the currach. He searches the sea for any sign of Rufus, but even if he caught sight of a fleck on the horizon there's no way he could reach it. There's nothing he could do.

Eamon loses consciousness, and he and Ghislaine lurch forward to grab him. “He's gone into shock,” she says.

“Katie,” he says. “Use your body to warm him. Wrap yourself around him.”

He and Ghislaine put their arms around each other as well. Still, he keeps looking. The sea is vast; man is small. But the waves are gone, and the sky has cleared. If Rufus were floating anywhere within sight, he would see him.

“He had his life preserver on,” he says.

“I think he swam for shore,” Katie says. “He went to get help for us.”

He looks toward the shore, hoping to see an orange dot walking along the coastline. Would Rufus have been able to swim all that way? Would Rufus have taken off for help without saying so? Is it possible no one heard him saying so?

He doesn't see Rufus, but he does see a trawler heading toward them.

“Someone's on the way,” he says. “Help.”

Katie nods through her shivering. “See? He's sent someone.”

Their bodies racked with shakes, he and Ghislaine nod back. He pulls her tighter to him, tries to get his arms to work, rubbing hers.

There's no way Rufus would make it to shore without freezing first. There is no way possible.

“He's somewhere bundled up,” Katie says. Clack-clack go her teeth. “They've got him safely.”

The trawler grows larger and larger, pulling up beside them. “That were a storm,” a man shouts, throwing a rope down. “You're lucky to come out of it alive.”

Katie tries to grab for the rope, but her hands are too unsteady, her fingers too stiff. The rope falls into the water.

“Not that you don't look hauf dead,” the man says, throwing the rope again. “Tie your craft up with the rope. I'll bring you into the harbor.”

Katie manages to grab hold. “No, wait!” she shouts, but the man is gone.

“Get your clothes off,” the man says, reappearing long enough to throw down four thick wool blankets before disappearing again.

“We have a man lost!” he shouts, but the man doesn't hear him, doesn't turn.

The trawler's motor revs. The currach tugs back, then starts sliding behind the trawler toward the island.

The sudden fast-forward motion creates a breeze. He lets go of Ghislaine, and together they tug at Eamon's pants while Katie tries to remove his jacket. Once they have him swaddled in a blanket, they strip to their underwear and wrap themselves up. It's not warm, but it's better.

“If anyone could do it, Rufus could,” Katie says.

No one answers. A brittle silence cloaks them.

The trawler brings them around the island to its south shore. Once it's berthed in the Rathlin harbor, the captain reappears from the wheelhouse to throw the rope tied to the currach to a second man on the dock, who pulls them into the shallows. Two more men splash into the water to drag the currach onto the sand.

“Did someone else come onshore?” Katie cries to them, trying to stand up, grabbing the side of the currach to keep from spilling again into the water.

The men stop short. “Wha' you mean, lass? Fra your party?”

She nods, wavering, a tangle of wet blanket. The two men exchange glances. One lifts her up and out of the boat, cradling her as though she were a baby. “These are rough waters, lassie.”

The other pulls the currach the rest of the way onto the shore.

He and Ghislaine help each other out of the boat, clutching their blankets around themselves, while a man wearing a rain jacket bearing the insignia
COMMISSIONER OF IRISH LIGHTS
leans over Eamon's ruined arm, examining it.

“I was inspecting the light at the far end of the island when the storm hit,” the man says, trying to lift Eamon up. Eamon leans forward, unable to find his balance.

“More proof why they shouldn't have got rid of the keeper last year,” the captain of the boat says, coming over to help. “This one goes straight to the pub. Doctor's thare. We'll get the others wairmed fest.”

On his feet now, Eamon looks around, confused. “Have to go for Rufus.”

“There's nothin' you can do the shape you're in,” the captain says. “None of you are fit fer helpin' anyone but yourselves right now.”

“You'll look fer him, though?” Katie says, trembling. “You'll tell the coast guard?”

She looks at Ghislaine, then at him. In her face, he sees what they've left behind: the long days on the boat, the sudden rain, that final swell.

The captain sighs. “Who'll I be looking fer?”

“I'll come with you,” he says, trying to will his rigid limbs forward, to push his breath through them.

“I will come, too,” Ghislaine says between clenched teeth.

“And die in my boat of hypothermia? No. You hae to get wairm noo.”

They all turn toward the sea. Puffins dot the shore, their gay orange feet and beaks, their dandy white chests and cheeks. Guillemots and razorbills sweep overhead, filling the air with the sound of their squeaks. The water is a deep gray-blue, just slightly choppy. An iridescent rainbow lights up the sky in a pastel arc.

He puts an arm around Katie. “Rufus Richardson,” he says. “Twenty-seven. About five foot nine, a hundred and sixty pounds, black hair. British national. Leader of our expedition.”

How ridiculous to try to sum a person up in a name, an age, a nationality. As though the shell of an egg could tell anything about the bird inside it. As though any of those things could come anywhere near to explaining Rufus.

He's led alone to the boat captain's house, a whitewashed cottage with blue shutters and a thatched roof, just off the harbor. “You have a good soak,” the captain's wife, Jane, says, hurrying him into the kitchen, where she has filled a metal tub. “Come out when you kin feel your digits agin. Dinnae worry about the girls.”

The warm water soaks into his limbs. Slowly his body stops fighting. His feet and fingers, his ears, his arms swell, then burn, then tingle. Every few minutes, Jane raps once, hard, on the door to the kitchen and calls, “Are you all right, then?” to make sure he doesn't fall into a stupor. It's dark in the room, despite the late afternoon light slanting through the windows. The only lamp is not lit.

When his body is loose enough, he dries off, drags on some borrowed clothes, and heads for the pub.

Eamon is sitting next to a roaring fire on a chair packed with hot water bottles. A makeshift cast supports one arm, darkening colors spreading up toward his neck. His eyes are normal again, though—quiet and watching.