Seven Letters

by J. P. Monninger

  “That would be fine. How’s this for your breakfast?”

  “Lovely.”

  “Did you see Gran cast bread upon the water? She’s an old witch, my gran.”

  “She loves her grandson. Loves him more than she could bear if she lost him.”

  He nodded at that. Then he served me breakfast at the wheel. This is how it’s going to be, I realized now. We were going to travel, and see, and watch, and look at the land from the ocean. We had made our own island, an island so perfect we needed next to nothing from the world.

  When we finished breakfast, Ozzie cleaned up and then took the wheel back. The sun had risen in the sky and the heat of the day had begun. We passed a pod of seals, then watched a flock of guillemots or gannets diving into the sea. The breeze ruffled Ozzie’s hair and I watched him and felt a gush in my stomach for how handsome he was. My handsome, handsome husband.

  “It’s a mad, mad plan,” I whispered to him as I hugged him from behind.

  He took my hand and kissed it. We traveled east with the wind and the sea carried us softly away from the sun.

  THIRD LETTER

  My Darling Husband:

  Don’t be cross with me when you see I haven’t written a proper log after breakfast. I am too in love with you to write down what we had for breakfast, or how many miles we travel at what speed. I will be better in the future, I promise, but right now I want to tell you how much I love you and why and what it feels like to stand beside you and pilot this boat around our beloved Ireland. We have a mad, mad plan, we two, and my plan is to stay next to you and form a life that will satisfy us both. Thrill us both.

  This lovely boat is our island. If we were wise, we would never leave it. We should stay here under the sea’s spell and refuse to touch ground ever again. You knew that. You gave it to both of us. We married on Skellig Michael and the sea was our priest.

  I know I am ridiculous sometimes when I fall into these moods of love. I almost can’t bear what I feel for you. Even this note is too flowery. You will laugh at it, and laugh at me, but my heart feels like it wants to burst when I am with you.

  I feel sometimes we have a small creature between us—not Gottfried, although I love him, but something small and more delicate, a tiny goat or a dove—and that we must be careful to treat it properly, to avoid inadvertently stepping on its limbs. I’ve lost my mind, I know, but I hope you see what I mean. Neither one of us contains our love, but we share it as we would the care of that small animal, so that it trails after us and depends on us and waits to come forward. I don’t know what I am saying. Forget the animal. This is supposed to be a log. We are going east and then north, and the current will carry us northward at least for a time. You said that. Underneath us the sea is urging us to stay, to remain, to drift away from land to live on our island forever.

  Oh, I am mad, mad, mad for you, Ozzie. Ozzie is a ridiculous name, you know? It is. It sounds like a furniture polish. But I love it with you, and I love to say it, and love to call your name when you are deep inside me and we are nothing but that heat and desire and closeness.

  Right now you are standing at the wheel and you are so handsome you take my breath away. The wind plays with your hair. Your hands are large and heavy. No one else can ever claim this moment. No one else will ever be on this island with you. I am yours, Ozzie. As you are mine.

  P.S. We ate eggs and cheese and tomatoes for breakfast. Black coffee. Black as the inside of a cabbage, you said.

  21

  We anchored deep in Bantry Bay that first night. The stars came out and we decided to carry our bed up to the main deck and sleep there. Ozzie checked the anchor lines and made sure our running lights worked properly, while I worked on the bed. I made it up with fresh sheets and plump pillows; a good bed was one demand I had made when Ozzie had proposed the trip. We needed to sleep on a decent mattress. I bought the mattress to fit our belowdecks quarters, but we knew we would carry it up on mild nights to sleep beneath the stars.

  “Well, our first night, Kate, what do you think?” Ozzie asked when he came back to help me with the bed.

  “I think it’s magical. I think it’s everything we hoped.”

  “Do you think you’ll get tired of it?”

  “Not for a long time.”

  “I’m going to have some whiskey now. Shall I pour you a glass?”

  “Wine, please.”

  “Coming right up.”

  He disappeared down belowdecks and returned a moment later with our drinks. We had already eaten. In the morning, he said, before we resumed our travel, he would put over hand lines for mackerel. Bantry Bay was known for its schools of mackerel.

  “Cheers to us,” he said, clinking my glass.

  “To us.”

  We drank. The wine coated my tongue and tasted of land and plants.

  Later, in bed, we studied the stars. I had never seen more stars. They stretched across the sky from horizon to horizon. Without the engine throbbing below us, the Ferriter had become a soft, pliant canoe set out on a calm sea. Water lapped against her sides and chucked under her bow. I liked hearing those sounds. Part of me wondered how I had come to this, to this place, with my husband beside me and all of Ireland waiting to be explored. Every journey holds a beginning, and this was ours.

  A little later, as we drifted toward sleep, we heard dolphins blowing nearby. Ozzie whispered that they sometimes came around boats to inspect the passengers. They were nosy about humans.

  “Kate, take off your clothes and stand up naked so they can see you,” he whispered urgently. “They need to examine you. They’ll keep us safe if you do.”

  “I would not get out of this bed for anything on this side of heaven.”

  “The dolphins are a kind folk, but you shouldn’t trifle with them. They like to see a naked woman in starlight from time to time.”

  “They’ll have to find another boat, then.”

  “You discourage me, Kate.”

  “How about a naked man? Don’t they like the sight of a naked man?”

  “They do,” he said. “But not half as much, I’m afraid.”

  “Well, then, go. I’ll stand naked tomorrow night and we’ll be half protected tonight.”

  “Are you telling me to leave our marriage bed?”

  “I’m only advocating for the dolphins.”

  “They run the mackerel up against the shoreline and corner them. It’s a cruel business. They could use the sight of a naked woman to cheer them up.”

  “Would a naked woman cheer up a school of mackerel?”

  “Oh, no. Mackerels are the accountants of the sea. They only look down at their ledgers. They write in chalk.”

  Mizen Head, Clear Island, Galley Head, Seven Heads, Old Head of Kinsale. Each night we navigated to the lee side of what sea was running or wind was blowing and there we anchored. Ozzie was an excellent captain, solid and seaworthy, and he had been over most of this part of the coastline for years. He knew small coves and inlets and places where fresh water came rushing out from the land. The weather held fine. For weeks we lived on a small wooden boat in a vast, empty ocean. In the afternoon, wherever we were, Ozzie chased me downstairs and told me to work. I went halfheartedly. How could dry, bookish work compare to navigating the Celtic Sea? Eventually, however, I gained a rhythm with the work. It wasn’t easy to concentrate, but when I managed to cross the barrier of the everyday world and merge with the memoirs of Blasket Island women, I felt more connected than ever before. Perhaps the sea influenced me, or inspired me, and I grew to look forward to the slow leaving of the Blaskets, the return to life abovedecks, the sea, the wind that blew constantly from the west greeting me as if I had been gone for ages. Then it was cocktail time, drinks on board, drinks while we aimed the Ferriter to her night’s rest and our place beneath the stars. We made love in the open air, the sea everywhere, the moon rising and casting our skin in gold and silver.

  Sometimes at sunrise, but more often in the afternoon, we pulled in close t
o shore and spent the day sunning and swimming. We were in no rush. That had become clear quickly to both of us. It was not a race to circumnavigate the island; we could do it stages, or over years, and we had no one to answer to but ourselves. We swam naked and it felt cold and wild to be out in the middle of the sea, close to shore, yes, but still not on a beach or anywhere that let us merely walk free of the ocean. We swam as water-creatures, almost, and we rose after our swims and lay for a long time in the hot sun, collecting the heat into our bones so that we could carry it into the evening. Sometimes we didn’t move. Other days, we kept going, not caring, driving the Ferriter into the night and picking up the stars one by one from the black water. I became better as a pilot. Ozzie made sure I took responsibility for half the navigation, and I found I enjoyed that part of it more than I would have anticipated. I liked looking at maps and planning our journey; I liked finding a tiny bay where we could anchor for the night and sleep without worry.

  We were almost to Dún Laoghaire, near Dublin, when the first true storm caught us. We had been tossed around a bit on several occasions, but this time the signs of incoming weather proved unmistakable. Ozzie listened to the radio through most of the morning, not liking what he heard, but not, I felt, overly concerned. Around noon, the sky grew dark and furrowed, and the sea began lisping against the keel. Ozzie stood beside me, the first worried look I had seen on his face since we had begun.

  “We need to either go out farther to sea, or move toward land,” he said, his eyes passing back and forth from the water to my hands on the wheel. “We can’t stay here. The running tide will push us against the land and we won’t be able to fight it.”

  “Should we go out farther to sea? What do you think?”

  “I’m not sure. The sea might make up our minds for us. We’ll have to take the waves as they come to us.”

  “Do you want me to turn away from land?”

  I didn’t want to; every impulse told me to head toward land, to what I had always known as safety, but I knew the sea had its own rules. The trick, at least in part, was to take the waves on one’s shoulder. Rise with the swell, then down into the trough. Ozzie had explained that much to me. The Ferriter was not a ship for open water, I knew. Not in an authentic storm. The clouds and sky began moving faster and faster above us. The water around us turned a gray, solemn hue, the color of mice or the greenish mold on bread, and the aerometer on top of the cuddy sang like a boy shouting into a fan. Wind began driving us from every direction. We had to raise our voices to be heard.

  “I wish I knew how far we are to Dublin,” he said, eyeing the water, the clouds, the spray foam. “I make it about ten miles, give or take.”

  “We could turn back to Wicklow, couldn’t we?”

  “We’re five miles out from Wicklow. If it’s ten to Dublin, we can run for it. By the time we come about and turn our flanks to the sea, we could be in trouble.”

  “What do you think? I trust you, Ozzie.”

  “We’re in a pickle, Kate. I won’t pretend we’re not.”

  “It came up fast.”

  “The bad ones do.”

  “Can the Ferriter handle it?”

  “I hate to ask it of her. With the open back, the fishing platform, you run a risk of being swamped. It’s not a blue-water boat.”

  “It’s really getting ugly.”

  “If we run to sea, we have no chance of help or assistance. Toward land, at least, we could run her aground if we needed to.”

  “You mean just run into the shore?”

  “We may not have much of a choice if it comes to that. It wouldn’t be ideal.”

  The swells had grown to more than ten feet. I had never been in a sea like it. I knew from conversation with Ozzie that ten feet was nothing; the waves could grow and grow until they were the teeth of an enormous saw blade running furiously at us. The sky, especially, looked foreboding. I noticed the gulls that usually followed us had gone to land. We saw no other ships, no other spots of life on the ocean surface. The sea had become a blue-green desert.

  “Let’s run to Dublin,” Ozzie said, throttling the engine higher. “It might be a mistake, but it will leave our options open. I’ll take the wheel, Kate. I’m going to open her up. It could get rough for a time.”

  “Should we radio our position to someone?”

  “We will soon if it gets worse.”

  “Are you afraid, Ozzie?”

  “It’s a mad, mad plan we have, Kate.”

  We kissed. A quick seal for the decision we had made. The waves ran at us and threw us up and down over the troughs, but we kissed anyway. Then it all became serious. Deadly so. He told me to go around and batten down anything that might have shaken loose. He shouted over the wind that I needed to be careful. The sea could take me off the fishing platform in no time. Afterward, he wanted me to go down to our quarters and check things there. Turn off the gas that ran our heating furnace and our two-burner range; tie down anything that might come loose and crash about. Stow everything as much as possible.

  I did as he asked, but going onto the fishing platform terrified me. As soon as I thought I could predict how the sea might move the Ferriter, it quartered a different way. Twice the waves sent us skidding on the water and we flew down the side of one wave and crashed the bow into the oncoming wall of water. It was quickly becoming too great a sea for us. Even I could see that. A wave broke over our starboard side and rocked us on our beam. The engine labored beneath us, churning the water, but occasionally having difficulty catching a purchase in the froth of the gray sea.

  “Come back, Kate,” Ozzie yelled when I had nearly finished lashing down a brown tarp we sometimes set up as a sun shade. “Don’t worry about the small things. If they blow over, so be it. You’re going to get washed over.”

  “Coming.”

  At that moment, a wave grabbed me. It crashed onto the center of the fishing platform and suddenly I was knee deep in water. It happened so quickly, and with such force, that it toppled me and threw me against the opposite gunwale. Then the wave swirled and emptied through the gunnels. I crawled back to the cuddy, my right shin throbbing. Ozzie hadn’t seen a thing. He had been concentrating on the approaching waves.

  I climbed to my feet. Only when I had my balance again did it strike me fully how close I had come to being washed overboard. I would have been dead in minutes. No one could stay afloat for long in such a crazed sea.

  I went down below, shivering. We were good housekeepers when it came to keeping the mess and tiny sleeping quarters in order, but the waves had taken everything and given them a good shake. One shelf of books had come loose from the wall and now books lay everywhere. A Pyrex pie plate had broken into a thousand pieces and crunched under my shoes as I scrambled to secure anything that looked wobbly. At the same time, I knew it was a fool’s task. Nothing could keep the sea from shaking things loose. I did my best, still frightfully cold and scared, and when I came back up to check on Ozzie I saw his face held a determined, fierce expression on his features.

  “Are we all right?” I shouted.

  “I don’t know.”

  “I don’t want to die, Ozzie. For the record.”

  “Neither do I, Kate. All we can do is keep going. I’ll radio our position in case…”

  “Why didn’t we know this was happening? This storm?”

  “We knew some of it. We just didn’t know it would be this bad.”

  Probably not true, I thought. Ozzie probably did know, but he ignored it. Or put it on a back bench in his mind. I hadn’t paid attention to the report. It had been on him. I knew that line of reasoning was no help; it was less than help, actually. But I found myself resenting him for putting us in this situation. It seemed to tie into a recklessness I had always recognized in him. That recklessness could be attractive, but it could also be dangerous. I felt like kicking him. I felt like kicking myself.

  We forged ahead. We could do nothing else. Although it was an odd notion that came and went with th
e waves, the Ferriter seemed to comprehend the precariousness of our situation. The engine kept up a steady thrum, but at times it seemed to miss the water in the wrenching waves and then the prop spun for a shrill moment in plain air. That sound came as a horror. Each time it occurred I thought we were headed over. Ozzie stood his ground, his legs wide to brace himself, his hands never leaving the wheel. I knew enough to understand that one wrong turn could put us broadside to the waves and that would be our end.

  The entire world grew wet and gray and horrible. I had to resist the panic that sought to take me over. I couldn’t do a thing to help, really. I stood beside him and watched him navigate each wave, the run up a thrilling, terrible climb, made worse by the knowledge that we would sled down the opposite side. If possible, I hated the descent more; the following sea caught us and pushed us and then we broke our bow into the next wave. Over and over and over again. I wondered how the Ferriter could take it. I knew it was good boat, a stout boat with oak bracing, but it was not really made for these conditions. In the end, it was a working boat designed to stay close to shore on calmer days; it was not a pleasure cruiser. Ozzie did not like to run the engines as fully as he had to, and I saw him glance back a dozen times, a thousand times, at the small betrayals the engine made against the water. If the engine quit, I knew, we would be goners.

  “I should have shown myself naked to the dolphins,” I shouted, trying to keep my own spirits up as much as anything else. “It’s my fault.”

  “I tried to tell you, Kate! It’s the lack of gratitude they can’t stand.”

  “Is this really our honeymoon?”

  “I guess it is!”

  “Couldn’t we have gone to a nice hotel? Maybe in Paris?”

  “It never occurred to me, Kate, but you might have a point.”

  He smiled at me. His eyes held such power in that moment that I almost felt heat from them. He loved this! He loved the excitement of handling the boat against the ocean that wanted to whisk him away. How had I failed to know that? How had I not understood that essential part of him? He wasn’t panicked or terrified. He was glad to be in such circumstances, his blood wild and running through his veins, his hair blown back, his hands heavy and strong on the wheel. It was not bravery. I was brave, because I feared our situation but carried on anyway. Ozzie felt no such fear. He thrilled to the danger, to the chance that everything could be taken in a moment. He was not brave, I realized, but driven by forces that I could not comprehend. He needed to put himself, and me, in peril, to satisfy something he probably didn’t even acknowledge in his heart.