The Night Swimmer

by Matt Bondurant

  Finbar was in the doorway, a stack of blankets in his arms. Nora was talking to me, asking me questions, but I couldn’t hear anything except the throb of my heart and the roar of wind and sea. I looked into Finbar’s eyes, the deep pools of blue-green, the color of the ocean in the morning, and I could almost see his brain invert itself. Seeing a woman like me, doing what I just did, completely naked and without shame, must have put a mark on that young boy, but what exactly I cannot say.

  Chapter Fifteen

  I spent about ten hours in bed before I could get upright and eat some soup. Nora sat with me as I ate and told me that the guard had arrived and that Patrick’s body was retrieved. She sent a message to Fred that I was recovering fine and would be back soon. The word down at the harbor was that they were ruling it a suicide. The investigators determined he threw himself from the cliffs of Pointabullaun. Nora crossed herself.

  The poor boy was heartbroken, she said. There was a note with the body. It was those other woofers, the cute American girls? They broke his heart.

  Nora sat with me at the table, stirring her tea, eyeing me with what I thought was nervous concern.

  You have to be more careful, Elly, she said. The island does not suffer fools gladly.

  * * *

  Patrick’s body was going to be shipped back to his parents in Ohio.

  * * *

  In the afternoon I boarded the ferry for Baltimore and found Stephen-the-fucking-blow-in seated on the aft bench surrounded by a set of stacked crates and luggage. He gave me a grim smile and I sat with him. Roaringwater Bay was rough, and the swells rolled the boat from the side, filling the air with spray. Stephen cinched his hood down and for a few minutes we didn’t say anything. I was exhausted and the brisk air felt good.

  I’m done, he said finally. We are off.

  Do you know who did it? To your mules, I mean.

  Them’s right there, he said, nodding at the pilothouse.

  Two Corrigans were behind the steamy windows, one driving and the other placidly gazing down at us with bulbous eyes and wide, thin mouth.

  You see that one in the cap? Eamon Corrigan. Kieran’s little brother. ’E’s the one, with some others. I shoulda known it would happen.

  What are you gonna do? I asked him.

  We got a place up in Kerry, Dingle, he said. Beautiful spot on the coast. Had to get out of County Cork. You have to go a hundred miles to escape the Corrigans.

  I’m sorry.

  It’s okay, he said. The missus was sour on the island for some time now. It’s better we go.

  At the Baltimore dock Eamon Corrigan used the boat crane to unload Stephen’s crates. The other passengers walked up the quay, leaving Stephen and me standing there alone. The lights were on in the Nightjar, and I thought about asking Stephen to come in for a bit to talk. I was so tired I could barely stand. Flocks of seabirds swooped in the heavy gusting winds, screaming, calling to each other. When Eamon had gingerly deposited the last crate he stood up and took off his hat and gave Stephen a bow and flourish. Then he stood and gave me a long stare. Stephen nudged me.

  This is it, he said. It was nice meeting you, Elly.

  He held my hand for a second, about to say something. A small truck was backing down the quay.

  This is for me, he said.

  Do you need any help?

  No, he said. I don’t. And you shouldn’t besides. You’d be better off not helping.

  Okay.

  Be careful. You and your husband.

  We will.

  He stood there, hands in his pockets, sea spray in his beard, as if he expected me to say something. I found myself thinking that he never should have been out there to begin with. The island wasn’t for people like Stephen. I sort of shrugged, then turned and walked up the road to the Nightjar.

  * * *

  I found Fred in the middle of a serious bender. I could barely walk right, the skin around my eyes and mouth was chapped and flaking, and he didn’t notice. There was a line of dirty glasses down the bar and the floor was muddy. I figured he had heard about Patrick. Fred sat on a stool reading Spinoza and making notes, the jukebox playing Yaz, Upstairs at Eric’s, at earsplitting volume. The only other person in the bar was Dinny, who sat at a table just looking at me, his white flipper hand around a full pint, a half dozen empty glasses lined up in front of him. I cranked the volume down on the jukebox.

  Fred slipped off the stool and shuffled around the bar, holding out his arms like a zombie.

  C’mere, he slurred.

  What is wrong with you?

  What? What’s the problem? C’mere.

  He clutched me in an unsteady embrace, stepping on my toes.

  You feeling okay? he asked. Everything okay? Nora told me about what happened.

  I’m fine, I said. Why is there no one here?

  And Patrick, Fred said. Unbelievable thing.

  I disengaged myself and held him at arm’s length. What is happening? Are you pissing off the customers?

  He shrugged and rattled the ice in his glass.

  Nothing serious. I’m not universally liked around here. Fuck ’em. Dinny likes me.

  Fred raised his glass to Dinny, who ignored him.

  So you heard about Patrick?

  Fred nodded.

  Well?

  Well, what?

  You don’t believe he killed himself, do you?

  Fred scratched his hip and shuffled back behind the bar. Dinny set his glass down and slunk toward the door.

  Later, chief! Fred yelled to him.

  Dinny gave us a half wave, his chin in his collar, and tripped over the doormat out into the street. The door swung shut with a bang.

  There was a note, Fred said.

  But Patrick? I said. Really? You think he would do that?

  The guy was eccentric, he said. He was also extremely motivated. Takes a motivated guy to jump off a cliff.

  No way, I said.

  I told Fred about the incident in the bar with Kieran and the other things I’d heard Patrick say about the Corrigans.

  We gotta do something, I said.

  But the guard was already here, Elly. They took my statements. They wrote a report, said it was closed. Done deal.

  What about me? I said. How come nobody talked to me?

  I don’t know, Fred said. They never mentioned you. I figured they had talked to you out on the island already. They acted like they had.

  Nobody— Listen, this clearly isn’t right and you know it. We gotta call the police.

  And tell them what?

  About Kieran, I said. The thing at the Five Bells. The whole story.

  Fred poured himself a glass of whiskey and stared at the bar with his eyes closed. My skin tingled with a clammy sweat. He shook his head.

  Elly, he said, I don’t think that—

  Are you kidding me? I yelled. What the hell is wrong with you? Jesus, Fred. The guy was just here, in this bar, drinking with you.

  I fucking know that!

  He was giving me this condescending look, rattling the ice slightly in his glass, and in that moment he looked just like his father. I suddenly felt terribly alone.

  I walked to the bar and picked up a stack of paper covered with his cuneiform scratching.

  What the hell is this for?

  It’s for the book. Obviously.

  He looked at me like I was an idiot. I wanted to hurl something into his fat furry face.

  You actually still believe, I said, that you are going to write this stupid fucking novel? You really believe that?

  What . . . what the fuck does that mean?

  It means, I said, that you are the only one in the world who believes you will ever complete the thing. How long have you been working on that? And what have you actually written? You just pile up a mountain of shit, all these fucking little scraps of paper. But you never actually do anything with it.

  His face faltered. I had hit him somewhere deep inside.

  You don’t belie
ve I can do it?

  No, Fred. Nobody does. You’ve lost it.

  He picked up his glass and peered down into it.

  You’re wrong, he said.

  Really.

  I still have it, he said.

  No, you don’t.

  I do.

  You think you have it, I said. But you’ve lost it.

  He bristled, the familiar look, the coming firestorm of argument, the marshaling of rebuttals. Then a tremor ran through his face, and he looked away. I had found a soft part of him and sunk the barb in deep. There was no going back from it. I returned to the island the following day.

  * * *

  The goats always found their order along the slanted fence, their heads held above the angular haunches of their betters before them. They chewed and bleated and accepted the line with cloudy-eyed nonchalance. When Highgate opened the gate they filed into the feed trough, and after probing the smooth ceramic bowls with their long purple tongues they cocked their heads to allow the blind man to tether them each in her spot. Highgate used this time to inspect the goats, bent from the waist, running his hands over their faces, murmuring to them, feeling their udders, keeping a mental tally of their physical and psychological state.

  This is what makes the goat, Highgate said, the most advanced domesticated animal. Their acceptance of the natural order of things. The establishment of this order is nearly invisible. It’s like it was always there.

  But they aren’t born with it, I said. They still have to work it out.

  You do have to limit the amount of extra males. But look at the order.

  Highgate gestured at Angelica, the lead goat in the pack. She nosed at the feed bowl, a gray-black goat with a white saddle, a massive engorged udder.

  It’s adapted to milkers, he said. The best milkers lead. Angelica isn’t the biggest or toughest goat in the herd by far. They have absorbed what is most important for us and incorporated it into their social instincts. Course goats have been living with humans for ten thousand years. We don’t have to tell them who is the best milker. They know.

  The wind howled, whistling through the chinks in the stone. Highgate poured feed into each bowl. The food was a simple mix of sugar beet pulp and silage, which kept them passive during the milking. Highgate sanitized his hands and located the buckets in the metal sink, one with cleaning solution and small dried rags along its side, the other empty and sterilized to receive the milk. He hooked the wooden stool with his foot and squatted beside Angelica and went to work. A dirty calico cat crawled under the wall and crouched at his heel.

  White breeds are more placid than colored, Highgate said, at least normally. Miranda is obviously an exception. Her mother Lucy has a touch of Saanen in her. Milk genes come through the male line, and Miranda’s da was an unregenerate bastard of a British Alpine, more than a hundred kilograms, seven feet tall when he reared up.

  What happened to him?

  We did him with a bolt gun some years ago, Highgate said. Far too dangerous. Plus he figured out the gates.

  What do you mean?

  The latch. He worked it out, could fiddle it with his horn nubs and mouth and get the gate open. Once one goat figures it out, that knowledge quickly passes through the herd.

  Is that how you normally put down males?

  Mostly use a spade, Highgate said. He mimicked an overhand swing.

  A good sharp blow to the back of the neck will do it. Nearly instantaneous and painless if done well. Clearly I don’t do the swinging.

  Which one is Lucy? I asked.

  Highgate worked the teats, the milk singing in the pail. The other goats shuffled with anticipation. He nodded at the back of the line.

  The runt?

  In a way, he said. But a crafty one. Another example of the intelligence of the goat is that they do not equate leadership with quality of life. Lucy is just as happy as any other goat, completely content with her lot. It’s a workers’ paradise.

  Highgate turned the teat toward his foot and shot a few streams in the direction of the cat, who neatly caught each stream in her pink mouth, then he moved the bucket and stool down the line to the next goat.

  Did the police talk to you about Patrick?

  Oh, yes.

  Do you think he did it? I mean kill himself.

  Highgate shook his head.

  Who can say. The heart of the young is a perilous place. I feel for his parents. I should have sent him home a while back. He’d been here too long. He was holding on too tight.

  I thought of Miranda loping across the night fields, the way she stepped up and over fences like a man. How she watched me in the Ineer from the top of the hill. I wanted to know if it was her deformity that made her that way, or if the aberration was merely the focusing agent of her strange psychology. I asked Highgate what he thought.

  He paused, holding Nai’s teats over the pail, the cat obediently stationed at his heel. That strange ever-present grin, the line of even white teeth, at times seemed more like a grimace than a sign of happiness.

  Miranda is the master of her own station, he said. There was a time, back when she was young. Our relationship was different.

  He shot the cat another stream and then began milking into the pail.

  I gave her a lot of special care early on. She was imprinted on me to some degree, followed me everywhere. Treated me like I was her mother. But when she started walking and moving across the island . . . well, it was expected.

  Are you sad about that? I said. Do you wish she stayed here, with you?

  Highgate shook his head.

  Never. Not at all. She has special abilities, gifts. Why would I want to hold her back? I guess she is like my child, in that way. She is loose upon the world and that is as it should be. I feel for Patrick’s parents. A terrible thing, to have your child pass before you.

  He switched teats and pulled thin jets into the pail, the milk foaming.

  I should have protected Patrick.

  What could you have done?

  Highgate stopped milking and turned to me.

  I should have protected him. All of us. He did so much here. We could have helped him.

  Highgate stood and flipped the stool against the wall, sending the cat scrambling. He picked up the milk pail and opened the chute latch.

  Unhook them for me please, he said. That’s enough for today.

  * * *

  Then I got drunk with Sebastian at the Five Bells.

  I feel heavy, I said. On the earth. Sort of swollen, large. Clumsy. I don’t know how to explain it.

  His eyes were placid, gray-blue, unblinking. His fingers rested lightly around his pint glass, motionless. I didn’t know if he wanted me to continue. I shrugged and set my elbows on the bar and drank my hot whiskey.

  And in the water you feel light, he said.

  Yes.

  Buoyancy. Weightlessness. It is a pleasant sensation.

  Yeah.

  How much do you weigh?

  Are you kidding? You can’t ask me that.

  I’m a biologist, he said. I’m allowed. In the name of science.

  I looked at my hands, curled on the bar, the long bony fingers. I had wrists like a longshoreman’s, corded with veins, my forearms like hams. I closed my eyes and felt the density of my bones. I was suddenly tired and wanted to fall down right there, just let myself go. I felt like I was going to go through the floor. I could still feel Patrick’s slippery skin on my fingertips, the taut weight of his body. I raised my drink and downed it, which made me think of Fred for a moment, and I laughed hard and loud at this embarrassing irony.

  What?

  I was thinking about Fred. My husband.

  Your husband is a lucky man, Sebastian said. You must be well loved.

  What? Why?

  He turned his glass on the bar a few reflective revolutions, fingering the condensation.

  Because people fall in love with you, Elly. It’s plain to see. People fall for you everywhere, people you don’t eve
n know.

  I shoved him with my forearm.

  Stop it, I said. That’s ridiculous.

  No, Sebastian said, it’s not. You create love out of nothing, every day.

  The next few minutes seemed like scattered images, full of sensation. Sebastian was helping me through the door, my feet like lead, and I remember the powerful surge of stars, popping like flashbulbs in the sky, and the roar of wind and ocean that wrapped around my head like a blanket. I was leaning into him, enjoying the feel of his shoulder, his hand around my elbow, my cheek on his collarbone. He smelled like the sea, raw, and briny, or maybe it was just the air, but it was wonderful and I drank it in. When we came around the Ineer, that beautiful bowl shimmering with night and stars, I asked him to go for a swim with me.

  No, no, he said. I’d drown. I’m a bit tipsy, and you certainly are too.

  I’d save you, I said.

  He laughed.

  I suppose you would.

  Don’t be afraid.

  I was hugging his arm to my chest, our faces close together, the wind pushing my hair over both of our heads. Below the seawall the water thundered and trickled off the boulders. I wasn’t thinking of anything but how I wanted his body next to mine, to kiss him deeply. I wanted to hold him in the leaping sea, for him to feel my strength.

  Too cold, he said. We’ll freeze to death.

  No, I said. We won’t.

  Sebastian looked up the hill where the faint pinpricks of Nora’s place shone, the road a faint ribbon of gray, the sedge and heather on the black hillside shifting in the wind.