A Country of Eternal Light

by Darby Harn

  The wind pushes us out of the grass. I look back for the fishing boat. Nothing but spray out there in sea.

  The good fortune of some men.

  Aoife raises the bottle of whiskey in toast. “It was Eamon, tonight. Slan abhaile, Eamon.”

  She sits at the kitchen table, pissed. Scrubs faded to a wine stain. She drinks the Jameson’s straight from the bottle and I want it. I want it so bad I can taste it. I’ll fuck that bottle I get it out her hands, but what I want for I am denied and so long as I sit here, wet for it, I remain dry.

  “What was it?” I say.

  “Heart attack. We’ve no aspirin left.”

  I look in on Ma in the living room. Somehow watching telly and not watching at the same time.

  “The son’s in Dublin, I think. Or he was.” Aoife swipes the wet paste of hair from her eyes. “I couldn’t find the contacts. Could you come back and help me with it?”

  “Were you looking before or after the whiskey?”

  “You make these distinctions, Mairead.”

  “You bought that off Colm?”

  She shrugs. “I traded him for it.”

  “Even you have standards.”

  “I traded him an IOU.” She snorts. “It says – listen to this now – on the note, like – it says: ‘To be paid in full and with interest in one year’s time.’ A year, Mairead.”

  “You’re clever.”

  Aoife blubbers her lips. “How’s your man?”

  I cross my arms. “He’s not my man.”

  “Is Gavs not stealing you back to America, then?”

  “God, you’re a shite drunk.”

  “You’re literally in line to be one of the last ever members of the Mile High Club and you’re going to pass it down?”

  “This is why I don’t talk to you.”

  “This is why?”

  I glance at the bottle and then look away. Look away. “We’re just… we’re just keeping each other company. That’s all. And that’s fine. I appreciate him.”

  “You ‘appreciate’ him?”

  “If he’d come before… who’s to say.”

  “He did come once before.”

  “I would have been all of twelve, Aoife.”

  “You can’t let little details like that get in the way,” she says. “Mairead. If he wants to take you for a ride, let him. Youse can pretend like you’re not shagging every night down the pier and we’ll all pretend like we don’t know you are.”

  “We are not shagging. And you’ll be keeping your gob shut.”

  She laughs. “He’s seen you naked. He’s got that glint in his eyes. Been touched by God, him.”

  This bleeding woman.

  “If youse get on, we’ve got a solid year, they say. That’s plenty of time to work up to a threesome, like.”

  “Don’t you have rounds?”

  “What do you even bother with him for then?”

  I don’t know. I don’t know why I bother with anything. There’s no point to anything but waiting now.

  Wanting.

  “Can you imagine it, Mairead? The three of us? Ménage à trois. I’ve got whiskey for him, too. Call him down.”

  “Aoife.”

  “When in Rome. Or Greece. We’ll do it Greek like. Do you remember? Patsy? That night at the pub? Absolutely banjaxed she was. Asking for it, Mairead. The lube. Going around the bar. Do you not have any? The state of her.”

  She almost vomits laughing. She runs to the sink to wait for it. Nothing comes.

  I brush her hair back. “Just take it easy, Aoife.”

  She grips my hand. “Can I sleep here? Do you mind? Or would you come back to the home with me?”

  “Who’s up there now?”

  “Saidbh.”

  “For Christ’s sake, Aoife.”

  “She’s some worker, Mairead. She’s no equal.”

  “She’s sixteen, like.”

  “She doesn’t know that – ”

  All that whiskey brown and sweet comes out her mouth. Chunks of something she ate. What has she been eating. Tears and spit hang off her and I hold her hair back, like I’ve been doing since we were girls. All that hair, Aoife. Like beach grass. You get lost in it. I brush her cheek. Red and warm. She’s gagging now but it’s not the drink. She slumps against the counter, weak and tired, sore from watching us die, one by one. I left her there at the home, like I left you here. It’s all I do is leave.

  And still, here I am.

  Her scrubs need washing. I’ll do it down the shore later. I stuff them in a plastic grocery sack I’ve been keeping and I don’t know what for. Years all these sacks drifted across the road and spoiled this harsh beauty and now there are no more. You hold on to things.

  She curls her leg around me. Damp heat against my thigh. She’s sweating out but I pull the covers over us. I’ll wait for her to fall asleep, and then I’ll go. I owe her sleep. Her heart skips with all the drink she’s taken. He’ll be furious, Colm. Let him be angry for something. Her hands jitter. Words mumble on her lips. She whimpers and whines, Aoife. I kiss her cheek. Her fingers brush my lips.

  I’m sorry, I think she says.

  In the morning, I go down to the water with a litre bottle. No sense making Aoife come all this way. Though doing this a bottle at a time is shite. I should see if Colm still has any kegs still at the pub. Forget it. I’ll walk the mile for every bottle. The sea rolls out like a carpet. I think I hear the dog. Pebbles of hail bounce off the naked rock. Off me. The weather is turning now. It’s so cold. Ma will be cold.

  I ought to get home.

  Loads of birds this morning. Black-headed gulls. Pintails. An Eastern Kingbird. He is far, far from where he should be. Birds from far away as Africa are known to find their way to the island. Will he go back, I wonder. Does he have anywhere to go back to. Sanderlings skirt across the exposed beach, pecking for food. The tide rolls in and they sweep up the shore, each one a cursor speeding across a blank page. The tide goes back out, they sweep after it.

  Back and forth.

  The tide in, the birds up, the tide out, the birds down and on it goes like nothing’s happened. Once I loved these hurried birds. Their dogged gonzo for life. Now they offend me, the Sanderlings. Their blind devotion to routine. To instinct. Their ignorance of you.

  Their shadows grow. The birds scatter, in every direction. The sky catches fire.

  Lord God. A meteor.

  The blanket of gray evaporates around the meteor and it’s coming straight down at the sea and I rise from the rock in anticipation and then it flares out atomically.

  There and gone.

  I take my place back on the stone, stranded somewhere between relief and disappointment. Why am I stranded? What is it I’m holding on to? The manic waves carry on. The birds. This slow erosion. And then the loudest sound I’ve ever heard sends me off my arse. The shockwave ricochets off the hills and dales of the island and windows shatter miles away.

  I take off running for home.

  Chapter Six

  Every window in the house is gone. The front door off its hinges. Lord God. Ma. I run in screaming.

  “Ma!”

  She’s sitting in front of the telly, flipping through her channels. Broken glass in her lap. Ma looks at me, confused.

  “Mairead… when did you get back from the States?”

  I brush the glass off her. She bats my hands away. I grab hers and I could just throttle her. I could, just. Stupid woman. Where’s your head at? Where are you? WHERE ARE YOU?

  Her head shakes. “What are you crying for, girl?”

  “Ma…”

  I fall in her lap, sobbing like a child. She pats my shoulder. The best she could ever do.

  Outside the nursing home, the car park is empty save for a horse and cart at the main entrance. Wandering the hall I find Domnhall Walsh, hat in hand. Years this man waited at the pier for the ferry to unload all the tourists so he could scoop them up, ten a head. Domnhall goes sour soon as he puts eyes on me. People don�
��t want to talk to me. Deal with me. Everyone says hello on the island. Everyone greets you with a smile, until you’re grieved.

  “I came by with Tilly Ni Laighin,” he says with a shrug, and then follows with one of his characteristic pauses.

  “If she’s in for her hair, take her back.”

  “Is there no hairdresser today?”

  “There aren’t any windows today.”

  Aoife zombie walks through her rounds right past me. Doesn’t notice me at all. I follow her room to room, waving at the residents bright with their smiles but quiet with their secret and I hang just behind until Aoife turns around, forgetting something, right into me.

  She wipes her nose. “Am I off me face?”

  “Are you not always?”

  She scoops me up in this great big hug. “You’re back?”

  “I just came in to check on you. Did anyone get hurt?”

  “Didn't notice, most of them,” she says. “Not that I did. Anyways. Your man is out there now boarding up the windows. Or he was. Is it still today? Or are we still tomorrow?”

  “You ok?”

  “I’m tired, is all. Yeah. Just tired.”

  I take the charts from her. “Go get some kip.”

  “You’re back?”

  “Go on,” I say. “You’re knackered.”

  She hugs me. “I missed you. I miss you.”

  Aoife goes down the hall, into an empty room she's been sleeping in overnight. Lord God. Has she even been home. One thing at a time. I go into the supply room. The girls here have been rationing pills, bandages, needles and the like for weeks. I go through the counts again in the medicine depot. Edna Malloy gets a whole for her dementia. Eamon Ní Dhuibhne gets a half for his arthritis. Eamon is passed. A line through his name. I do the count again. The home has six days supply at best of essential drugs. Say a week if we’re creative.

  Colm’s voice rolls down the hall like a cloud of gravel after a pickup truck. “Anything else needs nailing?”

  I come out the depot. He’s mortified to see me, Colm. Gavin just surprised. The state of him. Covered in mud and sawdust.

  “I thought you were someone else,” Colm says.

  “I imagine St. Peter will say something similar.”

  “We've finished covering the windows.”

  “Go raibh maith agat.”

  He scratches his chin. “I had a look at the generator as well.”

  “We’ve power.”

  “For now.”

  Cables run power under Galway Bay from the mainland. We’ve had little to fear even in the fiercest storms but to hear it from the news, there have been outages on the mainland.

  “What’s wrong with it?” I say.

  His fingers work overtime. “Fuel lines are corroded. It’s been sitting there dog’s years without any proper use.”

  “I have people on ventilators here.”

  “I’ll dig around and see if there are any replacements. Unlikely. We’ve no diesel, besides.”

  “I suppose you’ll tell me next there’s no Santy Claus.”

  His brows arch. “As it happens. How are you down the house?”

  “We'll manage.”

  “We’ve got plenty of wood left,” Gavin says, trying to make eye contact with me. I stare into the charts.

  “That’s kind.”

  Colm claws his chin. “You'll let me know, if there's anything more I can do.”

  “Aoife will ring you, if there is.”

  “Slan,” he says.

  “Yourself,” I say and go back in the depot.

  Gavin steps in the door. “Are you ok? Your mom?”

  “I’m fine.”

  “I was worried about you.”

  I give him a quick look. Doesn’t seem to be hurt any, except for the mess on him. “You’ll get left.”

  “I’ll come by. After we’re done.”

  “I’m thinking I’ll be here a while.”

  He nods, I think. I try not to look at him. I try not to give him anything to hold on to. What we are we holding on to?

  He turns, Gavin. He goes.

  I try to catch up on the dishes. Ma goes behind me and dirties them again. She laughs like it’s a game. As if she’s a girl. I suppose she is now. It’s all a game. Flip over a card. Try and remember its match.

  Nothing matches.

  Some birds got in through the broken windows. The cold or the confusion killed them. I set them on the table to take them out to the sea when I go but there’s so much work here.

  She sighs, Ma. “Not another dead bird.”

  When I was a girl, I’d go out to the shore. The wind becomes confused around the island. These vortices form and on certain days you stand there atop the rim and your hat will leave your head up into a funnel high in the sky. The wind sends birds into the cliffs and I’d bring them home, thinking myself some type veterinarian. Don’t say it, she said. You didn’t bring home another dead bird. I loved birds once. What I wanted to be was a bird.

  To just fly away.

  Every day the same shape but none of them match. Who am I. Where have I gone. Ma confuses me for her mother, for this woman Caoimhe I’ve never heard of and she argues with me. Mairead’s gone to the States. Where’s Declan? Not another dead bird and I am a dead bird on the kitchen table, wings fluttering with the breath of a little girl trying to blow life back into me.

  Do you know.

  Mornings I go down to the shore for water. The Sanderlings sweep back and forth, back and forth. Nursing home by 9. Rounds. Pills. Vitals. On the phone by 9:30. I ring the head office for Health Service Executive on the mainland. As per usual the HSE refers me to the pharmaceutical suppliers, as the ‘entire nation is experiencing critical shortages’ which originate with them.

  I go down the list.

  In every case, some poor soul unequipped as I am tells me all outstanding orders will be fulfilled, in the order they were received, once supplies arrive. Supplies arriving then from China or India, where 80% of the world’s pills are made, and where currently there is an ongoing experiment in the practical limits of tactical nuclear war.

  The man at Pizer is in India, in a call center in some office tower in some city so far unmolested. In the background I hear the chatter of other voices, the nonsensical rhythm of tapping keys. They sound like they’re in an arcade, like.

  “What do people do for medicine in India?” I say.

  “I can only address inquiries as they relate to Pizer.”

  “I’m sure they’re listening.”

  There’s a sliver of a pause. “Our calls may be recorded for training and quality control purposes, yes.”

  “At least tell me it’s warm. Is it warm where you are?”

  “We are catching fire,” he says.

  Rounds. Pills. Vitals. Try to eat something, anything for lunch. Scrap of toast. Maybe some shut eye. If I get ten minutes before Edna Malloy sets off the larm going out the fire door I am blessed. Roisin Ni Shealbhaigh resists death in her respite bed. Not even her family holds their vigil. The son asks me where the plug is. There’s no plug on her. Though if you would kindly pull mine. He does not oblige. I keep my charge. End of shift I go to the cemetery until dark.

  Where’s the plug.

  Down to the beach. Rounds. Pills. Vitals. The nursing home beds only twelve, but all are full. The residents need as much attention as Ma. More, like. Truly she should be there, but there’s no room. Twelve hours I would spend there when I started, and it wouldn’t be enough. Eighteen. The old devour the young. Ring the HSE. Sit with you until the mercy of dark and then don’t sleep. No sleeping. In the fog of the same dream I have every time I close my eyes. I’m in a boat. Lost at sea. Ghosts in the fog. This scratching sound. There is no sleep. Up all night searching through chat rooms and forums for the grief stricken, searching for scraps of hope, tools for dealing with this how do we deal with this I don’t want to deal with this.

  No way under or around, you just have to go through.
r />   I lost my husband nine years ago you never get past it.

  Life evolves. Grief evolves.

  The evolution of life is death and I’m not evolving.

  It just goes on.

  There’s so much work at the home. Across the island. A week after the meteor there’s a meeting at the Halla Fáinne. I don’t want to go, but Colm says people need to hear it from me, the state of things at the home.

  I try not to be heard.

  This is the first time I’ve been out in any proper way since. This is the first time I’ve seen any of these people and I don’t look. I try not to look. I try not to see them, strung together in the hall with their children like strands of people cut out of construction paper.

  I try not to be seen.

  Colm says his bit. He reads off this little piece of note paper he’s got up at the end of his nose. Wood stocks. Fuel stocks. Whiskey stocks. He calls me to the microphone. It’s a wonder the world doesn’t crumble now. There’s a black hole right here in this room.

  We’re after talking and now onto tea and what little cake someone scrounged together flour for. I try to go but everyone has some ailment. Some pain. Pale we are now. Hollow. The islanders tiptoe around their bother.

  Can you take a look? What do you have for it?

  Really they just want to gather some intel on me to take back to the rest. She’s out, then. Tragedy, the boy. Who was the father, anyways? I may as well be on stage.

  Colm shoos them off. Gavin sticks to his corner on the other side of the hall, but he’s got his own line forming. Other Americans, mostly. The college girls Aoife talked about. Each of them with a pitch. A promise, in their girly laughter. Aoife falls on the grenade for me. She chats him up and carts him over to me in the corner.

  Have youse met, she says, her cheek poked out.

  After a few diligent minutes of relating something she saw on the telly about the mating habits of seals in the Arctic, she excuses herself to go top up her tea.

  “Hi,” he says, like we’ve just met.