T. Boyle - San Miguel

Her stepfather swung round on him. “You stay out of this.” And then he leaned over the table so that his face was so close to hers she could smell the rankness of his breath that was no different from the smell of the meat on the chopping block where the flies had begun to dance and settle. “You’re drunk,” he said again.

Something flashed in her then, a single whipcord of rebellion. “So what if I am. You’re drunk half the nights of the week. You were drunk when my mother—”

“You shut your mouth. Shut it.” He bit off the words. “Right now. And you get yourself up from that table and go straight up to your room, or I’m warning you—” He didn’t finish the thought. His finger. He was wagging his finger in her face. “You’re a disgrace,” he spat, and she was already pushing back from the table, already gathering her feet to flee — how she hated him, the hypocrite, the tyrant, and who was he to boss her like a slave? — when the finger curled back into his fist and the fist slammed down on the table. “Now get! Do you hear me? Out of my sight!”

* * *

She was sick in her stomach all night, once the liquor wore off, that is, because it was the liquor — she understood this now — that killed the pain. That was its use. That was why the men drank it and women too, even her mother, who used to take a glass of her stepfather’s whiskey from time to time and sit sipping it in the corner, her eyes bright and her face gone slack, cradling the glass in her entwined hands as if to extract the last emollient heat of it. Twice in the night she had to get up and vomit in the chamber pot while everything seemed to swirl round her in the dark as if the earth had slipped off its track since she’d laid her head on the pillow. What they ate that night, she didn’t know. Or care. At some point the odor of frying onions and seared meat had seeped up through the floorboards, which only made her feel sicker, and she’d heard them carousing below till it was full dark and well beyond.

She was sick. She was weak. Her head ached. But Robert Ord was leaving first thing in the morning because he had three living barking seals tied up in his nets on the deck and he didn’t want to risk losing them to death or sickness or starvation before he got them back to Santa Barbara and the man from the circus who’d put in the order for them, and she meant to intercept him when he left the bunkhouse at first light. He’d told her he wouldn’t be staying to breakfast — there were the seals, in addition to the fact that his hold was full of the guano he’d shoveled all the morning and afternoon before and there were the friable white streaks on his trousers to prove it, not paint, not paint at all — and at first she’d begged him to stay on. “I’m starved for the company,” she said, moving in closer to him at the table under the spell of the rum and the way the light sat in the windows and the whole world that had been so dreary and dull seemed suddenly magical, but then, though her brain was fuddled and the connections came slowly, she began to see the situation in a whole new light. She wrapped her hand around the muscle of his upper arm and leaned in close to him so that their faces were inches apart. “No need to stay on my account,” she said.

“Oh, I don’t mean nothing like that,” he said. “I wouldn’t — I like being here with you. Hell, I’d stay a week if I could, if I was welcome…”

She would have let him kiss her, guano or no, and it didn’t smell, or not hardly, but he didn’t seem to take the hint. Maybe he was shy, maybe that was it. She held her face there, as close to his as she dared, and when he flushed and looked away, she dropped her voice to a whisper and said, “You can’t know how long it’s been since I was off the island.”

He lifted the glass to his mouth and jerked his chin — tossing — and then turned back to her. His eyes seemed to swell and recede and swell again. The lines bunched in his face. It was as if he were seeing her for the first time. Very slowly, very tenderly, he brought his lips to hers and they did kiss, almost chastely, as if he were afraid to go too far, and it was the sort of kiss she’d practiced on Jimmie, who had the annoying habit of trying to worm his tongue into her mouth, a dry kiss. He pulled back and stared at her a moment and then she kissed him and she was the one who worked her tongue and when they broke apart this time she didn’t ask a question of him or beg a favor — she merely said, “I’m going with you.”

“I don’t know,” he said, and her heart sank — he was just like the others, gutless and weak, afraid of her stepfather, afraid of the law. But then he looked her in the eye, just holding her gaze, and she could feel him working through the tangle, objection by objection, before he let out a sigh and said, “She’s riding pretty low in the water, what with all that weight. And those animals aren’t exactly the pleasantest things to be around.”

“I don’t mind.” She gestured at the carcass of the lamb, the crude kitchen, the door that gave onto the barnyard.

“And the guano. That’s shit, you know, gull shit.”

“I know.”

“It can smell something awful when it’s all packed in like that.”

“I don’t doubt it,” she said.

“Makes your eyes water. And it’s bound to be rough, what with her riding low, and I don’t know if you can… or you’ll want to—”

“Hush,” she said, and then she leaned in and kissed him again.

* * *

This time, though she felt cored out and her head throbbed and she’d hardly slept, she was there to make sure of him when the door to the bunkhouse swung open beneath the pale fading screen of stars. If he was surprised to see her there, he hid it well. She’d been sitting atop her suitcase and when the door opened she rose and came to him and he took both her hands in his and accepted the kiss she brushed against his cheek. He had his bedroll thrown up over one shoulder and a leather satchel over the other. He looked blunted and pale, his eyes heavy in his head, and she wondered about the aftereffects of the rum on him — if she felt this bad how must he have felt? Was he capable of piloting his ship? Rowing out to it? Even walking down to the beach?

It was then that the door of the bunkhouse swung open again and her heart froze till she saw the shadow of the dog there. She watched it lift a leg to the steps of the porch, then shake itself and go off round the back of the barn, and still she stood there, waiting for what she couldn’t say.

“Well,” he said finally, “I guess that’s your suitcase, is it?”

“Yes,” she whispered, and they were both turning toward it now, walking in stride. And the thing was, he never hesitated, but just bent to it, took it up by the handle and continued on across the yard and down the road, moving so swiftly on his long legs she had to hurry to keep up. The day brightened around them, just perceptibly, and then, in the distance, the cock began to crow and she could picture it perched atop the shed where she’d seen it spring in a single claw-pedaling leap every morning for as long as she could remember and her only thought was that she would never have to hear it again in all her life.

Then there was the dinghy, drawn up on shore, and he secured her suitcase in the bow and helped her into it like a gentleman so that she didn’t even have to get her feet wet. The surf rocked them. The shore pulled back. Ahead of them lay the boat drifting at anchor on a sea so calm it was like the land itself and she could see the pale sun-bleached mesh of the net and the three dark shapes nestled beneath it. The seals. The captives. Wrapped up in their animality and the forlorn fishy stink of them. They were leaving the island, never to come back, and so was she. The oars squealed in the locks and Robert, facing her, gave a quick look over his shoulder, then turned back and smiled at her. It was a simple smile, pure, charged with the excitement of what they were doing together, what she was doing, a smile of appreciation, of admiration, of awe even.