T. Boyle - San Miguel

They were silent a moment, both of them staring out over the waves to where the island suddenly came clear, stretched across the horizon like the smallest fragment of a very old rug. “I’m sorry,” she said after a moment, turning back to him, “but what did you say your name was?”

“Jimmie, ma’am. I’m Jimmie. Didn’t Herbie — I mean, Mr. Lester — tell you about me?”

She was about to say No, he didn’t, but then she saw the look in his eyes and caught herself. “Yes,” she said, “he did, as a matter of fact.”

This seemed to satisfy him. His features settled. He pushed back the hat to scratch briefly at his scalp. “Well,” he sang out all of a sudden, “no sense in standing here gawking — which of these bags you want aboard first?”

* * *

The Vaquero was like no boat she’d ever been on, the open high-railed deck more accommodating to animals than people, but the wheelhouse was snug enough and the men gathered there — ranch hands on their way back to Santa Rosa, the ship’s captain, her new friend Jimmie — were in a festive mood, their eyes shining, grins playing across their faces like heat lightning. There was a woman aboard, and a new bride at that, and they crowded round her, each one vying to outdo the other, their voices blending and breaking as they offered up an unyielding torrent of stories, advice, jokes and admonitions. She’d never much liked being the center of attention, shy of it, actually, the ugly duckling of her family, thick-limbed and awkward all her life, but this was different — she’d been selected for this — and she found herself enjoying the attention. Or mostly. And when it got too much for her, when the bug-eyed man in the plaid shirt and patched blue jeans leaned across the bench to shout in her left ear even as the one named Isidro contradicted him with a Spanish-inflected tirade on the other side, she just called out to Herbie in French— Chéri, sauve-moi —and he was there, distracting them with the jeroboam of champagne he’d somehow managed to get hold of from sources unnamed and had begun pouring before the boat even left the dock.

“À ta commande, madame,” he crooned, pouring first for her, then for the bug-eyed man and finally Isidro, who stopped what he was saying — about cattle, his defining subject — long enough to tip back the tin cup he’d produced from his jacket pocket when Herbie had first uncorked the bottle. And then Herbie— her husband, and how she loved the sound of those three syllables on her lips — was holding out a hand to her as if he were inviting her to dance, pulling her up off the bench and handing the big heavy dense-green bottle to Isidro all in a single fluid motion, and here she was following his lead, not to an imaginary dance floor but out the door to the deck where the sun poured down and the breeze fanned her hair and the spume broke away from the bow and flew up in sunstruck beads to vanish on the air. The sea was gentle, the air mild — or if not mild exactly, then not cold, at least not yet. To her right was the mainland with its white-fringed beaches and the greening mountains that rose up and away from them, to her left the big island clothed in a patchwork of color, and straight out over the bow, larger now, but still not much more than a blemish on the horizon, the mysterious place where she was going to make her home. Herbie pulled her to him, whispering, “Ah, enfin, je t’ai seule.”

The French. It was part of what had attracted her to him in the first place — she’d learned to love the language as a girl and he’d picked it up during the war — and now it had become their secret language, the language they alone shared amongst all these cowboys and sailors and sheepmen. She closed her eyes and he kissed her, right out there in full public view, and she didn’t care because she was half-mad with the champagne and the sun and the sheer wonder of the adventure she was on, picturing him the day they’d met, Herbert Steever Lester, dressed in suit and bow tie and with his laughing blue eyes screwed right into hers as she answered the door and he took her hand in his and murmured “Enchanté,” even though all he was doing was inquiring about subletting her apartment on East Seventy-second Street. Herbie. Her husband. Her first and only love.

And then, his arm round her waist, they were strolling the deck — promenading — and if she saw the stains worked into the planks or caught scent of the animals that had so recently been passengers here and were now on their way to meet their fate, she wouldn’t admit it. Why spoil the day? Why dwell on the imperfections when there was so much beauty to glory in? She threw back her head and let her gaze roam free, the shore receding, the islands drifting closer, the sun ladled over everything and everything glowing as if the world were slick with a new coat of paint.

For his part, Herbie chattered away, in English now, going on about the island and its multitudinous charms, telling her about the house and their bedroom and how she wouldn’t even need to crack her trousseau, except maybe for one of those sheer peignoirs from Paris. Gowns? Ball them up and throw them away! And where did she think his tux was? Back at Bob Brooks’ place in Beverly Hills. Where it was going to stay. Forever. Because this was the real life they were going into, the natural life, the life of Thoreau and Daniel Boone, simple and vigorous and pure. He talked on, talked and talked, pacing up and down the deck, as full of enthusiasm as she’d ever seen him.

When finally the breeze got to be too much for her they went back inside and there was another round of champagne and then another and then the shadows began to lean the other way and before she could think San Miguel rose up out of the sea ahead of them like an image on a photographic plate and they were in the harbor there, the anchor chain paying out and Herbie helping her down into the boat that would ferry her across to the place where her life was about to begin, and if through all these years she hadn’t believed in reinvention or second chances or just plain dumb luck, she had to believe now.

There was a team of horses — Buck and Nellie — but they were in the barn at the top of the hill where Jimmie had left them when he boarded the Vaquero the previous morning, and so she and Herbie hauled all their things up past the tide line themselves, then shouldered their packs and started up the crude dirt road to the plateau above. By this time, the sun was low in the sky and the Vaquero had rounded the point behind them and tipped away on the streaming red waves. She watched it over one shoulder, alive in all her senses, everything steeped in the soft declining light. The whole world seemed to be holding its breath. Something darted across the road ahead of them and what was it? A lizard of some sort. Or a snake. But then snakes didn’t have legs, did they?

The canyon that gave rise to the road smelled wet and raw, like the inside of a cave, and it funneled the wind so that it was blowing in their faces, blowing cold, and she had to stop to button her cardigan. And once they were up off the beach, everything was mud, so that her shoes were thick with it, each step heavier than the last. She hadn’t gone a hundred yards before they were like twin boats — or no, like those great flapping wooden things they wore in Holland, and what were they called? Sabots? No, that was French. Clogs. Wooden clogs.

But here was Herbie, dancing on ahead of her in his short pants and Army boots, his shirt flapping and the hair beating round his head, impervious to the wind and the mud and everything else. His mood was soaring, lifting him so high it was as if his feet hardly touched ground. And it wasn’t the champagne, which had worn off by now and had only left her feeling sleepy, but his natural exuberance that had him so worked up he was actually trembling like one of those coffee addicts you saw barking at each other like trained seals every time you stepped into a diner. Every thirty seconds he had to catch himself, looping back to her to shove at the weight of her pack as if to push her on up the slope, blowing a kiss in her ear, dropping a hand to her buttocks to pat her there, stimulate her, urge her on. And talking, of course. Talking all the while.