Anne Korkeakivi - Shining Sea

He pushes open the general store’s door. The ginger-haired girl who runs the shop looks very young, fourteen or fifteen, but the coffee she brews is as black as the most starless night and as stern as the stiffest island wind. Maybe the best coffee he’s ever had, even better than any he drank during the months he spent picking olives in Italy or the spring he passed busking on the Karlsplatz in Vienna. The girl’s father must be gone to work on the mainland, and the mother must be sick or tending a newborn. She’s dropped out of school to pull on her mother’s apron, a girl who is fifteen going on forty.

But that doesn’t make her not jailbait. He had a couple of run-ins of that sort early on in Europe; young girls still have hopeful imaginations. They blur the lines. They romanticize the lives of wanderers like him.

He nods at her curtly, careful not to appear too friendly.

The coffeepot on the shop counter feels heavy, like it’s just been filled. He pours a cup and takes a sip. Not a twinge on the end of the girl’s long nose, not a blink of her ginger-lashed eyelids. It’s like a dance they are doing together. He throws some coins on the counter, more brusquely than he intended.

There’s that old feeling of being watched, of being followed, like the way he started to feel even with Georgina. It’s not that he didn’t like Georgina. That was, in a way, the problem. From the first time they spoke it was as though they’d known each other always. Georgina once remarked, The thing about Francis and me is we’re both so serious we can’t take anything seriously. It felt, when she said that, as though she’d seared a hole right into his heart.

She got under his skin. She made him feel too much. Georgina, stretched flat on a chaise longue in a black leather miniskirt and black lace shirt with no bra under it, her delicate chin tipped back, her caramel-colored hair sprayed out over the cushions, laughing and adjusting a leg to let him see that she had no panties on, either.

A track mark in the crook of her knee catching his eye instead.

He doesn’t have the stuff to help someone like Georgina. And he doesn’t need another lost life on his conscience.

The general-store girl drops the coins in a small chipped cup with a couple of lonely clinks.

He tries not to feel ashamed of himself for being so rude to her, throwing those coins down like that. As though it were her fault he’s been stupid enough in the past to sleep with too-young girls like her. The people on Iona are nice. They deserve better than a person like him on their little island.

He was at a bar in Manchester, a scatter of empty beers in front of him, no idea where to go next or how he’d get there except that it had to be someplace where Georgina wouldn’t find him and try to drag him back into their sick life together in London. The idea of making it east to India and Nepal had come up over the years, but all that love and lies, dregs from a decade earlier — the very thought depressed him. Anyhow, the hippie trail pretty much closed down with the Soviets in Afghanistan and the shah out of Iran.

Up to Oban the morra, the guy on the neighboring bar stool said. My sister makes cheese there, sells it to a wee island, Iona. Crazy wee place. Hae to tae the ferry fae the mainland to the island of Mull, cross all of Mull, and then tae a second ferry just to get to it. A dot in the middle of nowhere.

Hey, man, he said. Can I hitch a ride with you?

In the middle of nowhere, and yet there . Not in the middle at all: the end of the earth, or maybe the beginning. Iona is solid. Iona is timeless. If he stayed longer, he might even find that elusive holy trinity or at least get closer to it: Peace. Freedom. Absolution.

With summer coming, though, other young men and women will start stepping off the ferry with strong arms and backs and considerably more commitment to the Community’s mission of seeking new ways of “living the Gospel in today’s world.” Locals say the island swells with visitors over the warmer months, the population exploding along with purple-blossoming wild thyme. The Community won’t need to turn to a prodigal son for its heavy work.

Men will be returning, too, from winter jobs on the mainland. Back to their women.

Time to move on.

“You know, miss,” he says to the girl, “you make a killer cup of coffee.”

An ugly wash of red creeps across the girl’s round face.

He carries his mug down to the dock. The morning sky is clear enough for him, with his prodigious eyesight, to see the captain stepping in and out of the small cabana on top of the ferry, the mile away to Mull. Of course, the correct word can’t be cabana . The bridge? Wheelhouse? Boats never have held any appeal for him.

Three last passengers stride onto the ferry, all wearing red jackets. Two men, one taller than the other, and a woman. Already the island’s population of ninety has begun to grow in number daily, along with the meadowsweet and Scottish bluebells bursting forth in the fallow fields. Some of the new arrivals come toting heavy duffels or suitcases and letters of introduction to the island hotel or the Community, ready to settle in for the summer. Some come, as he had, just for a day and find themselves unable to leave. The peace of Iona.

Georgina, spilling her pill case onto her naked lap, a cascade of light blue and pink and yellow polka dots against her pale pubic hair. Francis, darling, I had a looooong talk today with Daddy.

Are you really going to take that shit?

Her laughter, hiccuping up through her lank hair as she bent over, picking the pills out of herself. Well, I’m not going to fuck it.

You know, Georgina. You go alone. We’ll dance another night.

Her pale fingers, waving this away, then selecting a light blue pill. Oh, don’t be such a bore. It’ll be a loooovely party. It’ll be an ecstatic party. She popped the pill on her tongue and stuck it out at him. The point is, Daddy says we can get married.

He stopped strumming his guitar. Married?

He quite fancies the idea. He says it’ll be good to add some fresh American blood to the family. He says you’re sure to give him attractive grandchildren.

Down went the pill, her lovely swanlike throat rippling slightly.

As wasted and useless as his life might be, he doesn’t have a death wish. He doesn’t need to be around anyone else who might, either. Done that. Not doing that again.

The ferry separates from the pier, lurching its way into deep water. Once clear of the dock, it moves slowly but smoothly through the water toward him. It will take ten minutes to cross, the wind warming and sweetening.

Time to get a start on his day also.

Back in the store, he sets his cup on the counter and flashes the girl a smile. Red rushes again across her smooth young face, spilling into the roots of her carroty hair. She hurriedly begins counting up the change in the register, and he looks away. It’s been good on Iona; he doesn’t want to leave anything bad behind him. At least Georgina was twenty-two, or almost twenty-two, old enough to be held responsible for bringing him to the British Isles and settling him into her fancy Belgravia apartment.

Who’d ever have guessed her father would decide they should get married, him a shiftless, penniless SOB from America? What kind of parenting was that? Fuck, Georgina must have been in even more desperate shape than he thought.

People are out in the village now, a few tending gardens beside their low-roofed, whitewashed stone homes, a woman bicycling down the road lined with golden yarrow. He nods at each islander as he passes. Some greet him by name; five weeks now, and it is such a small island.