Anne Korkeakivi - Shining Sea

He wasn’t wearing work coveralls. He’d just graduated from college, had a little cash in his pocket from his new job stringing guitars in a music shop and a little more from his stepfather stuffed in an envelope by his bed— It’s high time you open an account, Francis, Ronnie had said — and there was a pretty girl waiting to meet up with him. It was a fine August evening. He laughed. Back in grade school? Before smoking weed cured your asthma?

Eugene laughed, too, a bitter, dry laugh. No one knew what made Eugene’s asthma go away so suddenly at puberty, but it wasn’t smoking weed. The big joke was that it cleared up just in time for him to pass the army physical. Yeah, exactly. Well, those days when I never got picked for teams were the good days.

He popped the tab on another Bud and watched the evening star grow in the waning light, lay back to soak in the warm Southern California nightfall. Only later did he hear what Eugene was really saying: And I never got picked for any teams .

It really wasn’t a joke that asthma had kept Eugene off every team when they were growing up but not out of Vietnam. It turned out not to be funny in the slightest. The army in Vietnam: the worst team of all.

What happened? people asked afterward. Why? Why’d he do it? Eugene’s mother clung to his arm, her worn face swollen from crying: Eugene must have said something to you. You were best friends since forever. You were like brothers.

Eugene did say something to him, something else earlier that same last evening. But not until it was too late did he hear him.

After the funeral, he borrowed a girl’s car and drove to Patty Ann’s. It was a terrible place, where she and her kids were living. They didn’t talk about his plans or about Eugene; she talked about music, about some jewelry she was making, about her sons. They shared a joint and a bottle of cheap wine. But she knew he’d come to say good-bye. I’ll always be your big sister. I’ll always be here, she said when he left. He went from there to the TWA ticket office and bought a round-trip ticket to Paris, because it was the cheapest flight for Europe available and round-trip cost less than one way. The return half of the ticket, long expired, sits at the bottom of his pack.

Over here no one asks him, What happened? He’s almost learned how not to ask himself.

“Sure. Dinner at seven,” he says, although he has no intention of going.

* * *

The sun is still high when he heads back toward the abbey, but a hazy pink film hugs the dark blue edge of the horizon. In June, the sun sets late up here. He passes the four pale green eider eggs, still unguarded. Perhaps a gull caught their mother.

Back in his makeshift bedroom, he lies down and closes his eyes, drawing in the day’s tender, salty scent of sea, the flinty embrace of the June sun, the hours of solitude. He falls in and out of sleep, but as peace grows within him so does a hollow feeling. He has no oatcakes left and no food in his room, and he’s told the Community he won’t be eating with them tonight. Neither of the women he’s befriended on the island has invited him around this evening.

On Iona, that doesn’t leave many options. There’s the Argyll and then there’s…the Argyll.

Fuck it.

He draws himself up from his cot and pulls his jacket on.

The air is silvery with the sound of singing from within the abbey. A lone cow lopes its way down craggy Cnoc Mor, the hill behind the tiny island school. He makes his way down and around the short row of waterfront houses. Inside the Argyll, Rufus and the two others are installed around a wooden table.

“Hello!” Rufus says, waving to him. “Sit down! I’ve already ordered for everyone.”

He slips into a chair at the table, checking to see who else is in the tranquil dining room, evening sun streaking its windows. No one tonight. A plate of mutton pie appears before him.

“What’s your name?” The girl in Rufus’s group has a slight accent he can’t place. She’s dark-haired, sleek, and good-looking in an unfrivolous way. “I am Ghislaine.”

She doesn’t offer her hand. He likes her matter-of-fact manner. “Francis.”

“Ah, Francis! And this,” Rufus says, introducing the thick-necked, flat-headed boy who completes their trio, “is Eamon. Eamon from Belfast.”

Eamon nods at him.

“So, Francis,” Rufus says, “you are wondering what we are doing on Iona.”

“No, not really,” he says, cutting into his pie. “Lots of people come to Iona.”

“Last December,” Rufus says, “right after the Harrods bombings, I woke up, made a cup of coffee, and thought: this is madness. We need to reach out across the water.”

Rufus stops and looks at him expectantly.

He swallows a forkful of warm, savory pie. It’s good — better than good. Surely worth having to sit through this.

“ Across the water! We’re going on a mission of conciliation,” Rufus says, “one that we hope will be heard by both Protestants and Catholics, by both Ireland and the UK — by the world, even. Next weekend is the anniversary celebration of Columba’s arrival in Scotland. We’re going to undertake his two-hundred-kilometer journey in reverse, from Iona to Northern Ireland. The twist is that half of our crew will be Catholic and the other half Protestant. You see the symbolism, I’m sure. We’re pulling together . I’ve had an old currach shipped, refitted, and kitted out here on Iona, and we’ve been training in another one off the coast of Devon. And — very important — I’ve reached out to as many newspapers and television stations as possible. Maybe you’ve even heard about us.”

He’s seen a currach. It stuck with him because it seemed such an unlikely sea vessel — something between a rowboat, sailboat, and canoe. These three red-jacketed knuckleheads are going to row all the way from Iona to Northern Ireland, over open sea, in a boat that’s little more than a wooden butter dish?

He shakes his head. “No. I haven’t heard anything.”

“The thing is,” Rufus says, unfazed — it’s hard to imagine what would faze Rufus—“we have a little problem.”

“Not so little,” Ghislaine says.

“We’ve lost one of our crew members,” Rufus says. “Our Irish Catholic.”

He lays his fork down.

“It was a bit of a freak accident. We were training in a borrowed boat in Oban yesterday. He slipped on a mound of harvested seaweed and knocked his head against a pier. He’s laid up in a hospital bed for the foreseeable future.”

Rufus stops again to look expectantly at him.

He picks his fork back up. “Must have been a nasty fall.”

Ghislaine frowns. “Rufus insisted we continue on to Iona. He said he was sure something would come up.”

“And by God, it has!” Rufus says. “Will you believe this, Francis? Our lost crew member is six foot one and weighs one hundred and eighty pounds. Exactly. You’ll fit his kit perfectly.”

He wipes his mouth with his napkin. As he inclines his head, he catches sight of Moira — or Muira? — walking into the kitchen. The one who isn’t a postmistress. She flashes him a glance before disappearing behind the kitchen door.

“ You’re Irish-American,” Rufus says. “It isn’t Irish-Irish, but it’s close. You look very fit. You obviously have no commitments to keep you from stepping into the boat when we push off tomorrow morning — you wouldn’t have been sitting out there in the middle of the day playing your guitar if there was someplace you had to be.”

He takes a last bite of the mutton pie. The meat falls apart on his fork, soft and tender. He tears off a piece of bread and mops up the remains of the cheddar — mashed potato topping, gravy squeaking up over the all of it. Perhaps Moira/Muira is waiting in the kitchen, hoping he’ll leave with her. Suddenly, there isn’t anything he wants less. What’s more, for reasons he can’t quite put his finger on, the idea of Rufus seeing him leave with her turns his stomach.