by Abby Geni
The evening that followed was strange. They were biologists, and I had become an interesting specimen. Forest occasionally shot me a look I could not interpret; it might have been amusement or discomfort. Lucy insisted on feeling the baby, laying icy hands on my stomach. She stood there for a long time, beaming, waiting until the fetus responded with a kick. Behind her eyes, there was a suggestion of something more than happiness. Relief, maybe.
The clock ticked in the corner. Someone had broken out a case of wine. I sipped grape juice with a sour aftertaste—a few weeks past its sell-by date, I guessed. As the hours passed, I remained quiet. I did not have to lie. I did not have to say anything at all. Mick sat beside me, shielding me, deflecting every question, filling the space with his big, benevolent presence.
At one point he reached over and took my hand. Not since your death had I felt so safe, so protected, so loved.
LATER THAT NIGHT, I was woken by a strange sound. At first I thought it was my seal pup—my lost-and-found pup—calling for me again. Crying for its mother one last time. It took me a while to come fully into consciousness. The keening went on, punctuated by heavy, sodden breathing. Gradually I realized that it was human. A wracked, heartbroken, anguished noise. Someone was sobbing.
I sat up in bed, palming the hair out of my face. For the life of me, I could not figure out where the sound was coming from. It could have been Lucy downstairs, weeping into her pillow. But it also could have been coming from the hall outside my door—from Galen’s room, maybe. The wind whirling around the cabin played tricks on my ears. The voice itself was not recognizable. Pain had distorted it, washing out the usual characteristics: age, gender, vocal quality. There was something universal, I realized, in the noise of a person crying. I did not dare get out of bed and try to locate the sufferer. What I was hearing was too intimate for that. I tilted my head to the right and left, trying to pinpoint the source. But I could not solve the riddle. The sound was coming from everywhere at once, as though the house itself were in tears.
36
THERE IS NO way forward except through words. Since you died, I have dealt with every tragedy and loss the same way—by writing. So I will write to you now. Even though my letters have begun to feel hollow, even though the act brings me less and less solace, I will write to you. There is no remedy for what happened today. But I will put the words on paper anyway, hoping against hope for comfort.
The first few hours of the morning were lovely. I woke late, wrapped in what felt like a quilt of sunlight. Captain Joe had recently made an appearance, which meant the fridge was stocked. I ate a bowl of cereal with strawberries and fresh, creamy milk. I found a gossip magazine crammed at the back of the bookshelf, where it had been hiding, undiscovered, for my entire tenure on the islands. I flipped through it with glee. The house was quiet. Only Galen was home. He and I maintained a companionable silence, moving around each other with the mute ease of goldfish in a bowl.
Around ten o’clock Lucy appeared at the front door, hard hat in place. In her poncho, she rustled across the room to where I lay on the couch.
“Get up,” she said, standing over me.
“Why?”
“I need help. Mick dropped a piece of equipment in the water. One of my best nets. It’s caught on a reef. We need all hands on deck.”
Galen was already on his feet. It took me a while to extricate myself from the couch cushions. It took me even longer to get my flea collars around my ankles. I have reached the stage of my pregnancy in which bending over is complicated.
On the porch, the first thing I encountered was Kamikaze Pete. Weeks of unceasing battle had diminished his physical person, but not his spirit. He was thin and bedraggled. He had not taken the time to care for his plumage, feathers jutting out any old way. One eye was permanently squinted shut. Still, he launched himself as vindictively as ever at my skull. I ducked low and made a break for it, skidding down the steps. Kamikaze Pete did not chase me. He stayed on his own turf, shrieking threats at my retreating form. Galen followed me down the stairs.
Lucy was already halfway across Marine Terrace, leading the way. I saw Mick at the water’s edge. He was shadowed against the brilliant shards of light strewn across the surface of the sea. Threading through the birds was not easy; I had to be cautious. Chicks of various sizes bobbed everywhere, tumbling onto the path and squawking up at me. Their parents were not as welcoming. They whacked my shoulders with their wings and emptied their bowels onto my poncho. Their cries rose around me like fog, thickening the air, making it hard to keep my bearings.
I glanced up. I saw Lucy in motion. I saw Mick swinging a rope in both hands. I glanced down, checking my progress. Then I looked toward Mick again.
A group of gulls had come out of nowhere. Even at a distance, I heard the screech of their voices, nails on a chalkboard. Wheeling in formation, they plunged out of the sky. Mick lifted his arms, batting the birds away. But there were too many of them. He was encircled by a tornado of feathers.
What happened next is etched on my brain like ink on photo paper. I remember every instant of it, every action, every breath. I will remember it forever.
There was a sharp crack. Mick lurched to the side. One of the gulls had made contact with his hard hat. Another swooped in, slamming against the plastic dome. Before my eyes, the thing broke apart. It seemed almost geographical: an earthquake splintering the hard hat into shards. The pieces exploded outward. Bright plastic, white birds. Mick was without armor. He was defenseless.
The gulls did not hesitate. Pecked in head—their favorite kind of violence. They beat at Mick’s face, disorienting him. A large female took aim. Her beak glinted. I saw a splash of blood. She had sliced off a wedge of Mick’s ear.
He screamed. There was no time for me to take it in. There was no time left. Beaks swiveled around him like knives. Slashing at his forehead. Tearing his throat. Pulling swatches from his poncho. Ripping his fingers to the bone. The birds were decorated in blood now, marked and smeared with war paint.
In what seemed to be slow motion, Mick twisted in midair. He was scored all over by wounds. The gulls had tattooed his wrists and hands with abrasions. One ear was gone. A crimson hole. His Adam’s apple poured a waterfall down his neck, streaking his poncho. The birds swooped around him, unrelenting. His hand rose in a helpless gesture. A trail of red mist followed the movement, drifting behind his arm like an afterimage. He was standing too close to the water.
A slip. A stumble. That is all it takes to claim a person’s life. Mick fell inside a cloud of wings. He disappeared behind the rocks. A splash rose against the shore, glinting in the light. The birds rose too, triumphant.
Something touched my arm. It was Galen, gripping my elbow to steer me forward. We stumbled frantically through the rookery. We reached the shoreline together. His grip was causing me pain. It was hard, at first, to make sense of the mix of glare and darkness. Dazzling coins were spangled across the water. My eyes adjusted slowly. There was a long shadow inside the wet glow.
Now, in retrospect, I am aware that I did not want to understand what I was looking at. I took it in without registering its meaning. Denial is a powerful thing: it can alter what we see, help us forget the moments of transgression and pain in our lives, keep us unaware of violence. Mick’s body bobbed limply on the ocean. Facedown. I held my ground, waiting for the scene to resolve into something else. Any second now, he was going kick his legs. He was going to surface, gasping for breath. He was going to start to swim. I was calm and curious, nothing more.
A moment later, a gull landed on Mick’s back. Its beak flashed, and a spatter of crimson coated its feathers. It took flight with something in its mouth—a hunk of quivering pink. A second bird followed suit. It perched quizzically on Mick’s arm, its weight dipping the limb beneath the surface of the water. It peeled a strip of skin from the back of his hand. Then another bird landed. And another.
At my side, Lucy was sobbing. She waved her arms in vain, trying to s
care the gulls away. Galen had his fingers buried in his hair. His mouth was contorted. The birds were growing bolder, circling in a pack. They yanked tufts of Mick’s hair out. They stabbed at his poncho, penetrating the fabric, wrenching mouthfuls of wet flesh from his torso. They smacked one another with their wings, battling over who would alight on the body next. They shrieked in what seemed to be elation. Mick was a sodden mass, oozing coils of blood over the surface of the sea.
I don’t know how long I would have stood there, unwilling to believe what I was seeing. Forever, maybe.
It seemed as though the noise of the birds was growing louder. The roar became unendurable, thundering in my ears. I had an impression of motion and wind, of something rising around me, as though all the gulls on Southeast Farallon had taken flight at once.
Galen grabbed me as I fell. The last thing I remember is the expression on his face—eyes haunted, mouth open—and the vise of his wiry arms.
I WOKE IN my bedroom. I kept my eyes closed for a bit, inhaling the familiar odors of dust and mildew, feeling the light from the window on my cheek. Somebody else was there. My heart leapt. I wanted it to be Mick; I was sure that it would be Mick. He had always been the one to care for me when I was ill.
“How are you feeling?” Lucy said.
I opened my eyes. She was leaning over me. Her hair swung in its usual braid.
“I’ll get you some water,” she said, turning toward the door.
I flung out a hand to stop her.
“What happened?” I said.
She sank onto the bed, frowning. I was struck anew by the hale solidity of Lucy. Her whole body spoke of matronly good health. But her face had a dewy aspect now. Her eyes were swollen.
“You know what happened,” she said.
I was still hoping she might come up with an alternate solution. Maybe Mick had been rescued just in time. Maybe the kiss of life had saved him. Maybe he was downstairs now, shrugging off the last vestiges of hypothermia. Maybe he was fine. That was what I wanted to hear: Mick was absolutely fine. It was the What If Game all over again.
Lucy brushed a lock of hair wearily from her face.
“I’m so sorry,” she said.
At once, I pushed myself upright. With a frantic gesture, I reached for her, pulling her into a bear hug. I saw the shock in her face. My belly knocked the wind out of her. She patted my back, and I gripped her rib cage with all my strength. This was not a benevolent instinct. I wanted to force what she was about to say back into her throat, through her lungs, down through the soles of her feet. I wanted to prevent her from saying Mick’s name aloud, from saying drowned or gone or, God forbid, accident. I did not want her to say a word.
37
I AM LEAVING THE islands. It has not been a question, to go or to stay. Galen has arranged the whole thing for me. He has radioed the mainland, contacted Captain Joe. On Friday afternoon, the ferry will take me away.
It is July. Mick died in July. I know this, not because I have checked a calendar, but because the night the helicopter came to remove Mick’s body, there were fireworks. I was lying down in my room for the whole of that encounter. I heard the whir of the rotor. I heard the angry, raucous response of the gulls. For a while, it was Armageddon out there, the blades whooshing, the birds in flight too. Voices downstairs. Footsteps. Doors slamming. I stayed where I was. Soon enough, the helicopter rumbled off. The gulls seemed upset for a long while afterward, shrieking and babbling.
I did not budge. The sky darkened outside. Weak and weary, I stared out the window. I had not found the wherewithal to eat or drink much of anything. At last, at moonrise, the gulls bedded down. The islands looked painterly in the waning light—coated with white bodies like gesso on canvas. The moon was a sliver, a fishhook. A few stars began to burn. I was debating whether I had it in me to head downstairs and attempt some dinner when there was a sound—a distant report.
I caught my breath. The noise was unmistakable. Cannon fire. For a moment I was reminded of the eggers and the lightkeepers—their epic, ancient battle. There was a flash of light. Another boom. The sound and the flicker were too far away to appear synchronized. It took me a while to realize what was happening. The fireworks were rising above San Francisco, thirty miles away. From my vantage point, they were tiny. I could have pinched them out between thumb and finger like the flame of a match. Three golden spheres burst in succession, as small as buttons. Red, white, and blue rockets whizzed in teeny arcs. A diminutive, glittering tree blossomed in the air, its leaves streaking downward like a weeping willow’s. It was as though I were watching the Fourth of July inside a snow globe.
The finale was impressive. Bright orbs overlapped one another, all the colors of the rainbow. A garden of miniature flowers bloomed and died in a matter of seconds. When it was done, I waited a while, hoping for more. The cannon fire continued for a minute or two in the darkness: all the aggressive noise of the fireworks, none of the celebratory light. Finally, only the smoke was left—gray, hollow shapes, drifting on the wind like ghosts.
I HAVE NOT cried for Mick. Instead, I have been wandering. I have trekked all over Southeast Farallon, visiting places I have not been in months. I have carried the weight of my belly across Dead Sea Lion Beach. I have visited the caves to the north. Rhino Catacombs. Orca Cove. Eerie places, with an eerie view. With the baby kicking in protest, I have strolled all the way to the Weather Service Peninsula. I have sat for hours on Marine Terrace, shielded beneath my hard hat, wrapped in my poncho, breathing through my mask, gazing in the direction of California.
Eventually, I am sure, I will once again see the archipelago for what it truly is—a wild place, nothing more. A place where the rules, comforts, and safeguards of modern life do not apply. For now, however, the islands seem less wild than malignant. Every gift comes with a terrible cost. A talent for photography arises from the loss of a mother. A baby can be found only after rape, violence, and death. The closeness of a friendship must be answered with loss. A love affair, too, must end in tears—as Forest and Lucy could attest to. These are not good thoughts. These are the sort of thoughts that keep a person in motion, striding up and down the slope.
Once or twice, I have seen Forest in the distance—a thin shape, moving fast. I have not spoken to him. This I know: there is nothing as lonely as grief. He and I are fellow mourners, each locked in a kind of mental isolation. Forest has barely been in the cabin at all. Instead, he has taken the Janus out on his own for no real reason, zooming around the islands, the sound of the engine ringing against the cliffs. He has not been present at meals. He does not join the evening queue outside the bathroom, all of us clutching our toothbrushes and glowering at one another. I have begun to suspect him of sleeping in the coast guard house. I do not hear his footsteps in the night. I no longer catch his dry cough in the mornings. It seems impossible for someone to be so absent in such a confined environment—yet Forest has all but disappeared.
The autopsy was concluded swiftly. They said that Mick had drowned. His lungs were full of seawater, his eyes decorated with pinprick hemorrhages. Foam around the mouth. All the telltale signs. By the time the gulls had finished with him, his body had been in bad shape. His funeral would have to be a closed-casket service, apparently. I tried not to think about it. I took some small comfort in the knowledge that drowning was supposed to be a pleasant way to expire. I had heard this fact somewhere, long ago, and I clung to it now like a lifeline. Drowning was an ethereal, ecstatic way to leave the world, more like dreaming than dying.
Still, I could not help but wonder exactly what had happened in the seconds that Mick was out of my sight—between the moment he stumbled and the moment he perished. It seemed impossible that I would never know for sure. He was a strong swimmer; he was a seasoned biologist, used to the myriad dangers of the islands. But none of that had helped him when it mattered. Maybe he had ruptured an eardrum when he hit the sea. Maybe he had opened his eyes in the cloudy water and found himself fatally disoriented,
unsure which way was up. Maybe he had collided with something beneath the surface, a boulder or a reef. Maybe he had struck the surface at an angle that had knocked him unconscious at once. In truth, there were a hundred ways to die on the islands. It was amazing that we were not all six feet under—lost to the wind, the ocean, and the dreadful, human capacity for misadventure.
Last night, I dreamed about the ghost. It was a chilly evening for summer. I was curled in bed like a hedgehog, trying to keep warm. Then I felt a hand touch my shoulder. I sat up, disarranging the blankets, and saw her.
At the time, this did not shock me at all. She was wearing a long, floating dress. The moonlight caught the edges of it and turned it to silver. Her hair shrouded her face. I couldn’t read her expression. She drifted backward. I followed.
Her dress swirled as she paced down the long hall. She paused outside the room that Mick and Forest had shared. She pointed urgently with a long, white arm—as white as salt. Then she turned to me and lifted her chin. Her hair pooled away from her cheeks, revealing a round jaw, deep-set eyes, and a stubborn mouth. For the first time, I could see her face. It was like looking in a mirror.
38
ON A WARM July morning, I found myself in the lighthouse. This was foolish, I know. The path up the hill is hard to manage at the best of times, let alone while carrying the added burden of pregnancy. The gulls clearly viewed my approach as the first line of an advancing army. I slipped once, skinning my knee. I lost my temper and took a swing at one of the birds. He had been rattling around my hard hat, trying to disorient me, feathers opening and closing in front of my face like shutters. I threw a punch, smacking him in the wing and spinning him away, though he still hollered admonishments in my general direction. It felt good to lash out, to cause harm. If I could, I would have done the same to every gull on the islands.
