EPILOGUE
AND THE TRUTH of this story is: I did not wait for the move, did not help in any good way, have no idea of its real proceedings. I left. Went east by train like any tourist to Dublin, stayed in a poor hotel, my room above the bar and loud with “typical” evenings. There was a drama festival, cheap seats could be had in the gods, so I saw The Tinker’s Wedding, saw the sweet ballet of the western world. I met an acquaintance in the Brazen Head, and as we sat drinking whiskey, the dog of a regular sniffed my boots, unworn since Inishbream.
– Have ye been in the fields then? It is that he smells cattle or wild birds. Moss and the like. He’s not used to such smells.
– Yes, I have been in the fields.
There were days when I almost went back, when the city was rank with fish and I remembered the nets, still usable, when my eyes filled with the memory of soft gas lamps and mist.
But I took the boat-train to London, thinking: There at least I’ll not be reminded. Walked through Hyde Park, the Moore sculptures recumbent on every horizon, curved as a dolphin rib forgotten on a mantle. Finally I bought a ticket home.
The flight attendants will be serving hot canapés shortly. Please have your seats in the upright position. The usual crowd for economy class. The usual meals. Seats upholstered in purple, gaudy red, colours seldom if ever found in true nature. And the people as well. Maybe walking in the tamed park most cities have for a heart and recreation. Or else topped by hunter’s orange and well armed against bears.
– A canapé, madam?
Serve me a beggar on horseback, a tinker in the grave. The odd thing about flying is the proximity of the moon. A pale occurrence in an unnatural sky. And him, maybe, watching. Ah, it’s Christy, by the stars of God! I’d know his way of spitting and he astride the moon.
– Yes, please. And I’d like whiskey, too. Irish, if you have it. No ice.
Below I could see clouds for hours and hours and then, through an opening, mountains. Silvery threads of lost rivers, blinding lakes, power lines, slashes that could be ski runs. Animals, too, if I knew where to look.
It was evening as we approached Vancouver, city lights illuminating the tines of trees and the sea catching the end of the sun. Someone, my father, my brother, would be waiting to ferry me home over the wide gulf. If we were lucky, we’d see a trawler or gillnetter heading north for a salmon opening, the men warming their hands around mugs of strong coffee, their nets waiting to be thrown to the sea.
All my days on Inishbream were darkened by currachs and black sole, the twilights broken by children tossing their endless stones to the sea, taking up fragments of the island and closing the thin bones of their fingers around them, then casting them away.
When I remember my year, I’ll say: I was married to the boatman, his long oar alight with phosphorescence and his embrace bright with the scales of mackerel. I was never given a brown mug. Never, like Festy, did I discover a message in a bottle, never, like Agnes, did I grow a child in my womb, never knitted a gansey. My house grew lichens yellow as the sun, and snails crossed the threshold, reappearing out of thin air when I’d removed them one by blessed one.
The grey geese circled Inishbream and the population fled, leaving their tables laid for another stranger to dis-cover, leaving a brand of turf to burn away to cold ash. The currachs lay beached like dead whales on the mainland strand, the ribs splitting in the sun. There could be no burial, just the changing dunes of Eyrephort Strand, and no other way for a man to return.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Most writers are lucky to have one good editor in the course of bringing a book to light. I count myself blessed to have had two. Crispin Elsted’s precise and poetic mind helped to shape Inishbream in its lovely Barbarian Press edition, and Laurel Boone’s careful and caring eye further assisted me in refining the text. I am grateful to them both.
THERESA KISHKAN lives on the Sunshine Coast of British Columbia. She and her husband, John Pass, operate High Ground Press, which specializes in the letterpress printing and publishing of poetry broadsheets and chapbooks. Her work has appeared in journals on this continent and abroad, and a suite of her poems was set to music by the composer Steve Tittle. She has twice won Province of British Columbia Cultural Service awards.
Kishkan is the author of six poetry collections and a book of essays, Red Laredo Boots, that brings to life a land-scape impregnated with history and memory. In 2000, her widely praised first novel, Sisters of Grass, announced the emergence of a major new writer of fiction.
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