Casting Off

by Nicole R Dickson

  “Good. Now get on the bike.”

  Matthew looked up into his father’s face, his wide, frightened eyes reflecting the periwinkle sky above him. Tears glistened in the light as they rolled down his cheeks. Grabbing the handlebar with only his left hand, Matthew lifted his feet to the pedals with a whimper. Sean pushed the bike. Matthew was unable to keep his balance with the injured arm and fell over again. A small cry passed the boy’s lips as he hit the dirt. He didn’t roll over.

  “You’ll never be a man,” Sean declared and walked away, leaving his son lying on the dirt road behind him.

  “Sean!” Claire called.

  He didn’t look back. He didn’t reply. He walked away.

  Sean held his head, his knees buckling beneath him as the sound of his son crying in the dirt rolled across his mind. He hadn’t taken Matthew into Galway until a week later to have his arm set.

  Then the late spring wind blew, and Sean’s memory shifted directions and he watched Matthew standing at the altar kissing his new wife, Mary, ten years after the bike accident. All Sean could remember of that day was the permanent bend in Matthew’s lower right arm—a deformity Sean had put there. Matthew held Mary to him in front of the priest with that bent arm as Joe played his pipe.

  Suddenly Sean pulled his hands from his head. He listened. There was a pipe playing beyond his workshop door.

  “Joe?”

  The whistle was clean, with no needless air rasping the notes. His feet scuffed the stone floor as he crossed it, sending the yellow swatches scattering in his wake. Opening the door, Sean trotted across the kitchen. The whistle climbed higher, its notes tickling Sean’s aging ears. As he entered the living room, he found the music coming from outside.

  “Rowan?”

  He flung his front door open and leaned out into the clear morning air. The ocean roared behind his house to the west. The wind smelled of grass and dew, blowing in from the east. The music was from neither east nor west—nor north nor south. It just was, and Sean stood rock-still, his bare feet cool on his slate step, listening to it.

  “Joe.”

  Sean tucked the swatch into his pant pocket and from within his tattered sleeve he pulled out his whistle. He raised it to his weathered lips and blew. His note was full of air like a cough. It was rough and grainy. He stopped, closing his eyes, listening for the scale. The surf pounded the shore. For a moment, Sean lost the whistle’s sound.

  “No,” he whispered, stepping farther from his door. As the tide rolled away, the whistle poured down the scale like a tiny waterfall.

  Quickly Sean grabbed his cap and coat from the hook inside his door and, leaving his house to the elements, ran around his cottage toward the ocean, his feet bare of shoes. Flying down a dune, he heard a scale no longer. It was a tune. It was bright and happy, skipping in waves around him but now and then silenced by the surf.

  “Wait,” Sean called, unbinding the ropes from his curragh and flinging them onto the sand. With a great grunt, he flipped his boat over, tossed the oars, his coat, and his cap into the bottom, and pushed the curragh toward the sea. Sand grew in mounds before his bow and crawled up between his toes, trying to keep the man on dry ground. But like all fishermen, Sean knew that as his boat hit the waves, the ocean would grab it and take it farther out to sea.

  “I’m coming,” Sean yelled, as a wave crashed over the bow. Cold, salty water splashed his face and stung his eyes as the bottom of the boat was lifted from the sand. Grabbing the side of the curragh, Sean pulled himself in, landing flat on his back in the bottom of the boat. Quickly he scooted his legs under him, seated himself, placed the oars on their pegs, and pulled. As he raised his oars, the bow climbed over the crest of an incoming wave, and water came crashing into the curragh. Sean dropped his oars in the water, pulling with his crackling back, pushing with his grinding knees. The next wave was smaller, and as he laid on the oars and crawled slowly away from the shore, he could hear the pipe more clearly.

  He rowed in rhythm. The periwinkle sky touched his head, heating his scalp. Grabbing his cap, the old man popped it over his sparse hair and headed north, where he knew a kelp bed grew. It was there, on gentle spring mornings, that the sea was most quiet. He had found it sixty-eight years ago, the day after his father stopped talking to him—the day Sean became a man. He was fifteen years old and had left his father’s house the night before, choosing that night to sleep with the cows in Claire’s parents’ barn. He had never returned to his father’s house until the man passed on.

  It was to that kelp bed Sean now rowed, his body popping and grinding. But he wasn’t paying attention to his pain; he was hearing Joe’s song. When he reached the kelp bed, he pulled his oars into the curragh. The boat slowed its forward motion and came to rest in the tops of the giant green forest below. Closing his eyes, Sean listened.

  It was Joe, all right, playing the same tune he had played the first time out in the curragh with his father. Sean had lost the memory of Joe’s pipe—so clean, with no wasted air. It was there, but blurred by time and pain, and the exact sound had been lost long ago. But now Sean heard it as if Joe sat before him in the curragh surrounded by the silent sea beneath a periwinkle sky.

  From his sleeve, Sean pulled his pipe and put it to his lips. The music stopped. Startled, he stood up, straining his ears to catch one more sound—one more note. There was nothing but the ocean lapping the sides of his boat in the stillness of morning.

  “Come back,” he called, but no sound followed.

  “Come back to me!” he yelled to the sky.

  There was nothing. Falling back onto his seat, the old man rolled his pipe between his fingers. He brought the whistle to his lips and played. His sound was rough, the tune flat. He was like a person who had not sung for years trying to sing a song from long ago. The voice remembers how it is supposed to sound but can no longer hit the notes. Sean cringed at the miss.

  “Come back,” he whispered.

  It was Joe. Only Joe sounded so.

  Joe had a way with the pipe. It was Joe who taught his brothers the whistle. He helped with fingering and aperture. As Matthew played melody, Joe played harmony until the next son was old enough to play. Then, before the driftwood fire at night, Joe would give each boy his own harmony to all the songs he knew. Every night, for many years, Sean’s house was filled with tin whistles playing over gales or through warm summer nights. But as his sons grew, there was less and less music, until there was but one pipe sounding around Sean’s beach. It was Joe, playing somewhere else besides his father’s hearth.

  “Please, come back,” he begged, but there was only the breeze blowing silently about the curragh.

  From his pocket, Sean pulled out his yellow swatch, fingering the garter stitches as the sun heated his back. He hadn’t thought of Joe for so long. He certainly hadn’t thought of Joe’s pipe. But when he had heard Rowan whistling away like she’d been doing it for years—like she was born to the island herself—then he thought again of his second son.

  Tucking his pipe into his sleeve again, Sean turned the boat around and headed back to shore in silence. His oars were as heavy as his heart. Slowly, he pulled against the sea. Gazing out at the horizon, he let the memory of the music flow into him, burning the pristine sound into his mind. Perhaps it was Rowan, after all. Perhaps as she played, the island picked up her song and spread it through the air. But then, Rowan didn’t know any tunes; she knew only scales.

  Turning his boat east, Sean rolled ashore, hopping out of the curragh in his bare feet. Sand grew in mounds before his bow, seemingly angry with him for leaving the beach in the first place. With a great heave, he rolled the curragh over, leaving it resting on the sand, unbound to its mooring rocks. With the waves crashing behind him, he picked up his coat and climbed the dune to his house. The rosebushes were but dead sticks next to his cottage, and when he rounded the corner he found his front door open as he had left it. To the east, he spotted a small group of tourists watching him from the roa
d.

  “Go ’way,” he muttered, and stepping into his house, he shut the door. He hung his cap and coat on the peg just inside and dipped his fingers in the small shell of water.

  “God bless all here,” he said. There was no answer.

  In the kitchen Sean poured his cold tea into his empty cup. Lifting it from the table, he shuffled into his sons’ room, grabbed the large bag of wool, and sat down on his chair, which sat lonely near the dark fireplace. He set his tea on the floor. After brushing the sand from his feet, he pulled his spinning wheel toward his chair.

  “I have to make Brendan,” he said to the spindle as he popped an empty bobbin onto it. Very carefully, he pulled a leader thread from within the bag of wool, tied it onto the bobbin, fed it through the hooks on the flyer, down into the orifice, and out the other side. There he made a knot and as he placed his right foot on the treadle, he reached down for his tea. Taking a sip, he peered sideways out the window at the periwinkle blue sky. He set the wheel in motion. It clicked loudly through the empty house, the spokes spinning in front of him like the wheel of Matthew’s bike.

  CHAPTER 17

  Bobbles/Ribbing Between

  Bobbles/Ribbing Between. 1. A bobble knitted and a single rib created between it and another bobble. The ribbing stitch appears as a string between the two bobbles and can be knitted as a straight line or curved like the letter S. 2. A new friend.

  —R. Dirane, A Binding Love

  The rest of the week, Rebecca endeavored to keep Rowan close to her without insulting anyone in town. Siobhan had come over again on Tuesday for the day. On Wednesday, Rebecca headed to Rose’s house, inviting Siobhan to come along with Rowan while Rebecca learned to spin on the wheel.

  Tom was ill on Thursday and Maggie asked Rebecca if she could help in the pub. It was a natural request, as Maggie put it, because Rebecca had been a superstar waitress through college, according to Sharon. Rebecca was glad to help out, especially since doing so allowed her to invite Siobhan over to play with Rowan and Maggie’s two boys in the back of the pub for the day.

  When Friday arrived, Tom was still ill, so Rebecca and Rowan pedaled toward the pub through heavy morning mist, the sun but a suggestion of light on the eastern horizon. They found Annie, Paddy, and Siobhan waiting for them in front of the Blakes’ house. Paddy held fishing poles and Siobhan held flashlights.

  “Time to go fishing,” Paddy called.

  “Oh—Rowan and I were going to help Maggie in the pub,” Rebecca replied with a grimace. She wasn’t ready to let Rowan run free quite yet. She hadn’t even figured out how to keep Sean away.

  “Let her go,” Annie said. “I’ll help you and Maggie in the pub.”

  “When will you be back?” Rebecca asked nervously.

  “We’re only going on the rocks south,” Paddy replied. “If we’re not back when you want Rowan, just come and get her. She might be a bit smelly, but she’ll be fine.”

  Rebecca laughed and with a nod kissed Rowan’s head. Her little girl skipped hand in hand with Siobhan south, following Paddy.

  “Come on. Maggie’ll have breakfast,” Annie said.

  With one final glance over her shoulder, Rebecca left Rowan to Paddy and the sea.

  The town was quiet. There was no loud laughing, no people rushing down the streets speaking foreign languages, and no whizzing bicycles. Clearly tourists didn’t rise before the sun while on holiday. By the thickness of the fog today, they would be in bed for some time longer. Rebecca supposed that mornings here were mostly silent like this, with the ocean wind whispering salty secrets to those who chose to rise before dawn.

  Annie and Rebecca walked past the front of the pub and around to the back of it. With a little rap, Annie opened the back door, which led to the pub’s kitchen.

  “Good morning, Maggie.”

  “Mornin’, Annie. Mornin’, Becks,” Maggie said without looking over her shoulder, concentrating instead on the sausages frying on the grill before her. “Have some coffee.” She nodded to the steaming pot on the counter.

  “Thanks,” Annie replied, pulling two cups from the tray of twelve that sat next to the coffeemaker.

  “Where’s Rowan?”

  “Ah—Paddy took her fishing with Siobhan. They’ll have fun,” Annie said, setting a full cup of coffee before Rebecca, who had taken a seat at the large butcher-block table in the center of the kitchen.

  “Have you been thinkin’ about the Mairead Dam Mad Situation, Becky?” Maggie asked.

  “Yeah,” she replied. “I think with seven kids, it’s best if we just take Mairead for a day. My dad only had me to deal with, so the lesson took longer. It’ll be a wonder if Jim can survive one day.”

  “Well, Mairead’s mum’s been asking her to visit. Mairead’s from the island just north. That would be a one-day trip, with travel time and visiting time,” Annie said, seating herself across from Rebecca.

  “You know the Dam Mad Situation?” Rebecca asked, with raised eyebrows.

  “Yeah, it’s one of Sharon’s stories about you.”

  “Ah, right.”

  “Maybe Paddy can take her,” Maggie suggested, holding two eggs in her hand. “You like your eggs scrambled, right, Becks?”

  “Yes, thanks. Can Paddy take her? He’d have to go back and get her that same day.”

  “Or Mairead’s brother, Iollan, can bring her back. He’s a fisherman, too, and has a boat,” Maggie offered.

  “When it works,” Annie said with a snicker. “Let me talk with Paddy and I’ll have Paddy talk with Iollan.”

  A gentle tap on the door brought Maggie, Annie, and Rebecca to attention. Fionn’s head popped into the kitchen. He had left a week before, and, true to his word, he had returned.

  “Good morning!” he greeted them, smiling broadly through his red beard. No one answered. “Did I interrupt something?”

  “What are you doin’ home?” Maggie asked with a frown.

  “And good to see you, too, Maggie, my love,” Fionn replied, shutting the door behind him.

  “He’s come to return the books he brought to me from the library,” Rebecca replied with a little smile. He did have the most beautiful hair.

  “That is one reason I’ve returned, yes. But there are two others. The second—I come bearing a message from Sharon.” Fionn helped himself to the coffee.

  “What message from Sharon? She have her baby?” Annie asked excitedly.

  “Nope, she hasn’t. The third—I needed to talk with the father.”

  “The father,” Maggie repeated.

  “Aye. You’re burnin’ those eggs, Maggie,” Fionn said.

  “Ah!” she hissed, turning back to the grill. “Sorry, Becks.”

  “So what conspiracy were you three hatchin’ when I walked in?”

  Rebecca shifted anxiously in her seat.

  “We were talkin’ about the Mairead Dam Mad Situation,” Annie replied.

  “Excellent!” Fionn said.

  “You know about the Dam Mad Situation?” Rebecca asked.

  “It was one of Sha—”

  “I know, I know,” Rebecca interrupted.

  “We’re taking Mairead to see her mother and leaving Jim with the kids. Just trying to come up with a date now,” Annie said, and as she finished her sentence the back door opened. It was Fionn Sr.

  “Son! What are you doin’ home?”

  “He came for three reasons, the last of which was to see the father,” Maggie replied, raising her eyebrows as she slid a plate of eggs, bacon, and tomatoes in front of Rebecca.

  “You stay with Tom last night?” the older man asked, taking Fionn in his arms and giving him a hug.

  “Nah, I stayed with Father Michael.”

  Annie whistled.

  “Must be in some pain to stay with the father for an entire evening,” Maggie said.

  They laughed.

  “You work it out?” Fionn Sr. asked.

  “Workin’ on it,” Fionn replied. “Mairead needs to go home for the Dam
Mad Situation.”

  “Really? When?”

  “How ’bout tomorrow?” Fionn offered. “I’m here and we can take her over in the curragh. Becky wanted to ride in one.”

  “No,” Rebecca began. “Not ride in one. See—”

  “That’d be excellent!” Annie interrupted Rebecca. “Paddy’ll have already missed a fishing day taking the girls out on the rocks today.”

  “Great! It’s settled,” Fionn Sr. said. “Maggie, I came by to let you know there’s a line of hungry people at the door.”

  “Ah, buggers!” she said, wiping her hands on her apron. “Forgot to unlock the front.”

  “I’ll get it,” Annie said, standing up and heading out the kitchen door into the pub.

  “I better be checking on the curragh,” Fionn Sr. said, leaving by the back door.

  “I’ll come with ya.” Fionn set his cup on the counter and followed his father.

  “Wait!” Annie called after him. “What was Sharon’s message?”

  “Oh. Becky. I’m not allowed to bring you any more books. You have to come to Dublin to get them yourself. Not my message, mind,” he said with a wide grin. “Sharon’s.”

  Fionn shut the door with finality, and with a deep frown Rebecca stood up from the table. This was not what she had planned at all. She had responsibilities. She needed to write a book. She had a grant and only two months to do her research. Now she was mixed up in a Dam Mad Situation ten days after her arrival. She was a waitress at a pub and was going to cross a great ocean in a tiny little rowboat.

  “Hey, Maggie,” Annie said, coming through the kitchen door, “scrambled eggs, bacon, tomatoes, and a coffee.”

  “You eatin’ your breakfast, Becks?”

  Rebecca watched Maggie slide two eggs and a rasher of bacon onto a plate. She took a deep breath again and shook her head.

  “Can you take yours out to whoever?” Maggie asked.

  “The man by the window,” Annie offered, filling three cups with coffee.