Casting Off

by Nicole R Dickson

Lattice/Bobble Within. 1. Lattice pattern with a bobble knitted into the center of each diamond. 2. A community suffering a loss together and together weathering the grief.

  —R. Dirane, A Binding Love

  Sean stood over his dead rosebushes, their skeletons bleached and crooked. So bare were they that the canes had no thorns, their prickly appendages scraped away by years of sand and wind. They were dead despite the fact that he had replanted the flowers over the last forty years, digging holes in the exact spot where he and Claire had planted their first bushes when they moved into his father’s house, three months after the old man’s death. She said the cottage needed roses. Claire loved roses.

  The sun was straight overhead when Sean stepped out of his house on Sunday, the light diffuse and white in the gray drizzle. He had worked half the night on developing the color apricot. He had no luck casting the color warm enough to match Liam’s sunrise, but he did happen upon an orangey gold that reminded him of Claire’s favorite rose. That was what drew his mind away from his third boy and out to the side of his house to appraise the state of his rose bed.

  “Well, Claire,” he said. “You’ve left me with nothing.”

  As soon as the words passed his lips, he heard Joe’s pipe on the wind. A mistle thrush flashed in front of his face. Startled, Sean spun around, watching the bird land upon the shallow keel of his curragh. He gasped, grabbing his heart as he watched a little black boat bob far out, heading north in the gray-blue water.

  The entire island had come. The top of the hill where the cemetery stood was covered above the ground with more people than were buried beneath it. At least it seemed so to Sean, who stood to the south of the O’Flaherty family plot, watching Padrig Blake and Fionn O’Flaherty finish shoveling the rocky gray soil on top of Mary’s grave. Claire wept softly next to him as the dust from the shovels fell in tiny clumps, wet from the gray drizzle that sifted through the air. Soon it would rain. Sean could taste it on the wind.

  “Come on, Claire,” Ina said. “The pub’s closed and we’ve food laid out.”

  “We have enough at home,” Sean replied, turning his gaze to the fresh soil covering his oldest son’s grave.

  “This burden is best shared, Sean,” Father Michael said. The priest was in his mid-twenties, by Sean’s reckoning. What did a young man know of burdens?

  “We carry our own burdens,” Sean replied. “We’ve no need for help. Come, Claire.”

  “Sean,” Ina whispered.

  “Claire belongs to me,” Sean added, flicking his cold hazel eyes at Ina.

  Turning from the graves and the people he had known all his life, Sean led Claire past the Dirane family plot and out the small gate in the cemetery’s stone wall.

  Morahan.

  Sean turned around, freezing as he caught sight of Old Man Dirane. The shanachie stood next to his own grave, smoking his pipe as if the drizzle was not even falling from above.

  “Sean?” Claire whispered.

  “Do you see him?” Sean breathed, blinking in the gray mist, waiting for his mind to dissolve the ghostly vision.

  “Who?” Claire asked.

  That’s quite a tale ya have to tell, Old Man Dirane said, smoke puffing from his mouth.

  “What’s wrong, Sean?” Claire asked.

  “Shut up,” he said, pushing Claire by her arm in front of him and down the hill. Her shawl slipped from her left shoulder. They walked halfway to the dirt road below, at which point Sean turned and looked hesitantly over his shoulder. There he saw Padrig Blake and the priest standing at the edge of the cemetery, watching him. Old Man Dirane was nowhere in sight.

  Sean let go of Claire’s arm, and in silence broken only by her quiet weeping and the sound of the surf, they walked home. The gravel crunched sharply under their feet, and when Claire opened the door she dipped her fingers into the little shell of water by the door and crossed herself. Sean followed, shutting the door behind him. He, too, touched the water in the shell.

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

  “Claire!”

  His wife jumped.

  “God bless all here,” he repeated.

  “Welcome home, love,” she said quietly, pulling the fringe of her shawl through her fingers. “Would you like tea?”

  “That would be fine,” he said, squinting at her.

  Claire went into the kitchen as Sean walked to the hearth. He tossed two bricks of peat onto the dead gray ash, tiny specks of dust bursting into the air as he did so.

  “Bring me matches,” he said.

  The ash floated out of the fireplace, drifting to the floor and falling onto Sean’s shoes. The soft tinkling of a teapot echoed in the kitchen. Sean spun on his heel and walked into the kitchen.

  “Did ya not hear me?” he said.

  Claire turned her head in his direction. She shook her head.

  “I said I need matches,” he repeated, seething.

  The tears that had been softly falling from Claire’s eyes for three days began to pour down her cheeks.

  “You blame me,” Sean hissed.

  “No, Sean,” Claire gasped, trying to catch her breath through her tears. Her blue-green eyes were wide. Sean grimaced.

  “Yes, you do! You think I killed them.”

  He stepped closer to his wife. Claire backed up.

  “It was an accident, Sean.” She choked out the words, but he saw that her eyes said otherwise.

  “When I ask for matches, I expect matches. When I ask for something, I expect it done. My sons understood that! Why can’t you?”

  Sean lunged at his wife, who tripped on the leg of the kitchen table, dropping the teapot with a sharp crash upon the stone floor.

  “Jesus Christ, Claire,” he yelled, reaching for her, but before he could grab her arm, his wife bolted for the kitchen door.

  “Get back here!” he hollered, slipping on the shards of the teapot as he tried to follow her. Gaining his balance, he stormed into the living room. The front door was open and Claire was gone. Sean raced outside.

  “Claire!” he called. He gazed up the gravel walkway and then to the left and right. She was nowhere to be seen. Stomping to the left, he came around the corner of his house and found her pushing the curragh into the surf.

  “Claire! Get away from that boat!”

  Sliding in, Claire lifted the oars as Sean flew down the beach. He could see her pulling on the oars, her face twisted in pain. His feet hit the water; he could just about grab the stern of the curragh. But the outgoing surf pulled the sand from beneath his shoes and he faltered, falling to one knee in the water.

  “Get back here!” he screamed, lifting himself from the sand and marching farther into the surf. The waves pounded him like large, cold fists.

  “Claire!”

  He could not reach her. She struggled with the oars, rowing farther out, heading north and away from her home and her husband.

  “Sean!”

  The old man stopped. He looked at the bottom of his curragh and then at his oars. Sweat poured down his chest beneath his gansey as he glanced around in a daze. He was in his boat and had rowed far north of the kelp bed. There was a pipe on the wind.

  “Sean!”

  He heard Rowan’s voice, and gazing over to the small spit of beach from which the O’Flahertys fished, he found Rowan and Siobhan jumping up and down and waving at him from the shore, flutes in hand.

  “Come in, Sean!” Rowan yelled.

  Fionn Sr. stood by his curragh, his red-gray hair shining like aged bronze in the sun. Turning his boat, Sean rowed in, his arms and back aching from the strain of all he’d put them through, though he couldn’t even remember climbing into his curragh. The surf caught him, bringing the boat in, and when he hit the sand Fionn Sr., Rowan, and Siobhan pulled him ashore. Pushing his hat away from his eyes, he found Siobhan dressed in the same strange coveralls that were Rowan’s uniform.

  “Your mother make those for Siobhan?” Sean asked.

  “I borro
wed them from Rowan,” Siobhan replied.

  “Look! Look!” Rowan exclaimed, lifting her right foot and pointing to her shoe. There, on her tiny foot, was a proper pampootie, tied neatly around her ankle.

  “Ah, the shoes of an island fisherman.” Sean smiled.

  “Annie made them for us,” Rowan said, pointing to Siobhan’s pampooties. “Were you racing us?”

  “What’s that?” Sean inquired, cocking his head.

  “You were rowing hard behind us,” Fionn Sr. replied.

  “Ah—no. Just . . . looking for better fish,” Sean said.

  “We went fishing, too,” Rowan said.

  “Catch anything?” Sean asked of Fionn Sr.

  “Just the sun. We’re headin’ in for some tea. You’re welcome to come.”

  “Uh, I should be headin’ back.”

  “Come on, Sean,” Rowan said, pressing him to join them.

  He looked down into her face, and though he knew there was a gray-white sky above him, there was no reflection of it in her eyes. There were only shades of earthy brown. His mind held no memory of earthy brown—no memory, that was, except Rowan herself. He nodded. His spine and knees cracked as he stood. It had been many years since he had set foot on O’Flahertys’ beach, and as his left shoe hit the shore, a crushing pain seized his chest.

  “Move or we’ll miss the fish!” Emmet screamed as he shoved Sean hard, causing him to fall sideways out of the curragh. Very slowly, Sean saw his older brothers, Emmet and Ronan, turn and watch him go overboard. The net they held in their hands was around Sean’s foot.

  “No!” Ronan yelled.

  As Sean hit the water, his knees hooked the boat’s side and the curragh flipped over. Sean heard his brothers fall, but he could not see them through the black sea. Pushing himself up toward the light, he stuck his head above the water, gasping for air. At that moment, he felt a great tug on his left foot, which was still caught in the net. It dragged him under again. Spotting the overturned curragh as he went down, he swam in that direction and grabbed hold of it. He pulled his head from the water. The net flailed and tugged desperately at his foot.

  “No!” Sean screamed, grasping the bottom of the boat, which was now turned to the sky above. He clawed at the sides, seeking a crack or a break in the curragh’s seams, but this was one of his father’s boats. It had none.

  “Da!” he yelled, and under the water he went. Looking up at the light, he tried to keep himself near the surface. His lungs burned for air as he struggled. He couldn’t let go his breath. He was surrounded by frigid water. His eyes knew it. His arms and legs knew it. His mind knew it. But his lungs knew only that they needed air. Sean stilled in the water, sinking lower and lower as he was dragged below by the weight of the net.

  “Perhaps,” said his lungs, “you should breathe.” As he was about to do so, he could see his father above him. He reached out his hand, stretching as far as he could. His father grabbed him and pulled the boy up from the ocean.

  “I told you to watch the net,” his father said, seething.

  Sean gasped as Peter Dooley grasped the back of his jumper.

  “Emmet pushed me,” Sean choked, clutching the interior of Dooley’s boat. His leg was bent the wrong way. “Ah!” he screamed as pain shot through his knee.

  “What’s got you?” Dooley asked.

  “The net!” Sean yelled, kicking his foot wildly to get free of it. His knee burned.

  “Where’s your brothers?” his father asked.

  “They’re in the water,” Sean grunted, pushing his foot back and forth to get the net off his shoe.

  “Where?”

  “I didn’t see them fall. Emmet pushed me! I went in first.” The strap of Sean’s leather shoe broke. Though he was just fourteen years old and small, the net’s release caused forward momentum, and Dooley and Sean’s father, with Sean in their arms, fell back in the curragh.

  “Where are your brothers?” Sean’s father yelled again.

  “In the water,” Sean whimpered, holding his knee.

  “I don’t see them.”

  Sean glanced up at his father and as their eyes met Sean’s heart stopped.

  “They’re in the net!” Sean’s father screamed.

  “Who?” came a call from portside.

  “Emmet and Ronan! They’re in the net!”

  Sean sat upright, looking toward the sound of the voice. There, in a curragh to the left, were Old Fionn O’Flaherty and his teenage sons, Tadhg, Nial, and Young Fionn. Tadhg and Nial stripped out of their jumpers and shoes and dove into the water. Had it been anyone else, Sean would have been worried for them, but not these two O’Flaherty boys. Tadhg and Nial were gifted swimmers, born to it like they were seals. Within a minute or two, the boys came up, struggling with the weight of the net.

  “Emmet!” Sean’s father yelled as he grabbed the net from Nial. “Emmet!”

  The net rose above water with Emmet and Ronan white as sea foam within it.

  “No,” Sean whispered.

  Emmet’s dead gaze fell upon Sean. He shrank away.

  “Row!” Sean’s father screamed, and crawling from beneath his dead brother’s eyes, Sean moved to lay on the oars.

  As they rowed in, Sean’s father desperately tore his sons from the net, pushing on their chests to clear the water, but it was no use. By the time the curragh hit the sand on O’Flahertys’ beach, Sean’s father sat as still and silent as his two sons laid out before him. Emmet, eighteen, and Ronan, just seventeen, were dead.

  Tadhg, Nial, and Young Fionn slid their boat in and helped Sean’s father lift Emmet and Ronan out of the curragh. Sean sat, his knee burning and his eyes stinging from the tears he dared not shed before his father.

  “Sean,” Old Fionn O’Flaherty said as he wrapped his arm around the boy’s shoulder, “it’s not your fault.”

  “Leave me be,” Sean whispered, shrugging away from the comfort.

  He crawled out of the boat and raced down the beach, his knee screaming in the pain that was tearing up his insides. He ran up the hewn stairs with his bare foot and kept running until all he could hear was the wind in the brush and the song of birds. He fell, burying his face in the dirt.

  “I hate you, Emmet!” he shouted into the weeds. “I hate you! I hate you! I hate you!”

  Being the youngest, Sean had always been pushed about by his brothers. They hit and kicked him and his father did nothing. Make you tough, was all the man said. Now Sean knew his father would blame him for their deaths.

  A hand touched his shoulder.

  “Leave me be,” Sean growled.

  “Sean, it’s me. Claire.”

  “Please leave me.”

  She touched his hair, and beneath her fingers Sean could feel the pain rising in his chest, aching in his throat.

  “It’s all right,” she said.

  “They pushed me off the boat.”

  “They always do, Sean. Everyone knows that. It’s not your fault.”

  “My da will think so.”

  Claire wrapped her arms around Sean’s head, lifting it to her lap. The tears rolled painfully from his eyes. He didn’t want to cry, but this was Claire. A Dooley she was, though in her arms Sean could feel her mother’s grandmother. It was that part of Claire that could have compassion for the most wretched and kindness for the meanest. It was the part that saw Sean as he was inside. Only an O’Flaherty could do that.

  “My brothers are dead,” Sean whispered. “My father will never forgive me. I kicked them off my foot.”

  “You didn’t know they were there.”

  “It won’t matter, Claire. Don’t you understand?”

  “This is what I understand, Sean Morahan. Men die on the sea when they don’t stick together. There is no greater truth than that, and everyone on this island knows that truth but your da. He raised his sons like he did, and now all but one are dead. Your father may blame you, but you need to know different. It was your da’s own doing. And when we have sons, you’ll
remember this day and you’ll make sure our sons know to watch out for each other and to stick together. That is the truth, Sean Morahan.”

  Sean knew Claire’s truth and it was why he also knew he would have no other for his wife. That truth was how the O’Flahertys lived and loved and was why, over the years, Sean wanted more than anything to belong to that family. His father knew Sean’s desire, and though the Morahans and O’Flahertys fished together, growing up Sean was never allowed to spend time with them. But that did not stop him. He wanted to love like they loved and he did. He loved Claire.

  A small hand wrapped around Sean’s left index finger. He shook his head, dispersing the past from his mind, and found Rowan holding on to him. A pipe played on the sea.

  “Is something wrong there, Morahan?” Fionn Sr. asked, his brow furrowed deeply. Sean looked up at the bronze-haired man, who was not even a whisper in his father’s mind when Sean’s brothers died. This was Young Fionn’s son, and now this Fionn had grandchildren of his own.

  Sean turned around, facing the ocean. The music stopped.

  “There’s something on the wind,” he said softly.

  “I don’t smell anything,” Fionn Sr. replied, peering up into the white-gray sky.

  “Come on, Sean. I’m hungry,” Rowan said.

  Stepping from his curragh, Sean willed the pain in his chest to stop. As he walked across the sand, he felt Rowan’s tiny thumb rubbing the side of his finger gently. It was comforting, and when she released him to climb the rough stone stairs that led to O’Flahertys’ house, he shook, as if without her hold on him he would fall back into the past. Quickly but very tenderly, Sean took Rowan’s entire hand in his, and together they climbed away from the shore.

  CHAPTER 25

  Diamond/Tree of Life Within/ Ribbing Without

  Diamond/Tree of Life Within/Ribbing Without. 1. A central panel with large diamonds and a single Tree of Life knitted within each one. On each side, within the angle where one diamond touches the next, ribbing is knitted. 2. A people’s history.

  —R. Dirane, A Binding Love