The Night Swimmer

by Matt Bondurant

  He said he wasn’t going to take payment, Patrick said. We don’t work that way.

  We helped Patrick trundle the dolly down to the quay where the ferry sat idling, a few passengers already aboard. The harbor was busy with craft, and the air was thick with diesel and gut bait. A couple Corrigans, conspicuous in their safety jackets, stood at the end of the pier. They watched Patrick and Fred struggle with the pallet of canned goods, stowing the parcels on the slippery boat deck. Patrick did not hide his displeasure.

  Anybody else, he said, they’d be helping out.

  He looked at the pilothouse and held out his arms. The man inside gazed at us calmly, bringing a cigarette to his lips.

  Bastards, Patrick said.

  It’s not a big deal, Fred said. We got it.

  While Patrick tied down his packages, I asked Fred when he started buying stuff for Highgate.

  They got fucked by the Corrigans again, Fred said. They needed some basic supplies. I figured I’d help ’em out. The rate we get with our Murphy’s supplier is way cheaper and faster now with the car.

  Fred hitched up his shorts and gazed out toward the islands.

  You know, he said, they’re running that farm on nothing. I’m amazed that old man is still chugging along.

  Yeah, I said. I know. I’m sure Highgate appreciates it.

  Yeah, Fred said. Well, have a good time.

  He kissed me on the forehead and gamboled up the hill to the Nightjar, the wind whipping his T-shirt.

  On the ferry Patrick and I huddled under the lee of the cabin. I asked him about what Fred had said about the Corrigans.

  It’s complicated, he said. And then again it’s not.

  He told me that with the creation of the European Union came a raft of new regulations for food production. Highgate figured no one would concern themselves with such a small, remote operation, and for years no one did.

  Last week, Patrick said, we get a surprise visit from an EU inspector, out of Cork. Says it was a normal random sweep of local businesses. Didn’t check a single other business on the island, or in Baltimore. Somebody reported us.

  Patrick told me that the inspector found the farm in violation of several statutes. The equipment and work necessary to be in compliance would cost at least twenty thousand dollars. This was of course impossible.

  We’re shrinking the operation, Patrick said, down to seven milkers.

  They could produce only a few products: milk, ice cream, and kid meat that would be shipped and processed on the mainland. Patrick nodded toward the two Corrigans who slouched against the side of the pilothouse.

  We all know who reported us, he said. Probably Eamon there, the one with the black hair and bad teeth. Kieran’s little brother. He does a lot of the dirty work.

  The Corrigans saw Patrick pointing at them, and one grinned a gap-toothed smile and gave us a wink. He nudged the man next to him and they both stared at us with their hands thrust in their pockets.

  They can’t control Highgate, Patrick said. They’re afraid of him.

  Eamon Corrigan muttered something, and the two men laughed together for a moment. Then Eamon turned to me and with a forefinger pulled down his bottom eyelid, then spat overboard.

  These people, Patrick said, they think they own this world.

  What do they want from Highgate? I said.

  Patrick gazed out at the passing hulk of Sherkin Island for a few moments.

  Why does the raven kill the lamb? There is no answer for it. It is in their nature.

  * * *

  Highgate unlatched the feed barn and the line of bleating goats trooped inside.

  Why’d he do it? I said. Why does Kieran even care?

  Well, Highgate said, waving his arm around at the fields and buildings, all of this. Prime real estate, great views of the bay and the mainland. The other reasons are more difficult. Kieran was born here of course, lived the first eighteen years of his life here. But he was gone for more than two decades. He was kicked off the island by his own family.

  What for?

  He was trying to seize control of the ferry service.

  Highgate told me that the present Kieran Corrigan, whom I had seen on the quay surveying the gray waters, was somehow banished from Cape Clear in the late 1960s, and had only come back recently. When Kieran returned he purchased large tracts of land from a couple old Cadogan and Cotter families, the other most ubiquitous names on the islands of Roaringwater Bay, and set about getting himself elected to the planning commission, the co-op council, and the ferry board. His brothers and nephews ran the ferry, and his son Conchur took over the lucrative salvaging business that operated around Fastnet and throughout the southern coast of Ireland. Kieran began his construction on the Waist a few months later, determined to transform the face of his ancestral homeland. He was now in possession of the title The Corrigan, the acknowledged chieftain of his clan.

  Highgate worked his way around the feeding trough, feeling the face and throat of each goat in succession, saying little things to them, and they licked his fingers and made grunting noises of contentment.

  That’s when I showed up, Highgate said. And we had some good years, hacking out a bit of a livin’. Though I had plenty of trouble myself during that time.

  Thirty years ago Highgate’s children, two sons, left for the mainland for school and never returned, as did his wife. She was working in Schull as a teacher, commuting to the island on weekends. In the winter of 1972 the family was going to gather out on Clear for a Christmas Day dinner. The day before Highgate received word from his wife that they wouldn’t be coming. And he needn’t bother coming to the mainland, either.

  It was the island, he said. She didn’t . . . she didn’t take to it like me. It was a struggle. I understand. It’s not a life for everyone.

  Do you still see her?

  I’m afraid not, he said. I’m blind you know.

  I’m sorry. You know what I mean. Are you in contact?

  No, he said. I haven’t spoken to her since that day.

  Highgate’s sons came to the island a few times a year to visit, but that winter the stress of the destruction of his marriage caused Highgate’s blood pressure to skyrocket.

  Common thing in blind people and their dogs, he said. The stress of the owner gets transmitted to the dog. Poor Hannibal, he just took it all in. He was dead within a month.

  Highgate came to the end of the line, little Lucy, the runt of the pack, and he held her nose and said, there, that’s just fine, isn’t it?

  The little goat murmured and nosed in his pockets. We went out into the muddy yard, Highgate with his hat pulled low over his eyes, smiling, reaching out for the gate, and when he found it he carefully unknotted the frayed bit of twine. The clouds over Roaringwater Bay were alive with light, pinks and purple on a blue field.

  Isn’t it something, Highgate said. You never get tired of it.

  He had never seen the view himself. Highgate had been blind since he was a child. The first eye went to polio, and the second he took himself with a fork when he was three years old, sitting at his mother’s table, eating peas. He said he remembers colors, and some vague shapes, but that is all.

  We stood there for a few more moments, enjoying the elements in our separate ways.

  I’ve seen her again, I said. Miranda.

  Oh yes?

  From the Ineer. She watches me from on the top of the hill.

  I’ll bet she finds your swimming curious.

  The goats began to file out of the feeding barn, tossing their heads. Highgate’s hands trailed down their backs as they passed. Ajax, sitting at his heel, sniffed them all in turn as well. Highgate exhaled deeply.

  I suppose we ought to see if we can make a formal introduction.

  Highgate led me down toward the cliffs to another fence line tucked out of sight from the house and barn. There was the faintest track in the grass, the thin, punched marks of goat hooves. After the fence the ground dipped into a small hollow in the
field that was thick with heather and shrubs. The grass was dense and hip high, the gorse climbing like trees and we were enveloped in a maze of growth. Ajax trotted behind us, tail tucked between his legs, his head low. The wind diminished considerably as we neared the small grove. I heard the ticking sounds of water, and I could detect certain smells, goat feces, foxglove, and ragwort. The plants were unlike anything I’d seen on the island, with waxy leaves a yard across, corpulent blossoms thick with amber tendrils, long heavy flowering bulbs in lurid colors. Highgate seemed to pick his way by scent, nose up into the air, the faint smile on his face. Ajax whined and turned, heading back to the house.

  The dogs don’t like Miranda much, Highgate said. They have a kind of understanding.

  We reached a small clearing, and Highgate stopped about ten yards away from a large clump of gorse rimmed with tall weeds, a stunted tree spreading its rough canopy over the nest. He put his fingers in his mouth and produced a series of low whistles, barely discernible. Then it was quiet, only the faint roar of the sea in the background. We waited there for a few minutes, Highgate sniffing the wind, smiling, until finally he shook his head.

  Not ready to meet you proper it seems, he said. Or she’s about somewhere.

  He turned and led me out of the grove, coming up a sharp little hill, and then we were suddenly in his field again, Roaringwater Bay to the north all whitecaps and deep blue.

  Miranda keeps her own counsel, Highgate said. She decides her own hours and visitors. She often likes to hang about the windmill up on Knockcaranteen. Let’s take a walk.

  Highgate skirted the gate at the end of the lane, stepping over the fence and continuing through the ditch to the road, never breaking stride. The hills of Knockcaranteen stretched out before us, a series of humped rises heavy with rust-colored bramble and gorse. The wind turbine at the top stood out against the sky like a white scarecrow, arms spinning silently.

  Miranda was born six years ago, Highgate told me. In March, which is unusual for a goat.

  She was born without fully developed front legs, and for the first few days she pushed herself around in circles in the straw and dirt while Highgate tried to make a decision. Normally such an abnormality would call for euthanasia, but there was something about the way Miranda persisted in her attempts at locomotion, her unflagging desire to be part of the world, that moved Highgate. In a week she could drive herself along in straight lines on her belly and chest. The other goats, including Miranda’s mother, avoided this strange mewling creature that butted up against their legs.

  I couldn’t do it, Highgate said. The vitality in her, her life force is strong.

  Most goats are born in sets of twins, and Miranda’s twin, a black and white named Juno, was her only companion in those early days. Miranda was unable to go out into the fields with the other goats, so she spent most of her time alone in the barn.

  One afternoon a pair of ravens caught Juno alone and pinned her in the grass and ate her eyes. Juno lived for another few days, crouched in the barn with Miranda, bleating piteously. After her sister died, Miranda seemed determined to get out into the fields with the other goats, and Highgate had a hard time keeping her in the barn. She started to push herself up against the feeding trough and other objects, and one day Highgate came in to find her standing on her hind legs, leaning on a wall, eyeing him defiantly. In another month she was standing on her own, and by that summer she could walk upright with an awkward, bobbing gait, her two devastated forelegs dangling uselessly. The other goats were quickly cowed by Miranda, and she became the alpha goat, leading them in and out of the barn and feeding area. But they remained skittish of her, and most days Miranda wandered by herself in the fields.

  Soon she was able to climb stairs and step neatly over fences and could not be contained. Highgate gave up trying to breed or milk her and let her roam as she pleased. Miranda took to wandering around the island at night, though she was rarely seen by anyone. She stopped coming back to the barn at all, and weeks would go by before Highgate saw her again, lurking around the wind turbine or striding across the cliffs overlooking Roaringwater Bay.

  We followed a narrow switchback path of spongy grass up the slope, the gorse waist high and impenetrable. You could hear the slow whoosh-thump as a kind of deep background to the howling wind, and by the time we reached the clearing, the steady rush and heave of air over the blades was like a giant heartbeat and I found it hard not to flinch with each rotation. The white steel column of the turbine, made of bolted I-beams covered with steel plates, was surprisingly clean and free from the rust and chipping that everything else metal on the island suffered from. The concrete blockhouse power station stood just off to the right of the column, the same stark white as the turbine, a few head-high windows covered with heavy iron bars.

  The turbine hadn’t been connected to the island’s power supply for years, Highgate told me. Kieran put together the project in 1993 but nothing ever came of it. They sealed it up soon after, bars on the windows and a metal plate bolted over the door. There was power being generated, lots of it, but it had nowhere to go. It was all just churning and writhing in the blockhouse. It felt as if the hillside was throbbing under my feet.

  The co-op wouldn’t agree to Kieran’s deal, Highgate said. He set it up so that the island would buy power directly from him, all the profits going into his pockets. There was enough power to supply the island and even push power back into the mainland grid. The island could sell the power all over Ireland. There was a considerable profit to be made, enough to put money in the hands of every islander. It could have been a way out, a kind of salvation for the dying economy of the island. The one limitless resource they had was wind. But Kieran wouldn’t share it, and quite a few of the old island families, the ones who knew Kieran’s people from generations back, they lined up with Kieran. They felt it was his right, after all, to profit from the project that he’d single-handedly arranged and financed. Highgate and a few others, mostly blow-ins, fought back, earning an injunction from the Cork County Council, so Kieran merely pulled the plug on the whole thing. He dug up the spiderweb network of power lines they’d laid throughout the island, cut the connection to the mainland cable, and sealed up the blockhouse.

  Highgate turned from the turbine and surveyed the slope of land down to his farm.

  I’d better go, he said.

  He put a hand on my shoulder and raised his chin. His watch cap was pulled down almost to the tip of his nose.

  You be careful, Eleanor. You probably shouldn’t hang about here for long.

  He gestured at the turbine.

  There are forces that will not be contained. Not forever.

  He smiled, two wet tear tracks on his ruddy face.

  You are welcome at my place, he said, anytime. If you ever have trouble.

  Thanks, I said. I appreciate it. Sometimes it is . . . lonely.

  That’s the way of things, he said. Islanders are desperately suspicious folk. There are reasons, of course. But it is good that Miranda has taken an interest in you. She doesn’t show herself to just anybody. Few on this island know that she exists.

  He squeezed my shoulder, a strong grip, and a warmth spread through my chest.

  Miranda is very special to me, Highgate said. Like my own child.

  The waves in the bay advanced in slanted rows of knotted white, pushing desperately into the island.

  Do me a favor, he said. Keep Miranda a secret. I don’t know what would happen if I lost her. I don’t know what I would do.

  Sure, of course.

  She will look out for you, Highgate said. You’ll see.

  We turned and started back down the slope to the road, Highgate leading the way.

  * * *

  I had taken to dropping in on Nell in the afternoons to have tea on the terrace. She was always home, and if I came at four she had the kettle on and cookies on a tray with two plates and cloth napkins, ready to go. It became clear that neither of us were particularly interested
in the conventions of small talk, so we ended up spending a lot of time on the wind-blasted cliff, staring across the sea. The open ocean is always the same, and yet always different. If you look carefully, you will notice the slight variations in color, wind, smell, and waves. It was all about patience and focus. I mentioned this to Nell, and she nodded knowingly, her face pink from the wind.

  When I asked her about Highgate, or the Corrigans, or nearly anything else, the answer was always the same.

  That’s something for Bill, she said. He’s the one who is out and about.

  She would gesture to the open sea.

  This is my world, right here.

  After a few visits, hours spent blasted by the ocean, the golden sea unfurling before us, I could tell that I was changing, that the vista was altering my perspective of everything else. I became more aware of the distances all around us. The spaces above me, the vast skies and the headlong rushing sensation of a planet spinning through space. And the spaces below, the depths of the ocean, a kingdom of darkness and cold. Standing on the seawall of the Ineer, walking the fields below the wind turbine, or in the Nightjar with Fred, or watching the hatchet-faced man take his picture of the ferry passing Douglass’s Cove, I began to feel the eternity of space. Everything is so much farther away than it seems. There is more space in even our own bodies than actual matter. We are not close to anything.

  Nell had been gazing at the sea for more than twenty years, and whatever world she inhabited before she moved to that house on the cliff was certainly a long way from the world she inhabited now.

  When Bill barged in the peace would be shattered. Bill was a force of nature in a way similar to Fred, with one essential difference. He wanted Nell, the prettiest girl in town, and he got her. He wanted to become a marine, a war hero, and he did. He wanted to retire to an island, so he moved to Clear. He wanted to become a writer, so he wrote novels, poems, and essays. He simply sat down and churned out everything he thought of and sent it everywhere possible. Bill published pieces in nearly every small newspaper, community newsletter, and local hash sheet in County Cork, as well as military journals, obscure literary journals, artists’ collectives, sailing magazines, tourist pamphlets. He wrote like he lived, with an aggressive, grandstanding style. But he became what he wanted.