The Night Swimmer

by Matt Bondurant

  Like what? I said.

  You know, mainlanders comin’ in and trying to change things. Thinkin’ they know how the island should be run.

  But Highgate is running a fucking organic goat farm! I exploded. You of all people . . . I would expect that you would be supporting such a thing.

  O’Boyle swilled his beer.

  It’s not that, he said. Sure, the organic farming thing is fine. But Highgate has a way of getting people stirred up. He thinks he knows how things are supposed to be.

  But, who cares?

  This is an old place, O’Boyle said. Older than any other part of Ireland. This is the first giant’s tear, the first to rise from the ocean. There are things here that are older than any of us.

  I couldn’t help but laugh. O’Boyle looked cross.

  I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I think I’m high already. I got it, older than all of us, the giants, I got it. But really, you’re talking about Kieran, right?

  The flickering light showed only half of his generous, ogre face. He smiled wanly, and put the pipe to his rubbery lips.

  Tell me about him, I said. And about you.

  Why?

  I want to know.

  If I do, will you take me to her? If I tell you everything?

  Miranda?

  Ah, he said. Miranda. Yes, Miranda.

  I slouched down in the chair and squinted at rain spattering on the window. The light in the room seemed to be draining out, and I was having trouble thinking. Do me a favor, Highgate had said. Keep Miranda a secret. Why? What did it matter?

  But I don’t know where she lives, I said.

  You have a good idea, yes? A general approximation? You can show me?

  Tonight?

  Yes.

  Why?

  Because we can help you. Because I’m going to tell you what you want to know. Now listen.

  * * *

  O’Boyle’s mother was a woman known simply as Maeve, who in her final years lived in Coosadoona, in the ruins of the Dún an óir, the Castle of Gold. She was known in her youth as a great beauty gifted with an ethereal singing voice. For many years she had assisted islanders with herbal remedies and sung strange airs that no one could identify at weddings and funerals. She was unmarried when she gave birth to O’Boyle, and she never identified the father. Just before the birth she received a visit from Father Cadogan, a stately man much cherished by the parish. An hour later he fled her rude hut with his cassock torn and cursing under his breath.

  Soon after O’Boyle was born, Maeve began to drink, starting at daybreak and continuing until she collapsed in the ashes of the hearth, the mewling baby latched at her breast. She began to rant and claim that she talked with the spirit of her sister who had died many years before. Maeve’s sister had wandered off from her cottage when she was a teenager, and was missing for a month. A group of islanders, led by Kieran’s father, finally found her in a cave on Blananarragaun cradled in a nest of auks and storm petrels, her skull picked clean.

  Maeve said that her sister came to her in daytime dreams dressed in a white shift, the collar ringed with blood, a screaming blizzard of snow in her wake. Her sister told Maeve the future. Her visions always contained ashes and smoke, fire, raw earth, deep tombs of rock, and always death, but not the transfiguration of a watery death, a passage through to some other state, the prevailing vision of death on islands like Clear, but rather the eternal tomb of the soil.

  At some point in her madness Maeve seemed to forget her son was there. As a toddler O’Boyle roamed the cliffs and shorelines like a feral animal, scavenging for bird eggs and tubers. He took to lurking outside the pub, ferreting through the garbage and listening to the traveling buskers through the window. The island women eventually gathered the boy, and an old woman named O’Boyle who lived on the exposed moorland of Ballyieragh on the western cliffs took him in. O’Boyle took this woman’s name and she left him her cottage and land. Flat broke and without a vocation, O’Boyle sold the land to the Corrigans soon after his mother’s death and took up living in the caravan.

  A few months before Maeve died she locked herself in the old castle, refusing to come out or to take visitors. She said that her sister told her she must die there. When they finally broke in the door after many weeks of silence, they found her moldering in the corner, covered in a fuzz of mossy toadstools. On the castle walls she had scratched with chalk in letters a foot high:

  Insa Chonair chlúthair ar thaobh na gréine,

  sea a dhein Ciarán Naofa ar dtúis a chill

  In cosy-sheltered Comar on the sunny side,

  Holy Kieran first built his church.

  Then in English she had written:

  A brave vessel, who had, no doubt, some noble creatures in her,

  Dashed all to pieces. Oh, the cry did knock against my very heart.

  Those blown in on the easterly winds, they will sink them all.

  The blind priest, animal spirit, the cliff walker with cloven feet,

  Night swimmer, who watches the drowned and the yet unborn,

  All will lament as the great eye is swallowed by wind and water.

  I was drowsing on O’Boyle’s reclining chair, the caravan dim. As he talked, his dark shape hunkered over the table, I had half dreams of fish people in the waves of the Ineer, elfish children scurrying around Fastnet Rock, I saw Highgate standing on a windswept cliff, inches from the edge, his arms outstretched to the sea, the giant turning arms of the wind turbine above him. The drumming on the roof had stopped, and the only sound was the gurgling, ticking noise of the island draining, the water pouring through the vast honeycomb of limestone bedrock. The air in the caravan was fetid and close and I asked O’Boyle to open a window.

  What time is it?

  Just past four, he said.

  Really? Was I asleep?

  No, he said. I’ve been talking a long time.

  Do you mind if I take a nap?

  O’Boyle got up and brought me a bottle of water and a thin wool blanket. He spread the blanket over me, tucking it under my chin. I was warm, and the chair felt unbelievably soft. My muscles felt like melting butter.

  What about Kieran? Aren’t you going to tell me about him?

  Yes, I will. And then we will go.

  I was rapidly falling into a quiet hole, my body letting go. I closed my eyes.

  Where?

  O’Boyle’s voice sounded like it was coming from far away, like it was echoing down a long tunnel.

  To Highgate’s, he said. To see Miranda.

  * * *

  I had a dream that I was lying in a shallow pool, a muddy bottom, with twigs and leaves floating in the brackish water. There was an intense pressure and my stomach began to twist and swell, growing larger, and I sat up and gripped it with my hands. It was perfectly round like a snow globe, and inside I could see a rounded bay, like the Ineer, full of beautiful blue water, ruffled to whitecaps in a gentle wind. In the water were hundreds of moving things, swimming at the surface and below, and as my stomach grew I could see that they were faces, human faces, all paddling and stroking around, moving among each other in a kind of choreographed mix. They were all tiny children. Then the figure of a man rose up, an old man in a cassock with a wooden cross on a leather thong around his neck. He waved his hands over my stomach and everything went black.

  * * *

  I awoke in the dark, lying in my bed at Nora’s. I was in my underwear under the covers and my body felt sore and wracked like I had swum for miles in heavy chop. A shadow crouched by the bed, and by the smell and the breathing I could tell it was O’Boyle. He was crying. I sat up.

  What? What is it?

  Oh, Elly I’m sorry, he blubbered.

  What?

  He wiped his face on his arm, rubbing it back and forth like a dog.

  What did you do?

  You never meant anything, O’Boyle said, you never meant anything but goodness to me. I knew that once you saw her out on the rock. We knew you would come.

>   What are you talking about?

  Fastnet, he said. You saw her, on the tower. Elly, I’m sorry but it was the tea that first time. You wouldn’t listen to me. The second time . . . I couldn’t save you. Nobody could. But she was protecting you. Otherwise—

  You drugged me? I said. Why? Why did you do that?

  We had to do it, he said. You don’t understand. You don’t know what he can do.

  O’Boyle stood and shuffled to the door. When he opened it the light from the hall revealed his face wet with tears. He was covered in mud and brambles, his pants torn.

  I’m sorry, he said. You never meant anything but goodness.

  * * *

  In the morning I packed up my bag and walked down the hill to the South Harbor. The ferry wasn’t due for another hour, so I sat on the seawall of the Ineer and watched the swells roll in and push themselves up the stones. I wanted to leave, to get back to Fred and the Nightjar, to take a long shower and then sit downstairs at the bar with him, a cup of coffee, and his scribbling, listening to music we both loved. I couldn’t bring myself to go back up the hill and to Highgate’s farm.

  Time passed, and in the North Harbor the ferry came and went. Why would O’Boyle want to find Miranda so badly? Had I led him to her? I would at least go see Highgate, make sure everything was okay. Maybe it would be nothing, and I wouldn’t have to tell him what I had done.

  I know how this sounds, now. I’m not proud of it.

  * * *

  Highgate seemed happy to see me. He had been out in the fields tending to the new kids and his fingers were cramped up with cold and we sat down in the living room to warm up. I stirred the peat fire and adjusted the damper.

  Wonderful to have you here, Elly, Highgate said.

  I was dunking a biscuit in Akio’s milky-weak tea when Gus burst through the front door.

  Ravens, he yelled, the fucking ravens!

  Highgate leapt from his chair, hands tucked in front of him like a boxer. The dogs were already at the door, setting up a low whine, hair raised. Highgate moved to the door, and by the time I got outside he was sprinting down the back fields to the sea, the dogs flanking him. The sun had broken out of the clouds for a moment, and the air over Roaringwater Bay was dazzling. At the first fence Highgate took a few long strides then stepped up and over, cut right, and headed north, skirting the heavy section of undergrowth and bramble. He must have counted the paces to the fence. The old man was moving, outpacing the dogs through the heavy grass.

  We hustled after him, and when we came around the bramble rise to the north field Gus drew up, pointing into the sky. Heavy black shapes moved in slow concentric circles, broad-winged ravens, a couple dozen or more descending and ascending like a silent black funnel to the ground. The wind shifted and howled, impossibly hard, and I instinctively put my hands to my ears, and the harsh overcast sky and bright colors made everything lose focus and telescope like a flickering filmstrip: white flashes on the ground, Highgate in his parka glistening wet in the patches of sunlight, the dogs leaping around him. A kid struggled on its side, its face a gory mess of blood and bone. Gus shouted something to me I couldn’t hear in the buffeting wind. Highgate knelt on the ground, his hands searching the goat’s body. The dogs kept a tight circle around him, their eyes pinned on the cone of ravens that screamed and banked over the blind man’s bowed head.

  Gus and the woofers worked quickly to gather the other kids and got them back into the barn. Back at the house I waited in the living room while Highgate and the woofers disposed of the body. I could hear them murmuring in the kitchen, something like a prayer. Highgate shuffled in and joined me on the couch, kicking the stove with his bare feet to determine if it was hot. I scooped some peat out of the bucket and arranged the flue.

  Sorry you had to see that, he said. It is a rare thing.

  How can you stop them?

  You can’t, he said. You can only hide the kids, hope the mothers protect them. The problem is that the ravens work in pairs; one distracts the mother while the other goes after the kid. They always attack the eyes, blind them first, so they don’t know where to run. But a whole flock . . . that just doesn’t happen.

  He took off his hat and ran a hand through his white hair.

  They are harbingers, he said. It’s been many years since they’ve come. The old islanders called them the messengers of woe. Something else is on its way.

  What?

  The stove hissed as the draft was sucked across the coals. Highgate set his tea down on the table with a rattling hand and turned his sightless eyes to me. He looked genuinely afraid.

  I had a sudden image of O’Boyle, standing among broad leaves and engorged blossoms, the sky a cloak of glistening stars. It wasn’t like a remembrance, more like a scene played out in my mind. He was in a small valley with heavy vegetation, and I could smell the intense odors of foxglove and ragwort, the musk of goat. O’Boyle turned and said something to another figure standing nearby. A woman, wearing a large man’s coat, her long hair wet and hanging down the back, her hands shaking. There was no wind, and the powerful animal smell hung heavy in the air. I could hear the faint plink of water dropping into a pool. I couldn’t see her face.

  It was me.

  There were others there in the dark, other men moving around us.

  * * *

  You need to go, Highgate said. Get back to Baltimore, your husband. I’m afraid they are going to come for you, too.

  He knew.

  * * *

  The wind rattled the phone booth behind the post office. I had to use my flashlight to see the numbers on my phone card and to dial the sixteen-digit number to reach my parents. A man answered. His voice was strangely electronic, and for a moment I wasn’t sure if my parents had gotten a new answering machine. But then the voice paused and was obviously waiting for an answer.

  Hello? Dad?

  Yes? the voice said.

  It’s me, it’s Elly. Can you hear me?

  There was a cloud of static and then the line became clear. It was my father.

  Something terrible happened, he said. Your sister . . .

  More static like an electronic sea.

  . . . done it to herself like that. We don’t know what to do. Your mother . . .

  Hello, Dad? You’re breaking up.

  My mother got on the phone. She was crying.

  Hello, Elly? Oh, my goodness, you wouldn’t believe it. Have you been watching the news?

  No, Mom, what’s going on? What happened to Beatrice?

  Your sister . . . hospital yesterday, but no one really knows . . . fires across the river and the smoke you wouldn’t believe . . .

  Mom? Are you guys okay? Is everyone okay?

  Yes, yes, she said. Don’t you worry. We’re fine.

  PART III

  A POEM

  My sense of morality is that life is a creative process and that anything that chafes and impedes this forward thrust is evil and obscene. The simplest arrangements—trees, a line of bathhouses, a church steeple, a bench in a park—appear to have a moral significance, a continuity that is heartening and that corresponds to my whole sense of being. But there are speculations and desires that seem contrary to the admirable drift of the clouds in heaven, and perhaps the deepest sadness that I know is to be absorbed in these.

  We rise from sleep all natural men, boisterous, loving, and hopeful, but the dark-faced stranger is waiting at the door, the viper is coiled in the garden, the old man whispers lewdly to the boy, and the woman sits at her table crying.

  How the world shines with light.

  The Journals of John Cheever

  The final event of the contest, the poetry reading, took place at the Old Crown and Anchor in Cork, a giant pub with a stage and seating for a hundred. The three finalists stood on the stage along with the president of Murphy’s, who was wearing an improbably green stovepipe hat. The first three rows were taken up with media and the podium had a dozen microphones sprouting from the front like a
bouquet. Fred was glowing, seemingly expanding every moment with power. He was in his element. Fred always had the ability to transmit emotion in a glance or steady gaze. It was part of the secret to his strange charisma.

  The others had come to the podium clutching sheaves of notes, sweating and mouthing their memorized lines. Fred bounded up and swept the crowd with eyes that shone like a funnel of light, over the guests, other contestants, the judges, until his eyes rested on me. He paused a moment, swallowed, his eyes softening slightly.

  Shy one, shy one,

  Shy one of my heart,

  She moves in the firelight

  Pensively apart.

  She carries in the dishes,

  And lays them in a row.

  To an isle in the water

  With her would I go.

  She carries in the candles,

  And lights the curtained room,

  Shy in the doorway

  And shy in the gloom;

  And shy as a rabbit,

  Helpful and shy.

  To an isle in the water

  With her would I fly.

  He was reading it to me. I wanted to reach out across the room and hold him. I could feel his heart steadily thrumming in my ears like the sea.

  * * *

  The day following 9/11 Fred retreated into his office with a few bottles of whiskey. After he didn’t come to bed the first night I knocked softly, and when no one answered I opened the door. Fred was in his underwear, huddled at his computer with his headphones on, rocking back and forth, making a strange low moaning sound. The only light was the flickering blue of the computer screen. The desk and floor were covered in paper; Fred had taken his novel manuscripts out of their boxes and strewn them all over the room, as if he was looking for something. I closed the door and went back to the bedroom and crawled into our bed.

  I didn’t see him for three whole days. There was evidence in the kitchen, food left on the counter, empty bottles, that he emerged sometimes in the night. I figured I would let him go. On the fourth night he woke me when he crawled into bed. He was naked and urgent for me and we made love quickly. Afterward we lay on our backs in the dark, listening to the whir of the ceiling fan, the house settling.