The Promise of Light

by Paul Watkins

  “So we’ll be rowing to shore?” I tried to make conversation.

  “We’ll be rowing in. That’s right.”

  “How are you going to deliver that tractor?” Engines drummed up through the deck plates.

  “We’re making two stops. We deliver the tractor to Galway city. This stuff in the boats, this is the first stop. Lahinch. Your stop.”

  “But I’m getting off in Galway.”

  “You get off where the captain tells you to get off. Either that, or swim ashore from here.”

  * * *

  It was three-thirty in the morning. Land bunched in a dark wave just beyond the mist. The heavy smell of plowed fields drifted in.

  I sat on my suitcase and smoked a cigarette. The captain would show up sooner or later and then I would have words with him.

  The lifeboats had been loaded. They hung in their cradles, ready for lowering into the water. More crates still lay on deck.

  “Evening, Mr. Sheridan.” It was the captain. He stepped out of the shadows in his heavy rubber boots.

  I pulled the cigarette from my mouth. “I’m getting off in Galway, aren’t I?”

  “No, sir. We received a radio message to let off our passenger here instead. You’ll be met.”

  “Why the change?”

  The captain shook his head. His close-cropped beard looked as if it had been chipped off a slab of flint.

  “Did Willoughby tell you why I’m coming to Ireland?” It seemed stupid to keep the thing secret any longer. I wished I hadn’t taken Willoughby’s advice.

  The captain squatted down. He balanced on the balls of his feet. “Mr. Sheridan, I didn’t want to bring you here. When he first asked me, I told him I wouldn’t. But Father Willoughby insisted. I owe him a favor or two. I didn’t ask questions. You kind of get a feeling for when questions aren’t meant to be asked.”

  “It’s really quite simple…” I rapped my knuckles on the suitcase, ready to explain.

  “Well, if it’s all that simple, you should have gone on one of those big ocean boats that have brass bands and shuffle-board.”

  “I didn’t have the money.” The cigarette had started to burn my fingers. I flicked the stub over the side.

  The captain watched the arc of the falling cigarette, as if he didn’t like to see even those few shreds of tobacco wasted. He aimed a finger at a lifeboat that had been lowered to the water. “Time to go ashore, Mr. Sheridan.”

  “But where’s the port? I don’t see any lights.”

  “We’ve gone as far as you’re going.”

  Worry fluttered in my chest. Then suddenly it was everywhere, racing through my veins. “This isn’t right.”

  “Either you go in that lifeboat or I’ll have Baldwin throw you overboard. I had to stop him from doing that once already.”

  I stared at where the captain’s eyes had been before the shadows took them away. “What the hell’s going on?”

  The captain ran a finger along the bridge of his nose. “Mr. Sheridan. I’m not going to ask you again. I’ve done you too many favors already.”

  * * *

  I climbed down a rope ladder, using one hand to grip the bristly hemp and the other to hold my suitcase. The lifeboat rose up with each wave and clumped against the hull. Baldwin sat in the boat, ready to set out the oars. As soon as I stepped into the boat, Baldwin shoved the boat away and started rowing toward shore.

  The sky was purple and gray. A beach showed pale between the water and the clouds.

  A wave struck the boat sideways. It fell on us in heavy rain. I tried to brush the water off my clothes before it soaked in.

  “What’s the matter with you?” Baldwin’s fists tightened around the oars.

  “What the hell are we doing, Baldwin? Where’s the port?” I hoped that the anger in my voice would jolt the truth out of him. And I hoped he could not hear the panic that had taken over my heartbeat and my breathing.

  “Well, if you don’t know by now, then you’re better off not knowing at all.”

  “All I know,” I leaned forward and shouted, “is that you guys aren’t delivering any fucking farm supplies!”

  Baldwin laughed in my face. “Well, you’re right about that. You must be academic.”

  “So what is it then?” I grabbed a crate and tugged at the lid. The nails groaned in the soft wood as they started to come loose.

  “You leave those alone, you stupid bugger! You’ll get us both killed.” Baldwin jammed his oar blades deep into the coal-black water.

  I gripped the crate and tugged again. The lid tore off. A smell of oil wafted up in my face.

  “Now look what you’ve done, you bloody idiot!” Baldwin stopped rowing. He pulled in the oars. Silver threads of water trickled from the oar blades.

  I squinted at the crate. I ran my hand across the cold metal and wood inside. Rifles. “You sons of bitches.” The spit dried up in my throat.

  “Well, what did you think was in there? Did nobody tell you back in Boston?”

  I lifted one of the rifles from the crate. They were new Springfield ’03s, the same gun that Bosley used to go deer hunting each year in the Great Swamp.

  “And there’s plenty more than that.” Baldwin jabbed me with his boot. “We got fifteen crates at twelve guns to a crate and that makes … makes a lot.”

  “We’re all going to jail.” My eyes had dried out, too.

  “No, we’re not. If they catch us, they’ll kill us.”

  “Damn you, Baldwin.” I heaved the rifle into the water. It slipped into the waves and disappeared.

  “Here!” Baldwin lunged forward. “You can’t do that!”

  I swatted him aside. I took another gun and threw it over. “They’re all going in! You’re not stopping me.”

  Baldwin knotted his hand into a fist and swung and missed. Then he swung again and struck me on the temple. “You fucking useless cowboy. You don’t know what you’re doing!”

  My ear felt as if it was on fire. I grabbed another gun and threw it over. Baldwin’s fist smacked into my other ear. Now my head buzzed as if it was filled with wasps. I grabbed another gun.

  A strong light appeared suddenly from a hillside across the bay. It swung like a branch of ivory across the water.

  Baldwin’s face was suddenly bleached in the glare. “Oh, Jesus.”

  My eyes wouldn’t focus. The boat seemed to be dissolving in the harshness of the light.

  “That’s the British army.” Baldwin grabbed the oars and sank them into the water. He began rowing toward shore, leaning back to make the boat go faster. “They’ll shoot us before we get anywhere near a jail.”

  I gaped at the beam. It swung back and forth through the fog. Searching.

  Another wave exploded on the lifeboat. Light turned the spray into splinters of glass.

  Baldwin heaved at the oars. “As soon as we hit the beach, you’ve got to get the crates out. There should be people there to meet us. You got to work fast.”

  I breathed in, ready to spit out my anger at Baldwin. But the anger had gone and only fear remained.

  Now there was movement on the beach. Men waded into the surf as the lifeboat came into shallow water. Their arms swung above the waves as they came close.

  “There’s people coming toward us.” My throat had tightened so much that it hurt to speak.

  “Now you got a choice, Yank.” Baldwin pulled in the oars. “You can help us get these guns out of here. Or you can stand here and do nothing. And I swear to God you’ll never get a word out of your mouth before the English shoot you and leave the seagulls to peck your bloody eyes out!” Then he stood up, ready to jump over and haul the boat through the surf.

  I pulled him back. “Tell me who they are!”

  “It’s the Irish Republican Army. At least it would be if you’d leave them something to fight with.” Baldwin struggled free of my grip and vanished into the water. He grabbed hold of a rope that looped along the length of the lifeboat and started hauling the boat. Now me
n from the beach joined him. Their faces barged out of the dark. All of them were breathing hard. Their soaked clothes slopped in the water.

  For a moment, I stayed sitting in the boat. Baldwin was telling the truth. The worry on the faces of these men was proof enough.

  The searchlight blazed on the curved planks of the lifeboat. I could feel it. It sapped all the blood from my skin. I swung myself overboard.

  The water was freezing. It came up to my waist. Breaking waves shoved the lifeboat forward so that I found myself pulled toward the beach. My cramped hands gripped the ropes.

  We heaved the boat forward through the surf, coughing when the waves slapped our mouths.

  “You said there wouldn’t be any soldiers!” Baldwin yelled at the others.

  The man closest to me called across. “They got a tip. We did everything we could.” Salt water coursed off his chin.

  The beam swung out to sea. It found the Madrigal and burned along the hull. Men stood on the deck, their skin gone bony in the light.

  Then the lifeboat’s hull struck sand. Spray showered the crates and my suitcase.

  More men appeared from the dark. Some wore trenchcoats with thick brown belts. Others carried bandoliers with loops for shotgun shells.

  A wave burst against the back of my head. Water squelched in my ears. Another wave shoved me and I tripped. I went down into the surf and my fingers dug into the sand. Then hands closed on my arms and I felt myself lifted from the water.

  A man with a broad, flat forehead stood in front of me. He wore a sweater that drooped with the weight of seawater. “All right, are you?” he bellowed.

  I nodded and coughed up salt. Black waves crumbled into white and thundered up the beach.

  The engines of the Madrigal hammered up. It started heading out to sea. The searchlight followed, draining the darkness around it.

  “They’re leaving me,” Baldwin called from somewhere in the dark. “The bastards are leaving me!”

  I waded onto the land. Foam boiled around my shoes as the tide pulled back.

  The lifeboat lay stuck in the sand, filling with water as each wave barged over its stern. Men unloaded the crates, carrying them by their rope handles toward the dunes.

  Now Baldwin was running toward me. “There he is! Get hold of him.”

  “What for?” It was the man with the waterlogged sweater. He heaved a gun crate over the side and tried to drag it up the beach.

  “He’s been throwing the bloody guns into the water!” Baldwin’s drenched trouser legs trailed along the beach, picking up sand. “I’ll fix your trolley now, Yank!” He grabbed hold of my arm. “I’ll fix you!”

  Before I knew what I was doing, I had punched him in the face and my knuckles cut on his teeth. Then I realized I’d been waiting to do that for a long time.

  Baldwin tipped back into the water. A wave curled over him.

  “Help me here!” The man in the sweater couldn’t move the crate by himself.

  I grabbed a hemp rope handle and began running with the man toward the dunes. The beach was wide and flat. My shoes filled up with grit and the drenched coat twisted around my legs. Salt burned at the back of my throat.

  New thunder roared out of the night-black hills. I looked up into the sky, but saw only clouds hanging down.

  The man in the sweater dove away into the dark. His end of the crate smacked me in the knee.

  Pain slashed at my leg.

  Then there was a shriek. A trunk of water sprayed up near the Madrigal.

  Men ran past, carrying rifles and crates. Their footsteps dug into the sand.

  Another distant thud reached my ears. I could feel it—a shove against my chest as the earth shook underneath me. This time I knew what it was. I saw the flash of an artillery piece set up in a field above the far end of the beach.

  Then came a sound like a hammer banging inside an oil drum. The Madrigal lit up in fire. A flicker of darkness followed and then more fire. Flames blasted out of its hull.

  The man in the sweater rose up to his knees. He looked toward the hills.

  I reached for my end of the crate. The sweater man grabbed the other end and we ran again toward the cover of the dunes. We scrabbled up the slope, which gave way underneath us. Our clawed hands gripped the razor grass.

  Another explosion sent me down on my face. I let go of the crate and covered my head with my arms. I felt the detonation. It clapped at the air but was not close. When I raised my head, the sweater man was looking at me.

  The man held out his hand. “I’m Tarbox.” He wore a glove of sand.

  “Sheridan.” Grit crunched between my back teeth.

  Tarbox beat at the crust of sand on his chest. “I should never have got out of bed this morning.”

  “What’s going to happen to me?”

  “Happen to you?”

  “Yes,” The weight of my clothes dragged me down.

  “Same things as will happen to us, unless you decide to lie there all morning. In that case you’ll be dead by sunrise.”

  I watched his thick boots disappear through the razor grass. I tried to be calm and think straight. Tried to imagine my home, at least long enough to settle down my heart. But no pictures came. It was as if home had never existed, as if the island and Willoughby and Monahan and Harley had all bled into my mind through a dream. And now I was awake and they were gone and had never been there at all.

  Another cannon blast. Then a thump and a hiss of water raining down. I turned my head, eyelashes flicking away grains of sand. They were aiming for the lifeboat now. I saw a ragged hole where the shell had come down on the beach. Men were running for the dunes.

  Then I remembered my suitcase. I climbed to my feet and swayed under the weight of clothes. I started running.

  “Where you going?” Tarbox pulled a rifle from a crate.

  I jumped the last ripple of dune and headed out across the mud flats. The beach was huge and empty. The first smudge of dawn showed in the sky.

  The cannon fired again and its flash jabbed at my eyes. I let myself fall, hands splashing down into a tide pool. The blast howled overhead.

  Then I was running again.

  Sand still rained back to earth as I reached the lifeboat. I found my suitcase under the forward seat and pulled it out.

  As I turned to run again, I caught sight of the Madrigal. It burned under a patch of smoke, pressing against the clouds. Slithers of flaming gasoline threaded in and out of the waves. No voices came from the ship. No one cried for help. For a second everything seemed calm as I wheeled about, suitcase flying through the air.

  Then I was sprinting. The damned suitcase was filled with water. My voice became a rhythm of obscenities.

  Another cannon blast nudged at my ribs. I heard the shriek and a clap and knew from the sound that the shell had found the lifeboat. I craned my neck around and saw the lifeboat cartwheeling into the air. Smashed planks and oars skipped across the sand. Then the bow struck ground and a wave rushed in to claim it.

  I slumped in the dunes and lay gasping with my face on the suitcase. Its leather was soggy and disintegrating. There was sand between my toes, in my crotch, against my chest and jammed into every crossed thread of my coat. Slowly my breathing grew steady. My eyes drifted back into focus.

  Inland the sky showed lighter blue. Silhouetted against it was a man with a pair of binoculars. Others in trenchcoats crouched near him. They all carried rifles.

  The crates were stacked nearby. Tarbox still rummaged through the rifles, as if to find the best one. Water dripped from his hair onto the polished stocks.

  The Madrigal had started to sink. Detonations echoed inside it, more hammer strikes inside an iron drum. Still no sign of the crew. Pale rollers scudded up the beach.

  A truck engine grumbled someplace in the shallow hills. It changed gears and appeared suddenly from behind a fold in the earth.

  “Why haven’t they hit the Crossley yet?” The man in the binoculars stood on top of a dune. “Th
ey’re taking their damn time about it.”

  Shivers trampled on my back.

  Gunfire rattled in the hills. The fast clumping of a machine gun.

  The truck’s brakes squealed. Its windscreen exploded in a shower of glass. The truck swerved into the ditch. Paint chips flew off the hood, leaving punctured bare metal beneath. Its engine raced and then quit. Bullets tore its canvas roof to shreds. Shouting. Three men jumped out of the back and as soon as they hit the ground, it seemed to fly up in their faces. Their bodies twisted and they fell.

  The machine gun quit. Its firing echoed across the sand.

  The truck’s burst radiator hissed steam.

  The men around me slung rifles on their shoulders. They started moving out toward the road.

  “Are you hit?” Tarbox looked down at me.

  I stared up, still hugging the suitcase. “No. Not hit.”

  “Grab a gun and come along.” He handed over a rifle, holding it out at arm’s length. “You’re probably just concussed is all. That’s the thing about being concussed. You don’t think you are, but you are.” He latched onto my lapel and pulled me to my feet. As Tarbox’s hands dug into the soaked wool, its black dye squeezed out and bled across his fingers.

  The gun stock was slippery with oil. As I followed Tarbox through the dunes, I used the Springfield like a walking stick. In my other hand I held the suitcase. Water trickled from its seams.

  A pistol shot came from the road. Then another and another.

  Scattered beside the truck were the three soldiers. They wore khaki uniforms with black belts and hobnailed boots. Another body lay behind the steering wheel. All dead.

  I stared at the bodies, forgetting the cold and the sand. It would have been easy to blind myself with panic. Easier than understanding where I was and what I had just done, lugging guns up a beach in the middle of the night. But I did understand and Baldwin was right. There would be no time for explanation, not to men who were sending down an artillery barrage to welcome me into the land.

  Tarbox talked in whispers to the man with binoculars. The man looked at me, eyes narrowed. Then he walked over. He stopped a few paces away and turned his head a little to the side, as if listening for something. The buttons had popped off his trenchcoat. “Who the hell are you?” He stepped over a body.