A Country of Eternal Light

by Darby Harn

  Long, hard hours go in dragging the generator out of the basement. The generator ran on petrol. Fuel had been scarce for months before the war, but after the bombs dropped what gas there was became useless in Castlebar. I know the soldiers had some reserves at the barracks they intended to use once power had been restored. The petrol reserves amount to a piss jar but I enjoy the hum of the motor. The soft rumble of the generator, inducing a tremor through the floor like a dryer did as it reached the end of the spin cycle. Light bulbs had burnt out in the EMP. The TV shows nothing but snow. The generator gives little more than heat, but I am grateful for it. The absurdity of finding it now, when it can’t benefit anyone but myself, undoes me. The generator powers little in Castlebar beyond my screams.

  Air service to the island had been run out of Inverin for ages, until the airline started to gouge on the contract and suspended the charter. Private planes gave it a go the last few years before the black hole. The pilot flew out of the airport in Galway, on the Carnmore Road a few miles outside the city centre. He can get me home. If the bloody plane even still works. It has to. I’ve no money. I’ve nothing.

  I’ve got to try.

  Bicycles litter the city.

  I blow the tires up on my own air. This takes an hour out of me. I fill up the rest of the gas in jugs I strap to a rack I rig over the back wheel. Among the mounds of bikes in the tent city I find dozens of improvised hitches and wagons. One of them just the right size for the generator. This will do us well at the home. This will do us brilliant. I set out on the N84 south, the last person to leave Castlebar. I’m coming back to the island.

  I’m coming home.

  Seaweed litters the road.

  Electrical wires dangle in the wind like broken clotheslines. Cars float in ditches turned moats. The same for miles. For hours now. If I were a nurse – ha – I’d give myself days of bed rest and lots of liquids before even skirting the idea of minimal physical activity. I don’t have the luxury of time. I have all the strength I need.

  You are my strength.

  The tidal damage here is less than it was even just a few miles north, as I’d hoped. The Aran Islands provide a natural breakwater against the Atlantic for Galway Bay, so if I’m blessed the city has been spared the bulk of the havoc visited on the lower lying areas up the coast. Lord God, let it be true. Give me something for once. Get down to the harbor and find a boat. Find something. There’ll be something. I’ll wait for low tide and get back. I survived the crossing.

  I’ll do so again.

  The city is a city only at low tide. A city of wet dunes. The smoke of long smoldering fires in Salthill curls into a kind of barbed wire over the wall of rain clouds fencing me off from any perspective on home. Any escape. I know the island is just on the other side. Aoife and the residents and Colm are still there, waiting for me. You’re waiting for me. Our peace.

  Along the canal, the river is rusty with leaves.

  A lone duck paddles along through the amber weed, his wake rippling gentle like far behind. A pair of swans idles at a lock just short of O’Brien’s bridge over to Nun’s Island. Immaculate. The beauty and grace of the world unspoiled. A little pedestal rises on the span above the lock, engraved with a poem.

  And the flowing

  of waters below

  too many years.

  Nine hundred years the Children of Lir kept their form as swans. Time meaningless to them. Take another shape and time loses its grip on you. I always loved that story, and more after I sobered up. The bell of the new God tolled and the curse finally wore off. Time found them again. Death found them quicker. The children aged rapidly, as if they had been preserved deep beneath the sea all that time and when at last they made contact with the air again, they turned to rust. It had to be so; their world had gone. Everyone they knew and loved. A kind monk buried the children together, in a single grave.

  I always wondered: did any of the Children of Lir want to live?

  The old stories always giftwrap you the ending. Untie the ribbons of fear and suffering, and inside your box, new and shiny success. Vindication. None of that used, hand me down human doubt. Were the children true, at least one of them would have gone kicking and screaming to their death.

  Ah, you know it.

  It seems like I’ve been here forever, though I know it’s only been a few hours. The stillness draws out time. The absence of others. Of life. Without life, there is no time. No ticking clock. If I stayed here, alone in the lost city, would I age? Would I become Pan?

  Only girls play Peter Pan.

  I wander back into the streets in a daze. Night coming on. High tide. Where do I go? The human delta of Galway has evaporated. Left behind are the empty channels of High St., Manguard and Market. I expect the shadow of a person along the wall. A shout in the street. The bright reds and blues seem dull now without the light of life. Sandbags pile in the doors of shuttered shops, topped with shattered glass. Some attempted to board up their storefronts with plywood, but left it undone. Trash lines the roads, studding the silt accumulating against dozens of abandoned taxis along the rank opposite Eyre Square. A few have boots on them, as if the authorities tried maintaining some order before saying to fuck all with it.

  There is no one.

  All this could be yours someday, Da said, in one of those vapory conversations about my future.

  We’d come over for a new television. The one in the sitting room at the home now, running only Ma’s reflection. She wouldn’t come. She’d never come. I loved to go across with Da, and he wanted me to leave. All that possibility. The forked paths life could have taken, all draining toward the same dark sea. The stream of youth and ideas from the university joined up with this river of tourists from all over the world in a delta of streets branching through inner Galway to the bay. In the summer came the flood. There in the clogged streets between Eyre Square and the Spanish Arch you’d find packs of American girls checking off their Irish Bourbon St.; buskers vying for location; Italian girls over for the weekend with their effeminate boyfriends or companions or whatever is they do in Italy, sipping on espressos out front of the coffee shops too cool to be swept up in the mayhem passing by.

  The tide creeps up both sides of Eyre Square. Pinching me in. Lord God. I won’t be making it to the airport tonight. I have to find shelter. I’ll go in the morning.

  I’ve got to try.

  The verdigris capped dome of Galway Cathedral glints within the envelope of winter fog surrounding it. Deserted cars ring the cathedral, along with rows and rows of tents all left without thought. The cathedral looks a bit like a prison up close, with sheer stone walls and turrets like guard towers.

  The door opens with a bit of a shove. I half expect someone to be behind it. Failing daylight illuminates enough of the cathedral interior through the stained rose windows to show my solitude. Sleeping bags patchwork the marble. Yoga mats, like. No one would leave the church like this. The women of town polish the gold altar and communion railing after each and every service. At least they did. The cathedral echoes with my every nervous breath. I look around every pillar, down every row of pews, expecting someone to be lurking in here with me.

  Mine is the only sound.

  My first trip here, Da and I came during Sunday Mass. I was five, like. Six. We didn’t plan on going into the church. I don’t remember now why we did. Was it the time we got the telly? Must have been I wanted to see it. Whatever I wanted, he gave me. Da held my hand and we stood with three or four men at the back of the pews near the south entrance, though there was ample room to sit. This one man in runners and sweats fidgeted back and forth, as if he didn’t know to sit or stand. I asked Da why we were all standing and he hushed me. I murmured along with the prayers, but like him, I did not close my hands, did not kneel, and did not tithe as the basket came around.

  Churches no longer move me, even one as grand as this. See enough people off in church and you understand what this place is. A harbor. A port. An airport waiting r
oom. A transitional place where no one stays and everyone passes through. I imagine God must be on the other side; the ultimate vacation. Rest and relax. Unplug.

  It’s only the waiting that chips away at us, erodes our defenses against the consideration of what this all truly is. In churches we try and give shape and form to what we can’t understand. A blind person’s image of the world. Then you know: all that matters is how we see existence. Our lives. The future is already within us; we spend our lives trying to focus on what is distant and we are resolved only to bring clarity to our moment.

  This distant rumble snaps me out of my fugue. I go to the doors. High tide rolls up the city like an old carpet. I run up the stairs into the organ room. The pews tumble through the well of the church like ice in a glass. I’m so thirsty. Hungry. Please, God. What did I do? What did I do to make you punish me so? I am what you made me. A gluttonous craving for life wrapped up in a tiny little bit of flesh and bone. A fishing boat drifts through the church. Even now I want.

  Even now I hope.

  Painted angels support the dome above on their outstretched wings. The sky heavy on their backs. My chest thunders with all my dread. I’m never getting home. I’m going to die cold and starving in a ditch somewhere and I didn’t want this. I wanted my peace. I had my peace. I had you and Da and Ma and I had it all there, waiting for me and he started with me and I let him. I should never have let him. Why. I wanted more. God forgive me. I wanted more. Here it all is. The world. Empty and mine.

  Moonlight flares through the painted windows off the tiled mosaic of Christ on the wall on the far end of the church. Christ stretches out to the thin lines of his crucifix, head folding into the spaghetti string of his arms. Angels float above, waiting; a skull rests beneath the cross, its foundation. Beside her son, Mary holds vigil with her head lowered toward her meek left hand. Always Mary has her hand out to the faithful. Here I think it’s to shield her view.

  I slump to the floor. The strain of stone and steel against the water, the pressure building up within the city, twists up all the tension within me. I don’t sleep.

  There is no rest.

  Morning comes. Low tide leaves the city a little less than it was. I bike out to the airport, which takes hours thanks to all the debris the water left in the roads. Several of the cars in the park burned. Some down to their charred frames. The glass doors into the air terminal splintered from bullet holes. A rental bike rests against the wall, the type you’d see here, or in Dublin. The taste of wet smoke curdles in my mouth like vomit, just barely choking the reflex to gag over the smell of burnt flesh. Torch marks scar the walls, stabbing out from this deep black scab on the floor just inside the door. Melted glass curled within it.

  Molotov cocktail. Must have been.

  The remains of a body shriveled outside the public toilets. On the wrists I see a pair of cufflinks still pinned to a sleeve once white but now stained, like a smoker’s teeth.

  Lord God.

  This sound builds in the distance. Like a smoker having a coughing fit and then it evens into this labored buzz. Fuck. I run through the terminal out through the gate to the tarmac just as this old turboprop races down the runway. Wait.

  “Wait!”

  The plane takes all the runway to get off the ground and even then, it doesn’t seem she will. She labors into the sky, turning west slow and deliberate out toward the sea.

  “Wait…”

  The buzzing dies. A terrible quiet in Galway. I sit on the tarmac and I wait for the pilot to come back. He won’t be gone long. He’s delivering someone home, or supplies to someone in need. There and back. I’ll beg him. I’ll promise him whatever he wants. He’ll get me home. I’ll be home tonight.

  I’ll be home.

  Morning comes without the plane. Hours I wait in the terminal. Days. The plane never comes back. One last, cruel rubbing of my nose in it. Almost. My life in a word.

  Lord God.

  There’s nothing. There’s no way home. Seven miles. Seven miles and it may as well be the other side of the world. The sound I make. The force of it leaves my lips bloody. I don’t think there could be another, but it pries itself out of me from down deep and leaves me gutted inside. My grief echoes through the night. Galway. Ireland.

  Mine is the only sound.

  Chapter Nineteen

  A battery of vacant shops and stores piles on my mood.

  I trudge through silt-laden streets, past burned out cars and the rotting masses of dead fish back to the docks. I come to the boat slip at last. I hurry up along the wall, toward the masts. All of them jutting out of the water. Every last one of them, dashed. Scuttled. I stretch out to the park shadowing the bay. There’s nothing else. Nothing at the old, battered docks. A cruise ship lies on its side across the mouth of the bay, the white of its hull charred and streaked from fire.

  At low tide I make down to the seaweed draped causeway to Mutton Island, lancing out in the bay from the city like one of those booms a plane connects to refuel in-flight. I stand on the edge of Ireland, facing home. Home a shard of darkness across the horizon. I cry for you. I scream for you. Hear me.

  I’m coming home.

  I’m going the wrong way but I’m going home. The documents in the dossier I found at the hospital in Castlebar seem official enough. Shannon, then. This command post. They’ll have helicopters there. Planes. They have to. There’s nothing else.

  They have to.

  I’m coming back to you. I’m frightened and alone and weak but you are my strength. You are my hope. You will see me home.

  You will see me.

  I love you. Mo stór. I blow my kisses to you and I wrench myself off the shore somehow, and Lord God, I make my way.

  I go up the Hedford Road to the shopping mall. In the mess of the men’s department I find a backpack and water bottle. There’s nothing for food but I toss some random batteries in the backpack. Either I can trade these or use them to power something or other on my way. I’ll find food on my way. I’ll need something to protect myself, like. There’s no Swiss Army offerings, naturally, so I’m back to the kitchen knives in the housewares department. I break open a set and take the big ones. I find a road map and I plot my way south to Shannon.

  The coastal roads are gone, I know. How far inland has the sea come. There’s only one way of knowing. I get all up in my kit. I button up the coat tight. I can do this. You can do this.

  You’re going to do this.

  There’s no way through Oranmore.

  The N18 swamped. I double back to the M6 though it takes me east. I’ll cut south near Athenry. Down to Craughwell. A lightning bolt of roads all the way to Shannon. Abandoned cars and trucks make the M6 a gauntlet. Loads of vehicles left everywhere. I make great time. At Athenry, I turn south down the R347. Less cars. Empty houses. Fields of nothing for miles and miles. The road like a bunched line of string until it disappears under the surface of a flash flood. The signs and markers lost to water too far and too deep to cross. I’ll have to go back. Keep on the M6 and try the R349 I suppose. Miles. My legs are concrete. I’m so tired. I’m so hungry.

  Get on.

  You’ve got to get on. You’re not dying here. You’re getting home. You’re getting back to the island.

  Sheep graze on the shores of impromptu lakes. Baby hills become candy coated bolts of popcorn. The hinds of the sheep painted green and red to mark their owner. I miss popcorn. The dagger of hard kernels in my gums. The pain of eating too much too fast. I’m days without proper food.

  I need food.

  One of those sheep, like. If I can get close enough. I’ve got the knife. I can build a fire from the thrushes of pine trees fencing off any friendly way across these fields. I can make camp. Roast some lamb. Sing some ancient songs from the radio. It will be some good old craic. I can do this.

  I bike until I find a stretch of the ditch beside the road that’s not a lagoon. I climb the fence and slowly make my way back a quarter of a mile across the marshy shoals
of the field. There’s no telling how deep that water is. I’m no swimmer.

  You’re not dying here.

  I cleat a clump of earth out the ground with the knife and toss it in the water. There’s a sinking, heavy sort of plop as it goes in. The noise startles the sheep. It’s a merry-go-round, the sheep island. They rearrange themselves on the hillock, circulating down to the water’s edge and then back. Sheep in general will not cross water if it’s too deep, or if there’s nothing of value for them on the other side. By the looks of them they’re a wool breed, like we have on the island. This lot is long without seeing any sheers. Full fleeced.

  Fine then, lads. Drowning it is.

  I stab out more clumps and throw mud grenades into the huddled herd. This dance begins within them, where the ones at the top abandon their perch and circle down to the rim of sheep along the shore. The ones running from the earth bombs twist back up to the top where I plop them again and on it goes until they get so agitated they barrel through the fence of the ones that can’t be bothered along the shore, right into the water.

  The sheep thrash and try to get back to their island but I keep raining agitation down on the ones bringing up the rear. There’s no getting back for the early outs. They paddle furious. They bob and sink and surface and then unable to find their balance or the bottom they drown. They float like popcorn in beer. The dead sheep disperse and my luck does not extend to the water delivering one of them to where I stand. Fuck it. I’m wet already.

  I get out of my coat and wade in a bit. Lord God. The cold. I’ll never shake this cold. The water rises to my waist. I’m too small to go any further. Come on. Come closer. A little one floats near. I reach out. His wool brushing my fingers. I get my fingers in some strands and my feet flutter. I go weightless.