The Night Swimmer (32 page)

You left your big anchor at home, mate, Eamon said. Now you are
fucked
!

Then Conchur came across the room and Fred and I stepped back, but Conchur shot a hand over the bar and had Fred by the shirtfront. I grabbed Fred's arm but Conchur yanked him forward, dragging both of us across the bar. A couple builders peeled me off my husband, pinning my hands behind me.

Conchur held Fred at arm's length, the entire front of Fred's T-shirt balled in his fist.

Get off me!

Fred twisted and wrestled with Conchur's wrist.

I'll call the fucking police!

Fred took a long, looping swing at Conchur, clipping him on the chin. The builders squeezed my arms tighter.

'E wants a bit, does 'e? one of the builders said.

Fuckin' blow-in, Eamon Corrigan said. You and the blind man, a couple of goat-fuckers, are ye?

I'm gonna call the guard! Fred yelled, his face wild with fear.

Eamon stepped behind Fred and swatted him across the back of his head.

You stupid fuckin' Yank. We
are
the guard!

Stop! I screamed. Please!

Conchur grinned at my husband, gathering more of his shirt into his hand, getting him tight, and drew a fist back by his ear.

You ready for this, mate?

I remember the sound of the rain drumming on the windows and Patty Griffin singing, the sour beer smell of the pub, how the light from the docks outside glistened on the yellow survival suits of the Corrigans.

Then Conchur hit Fred square in the face, crunching his nose, and my husband groaned and tried to turn away, putting up his forearms as Conchur began to repeatedly punch him, even and steady like a piston, hitting Fred in the eye, the forehead, the temple, the ear. He dropped him to the floor and Fred curled up, trying to protect his face. I began to struggle with the builders holding me. I probably outweighed both of them, but they had hard, cruel hands, practiced to violence, and they cranked my wrists behind my back until I was on my knees, crying out in pain. A shadow hurried by the front windows.
There were people just outside, going on about their business.

I began screaming. Conchur knelt and straddled Fred, pinning his arms down with his knees. Fred's face was a smear of blood and saliva, his cheeks and forehead blotchy red and swelling. Conchur began to smack him hard with his open palm, side to side. Fred was crying as he turned his face away from the blows, an awkward gasping sound I had never heard my husband make before. He looked at me for a moment, and in his eyes I saw his anger and frustration, and behind that, something larger and more hurtful to us both.

*  *  *

When they left I crouched on the floor cradling his head as he covered his face and wept. After a while he stopped and I looked at his face, lightly touching the swollen parts, and he asked me if it was bad and I said no, it wasn't so bad. He asked me if I was okay and I said I was fine. Then he said he didn't want me to look at him anymore, so I turned away.

We locked up and went upstairs. I stood outside the bathroom as he washed his face, not knowing what else to do. I heard running water, then the small grunts and gasps as he dressed his wounds. I thought of him standing at the sink in his underwear, fingers of dried blood matted in his chest hair, his eyes in the mirror. What was he thinking, what did he see there? I would never know.

Are you okay? I said through the door. Can I help?

No, he said. Please, let's not talk about it.

Okay. I'll be in the room.

I lay in bed in the darkened room, and after a long time Fred came out, holding a damp towel full of ice to his face. He stood there a moment, his silhouette against the hall light.

Do you want me to turn on the lamp? I said.

No, he said.

He got into bed and arranged himself carefully on his back, still holding the ice to his face. I moved over to him and he put his arm around me and I rested my cheek on his chest. Fred gave my back three little pats, like he always did.

What are we going to do? I said.

Nothing, he said. Let's just sleep.

*  *  *

The next day when Fred went down to open up the bar I sat at his desk and watched the fog burn off Baltimore harbor, the moored boats emerging one by one like returning sentinels. On the computer was a list of dozens of folders containing hundreds of files with fragments of language, poetry, soliloquies, titles, names, locations, long screeds about religion, culture. I clicked a couple.

You have no idea what loneliness is. Consider the Galápagos tortoise, June of 1937. A tortoise nosing its way around the island falls into a deep rocky crevice, getting wedged facedown. Moisture collects at the bottom in a pool, inhabited by a weedy mold and blind amphibians, so the tortoise is able to remain nourished. A Galápagos
tortoise can live for more than a hundred years. That tortoise is still down there, facedown in the black. No one knows that he is there and there is no hope of salvation. He can only eat and survive and think his lonely turtle thoughts, long grasses, the sound of wind, the dream of being naked in the sun. Get ahold of yourself for fuck's sake.

If you had a million years it wouldn't matter. Be glad you don't. Giving cut flowers to another is such a powerful expression because they will die, very soon. Put them in a nice vase, give them water and light and perhaps stroke a stamen or two at midnight. They will die knowing they meant something, and that is all we are trying to do here.

Take solace in this; your cares may not be original but they are universal. And seriously, which is more important?

You know when you have the image of something in your mind, but when you go to do it you can't make it right? It just doesn't match up? There is only one problem in this life and this is it.

One folder was simply labeled “Images.” I opened it. Inside was a series of pictures, a long sheet of thumbnails, images of figures, human figures. I didn't really want to see the particular species of pornography that my husband was so absorbed with, but I clicked on one image anyway and it expanded to show the edge of a building, a black-and-white photo, a cluster of people in the windows, and a blur of movement halfway down, out in the white space of the sky. It was a woman, her skirts billowing, her arms slightly bent and gesturing out, like she was holding an invisible dancing partner.

They were all pictures of people falling. People falling from buildings, bridges, many falling from some unknown source, the picture just of a body in the air, in flight. The first grouping was a series of photos from something called the Triangle Shirtwaist
Fire, grainy black-and-white photos of women jumping out of windows, their faces composed, most clutching their pocketbooks, some chastely holding their skirts down as they jumped. Most seemed determined to land feetfirst, as if they would dust themselves off and walk away. Others were more contemporary, people falling from suspension bridges, a whole series from the Golden Gate Bridge, the Eiffel Tower, skyscrapers, the burning towers. I scrolled through the thumbnails for a minute, but there was no end. There were thousands of them.

*  *  *

Downstairs the bar was empty, sunlight pouring in the windows, the jukebox blaring Neko Case. Through the kitchen I could see the back door open and Fred in the alley, sifting through his manure pile with a rake. He was shirtless, a pair of baggy shorts, barefoot, and the hair spread off the top of his chest like flames. He carefully lifted a bucket and poured urine over the mound, singing along.

Does your soul cast about like an old paper bag?

Out in the street Kieran's builders were jackhammering the sidewalk, the street full of lorries and dust. It was an impossibly sunny day. The builders followed me with their ferret eyes, a small knot of Corrigans on the quay, shopkeepers, tourists, it seemed everyone was watching, waiting to see what I was going to do. I ran down to the ferry pier to the pay phone and called my mother. I entered my card number and the call connected, but there was no ringing, just a strange dull buzz. After a few moments I heard a voice on the other end, distant and faint. Hello! I said. Is it you? The phone booth was vibrating with sound, and I gripped the receiver, and pounded on the glass. I couldn't hear what they were saying. It was a voice that sounded like my mother, but it could have been anyone.

F
red was determined to stay open, and he didn't hide his injuries from anyone. I wasn't sure he was going to be able to bear it. He threw open the doors to the Nightjar and stood out on the sidewalk, his face a swollen, scabbed mass of purple. One eye was nearly shut, the whites of his eyes streaked with blood, his nose cracked, and the nostrils stuffed with bloody wads of gauze.

Only a few weeks left till summer, he said. If that is the best they can do, then we'll make it.

Bill came over as soon as he heard, and the two of them commiserated together at the end of the bar. Bill was clearly upset, and they had a whiskey together. I drank hot tea and rubbed Fred's sore neck. He had a hunk of black walnut behind the bar that he was whittling into a stock.

Look, Bill said, I live out there, with them. I can't get into this.

No problem, Fred said. I'm making my own gun anyway.

Bill forced a barking laugh, and Fred scowled at him. He didn't understand that Fred was serious.

Keep the chin up, Bill said. All will be well.

He finished his drink in an uncomfortable silence, muttering excuses, had to get back to the island, Nell, et cetera, and as he left he gave me a look of consolation.

I'll be back, Bill said. Count on it.

*  *  *

After he left Fred set his whittling down and searched the bruises on his face with his fingers.

Why is it, he said, that the only friend I have is that old hack?

Don't do that. Bill is a good person.

And then there's Dinny, Fred said. Good old Dinny. Barely said a fucking word to me. Probably best friend I got.

When I looked at his face a kind of resentment took root deep inside me. I wanted to let it go and merely be in love. It seemed like so many miles and years had passed since I wept in front of open, raging fires, shaking with desperation and desire for his presence. Where did that go? How does a love that strong and demanding abandon you? I watched him grimacing as he touched the blackened and swollen parts around his mouth, and what I felt then burrowed into my heart like some groping mechanical parasite, spinning in the scoop of flesh, building a hard shell around it, putting in anchors.

There's me, I said. I'm your best friend.

He dropped his hands and his face softened into a close-eyed smile.

C'mere.

I went behind the bar and stepped into his arms. I kissed his face lightly.

We're gonna make it, he said.

Can we sell? Can't we sell the place and get out of here?

I'm not leaving, Fred said. Not yet.

He turned away from me.

But we can just
leave,
I said. That's what they want.

Do you want to go?

I didn't know what to say. The truth is I didn't. Despite everything I still felt there was something left to do.

I'm gonna take care of it, Fred said. I promise. Please. I need this.

I wasn't sure if I trusted him. His inner chamber of secrets was deeper and larger than I had imagined, and I felt shut out and deceived.

Okay, I said.

*  *  *

In the late afternoon Fred closed up the bar and we went for a walk up to the Baltimore Beacon. On the streets everything seemed to proceed as normal, the usual blank faces and empty stares. Nobody said a word to us.

The old Baltimore Beacon was a nesting place for nightjars, and at dusk the air was thick with their silent winging, a vortex of them circling the pointed peak. They began to roost there more than a hundred years ago, when the beacon was lit by an oil burner refracted through glass, drawing insects from all points as well as ships, and the nightjars still began their evening feeding there, a fruitless hour of trolling the windblasted bluff before they turned en masse and headed for the lights of the harbor, marking their passage with their mechanical trill, a call more like an electric vibration than a living song. During the day they clustered about the base of the lighthouse, small lumps of mottled gray blending with the lichen-covered rock. When you stepped near them they emitted a short croak and then unsteadily took to the air. If the insects are plentiful and available, the nightjars will feed until they are gone, gorging themselves to the point of exhaustion, and they drop out of the sky like furred stones. The nightjar will literally eat itself to death.

We sat on a thick tuft of grass overlooking Roaringwater Bay and passed the flask back and forth, Fred grimacing as he sipped through his scabbed lips. Off in the west the low horizon was lined with black clouds a hundred miles across.

Looks like a gale, Fred said. Just what we need.

Beyond Sherkin the hazy image of Clear glowered in the fading light. I thought of Highgate walking the cliffs, sniffing his way. Was he looking for Miranda? Did he know what I had done?

These storms, Fred said. Every day is like a new world out here.

He squinted into the sun and tipped the flask.

When I was out there swimming, I said, near Fastnet, it changed so quickly. The water, the sky, everything. Like the closer I was to the lighthouse, the worse it got.

Remember that sailing trip, Fred said, with Bill? That was crazy.

Yeah, just like that.

Do you think Highgate has something to do with this?

With what? Conchur and those guys?

I don't know, Fred said. Do you think we just got caught between them? Highgate and Kieran?

I knew exactly what he meant but didn't say anything.

The woofers are always at the Nightjar, Fred said. I helped Patrick with supplies. He just wouldn't back down from Kieran. And then I basically told the guard that we think Kieran had him killed. It wasn't just about the farm, Patrick was protecting Highgate. You know his wife and kids left him? He found out on Christmas Eve?