NOVEMBER, 1995
Gary sat with Moira at the desk near the front door. He huddled with her over her open textbook. Caitlyn watched the two of them, wondering.
He’d already become more a part of her life than she’d ever expected. He and Moira . . . her daughter had bonded immediately and unquestioningly to her ‘Burning Man,’ and he responded to her with a teasing seriousness that made Caitlyn sometimes feel clumsy in her own relations with Moira.
And yet. . . . He kept his distance with Caitlyn, careful not to say or do anything that might be construed as an advance. At first, she’d found that comforting . . .
“Look,” he said to Moira, his baritone voice warm in the cool air of the room. “Remember when you introduced me to Codman Cody at the West Lighthouse? How many fingers does he have?”
Caitlyn could see Moira squeeze her eyes shut in concentration. “Six,” she said at last. “Four on his right hand, two on his left.”
“OK. And if he held his left hand over his right, that’d be two over four—like a fraction. What if he took away half the fingers on each hand? What would that look like? Think about Codman Cody’s hands . . .”
Again, the eyes closed, then opened. “That would be one on one hand and two on the other,” she said.
“Would he look silly then, with only three fingers?”
Moira giggled. “Aye, he would.” They both laughed, then Gary drew a two-fingered hand and a four-fingered hand on the paper in front of them. “So you can divide the number of fingers on both hands by two, right? Which means two over four can be reduced to what fraction? Look at the hands.”
“One over two!” Moira roared. “One half.”
Gary applauded softly. “Hey, you got it! What if he had six fingers on his right? Could you reduce two over six?”
A pause. Then: “One over three.” Moira giggled. “I understand. Thanks, Gary.”
“You’re welcome. Now . . . why don’t you get to bed? Your mom and I gotta talk . . .” He kissed her forehead and Moira flung her arms around his neck. She ran over to Caitlyn and did the same, then scurried off to her room. Caitlyn watched Gary straighten the desk and put Moira’s notebooks in her backpack.
“You’re good with her,” she said into the silence, and his deep brown eyes glanced back at her . .
“She’s a great kid. I like her a lot.” His gaze turned away as he tucked Moira’s math book in and closed the flap. His dark, long fingers tapped the blue cloth. He pushed back the chair. “I’m going for a walk. Wanna come?”
She hesitated. “I don’t know . . . Moira . . .”
“Just tell her we’re going. She’ll be fine.”
“All right,” she said finally. “Let me get my shawl . . .”
The night was cool but dry, a strong, high wind draping shreds of cloud over a half-moon and ripping them away again, though only a faint breeze stirred the dry leaves of the hawthorn in the yard. She envied the ease with which Gary moved in the darkness, contrasting with her own clumsy, stiff-legged gait. He slowed his own pace to hers, walking alongside her down the narrow asphalt road winding westward. He was careful not to touch her, always keeping a distance between them. They said nothing, listening to the night birds, the soughing of the wind, and the faint sound of the water. They passed Abigail Scanlon’s cottage, a quarter mile down the road—‘Wide Abby,’ they called her. The old woman was out on her porch: Caitlyn could see the outline of the misshapen body, like someone laying on their side, the legs at either end of the stretched frame, the head a bump in the middle of a log, the hand waving at either end, unable to reach each other across the huge girth between them. Caitlyn remembered how they’d had to alter her cottage, the door hinged sideways, all the furniture low and wide. Caitlyn waved to her. “A beautiful night, ’tis it not, Abby?” she called out. There was no answer, only a faint wave from one of the hands.
They walked on. She could feel Gary glancing from her to Abigail. “Moira goes to ‘school’ every day, but she’s the only one there,” he said finally. “She seems to know everyone on the island, and half the time she’s over at someone’s house. But y’know, in two months I’ve never seen anyone at all ever come to your house. I notice that you don’t go to the grocery yourself, that the person who delivers them leaves the box on the stoop and never knocks or rings the bell to say hello. I notice that your neighbors don’t say much to you.” He stopped, and she knew he was waiting for an answer. When she remained silent, walking on, he continued. “Is it me? Is it because I’m there?”
She smiled, because she must. “No,” she answered. “It’s not you. It’s . . . complicated.”
“I’m listening.”
“I don’t know if I can explain it to you. This isn’t your home; you weren’t sent here. You didn’t have to make the choice we made.” He said nothing; after a moment, she continued. “I came here with a mother who looked as deformed and disfigured as anyone here, who was in the same kind of pain. She lived for two decades that way, in daily pain and torment, and I took care of her. I took care of some of the others, too. That was nothing special. That was something we all did, those of us who could. And then . . . she died. And I left—because I could; because as far as I knew then, all the wild card had done to me was keep me forever young; because—unlike the rest of them here on Rathlin—I could get by in the normal society out there. I wasn’t ugly or horribly changed. I didn’t ooze slime or have spines or drag myself around like a slug. I was pretty and normal. Back then, when you looked at me or saw, you wouldn’t notice anything unless you watched me very carefully. I left. I left them behind. At the time, I didn’t think I’d ever come back.”
They’d reached the point where the road curved away north to Church Bay. The west side of the island around Church Bay slid gently into the water, unlike the steep cliffs that lined most of the island’s perimeter. They stood on a rise, the bay glittering below, while away over the channel, the lights of Ballycastle in Northern Ireland gleamed six miles away, tantalizingly close and impossibly far away.
“They’re jealous of you,” Gary said, “because you look like a nat, because you could blend in.”
“That’s part of it, aye. Then there’s Moira. They love her, Gary, they do. She’s Rathlin’s only child, and they all feel like they’re her aunt or uncle. But at the same time, she . . . She’s a slap in their faces. All of them made the decision to stay here. They made the decision that they wouldn’t bring any more children into the world to be like them, to suffer the way they’ve suffered. I left them, and I came back with Moira . . .”
“So they hate you.”
Caitlyn tried to shake her head. It would turn only slowly. “Hate’s an awfully strong word, and too simple. It’s . . . it’s more that they’re terribly disappointed in me. I’ve shamed them, and along with that they can’t quite ever forget that I selfishly abandoned them, and they can’t forget that I’ve almost certainly condemned Moira to die young and in horrible pain because of the virus she carries. What I did was selfish and it was abandonment, and it was cruel. I did it purely for me.”
“Sometimes you have to think about yourself first.”
“Maybe,” she answered. “But then you have to live with everybody else afterward.”
He gave her a contemplative hmm, leaning on the stone fence that bordered the roadway. She saw his gaze catch on the Ballycastle lights and remain there. “You really want to go home, don’t you?” she asked him.
A nod. “Yeah. I do. Arnie called earlier today, while you were bringing back the sheep. Mom’s getting worse, and their finances . . . My savings are gone; I can’t afford that lawyer any more. I done everything I can think of to do. I even talked to Codman Cody about trying to sneak off the island at night in his boat, have him land me somewhere on the coast and see what happens . . .” She saw his hand form a fist and slowly loosen again. “I left without saying goodbye to anyone. I miss my family, I miss my friends, I miss walking around the city, all the people and the sights and the food . . . But I ain’t going back as a prisoner.” He looked at her over his shoulder with a wry smile. “I guess there are all kinds of prisons, aren’t there?”
There was such gentle sympathy in his face, such compassion in his eyes . . . She wanted more than anything to lean toward that mouth, to kiss him and to feel him respond. She stared back at him, the eternal smile on her face, holding her breath. She could not move.
But he did. His head turned, he bent toward her so close that she could feel his warmth. He stopped. Pulled back, his expression stricken and guilty. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I shouldn’t have . . . I’m really sorry.”
“Don’t apologize,” she told him.
He shook his head. “It ain’t right, not when I’d leave here tomorrow if I could. Not after you took me in, let me stay with you. I’m really sorry, Caitlyn. I don’t want to make you feel threatened or bothered or-”
“Stop it,” she told him. “It’s fine. It’s . . .” . . . what I want too. I’m just so afraid of it and I don’t know if I can anymore, and. . . . There were a dozen other things to say, but she couldn’t say any of them. “. . . forgotten,” she finished.
But she didn’t forget it. She remembered. It haunted her dreams for a long time.
“I hope you find your way home,” she told him.
Rathlin’s lone lawyer was also Rathlin’s Mayor, an elderly gentleman with long white hair that covered most of his body. His snouted face and prominent front teeth made him look like a large rodent; the delicate eyeglasses perched there, the wire rims tucked behind his ear flaps, magnified the tiny black eyes, and the suit he wore made him look like a cartoon character . . His hand were pink and wrinkled and folded on top of the newspaper that covered his desk.
Joseph Carrick: ‘The Rat of Rathlin,’ as he’d been dubbed by the Sun and other tabloids.
DISASTER AVERTED! the headline trumpeted. Then, in smaller type: BLACK TRUMP DESTROYED IN JERUSALEM. SENATOR GREGG HARTMANN AMONG DEAD.
“I thought . . . I thought that since Senator Hartmann was dead that the charges against me might be dropped,” Gary told Carrick.
Carrick’s whiskered nose twitched. “I’m afraid they haven’t. I’ve made the inquiries you requested: the charges against you stand, and I’ve been told by the authorities in Northern Ireland, Great Britain and your own country that nothing has changed—you will be arrested the moment you step foot off Rathlin.” Carrick traced the headlines with a slow forefinger. “I am sorry, Mr. Bushorn. There’s nothing I can do.”
“Mayor,” Gary said, a tone of desperation in his voice, “Look, Hartmann was just about my last hope. I gotta get back—you don’t understand.”
“Joseph, surely there’s something else you can do?” Caitlyn’s voice drew Carrick’s attention away from the paper. His tiny lips, in the shadow of the snout, pursed in a tight moue of annoyance. Joseph Carrick had once openly courted Caitlyn, in the months after her mother’s death and before her flight from Rathlin. Caitlyn knew he’d considered her departure a personal insult—she’d heard him say it to others: “She think she’s too perfect to be touched by the likes of a joker . . . ”
“I’ve done all I can,” he answered tartly. “Surely you’re not totally disappointed in the news, Miss Farrell, since that means your ‘house guest’ will be staying.” Caitlyn’s cheeks went hot—she started to answer, but Gary had already risen from his chair. His forefinger stabbed the paper in front of Carrick.
Around the finger, white smoke curled away. “You,” Gary said, “will apologize to Caitlyn. I don’t care if you’re the fucking Mayor, I don’t care if you call Constable McEnnis and have him drag me off the island as a result.” His hand went down flat on the newspaper. The smell of ash and burning paper rose. Tiny flames leapt around his hand. “You know nothing about her, or you would have kept your mouth shut just now.” Fire crackled around his wrist. “Do I make myself clear?”
Carrick’s tiny eyes widened more than Caitlyn thought possible. He nearly squeaked as he pushed his chair back from his desk. “Aye, I understand,” he said hurriedly. “Caitlyn, I’m apologize. I certainly didn’t mean to imply . . .”
Gary swept the paper onto the wooden floor and stamped out the fire. The photo of the crater in the midst of Jerusalem was now a smoking hole. “I believe Caitlyn asked you a question just now.”
Carrick was staring at the ruins of the newspaper alongside his desk. His head jerked back to Gary, then Caitlyn. “I suppose I could contact a few people I know in your state department. Perhaps some sort of amnesty could be arranged now that the Senator is dead and the crisis over. Why don’t you come back in a few weeks or so . . .”
He did come back. Every week. And every time the answer was the same.
“I’m sorry, Mr. Bushorn . . .”