He sometimes rubbed his hand across his shoulders and legs. It was in the dark, as if he were blind and could follow his life on his body with his finger. His memories were scars. The scars were soft and smooth under his fingers, and he could imagine that all these scars were the only soft parts of his body. But there were many. His body was more soft than it was hard, but for the wrong reasons. He had a young man’s body, but for the wrong reason.
It shouldn’t be him. Not him, living an old man’s life.
Jesus,
He stayed standing there and waited for the sun to go down, and it did as the child biked by again; a boy, he lived in the house by the steps and there were always clothes hanging from the line, and he could see a young woman come out and hang the wash, or take it down, and her hair was black, like the boy’s, and there was a transparent pallor to her face, which was the sea’s fault. The sea marked these people, shaped their forms. Farther up, all the way up in the north, in Thurso, Wick, people were bent like dwarf birches on a mountain, black, pale, blown to pieces, blown through.
He turned in toward the room at the same time as the sun disappeared over to other continents. The room was exactly as dark as he wanted it. He went to one of the easy chairs and sat down and drank again from the whisky that waited in the glass. It was one of the cheap kinds.
He looked around with the liquor still in his mouth. He swallowed.
No. I won’t leave this.
It was the last time.
I will stay here.
He ran his hand over his right arm; his finger slid across the smooth skin that had been dead for so many years now. There was no life in most of his skin, only a surface that was silky and at the same time, when he pressed a little harder, completely hard, hard as stone.
He reached for his weapon.
He took care of it.
She had said that his violence hadn’t changed. Hadn’t lessened.
At the Three Kings the windows bulged from the wind, which was coming in from the northwest now. He felt the draft where he was sitting at the bar. He might have said something to the woman who was standing there as though petrified, but she didn’t answer, didn’t hear.
Sometimes she heard. He had waited to tell her things. He knew that he would need her later.
The door opened. The woman stirred. He heard a voice. Someone sat down beside him.
“Whisky, please.”
“Blended or malt?”
“Just give me whatever-”
He heard the stranger interrupt himself.
“-whatever you fancy.”
“Well, I don’t fancy whisky.”
“Give me a… Highland Park,” said the stranger, nodding toward the shelves of bottles.
The woman turned around and took down a wide-bottomed bottle and poured it into a glass and put it in front of the stranger. She spoke her dialect, which some people considered to be a miserable gibberish:
“This’s from Orkney, do y’know?” she said.
“No.”
“I thought y’knew,” she said.
The stranger drank. The woman had stiffened again. The stranger took the glass from his mouth and turned to him and lifted it an inch or so. The stranger seemed to gaze out the window. There was nothing outside. Now the stranger moved his gaze. He could see this from the corner of his eye.
Someone was watching him.
He turned his head toward the man who was sitting there. He nodded without saying anything.
The stranger was younger than he was, but he wasn’t a young man. There was a peculiar look in his eyes. There were lines on his face. The glass in his hand shook. He set it down and hastily wiped his mouth.
The woman had walked away from the bar.
I will have to stop coming here, he thought. Why do I come here?
I know why.
“Are you from around here?” asked the stranger.
14
Winter made it onto the ferry, the
Someone had once broken into his Merc and stolen the sign. He had looked for it for a long time.
He bought a cup of tea as they traveled out. The sun was alone in the sky. The cliffs were illuminated in gray, in silver. The path out was covered in cliffs, stone. All over, piles of stone that were islands, all the way to the open sea.
Johanna Osvald was waiting on the quay at Donso. He recognized her there. Time had passed, but she was standing in a place that could have been the same as it was then.
The community behind her climbed upward. Part of it seemed to be cut out of stone. There were many houses, some large, some built from expensive wood. He knew that the shipping industry was big on the island; it had given rise to wealth. The fishing fleet had been big here, but he didn’t see many trawlers in the harbor now. But of course they wouldn’t be here; they would be out at sea. He saw a modern trawler with two hangers or whatever they were called, he didn’t know, mounts for trawls on the stern. The boat was wide, heavy, big, blue. GG 381 MAGDALENA was painted on the prow. He saw a man who seemed to be looking at him, his hand cupped over his eyes, below his cap.
He saw a cross on the gable of a house. Religiousness had been widespread on Donso, he remembered that. The church was full. That had hardly changed.
People place their lives in God’s hands. His will be done.
Johanna raised her hand in greeting. He stood in the prow of the
She had not smelled like fish oil. He had joked about it once on the cliffs. Do country girls smell like manure? she had asked with the sharp part of her tongue.
“You weren’t easy to get hold of,” he said on the quay.
“You’re one to talk,” she answered.
They had made a quick agreement over the phone a bit ago.
They sat on the first bench they saw.
Her father had still not been found.
“I think something has happened to him,” she said. “Dad would have called by this time.” She looked at him. “He obviously would have by now, right?”
“You know him; I don’t. You know best.”
“I know it,” she said.
“I’ll put one out on him,” said Winter. “A description, I mean. We’ll put out an international description via Interpol.”
“Yes.”
