He’s standing shirtless on the front porch like a figurehead on the prow of a sailing vessel, undaunted by the lashing rain. Like he was built for this place. This island. This hard-fought life.
I watch him from the living room window, eyeing a small scar on his right shoulder, another across his bicep. More evidence of the battles he’s faced against the sea. He sips his tea, quiet, steam rising into his face—and my thoughts bend in on themselves. He’s handsome, I think, in this early morning light, just risen from sleep. The kind of handsome that would make most men arrogant, vain. But he is neither of these things. Rough, perhaps, lacking some decorum. But not self-important. I imagine he’s always lived an isolated life, even before the island split away from the mainland.
My mind slips deeper, wondering at the last time someone touched his skin, the last time his wife laid her fingers against him with hunger in her eyes. It’s been over seventy years since his wife died, since that awful night. But how long has it felt for him? Two years, three? All too recent.
He is a solemn, unknowable man, with skin like sap. A man who has lost too much.
He takes another sip, then turns. I snap my eyes away, but it’s too late. He knows I was watching him.
Ten days gone.
He heads outside just after sunup, even when it’s raining.
I stand on the front porch watching the waves, the gray sky, hoping for a bit of green, for the Faroes to appear against the horizon. But the waiting starts to feel like madness. Like I’m pushing the land away with my eyes.
So I find a broom in the kitchen and I sweep the house. I dust the windowsills, pulling away cobwebs from the corners. I lock myself in the bathroom and cry—anointing myself with tears, feeling the full weight of this whole fucked-up situation. Then I brush away the despair and step back out into the hall. Because there is no relief in the tears. The bathroom is mostly useless anyway, without a toilet. The clawfoot tub still holds water for a bath, but Clay explains that buckets of water need to be heated on the stove, then carried up one at a time. And he hasn’t offered to do as much.
I distract myself, daydreaming that tomorrow we’ll see land. Tomorrow I will return home and sleep in my own bed. Tomorrow I will see Nana and James, and I’ll begin the work of repairing the life I left behind.
I organize the kitchen cupboards—anything to keep the hours from feeling like years—where plates and mugs have been stacked haphazardly, without any order. I learn how to crank water from the faucet into the sink—it can be finicky in the cold of early morning—and I boil water for tea when Clay comes inside in the evening, shivering and wet. He tells me that the well that once ran deep underground no longer works—since the island broke away from the mainland. But he built a series of gutters along the eaves of the house to collect rainwater, diverting the runoff into a metal cistern in the cellar below the kitchen. Water is precious, saved and used sparingly. I made the mistake of washing my face in the sink one morning, letting the water spill greedily throughmy hands, wasting most of it, and he rushed over, slamming his palm against the faucet handle to shut it off. “Nae,” he scolded, shaking his head, explaining that each drop must be rationed. I wanted to reply that rain is always streaming over the house—surely we’ll never run out of water. There’s always plenty more falling from the sky. But I kept my mouth shut, because what do I know of water conservation.
My period starts. I cut up pieces of fabric I find in the hall closet—remnants I imagine his wife saved to be used later for mending shirts. In the evening, I wash the strips of fabric and hang them to dry on the laundry line outside, hoping he won’t ask what they’re for.
The days rise and fall.
The hours slippery, hard to grasp
I chop vegetables from the garden to make stew, I collect eggs from the wooden henhouse at the end of the dirt path, then carry them back to the kitchen in a small basket.
I notice him watching me… just like I watch him. Both of us creatures the other doesn’t quite understand. We are wary, untrusting, yet we have found ourselves in a pattern of existence. Of survival. Counting the days.
It’s late, near midnight, if I had to guess. And I hear Clay stirring downstairs, pulling on his boots.
“What’s wrong?” I ask from the stairwell, a blanket pulled around me.
“Lamb about to be born,” he answers as he opens the front door.
He stares at me, and I stare back, just before he steps out into the night.
I hesitate, before my legs carry me down the stairs. I make a cup of tea in the kitchen—thinking he’ll need it—then pull on a coat from the hook beside the front door: the one he said I could wear.
I make my way up the path, the moon swollen, shading the island in indigo. Before I’ve even reached the barn, I can hear the cries of the mother sheep, and I wonder if this is the sound that woke Clay.
Stepping through the doorway, I can see the sheep near the far wall, separated from the others, and Clay is on his knees, feeling the sheep’s swollen belly.
“Anything I can do?” I ask. Certain I’ll be no help.
“Best to let the rhythm of her body see this through.” He slides his palm up to her neck, assuring her, whispering words in a language I don’t understand. Watching him—he’s gentle, patient—I see a softness I hadn’t expected. But things move quickly and the mother sheep begins a pattern of lying down, baaing softly, then standing up again.
“Is she okay?” I find myself fidgeting, hands tensed around the cup of tea.
“Aye, only a matter of time now.”
No more than a few minutes later, he’s helping the tiny lamb emerge into the world, brownish and slick and fragile.
I gasp, air escaping my lungs. I’ve never witnessed a birth before, human or otherwise, and I feel my heart slow—stunned by the raw, quiet abruptness of it. The lamb trembling for breath, the air cold around us. Brutal and calm, the whole thing impossible. Yet performed countless times a day by every species on the planet. Instinctive. Second-nature.
The mother begins cleaning the tiny lamb, and Clay feels along her belly. “Looks like it’s only the one.” He stands, the sleeves of his shirt rolled up, and I see him let out a deep breath.
