No Names, page 24
In a flash I’m over the edge, scrambling down the side. I catch a glimpse of Mike. He looks like he’s about to signal with his arms or shout for me to stop. When I reach the stony bottom, the brown sugar lamb looks at me with those freaky eyes sheep have—rectangular pupils, yellowish irises—like he’s pleading for help. He’s wedged between several boulders, can’t move. As careful as I can, I move aside each lichen-encrusted hunk of rock, gently pulling the soft body into my arms. His bleating calms as I whisper, “Everything’s going to be okay, okay,” over and over again, my lips touching his soft ear. I lift him up and place him around my neck—front legs over one shoulder, hind legs over the other—to free my hands for the climb.
When I get to the top, Mike reaches down and lifts the lamb from my shoulders. He sits on the ground, cross-legged, the injured baby in his lap. I kneel in front of them.
“You could’ve killed yourself the way you flew down there.” Mike looks at me, then at the lamb. “Once in a while we lose one.” He coughs into his hand. “All the cliffs.” He sweeps his arm in a half circle over the landscape. “Seems both front legs are broken. Maybe his back, too.”
“What should we do?”
“Afraid there’s not much we can do.”
“Take him to the vet?”
“Isn’t one.”
“There’s got to be something we can do.”
He shakes his head, probably more a reaction to the whine in my voice than anything else. Super quiet now, he says, “There’s nothing we can do.”
“Please …” Then, seeing what looks to be disappointment in Mike’s eyes, I stop. I glance around at the cliffs, the ocean, the sky. Since coming to the Island, I’m maybe finally starting to understand, at least a little, a more real world than the Heights. I’ve never even had a dog or a cat to put down. For the first time in my sheltered life, I’m faced with death—and it’s not even a human death—and I can’t deal. That part of me that’s so good at manipulating to get what I want is about to start begging. It’s practically involuntary. Miraculously, though, I manage to shut that part down. One little victory. I’m beginning to learn there are forces greater than my needs that make up the world. Without a word, I lift the lamb gently from Mike’s lap, cradle it in my arms, and we head back toward the barn. The dogs already have the rest of the flock up the mountain, grazing fresh grass.
At the barn door, Mike says, “I’ll take it from here.” He reaches for the lamb.
I keep hold of the creature, like its Fate is literally in my hands. “If it’s alright, I’d like to come.”
Mike flashes an expression I’ve never seen from him—or really anyone else—before. It’s kind of stoic, yet not, kind of compassionate, yet not. It’s like a negative of a color photograph. You see both the color and its complement at the same time. As green is to red, so stoicism is to compassion. I swear that’s what’s crossing his features, and it’s beautiful. I follow him into the low, dark space.
“You’ll get used to it,” he assures me. I like that he’s assuming I might be around the Island long enough to get used to it or anything. He leaves to find the one proper knife in the house. I nuzzle my face into the oily wool, loving the soapy smell. The warm body feels so freaking good against my chest. I stick my pinky into the tiny mouth. The lamb starts sucking away like mad, maybe finding some small comfort here at the end of his brief existence.
Mike returns. “Set him up on the shearing table. On his side.”
I do.
“Hold the front hooves in your left hand, the rear in your right.”
I do.
The lamb seems amazingly—or disturbingly?—calm, like he believes we’re helping him. And maybe we are. Mike holds the head gently in the crook of his arm, and then, with one swift motion, pulls the blade along the fleecy throat, from shoulder to shoulder. This living creature convulses three times, blood bubbling fast out of the deep cut before running in smooth scarlet rivers down the brown wool. Then, his life is over and I let go. Mike quickly makes another cut along the underside—from where the ribs join, down to the anus—revealing convolutions of intestine and all the rest of what was bright-red life. He scoops the steaming organs out with bare hands, dropping them into a metal bucket. Next, he swings a rope over a beam, tying a knot that looks like a noose, and hangs the lamb by its hind legs so the rest of the blood can drain out into the bucket.
“Come on,” he says, wiping his hands on an old undershirt, and we leave.
Rain on my face wakes me from a nap. I left the window by my head open. A pair of demon clouds swoops away, leaving the sky blank blue. The weather’s like that here. Rain, sun—sometimes even snow—all in an afternoon. A new season practically every hour. A warm breeze replaces the cool one and moves through the room. Smoke floats in, though not the usual smell of peat. I close the window, roll out of bed, and go looking for Mike.
I find him out behind the barn, at the stone oven. When he sees me, he nods. From the top of the chimney, he pulls up an iron bar with hooks attached to it from which hang crackling hunks of meat. I smack down my default sentimentality, reminding myself that over the years I’ve probably eaten herds of anonymous animals in plastic wrap from the supermarket and in boxes from McDonald’s and never shed a tear. In the late afternoon light, the fat and skin glint red and orange, purple and black. He places the pieces on a platter, and we go in.
Mike takes the pot of potatoes sitting in hot water on the stove to the sink, drains them, then mashes them with a wooden fork. He opens a can of peas and heats them up in a saucepan. When everything’s ready, we go to the table. Mike carves the meat fast and sure, like a pro, putting the first rosy slice on my plate, the second on his. We sit across from each other. He cuts his meat and puts a forkful into his mouth, nodding for me to go ahead, eat. I cut a piece off, breathe deep and urge the fork toward my mouth. In my head, I give thanks to the little guy and eat.
Mike takes a swig of beer. “So, what music you listening to these days?”
I finish chewing, swallow. The meat tastes good and I tell him so before answering. “Well, the No Names for one.” I don’t say this to be sly. It’s the truth.
He snorts. “I mean new stuff.”
I lift a few of the soft, pale peas to my mouth, pop them in. “I’m all over the place, though right now I’d say the Dead Kennedys, Pavement. Unwritten Law.”
He shakes his head and takes another bite of meat. As he chews, he says, “I’m Rip Van Winkle. Tell me what’s going on.”
So, I give him the lay of musicland today, thumbnail. My take, of course. “I think you’d be totally simpatico with Pavement. Also, a band called Hüsker Du.”
“Ramones still around?”
“You bet!” My enthusiasm more high school cheerleader than jaded punk.
“Good to hear, good to hear.”
I talk about more bands, especially the surge of the more political Bad Religion. My mini presentation ends lamenting the death of punk, real punk, what with the likes of Green Day. “They’re a big deal,” I explain, “but kind of joke with real punkers.”
“Sounds like I’ve missed a lot,” he says, maybe wistful but also something else I can’t quite name.
“I don’t know about that. Everything comes and goes.” I look down at my plate. “Ever want to go back?”
He wipes his mouth with his sleeve. “To the music scene?”
I nod.
He finishes his beer and pours us both more before answering, “Not really.”
There’s a very full full stop there, like I’m not supposed to ask follow-ups.
“Maybe when you get back home you can send me a mixtape of stuff you’re into,” he offers with a tired smile.
I don’t want to think about leaving. Now for sure I can’t tell him about my crazy dream of never going back, of staying here with him and Daniel, of making this home. I’m not that stupid. Besides, it’s laughable.
When we’re done with the feast, we get up, leaving the dishes on the table. We top our glasses off before heading over to the bench. We don’t have to say anything; we tune the guitars as we’ve done every night for nearly two weeks. As usual, he starts. He’s been showing me some Fernando Sor etudes. I always tried skipping the classical stuff back home with Rongo, but with Mike it seems kind of cool—that’s what desire will do. After the etudes, he shows me a modern Italian classical piece for two guitars. It’s intricate and kind of a blast once I get the hang of it.
Maybe because I’m feeling pretty wasted, I really want the forbidden fruit: I want to finally hear him play from Invisible City. He said he doesn’t want to talk about the past, but I think, spinning out a good length of what Vashti calls my trademark sophistry, music is music, not the same as life. Besides, it would be solo, it would be acoustic. Temptation keeps nudging me. When we’re through the Italian piece a second time, I ask, trying to iron the tremor out of my voice, “Would you be cool with showing me some songs from Invisible City?”
During the silence that answers me, I’m cringing. After forever, a note or two make a hairline crack on the still air. Then, all of a sudden, it gets totally shattered by the opening chords of “All Your Finery at the Refinery.” He delivers the lyrics in that totally honest voice of his, so unchanged, so changed:
Down Petroleum Avenue you come
Wearing all your finery to the refinery,
Down Petroleum Avenue you come
In the Signal Red Triumph from your daddy …
He plays the song with the same stark rhythms as on the record, though not at the same frantic speed, and obviously not at the same volume. He sings the words without the full-blown rage from back then, more like a fuck you letter to someone you maybe once dated. His voice has the same hot-cold steel to it, only now there are breaks that weren’t there before. The breaks make the voice sound more fragile, but they also make it sound even more profound, even more beautiful. When the song finishes, he’s looking at me, but really, it’s more like through me.
Lame as it sounds, I mutter, “Thanks.” That miserable word stands for all the anxiety and ecstasy swirling around inside of me.
After a pause, without my even asking, he continues playing. More and then more. The whole amazing album. Nonstop. When he’s finished the eighth and final song, he bends over his guitar, shaking his head slowly for a long time. I put my arm around him, hoping that gesture says more than another thanks or an equally feeble awesome.
A minute or so later, he sits up. “Choose one,” he says.
“To play?”
He nods. I, of course, know all the words and chords, but still, I’m scared shitless. I automatically choose “Polluted,” maybe because it’s sort of about our hometown. The chords start out dissonant but it’s probably the softest song on a hard album:
Doesn’t matter that we never met,
doesn’t matter that only two percent
of the universe is visible matter.
What’s the matter?
The universe is all made up.
Doesn’t matter the universe is all made up
of invisible matter, doesn’t matter,
doesn’t matter that we never met,
’cause in some other time and space we met
down by a river, down by a river we met
under a river of stars, a river of stars …
Mike looks happy and sad and maybe a little shell-shocked all at the same time. As he stands up, he touches me between my shoulder blades. I know to follow him. It’s like he’s talking from dream: “Let’s go find that river of stars.”
By now, it’s the middle of the night. We stand up. The sleeping dogs stir. As we head to the door they rise and follow. At first, the poor guys appear confused by the hour, but in a sec they’re as eager as ever.
As we leave, Mike turns all the lights off. “So the dark will be even bigger.”
We walk the rugged half mile to the south side of the Island, the only part, he explains, where the water’s shallow enough for kelp to grow. Over the centuries, the Færoese dried enormous stacks of kelp fronds to then bundle and take to burn. No trees, so kelp and peat were the main sources of heat. Stars bubble up from the dark; the Milky Way flows like white water. On the flat, black plane of rock are piles of dried kelp I guess he has harvested. He arranges the long, flat fronds crisscross, until the stack rises nearly shoulder high. The fronds clatter in the wind. He strikes a wooden match on the ground and ignites the lightweight tower at its base. A single frond crackles and sputters for a long time before spreading slowly into a decent flame that slithers its way up. Being so thin and so brittle, you’d expect the fronds to burn fast, but the oil found in kelp, he tells me, makes for a steady burn.
The dogs curl up at the border between firelight and darkness. We sit down on the flat stone beside them and look up into what’s more than a river of stars. It’s an ocean. We listen to the actual waves unfold on the rocks. We don’t say anything for a long time.
Mike places a hand on my shoulder before breaking the silence: “I have something to say.” I turn toward him. His eyes appear black as the space between the stars. In a voice as clear as starlight he tells me, “It was good hearing you play that old tune.” His features seem to be saying something different, though. It’s like he’s falling out of this time and place. Now I’m the one thinking it might not be such a great idea to muck around in the past.
I start to speak, then don’t. I reach my hand toward him, as if to pull him back into the present, then stop, closing my hand around nothing but air. A monster wave of silence crashes over us. No words drift in to save us. Not knowing what to say or do, I give him a quick kiss on the cheek, as if such a random gesture might help. No reaction at all, so I give it another shot. This time, he takes hold of the back of my head and pulls me in close. He covers my mouth with his and sucks the air right out of me, then pushes every last atom right back in. We fall onto the rock, mouths locked together. The dogs lift their heads, blue eyes reflecting blood red in the firelight. When Mike finally unlatches his mouth from mine, he rolls onto his back. Lying there, he seems to be looking beyond me—to the stars maybe? into the past?—and says in a voice so flat it almost gets lost in the crash of waves, “This is what you wanted, right?”
The moments move past like when you’re dreaming and don’t know whether the dream’s going in the direction of sweet or nightmare. The smart thing would, of course, be to wake up.
He puts his hand on my crotch and holds on. Not rough, not gentle. He pulls me on top of him, kissing with more passion this time, or at least it seems that way. Some version of me that I don’t know takes both his arms and raises them over his head, pinning them to the rock. This strange me starts kissing his unshaven face and then on down his throat. I continue, like it’s a script I’m reading for the very first time right as I’m doing the scene. Amazed and scared as I am, I start being almost okay with it, start almost liking what’s happening. I find myself lifting his T-shirt and licking his chest and underarms. I run my tongue down the line of hair on his belly. He’s kind of sighing. I ask if it’s okay, and he says, “Do whatever you want.” I unbuckle his belt, the leather worn nearly thin as paper, hesitating big-time before unzipping his jeans. I look into his eyes for some signal either way. It doesn’t come. I pause before tugging the holey denim down his thighs. He doesn’t help. “Okay?” I ask. He murmurs something I can’t make out. “What?” I ask. He places one hand on the back of my head and pulls it toward his waist. I start going down on him. I take a deep breath, then exhale long, heating the fly of his briefs. Very slowly, I pull them down. I lick his soft cock a little before taking the head in my mouth. I look up to see how he’s doing. His eyes meet mine. At first, they appear glazed over, then in the next instant they’re bright, focused. In some micro-split of time, he slams upward, throwing me across the rock shelf. I land on my back. In the next split he’s on top of me, straddling me, lifting me up by the front of my shirt and smashing me against the rock ground again and again. I don’t even try defending myself. I don’t scream or cry out and, warped as it might seem, I don’t feel afraid. The dogs get up, circling us with worried looks. And right when I’m thinking how Mike and I are out here totally alone in the middle of the ocean and that he is going to kill me and that maybe no one will find out for a long time, if ever, he stops and, arms outstretched, looks to the sky in what—misery? His face, slick with tears, shines in the firelight. He gasps long and deep then leaps to his feet and tears off into the dark, in the opposite direction of the house, Alpha and Omega bounding after him. I lie by the fire, unable to move.
JULY 1994, MIKE
I wake to Omega lapping at my cheek, Alpha at my hands. I can’t remember falling asleep. Flexing my fingers feels like a small miracle. Stretching my limbs, an even bigger one. After just three breaths, I unfortunately recognize where I am. The old shepherd’s hut. It’s only on the far side of the mountain yet feels like the far side of the planet. Worse, after five breaths I remember how I came to be here. Morning seeps in through cracks between the stones. My body aches from the hard ground. Yet my only complaint is that the aches remind me I still have a body. The dogs go berserk when I finally kick open the weatherworn boards lashed together that serve as a door. The two of them spring out into the light and wind, nostrils quivering with the bounty of the world. I stay where I am, enclosed in stone, sick of my existence. The dogs circle back to see what’s become of their master. They lick me all over, paw me. Only then do I rise and leave the windowless shelter, blinking in the sunlight. I cover my face with my hands. If I were to take a dozen paces straight ahead, I’d fall a thousand feet into perfect oblivion and the ocean would forget me before I even broke its surface. That might be a blessing.
All my years on this island I’ve tried to live without a story—that is, without conflict—by not having contact with anyone besides of course Daniel on his yearly visit. Haven’t written a single letter, not even a postcard. But now I’ve reentered the story of my life in about the most dramatic way possible. I’ve got to deal with the consequences of what I’ve done. I’ve got to go down and find Isaac. I pray to God he’s not injured. I’ve got to let him know I won’t harm him anymore, will stay up here until Daniel returns. At the very least he needs to know my remorse, though any words I might come up with can’t possibly help him or free me from guilt. Still, I’ve got to tell him to not forgive me.
