Sail of Stone

43

He had made a journey he hadn’t planned on. It was a farewell. If you saw it on a map it looked like a circle, or at least part of a circle.

When had he last walked down Broad Street? Years or days or hours. A red sky. Down toward Onion Street and toward the harbor the sky was always red, always.

Four hundred boats per year!

Biggest whitefish port in Europe.

And out there, there were people he could have been close to. Maybe. No.

The smell. It was the sea, as it has always been, and then something more, which he hadn’t smelled then but did now: oil.

This city had changed after the oil. The trawlers were there, still a forest of masts, but people who walked the streets came because of the oil too.

The city had grown. The entrances were different, that was a sure sign of everything that had happened.

He stood on one of the western breakwaters. The trawlers here were largest. There was a blue one twenty yards away. He saw a man moving on the quarterdeck. He read the name on the trawler, which was made of steel.

That was something else, a hull of steel.

He heard a yell from the man down by the mess, a few words.

He lingered outside the Mission.

It was here.

The next-to-last night.

Meals 7:00-2:30, then and now. The Congregational church. Sick bed. Emergency facilities.

A notice that hadn’t existed then:

Zaphire went down in October 1997, four lives.

Everyone knew almost everything here. There were exceptions. There was one.

He walked in but turned around in the outer room. He was pushed away by the memories, and by something else: A man looked up from the counter, an expression on his face.

He was on his way out, didn’t look around, he wasn’t invisible here, he was deaf to the voice behind his back, the shout.

Caley Fisheries was still there. The fish market. There was a new notice at the entrance. Prohibited: smoking, spitting, eating, drinking, breaking of boxes, unclean clothing, unclean footwear. A guide for life, too.

Men in blue rubber garments and yellow boots were loading boxes of flounder or lemon sole. A truck to Aberdeen, and on to the south.

He walked on Crooked Lane; it was as crooked now as it had been then.

He walked toward the summit. The sky opened out. It was windy.

He felt the weapon against his thigh. It was just as cold. He wanted to fire it.

Half an hour later he was on his way, straight across and to the north. A long farewell. He drove through Strichen. He looked in his rearview mirror. Was anyone following him? It was possible, but he didn’t think so.

The weapon was under his jacket in the front seat.

He drove along the narrow roads to New Aberdour and through the village and stopped three yards from the formidable edge down to the sea. Three yards. He let the motor race. From where he was sitting he could only see sea and sky. Everything was one. The sea and the wind roared. He opened the car door. He got out. He held the pistol in his hand. He shot at the sky.

There were two roads down Troup Head. Over the slope and down the road to the community that hid itself from the world.

He knew. He had hidden here when the houses were still red like the cliffs, when the smugglers still defined life there. That was why no one had asked any questions.

When the cameras came he ran away.

Like now.

He sat in the car again.

He felt his foot on the pedal, a longing. A longing.

Jesus. Jesus.

Now he could see only the sky.