The Night Swimmer by Matt Bondurant Read Free Book Online Page B

direction. They returned my waves with quick flips of their hands and stony faces.
    Before we reached the end of the road the dogs took a sudden turn, slipping through a narrow break in one of the stacked-stone fences. Across the field rumpled bracken, deep russet and gold, and the ocean whitecaps beyond. There was a dull, grating sound underneath the roar of wind, and over the next rise I could see the blades of an enormous wind turbine slowly rotating.
    This was the highest point of the island, a place so windy that not even grass could grow there. The turbine was at least two hundredyards tall and stark white against the black rock and green hills, a small cinderblock power collection house at its base. The dogs led me right underneath the turning blades, which moved with that terrifyingly deceptive speed of large things, seeming to come slowly from far off, then gaining speed as they neared, until they passed overhead furiously, each tip maybe thirty feet from the ground.
    Down to the right of the wind turbine the corgis leapt like salmon going upstream. The ground, dried and blasted from salt and wind, developed a honeycomblike structure, with deep holes and pits hidden under the reddish thorns of the gorse and brambles that eventually gave way to grass again as we came down the undulating hill toward the sea.
    The dogs ran ahead and disappeared around a patch of high bramble. I stumbled into a grassy patch, almost stepping on the corgis who crouched low, tongues lolling in the fierce wind, facing the sea. We stood at the edge of a vast drop of sheer black rock that fell away over two hundred feet to the crashing waves of the Atlantic. The cliffs of Cape Clear are like that; they could appear at any time, suddenly, as if the sea was always at hand and the island a continual twisting set of precipices.
    *  *  *
    The following morning the ferry chugged into the North Harbor on schedule, and I filed on with a half dozen others and took a spot at the bow of the ship. As we cast off Fin Cotter came zipping down the quay on his bike, hair flaming behind. At the very end of the dock he performed a quick stop and twist, spinning in place, and then sprinted back up the quay. The sun hung over the island, shrouded in faded sets of clouds on the horizon, casting Cape Clear in a baleful glow. I told Nora I’d be back in a week, after the Nightjar opened. I knew I wanted to come back and spend time on the island, to get in that glorious water, but mostly I wanted to be back in Baltimore with Fred.
    Soon we were past Sherkin Island and into Baltimore Harbor, and I was pushing through the doors of the Nightjar, the tablesempty and the floor swept, walking behind the bar to put my arms around the broad back of my husband, who was turned away from me and struggling with the coffeemaker, who turned in my embrace and kissed my forehead, holding a coffeepot in one hand and saying, hey there, E, my sweet, sweet E.

Chapter Three
    T he Nightjar opened in October to little fanfare. It was a typical West Cork fall day, slate skies running to granite over the hills, a misting of rain, a chill that emanated from the ground. Fred dispersed flyers about town and on the islands, but when he opened at noon there were only two men standing in the street. One was a runty man badly scarred about the face and hands, and the other a strapping, straight-backed American in a Red Sox cap, a fanny pack strapped to his waist, grinning like Teddy Roosevelt. Fred set them up with a round on the house, and it was clear that was what the little fellow was expecting as he set to his glass of Murphy’s without a word, wrapping his ruined hands like penguin flippers around his pint. The American’s name was Bill Cutler, an ex-marine and now a novelist living on Cape Clear.
    Nice to have another Yank here, Bill said, pumping his hand, damn fine.
    Bill Cutler was a generous, friendly sort who always greeted you with a hearty bellow and a full-arm