The Scorpio Races

CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE

The next day is both the last day before the races and Tommy Falk’s funeral. I am driven to distraction by the idea of the race tomorrow, which feels like a disservice to Tommy. But when I try to tell myself Tommy Falk is dead, all I can think about is him and Gabe tossing that chicken around our house.

When I leave with Dove, Gabe is still lying in his bed, his door cracked open so that I can see that he stares up at the ceiling. By the time I get home, he has moved the debris I’ve put in front of the fence section the capall uisce destroyed and is smashing nails into boards. I can’t stay in the house because I keep thinking that tomorrow is the race and tomorrow is only one night’s sleep away, so Finn and I go to Dory Maud’s to help her get a new batch of catalogs ready to mail. When we get back, Gabe has transformed the yard – pulled up every weed and piled every bit of scrap into a heap behind the lean-to – but I can see that it hasn’t made him forget that Tommy Falk is dead. When we walk into the yard, he looks at us for half a minute before his face changes into something like recognition. His hands are shaky, and I make him eat something. I don’t think he’s stopped working all day. As afternoon turns into evening, Beech Gratton arrives, and he and Gabe exchange a grim-lipped greeting. Then we’re dressed and off to the western cliffs.

Gabe doesn’t tell us much about Tommy’s funeral, only that the Falks are “old Thisby” and that means that the funeral will involve neither St. Columba nor Father Mooneyham, but will instead take place on the rocks by the sea. Finn looks nervous at this, as anything that involves his immortal soul tends to make him nervous, but Gabe tells him to be decent and that it’s just as good a religion as any brand that our parents wore, that the Falks were the best sort of people you’d want to meet. He says it all in a very faraway sort of voice, like he is pulling the words from a storage cabinet for us. I sense that he’s drowning but I don’t have any idea of how to start to put my hand into the water to save him.

We have to pick our way across the long ragged cliffs to the western beach, which is rockier and more uncertain than the racing beach. The ocean is glazed gold in the evening light, and there is a fire burning just out of the reach of the water. We’re met by a small funeral party; I recognize many of my father’s fishermen friends among them.

“Thank you for coming, Gabe,” says Tommy Falk’s mother. I see now that she’s the one who Tommy had gotten his lips from, but if the rest of her is beautiful, I can’t tell, because her eyes are red and small from loss.

She takes Gabe’s hands. Gabe says, so serious that I’m suddenly ferociously proud of him despite everything, “Tommy was my best friend on this island. I’d have done anything for him.” She says something back, but I don’t hear what it is, because I’m so surprised to see that Gabe is crying. He’s still speaking to her quite plainly, but as he does, tears course down his cheeks with every blink. I find, weirdly, that I can’t watch him do it, so I leave him and Finn with her and move toward the fire.

It only takes me a moment to realize that it’s not just a bonfire, but a pyre. It smokes and crackles, the loudest thing on the beach. The flames are orange and white against the deep blue of the evening sky, and the wet, flat sand reflects them like a mirror. Each wave extinguishes the reflection and then returns it. It’s been burning for a very long time, with a mound of glowing coals and ash beneath it, and I am stricken when I see a somehow unmolested scrap of Tommy Falk’s jacket caught on the timbers.

I think: He was just sitting at our table in that jacket.

“Puck, isn’t it?”

I look to my left and see a man standing there, his arms folded neatly in front of him, as if he stands in church. Of course I know that he’s Norman Falk, now that I look at him, because I remember him standing in our kitchen the exact same way, talking to my mother. I’d just always thought of his face and thought fisherman, not Tommy Falk’s father. Beside him is a kid, possibly one of Tommy’s siblings. Norman Falk doesn’t look anything like Tommy. He smells like Gabe, which is to say, like fish.

“I’m sorry about this,” I say, because that’s what people said to me after our parents died.

Norman Falk’s eyes are dry as he looks into the pyre. The boy leans against his leg, and Norman Falk puts a hand on his shoulder. “We would’ve lost him either way.”

It seems a funny sort of comfort. I can’t imagine thinking that about Gabe. There is Gabe being dead, which is forever.

And there is Gabe being happy somewhere I might never see him again. It might feel the same to me, but I’m quite certain it wouldn’t feel the same to Gabe.

“He was very brave,” I offer, because it sounds polite in my head. My face is getting hot from the flames; I want to step back but I don’t want to seem like I’m stepping away from the conversation.

“That he was. Everyone will remember him on that mare.” There’s naked pride in Norman Falk’s voice. “We’ve asked Sean Kendrick to give her back to the sea, and he’s said yes. We’re doing it right for Tommy.”

I ask, ever so polite, trying to pretend that Sean Kendrick’s name hasn’t interested me, “Give her back to the sea, sir?”

Norman Falk spits behind him, hard, so that he won’t spit on the boy at his side, and then turns back to the pyre. “Yes, releasing her the proper way. Give the dead some respect, like we used to. Give the capaill some respect. It’s not about the tourists coming in and lining pockets. It’s about the capaill uisce and us, and anything less than that makes it a dirty sport.” Then he seems to remember who he’s talking to, because he says, “There’s no place for you on the beach, now, Puck Connolly. You and your mare. Shouldn’t be. I knew your father and I liked him, but I think what you’re doing’s wrong, if you’ll hear me.”

I feel shamed for no reason I can name, and then I feel bad that I’ve let myself be shamed. “I don’t mean to be disrespectful.”

Norman Falk’s voice is kind enough. “’Course you don’t. You just don’t have a mum and dad to set you right. That horse of yours is just a horse, is the problem. If the Scorpio Races are just horse races, then all this” – Norman Falk jerks his chin toward the flames – “was just a bloody shame and nothing else.”

Two weeks ago, I would’ve thought he was crazy, that of course it was just about the race, the money, the thrill. And if I’d just been watching the training on the beach, I probably would’ve still said that. But now that I’ve spent time with Sean Kendrick, now that I’ve been on the back of Corr, I feel something inside me slipping. I’m still not sure it was worth Tommy dying for. But I can see the allure of having one foot on the land and one foot in the sea. I’ve never known Thisby so well as I have these last few weeks.

The boy says something to Norman Falk and he replies, “He’s bringing her down now. Look there now.”

We both turn our heads and there is Sean, halfway down one of the little paths to the beach. He holds Tommy’s black mare, and in comparison to Corr, she looks fragile in his hands. Sean wears nothing ritual or unusual, just his same blue-black jacket with his collar turned up. I feel a strange, fierce squeeze in my heart when I see him, like pride, although there’s nothing about Sean that I can take credit for. He leads the black mare across the sand toward us, pausing only when she half rears and squeals, soft as a bird cry.

The funeral party gathers by the pyre to watch as he walks her to the water’s edge. It’s only then that I notice that Sean’s feet are bare. The surf rushes around his ankles, soaking the bottom few inches of his pants. The mare lifts her hooves high as the water courses in around her pasterns and then she cries out to the sea. There is something not quite horselike about her eyes already. When she snaps at Sean, he simply ducks out of the way and twists his fingers in her forelock, pulling her head down. I see his mouth moving, but it’s impossible to hear what he tells her.

Beside me, Tommy’s father says, “From the sea, to the sea,” and I realize that the words match the movement of Sean’s mouth.

I wonder then at how many times this moment’s taken place. Not with Sean saying the words, but with anyone. It’s like the moment at the bloody stone when I declared Dove as my mount. I feel the pull of my legs to Thisby, the invisible presences of a thousand rituals weights around my ankles.

Sean looks to the group and calls, “The ashes.”

Another boy – another sibling, maybe, this one looks a little like Tommy – hurries across the sand toward Sean. The light is failing quickly, so I can’t see what he’s carrying the ashes in – they must have just been taken from the pyre. Sean holds a hand over the vessel as if testing the temperature, and then he cautiously reaches in. The mare tosses her head and calls out again, and Sean hurls the handful of ashes into the air above her. Sean’s voice is a wind-torn, weightless thing across the sand, but Norman Falk says the words along with him: “May the ocean keep our brave.”

With his back to us, Sean tugs the halter from the mare’s head. She kicks out, but he steps out of the way as if it were nothing at all. With a shake of her mane, she leaps mightily into the water. For a moment she struggles over the waves, and then she is swimming. Just a wild black horse in a deep blue sea full of the ashes of other dead boys.

Then, so sudden and swift that I miss the moment of her disappearing, she’s gone, and there’s only the swaying of the ocean surface.

Sean stands at the edge of the surf, looking out at the sea, and there is something curious and longing in his expression, like he, too, wishes to leap into the ocean and be gone. I think, just then, that this is why Norman Falk asked for Sean to be there. Not because he was the only one who could perform the ritual. But because Sean Kendrick, looking like that, is the races, even if no race was ever run. A reminder of what the horses mean to the island – a bridge between what we are and that thing about Thisby that we all want but can’t seem to touch. When Sean stands there, his face turned out to the sea, he is no more civilized than any of the capaill uisce, and it unsettles me.

My heart feels full and empty with all of the beginnings and endings. Tomorrow is the races with all of their strategy and danger and hope and fear, and on the other side of it is Gabe getting into a boat and leaving us. I feel like Sean looking out over the ocean. I’m so full of an unnamed wanting that I can’t bear it.