I nod. “Good for it.”
Rob nods to the wooden bench behind me. “Have a seat.”
I sit, the motor rumbles, and we’re off.
The sea looks like a sheet of black glass as we zip over it. A fine spray arches up on each side of the boat, dotting my arms and cheeks with cool water. The breeze lifts my hair off my head as we move along the island’s rocky coast.
I look up at the grassy cliffs with eyes that sting. From down here on the surface of the water, I can’t see the valley that covers most of one side of the island; Tristan da Cunha simply looks like grass-covered cliffs that stretch to an unseen plateau.
I’m wondering where the boat will land when its nose points slightly inland, toward the cliffs, and I see…yeah, that’s penguins. A bunch of little dudes on a low-lying, flatter-looking rockface, hopping up and down and doing penguin shit. As we pass by, I swear one looks right at me. A cold sweat flushes my skin, but I shake my head and laugh and rub my hands together.
I’ll feel better by the time I leave this place, if everything goes right. Until then, penguins.
We curve around the island’s edge, and finally I see it—Edinburgh of the Seven Seas, the long name of the little village I remember.
From here, it looks like a smattering of brightly colored buildings in the shadow of a mountain. Fuck—it looks like almost nothing.
I wrap a hand around the top of my pack, take a deep breath. I rub my forehead. Christ.
We’re headed toward the jagged shoreline, which has dipped down lower, rising only ten or fifteen above the crashing waves. I tighten my grip on my pack and try to look alive when Mark glances at me.
Soon the motor’s noise softens, the boat slows slightly, its nose tipping up, and I see we’re coming up on the strange dock—two lines of cement jutting outward from the shore like two arms forming an almost-circle. Waves crash into them, shooting toward the sky in a wall of frothy white. As we edge closer, spray slaps my cheeks. I push a hand back through my now-wet hair and smile as my escorts grin back at me.
As we idle into the gap between the arms of the dock, the waves beneath the boat smooth out some, so we’re bobbing lightly. I can hear birds caw above us, smell the thick, salty air. A wave hits the dock behind us, and I see a flash of rainbow just ahead of the boat. I’m looking at it when I notice people standing at the shoreline—blurry figures through my wet eyelashes. They’re clearly here to greet us. To greet me.
Fuck, I’m really here again. And suddenly I feel like I can breathe.
Three
Finley
I see him coming up the hill from Calshot Harbor like Richard the Lionheart, trailed by half the island.
I’m the watcher—Miss Alice’s eyes and ears outside the kitchen. I turn and hurry down the backside of the hill, toward Middle Lane, where the café sits half a mile down, between the Smiths’ house and the Crenshaws’. My arms swing with my long, fast strides as I pass homes with wreaths and flags that weren’t there yesterday.
On our island, Carnegie is a holy name. Has been since his father, Charles Carnegie, wandered off a ship bound for Antarctica in 1988 and failed to step back on before the ship’s departure from Tristan. He was here almost three months before leaving on another ship, not to return for sev
en more years. But his resources came in his stead. Crates of medical supplies, books, food, and other goods started arriving a few months after Charles departed, and in 1991, his famous family’s foundation upped the ante even further with a million-dollar donation for updated farm equipment.
We got a new schoolhouse in 1992; in 1993, a new medical clinic was built. Carnegie Foundation dollars have helped lure three fulltime school teachers to Tristan—and, of course, Doctor. Before Dr. Daniels arrived four years ago, the island had only transient physicians. Prior to those, my grandmother and Mrs. Petunia White cared for sick people, Uncle Ollie for the unwell animals. Before Charles Carnegie and his pocketbook, children here stopped attending school at age sixteen. Now we’re in class until twenty. For those eighteen-year-olds who are eligible, there are scholarships to schools abroad for university.
The last time a Carnegie stepped foot on the island was in 1998, when Charles and his young son visited, ostensibly to look in on their wealthy family’s charitable endeavor.
When Declan began playing baseball for the Red Sox—about the time Doctor arrived here, I believe—the island was star-struck. The few times the Red Sox have played and we could get the signal, a group gathered to cheer him on at the café. When they heard this past September that the foundation was sending a crate of signed baseballs, they were quite beside themselves. Then the shipment was delayed. When word came, around Christmas, that “Homer” would be bringing them himself, no one believed it.
The day Mayor Acton got Declan Carnegie’s travel application, people gathered at the pub and nearly drained the bar dry. When I got his medical records, it was as good as confirmed.
We Tristanians have been busy in the last week. Drew Hollis smoothed the packed dirt of Upper, Middle, and Lower lanes with a tractor; flowers were planted in every last window box; front doors were re-painted; two homes got new roofing; the café was redecorated; the barber shop stayed open an extra hour each day to accommodate the many who wished to get hair cuts; the island’s twelve vehicles—four rusty Land Rovers, five pick-up trucks, and three Broncos—were washed and cleaned. Fresh crawfish were caught, meat pie was made, beef was marinated, and lamb was stuffed—but not yet sliced.
Miss Alice, the café’s chef, didn’t want to cut the lamb until she knew Declan had stepped foot on the island. Couldn’t have it drying out.
I’m panting slightly when I shove through the café’s teal door. My friend Holly looks up from where she’s setting a table, and Dot laughs from a corner where she’s watering a plant.
“You look a mess,” she says.
I sniff and march past them into the kitchen.
“Slice the lamb, Miss Alice! The Carnegie has arrived!”