Dead Seal Beach

First published in Causeway/Cabhsair 5:1 (May 2014)

I ease my backpack out, lay it down and zip the tent. The teeth locking. The clack of pebbles underfoot. I wait for the ripple of canvas, a sign that you’ve woken. Taut, the guy rope tied to driftwood, driven into sand that hasn’t shifted. I remember to breathe.

The canvas, the sea, the sky, everything flat. Grey. The colour of smoke. This could be a painting, a watercolour in a gallery in Portree, Ullapool, Stornoway.

Dead Seal Beach you call it. The first time we came here, a fresh corpse, blubbery and sleek. No teeth marks, no blood. No signs of why. You were like a TV cop, a forensic expert examining a murder victim. Time of death, cause. I wondered if it had been washed ashore or had crawled, hauled itself up out of its world and into ours. Had it been trying to escape something?

The tide is out. For the moment the causeway to Sheep Shit Island – your name again – is open. Three, four hours from now it’ll disappear. A magical road. Eight years, nine maybe, when we first came here. We got stranded on Sheep Shit Island. Inexperienced in the wild, distracted the Atlantic encircled us, isolated us, cut off our escape. We thought about swimming. We fucked on your cagoule. We waited it out. Eventually the road showed itself.

We shouldn’t have come here. Not now. It makes too neat a circle.

After everything; inevitable.

Beyond the island, nothing. Sea. Canada. Newfoundland. Nova Scotia. This is the edge of Scotland, the end of the road.

The guy rope tied to driftwood.

Pressure, the backpack’s waist strap settling on my hips. Under my feet pebbles clack.