Page 27

RED JOE

I hated the summer and the smattering of tourists it brought from the mainland.

I waited at the end of the jetty on Wednesday afternoon, wishing I’d remembered my sunglasses.

The light bounced off the water, stabbing into my eyes.

Young Harry Barnes was just tying up now, and the first couple of tourists, a retiree couple in matching pink polo shirts, were wandering down the jetty, oohing and aahing at the village and the lighthouse.

I nodded as they passed me.

Beside the jetty, Hiccup swam in circles like a seal. Only her snout and her eyes protruded from the water, and her tail trailed behind her like a broken rudder as she made bow waves.

Another couple followed the first. This couple was young. The woman had a baby strapped into a carrier on her back, and the man was loaded up with camping equipment.

Short Clarry’s dream of turning Dauntless Island into a tourist hotspot hadn’t really panned out—at least not yet—but I didn’t think anyone minded.

There had been some talk at government levels about getting us some more services, but their bureaucracy moved even more slowly than things on the island, and so far nothing had changed.

Maybe it would and maybe it wouldn’t, but in the meantime, life went on the way that it always had on Dauntless, as slowly and surely as the tide.

The boards of the jetty creaked underfoot as I finally walked down to Young Harry’s boat. The tourists were off now, leaving the locals unpacking their groceries and purchases from over on the mainland, and—in one case—their luggage.

“Joe!” Amy shrieked with delight when she saw me, leaping onto the jetty and hurrying down to meet me. Her thin summer dress was tugged tight against her body in the breeze, and did nothing to conceal her condition.

She launched herself at me, and I caught her and swung her around.

“You weigh a ton!” I accused her when I set her back down.

“Fuck off,” she said happily. “But I know, right? And I’ve still got three months to go. How long until the entire island knows I’m a fallen woman?”

“Well, considering Young Harry Barnes brought you over, it’ll be all over the island by tonight.” I bumped her shoulder. “You doing okay? With the ex?”

“That loser?” Amy asked. She shuddered. “We’re completely over, believe me.”

There was a story there, and I was sure I’d hear it later. I slung an arm around Amy in a quick hug, then went and collected her luggage.

“Oh!” said Young Harry Barnes, slinging a pack over onto the jetty. “What have you got in here? I could use this one as an anchor, Amy!”

“It’s not that bad!” Amy protested.

I lifted the pack and slung it onto my back, my muscles straining. “No, it really is that bad.”

We walked toward the shoreline. Hiccup met us, shaking herself dry and then bouncing and wriggling in enthusiastic circles around Amy.

“Hiccup!” Amy crouched down and hugged her. “I missed you so much!”

“Oh, thanks,” I said dryly.

Any straightened and shot me a look. “You go without saying, dickhead.”

I snorted, and we walked slowly along the main street.

The statue of Josiah Nesmith cast a long shadow in the afternoon sun.

We passed the tourist information centre, which was open for the summer. Next door, the museum was closed, but the sign on the door said it would be open tomorrow. We walked further up the street, past the familiar sandstone cottages, following the path our feet had worn since we were children.

“Holy shit,” Amy said. “Has Mavis’s shop got a new sign?”

“And a new ice cream fridge,” I told her. “It’s been a whirlwind of change. The whole island’s talking about it.”

Amy’s eyes danced. “Oh, I can imagine. First we get a new mayor, and suddenly it’s fancy signs and fridges as far as the eye can see. When will the madness end?”

We started up the hill.

“How’s that going, by the way?” Amy asked.

I shrugged. “It’s not too bad. The lady from the Electoral Commission said she’d never seen a ballot paper with only one name on it before. They had to ask a judge if it was legal.”

“Well, who was going to run against Red Joe Nesmith?”

“I didn’t even want to run!” I muttered. “Mavis just announced that I was, and I couldn’t back out.”

“That sounds like her,” Amy agreed.

“It made the papers in Sydney.”

“Well, it’s not every day that the former mayor tries and fails to kill the guy who turns out to be his successor, and then launches himself off a lighthouse,” Amy said. “That’s probably newsworthy, even for Sydney.”

That was fair.

We trudged up the hill toward the lighthouse.

* * *

A cloud of smoke swirled out of my kitchen door, followed by an idiot waving a tea towel.

“Hi!” Eddie called, flapping the tea towel. “Shit, hi. I’m Eddie, and you must be Amy, and I was trying to make some scones as like a welcome home thing, and I accidentally made fire instead.” He grimaced apologetically in my direction. “It was a very small fire, and it’s out now. Promise.”

I walked into the smoky kitchen. The cremated scones were in a baking dish that had been hastily dumped in the sink. I checked the oven was definitely off and that nothing was still burning.

Eddie bustled around behind me, poking at the scones. “Oh, they’re not salvageable at all, are they?”

“There’s biscuits in the pantry,” I told him.

I moved through to Amy’s bedroom and dumped her pack on the floor.

When I got back to the kitchen, Eddie was rummaging in the pantry, and Amy was sitting at the table, her gaze taking in all the changes—some small, and some large—that had taken place in her absence.

The largest, no question, was Eddie. After his first trip to the island he had, unaccountably, kept coming back.

And then, one day, I’d asked him to stay.

And Eddie hadn’t, not at that time, because he still had his thesis to finish, and a whole life back in Sydney, but he was here now at last. He could still talk under wet concrete, and he was still grumpy as shit in the mornings before he got his coffee, but it turned out those were things I could live with.

And it turned out Eddie could live with me as well, and the way I snored, and left crumbs in the butter.

We balanced each other out in the ways that counted.

And, more than that, I was stupidly in love with the guy, and vice versa.

“So Joe tells me you’re running the museum now,” Amy said. “Any new exhibits scandalising the locals?”

“Not yet,” Eddie said. “But once my thesis is published, there’s going to be a whole room dedicated to Josiah Nesmith: The Man, The Myth, The Monster .”

I helped myself to a biscuit. “I told you, if you call him a monster, someone will kill you for real. Come up with another m-word.”

“Mur-der-er,” Eddie sounded out, eyes round with delight.

“Not that m-word either.”

Eddie flashed a grin at Amy. “I’ll probably call it The Man, The Myth, The Mutiny . That way I can still have a display of Henry Jessup’s diary entries, but it won’t be quite so—what was it you called it, Joe? Confronting?”

“I said blatantly antagonistic.”

“Yeah,” Eddie said. “That way it won’t be quite so blatantly antagonistic to the islanders. That’s the plan, anyway.”

“And our plans are usually flawless,” I said wryly. “Right?”

“Right!” Eddie exclaimed. “What could possibly go wrong?”

* * *

T he opening of the Josiah Nesmith: The Man, The Myth, The Mutiny exhibit was held two months later on a Saturday night.

Eddie’s professor from the university came, and so did some people from the state tourism board, and even a couple of journalists from the Sydney papers.

There were canapés and champagne, and for a while, things seemed quite cosmopolitan.

Then the champagne ran out and was replaced with the islanders’ moonshine, and things took a more raucous—and festive—turn.

Sarah Hooper’s rum was definitely involved.

Somehow Eddie and I escaped the crowd and found ourselves in front of Josiah Nesmith’s statue down on the waterfront.

“Cheers,” Eddie told it, and raised his cup. “You murdered my great-great-great-grandfather because he told you to stop being a rapist, but I’m totally screwing your great-great-great-grandson, so it sort of evens out in the end, doesn’t it?” He hummed. “Really makes you think.”

I slung an arm around his shoulders.

“Makes you think,” Eddie repeated, swaying slightly on his feet. “Balance, and yin and yang, and… whatnot.”

“Sure,” I said, because I was too drunk to argue.

“It’s nice,” Eddie said. “The universe has balance. That’s nice.” He leered at me and tried to smoosh our faces together but only succeeded in smearing his mouth along my jaw. “You’re nice too, Red Joe Nesmith.”

“So are you,” I said, hooking my fingers into his belt loops to keep him from staggering backwards.

“Oh god,” Eddie groaned, dropping his forehead onto my shoulder. “We have to walk up that fucking hill now, don’t we? Will you carry me, Joe?”

“No.”

Eddie sighed loudly. “My sexy silent fantasy lighthouse keeper guy would carry me!”

“You should ask him then.”

“No,” Eddie muttered and groaned again. “I like you more. Come on, let’s go.”

We held hands as we walked up the street, and still managed to bump into one another along the way.

The party was still going on at the museum and would probably die down sometime in the early hours. It was Dauntless. Someone would pull the door shut when they were done. It was the island way.

We sobered up a little on the walk.

Above us, the stars were bright and infinite. I breathed in the salt air, and felt warmth spread through me. Here I was, on my island, under a field of stars, holding the hand of the man I loved. I was happy.

“Holy shit!” Eddie shrieked, tugging wildly on my hand as he stumbled sideways. “Oh, no, wait, it’s just Hiccup.”

Hiccup bounced to my side and pressed her wet nose into my free hand.

I petted her instead of screaming and we continued up the hill.

In front of us, shining in the moonlight, the lighthouse jutted up from the point, the light blinking out to sea. I sighed at the idea of having to do my final rounds before bed. The walk had sobered me up a little, but I wasn’t looking forward to the steep winding steps of the lighthouse.

Hiccup bounded ahead of us, cresting the hill first.

I walked after her, tugging Eddie along with me.

“Hey, Joe?”

I stopped and turned, and Eddie bumped into me.

I put my arms around him. “What, Eddie?”

“Remember what I told you that first time we walked up the hill drunk?” Eddie wrinkled his nose, making his glasses shift.

“What did you tell me?” I asked, a smile tugging at the corners of my mouth.

“I said I liked you, Red Joe Nesmith.” Eddie knocked our noses together.

“And what did I say?”

“You said you liked me too.”

“Ah,” I said. I carded a hand through Eddie’s scruffy hair and held it there. “Can I amend that now?”

“Hmm.” Eddie pressed his mouth into a thoughtful line. “How would you like to amend it?”

“How about this? I love you, Eddie Hawthorne, even though you told the whole world that my great-great-great-grandfather was a murderer and a rapist and a criminal, and just awful .”

Eddie considered that for a moment. “That’s an acceptable amendment. And I love you, Red Joe Nesmith, even though my great-great-great-grandfather wasn’t awful, and yours killed him.”

“Agreed,” I said.

“Agreed,” Eddie echoed, and then laughed and kissed me. “I love you, Joe.”

My heart swelled. “I love you too, Eddie.”

We kissed again under the lighthouse while Hiccup ran in circles around us and the moonlight illuminated the island.