"A Night in Kerkennah" by Nathaniel Mellor

A Night in Kerkennah

I once wrote in an autobiographical essay for third grade that I want to live in a dessert when I grow up. In the margins, she wrote “desert -3 points.”
Why the hell would I want to live in a desert, I thought?
Years later, barely half a mile from where the ferry deposited me on this island, I stand by that question.
I disembarked with a group of Spanish bicyclists, head to toe in spandex emblazoned with the logos for sports drink companies and protein bars. As soon as their bikes were on the road, they took off, five of them barely spaced an inch apart. Their follow car took more time to prepare before picking up the rear.
I thought about taking a taxi, my options were unlimited, or even a bus, undoubtedly cold from the air conditioning. But how far away could town be?
I started walking.
The entourage of cars leaving the ferry passed by, their numbers slowly dwindling, until I was alone, and the ferry was back out over the open Mediterranean.
A man passed me going the other way. In my head, he’s a goat farmer. He rides a small motorbike with a barely-held-together trailer behind him. It doesn’t have goats. He doesn’t look like a goat. But, somehow, he’s a goat farmer in my head.
He nods as he passes. I nod back.
Vacant homes, half-built huts of concrete blocks, littered the sand-packed landscape wherever rows of forgotten olive trees hadn’t already staked their claim.
I started counting the bones after a while. Mostly skulls, I can only assume some vulture made off with the bodies. Skulls with horns, like goats. Is this why I thought the man on the motorbike was a goat farmer? I thought about taking a skull, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. Not that it was gross, but it felt sacrilegious. Some forgotten desert god received their offering, it wouldn’t be right to take it away.
Drinking from my dwindling supply of water, a once-cold liter of sparkling water reduced to a few sips of flat plastic backwash, I wondered how my skull would look on the ground. Would anyone be surprised? Or is it normal to see a tourist dead from dehydration on the side of the road to El Abassia.
A small putt-putt sound grew louder.
The goat farmer pulled up alongside me. He gestured behind him, patting the seat.
I shook my head, tried to gesture my thanks.
The man spoke in Arabic, and when I didn’t respond, he tried French. I didn’t speak French either.
He patted the seat behind him harder. Giving up, I nodded my thanks and climbed behind him, tossing my backpack in the trailer.
We didn’t move fast, but my feet didn’t have to take the brunt of the walking, and since the trailer kept us upright, I didn’t have to worry about balancing.
A brightly-lit group appeared up ahead. One of the Spaniards found themselves with a flat tire and the follow car had set up a small repair station.
I nodded to them as I passed. A young man in bright, quick-dry clothes sitting behind a man the age of my grandfather, clad in robes. What a pair we must have made.
My new friend took me to what could graciously be called a village and waited with me there for a car to come.
When one arrived, it had no space. Four faces peered out at us from the back seat. Still, my friend tried to unsuccessfully negotiate a seat for me inside.
The goat farmer wasn’t a stranger in this village. He chatted with the man who ran a small corner store, a cooler full of sodas out front, a handful of children drinking them.
Some time passed. I refused a soda more than once. I got the feeling they were a little difficult to get out here and I didn’t want to take one.
Finally, a taxi arrived. This time, the backseat was only filled with three bodies.
The farmer began his negations again. He gestured that I was small. We all laughed at that, my own frame towering over everyone’s around me.
The three in the backseat, all men my age, seemed to be okay with an extra rider as long as I was helping with the fare.
I shook the farmer’s hand, transferred my bag from the trailer to the trunk, and joined the three other men inside the car.

I was the first to be dropped off, and the driver did so at a roundabout. “Hotel,” he said in French, pointing down the street.
I handed him twenty dinar and thanked him and the others.
The hotel wasn’t hard to find. A low slung white building with blue windows that stood barely four feet from the water.
The woman at the front desk, a white plastic table often found in backyards and patios, took my passport and fifty dinar, a wallet-breaking amount.
My room was small, one window at the top of the wall near the ceiling, and a private bathroom.
She turned on the tap, showing me water that ran pure white.
“No drink,” she shook her finger.

Left alone, I took my chances and had a sip. The water from my bottle was gone and there were no stores on the way here. Maybe a soda wouldn’t have been so bad.
The water tasted fine. Chalky, but not sour or salty so I had more.
Spanish words floated in through the open window. I popped my head outside the door to see the bicyclists, red and drenched in sweat, clip-clopping to their room at the other end of the building. I caught one of their eyes and waved.

After dinner, a brief affair at the restaurant across the street, I sat on shore watching the water lap at the sand that mixed with trash, fishing nets, and aluminum cans. I sipped from my bottle of water, freshly bought from the restaurant.
A few boats floated gently on the water, their anchors barely ten feet below them. I could hear the radios from inside their boat, the sound easily passing over the open water. Someone must have had a muted TV in their boat, flashes of light emerging from the deck occasionally with accompanying sound.
A Spaniard joined me on the shore. I saluted him with the water bottle but didn’t say anything. He nodded back. Tomorrow we’d each make our way to El Abassia but tonight was for the stars and the waves and the company of strangers.

Nathaniel Mellor

Nathaniel Mellor is a short story writer and poet who lives in southern Italy with his partner. He has work published or forthcoming in Willawaw Journal, Second Chance Lit, MASKS!, Six Sentences, Birdseed and Henshaw Anthologies. He is the current fiction editor at Pigeon Review. You can find him on Twitter @MellorNathaniel.

Headshot: Darcy Marie Melton

Photo Credit: Staff