Page 16 of Whale Harbor

For the first time, Mac began to cry.

“Know it.” The old man held Macdara’s head like it was a precious thing. “Know it here, in your mind.” He moved his hands to Mac’s chest. “And know it here.”

THE NEXT MORNING, AS THE women were dressing the younger boys, Grandfather told the older boys who were already dressed to walk down to the water and sit with their thoughts a minute. Mac sat on the usual rock and tried to make himself understand. He was still alive, still capable of feeling the cold stone through the seat of his pants, of watching the clouds race across the sky, and she who’d churned the butter he’d eaten that morning no longer existed. Had she ever walked down to see the whale? How many times had he watched her at the churn, working and working to make the golden lumps appear. She who’d made him, made all of them, was gone.

After a few minutes, Rian came running down the path to find him.

“What is it?” Macdara asked, standing.

“Nothing. I only wanted to see where you are.”

MAC HAD GIVEN UP ON his father appearing at the funeral, but next thing, as Father Damien began the service, there came Cathal ambling up the center aisle as if he’d never missed a Sunday. Mac took in the faces of the villagers in the pews, how they turned to look at one another. After, Cathal helped carry Mary’s coffin to the cemetery for burial, but when the time came to lower it into the earth he went pale and whatever brave performance he’d been determined to show the world collapsed. He staggered and Mac took hold of his arm. Cathal shook Mac off, turned, and walked straight out of the cemetery. Two days went by. Three. A week.

“Everyone is talking about him,” Barry said. “They ask how he is but I know they just want me to say I haven’t seen him.”

“I’ve had the same,” Mac said.

They called Sean from the post office on an appointed day, described everything for him, told him their father hadn’t been around since the funeral but Grandfather was still with them. Other families had had losses and didn’t behave this way. It wasn’t uncommon to hear of a child who’d been tragically trampled, fallen down a well, gotten sick. It wasn’t uncommon to hear of a parent dying, but a mother to children so young, with a baby only five weeks old, and so many others besides—that was news that traveled. In the first weeks, there was a sense whenever any of them went into the village that they’d been sainted by grief or had some other holy anointing. People hushed when they passed. They asked about the baby but when they asked after Cathal there was always an eye of curiosity that made Mac want to keep his thoughts to himself.

Eventually, after a few weeks, the visits from neighbors slowed. No one dropped off food anymore. Conversations outside the pub didn’t stop out of respect when Mac or any of the others walked by. Only Honnie was consistent in her attention but she had her own family to worry about. Kevin wasn’t feeling well. He was a loud type of man, but not a healthy one.

One month after the funeral, Vincent was still at Rose’s and their grandfather was still sleeping in the chair by the fire. Mac and Barry hiked out to Crow Island to see if Cathal was at the still and they each knew the other wondered if he might be dead. But there was no sign of him there, so they returned home and didn’t tell the others they’d checked.

No one had been to school since Mary died. Grandfather Walsh fished every day, taking a few of the boys with him. They killed a couple of the chickens but by the time the bones were picked clean they were hungry again. They showed Grandfather where the paper money was hidden under their father’s bed.

It was morning when Cathal finally showed. Macdara had just assembled ingredients for baking bread when his father came barreling through the door.

“I have something to tell ye now and wait until you’ve listened to it all.” He looked surprisingly well, which did not feel like consolation. He was freshly shaved, his hair cut, his clothes neatly pressed. He was a little drunk, yes—Mac could tell by the way he was standing—and it was only ten o’clock in the morning, but he wasn’t too bad. Several times, Mac had seen one of the Connelly boys delivering the mail on his father’s route and that had worried him, especially when they hadn’t glimpsed Cathal in any of his usual places. Grandfather Walsh continued puffing on his pipe.

“I’ve asked a woman to marry me and she’s accepted. She’s called Nuala. She spent twenty years in America. She was never married and has no children of her own. The Church requires some time until the banns, but we’ll marry as soon as we can.”

Grandfather Walsh removed the pipe from his mouth. Mac went so still it was as if he’d been painted into place.

“Barry, you’re going to England. I got papers sorted for you and you’ll be on the boat this Friday. Sean will meet you at the other end.”

“What?” Barry asked, half laughing. Surely it was a joke. He had just turned fifteen and had only a smatter of hair under his arms. “You mean Mac.”

“No, I mean Barry,” Cathal said. “Fearghal and Noel. You’re going to the seminary school in Limerick. You leave Friday too.”

At this Grandfather Walsh stood. Macdara felt a coldness run down his limbs.

“Who did you say?” Fearghal sputtered. “Me? Me and Noel? No.”

“I’m not finished,” Cathal said. “Vincent will stay with Rose. She said he’s doing very well.”

“No,” Mac said. “It’s time for him to come home.”

“You meant to say Macdara’s going to England,” Barry said again. “You said Barry by mistake.”

“But I don’t want to be a priest,” Fearghal said. He was thirteen, almost fourteen, and was starting to notice how he looked. Just that morning he’d stood in front of the small mirror that hung on the side of the loft stairs and again and again licked his palm and pressed his hand to the worst of his cowlicks, trying to get them to sit flat, but they only sprang back. Noel was twelve, and so far hadn’t said anything. He only looked back and forth between his father, his grandfather, and Fearghal.

“Come home how, Macdara?” Cathal asked, all the giddiness wiped from his expression. “Who’ll take care of him?”

“I will.”

“He’s a baby. He needs a woman. And who’ll mind him when you get a week’s work cutting back brush for the roads department?”

“He needs his father and his brothers.”