Page 2 of Whale Harbor

“Never.”

She described the teacher’s visit and asked him to practice English with Rian. “Lead him to it bit by bit,” she said. Of all his brothers, Rian admired Mac most. If there was anyone who could talk this stubborn child into learning, it was him.

“It’s only that he feels afraid,” she said.

“Afraid of what?” Mac asked.

“Of the feeling it gives him, learning English, knowing that the reason he has to learn is because he’ll leave one day.”

“Did he say that?”

“No,” Mary said. “But that’s what it is.”

Once again Mac marveled that his mother had a deep understanding of every possible feeling, even when the person himself might not know he was feeling it.

NOW, STANDING OUTSIDE THE BOOLEY house, Rian tilted his head back, cupped his hand around his mouth, and shouted “DÚISIGH!” as loud as he could. His voice echoed across the valley and rolled toward the sea.

“Did you hear that, Mac?” Rian asked, delighted. He shouted again, and again his voice echoed. “Do you think they heard that all the way at the schoolhouse?”

“Paul Evans is an ugly gowl!” Rian shouted before Mac could answer, and the words rolled down the mountain. Paul Evans was Teacher’s name. “Paul Evans wears his mammy’s knickers!”

Mac couldn’t help it, he laughed. Rian must have heard because he poked his head in and asked, “Are you up at last? Come see something.”

THERE WAS A STORY THEIR mother often told: Once, when the women were up on the mountain, an old hag appeared at the door. She was looking for food and shelter from the rain. It was strange that an old woman who was unknown to any of them should happen to be passing so far up the mountain, and they only had enough for themselves, but they gave her the best spot by the fire to dry off and something to keep her going on her journey. They were worried about her, being a great age and the mountain a rough place, but as soon as she ate and rested, she transformed into a hare and ran away.

“Is that true?” Mac asked very seriously the first time Mary told him the story. “Did you see her turn into a hare?” He was small at the time, alone at the killing stump with her as she held the tail of a cadóg in her left hand and with her right ran her knife down its back to remove the scales. It was a rare thing to be alone with his mother and that may be why for his whole life he remembered it. There was no doubt a baby in the cradle or in her belly or both but he couldn’t remember which one.

It happened before she was born, Mary admitted, but it was always talked about, and everyone knew that what might not seem possible in the village was certainly possible on the mountain. She wouldn’t dare doubt it and she warned Mac that he shouldn’t, either—only the most arrogant sort of person presumes to know the secrets nature holds. What would have become of them, she often wondered, had the women not given the crone a bit of bread, had they not given her a place by the fire. Mac shivered and wondered the same.

Mac and Rian were up the mountain this morning because Rian had gotten into a fight with a classmate, who, like Rian, was nine years old, and also from a family of brothers—except the Sullivans were all boxers. Mac asked what they fought over, but Rian wouldn’t say. Rian once fought over a spoon. Over whether it was raining outside or only spitting. Over whether a mule was smarter than a donkey. Someone once found a broken chain on the road, good for absolutely nothing, but Rian bloodied another boy’s nose to have it. This particular fight, Mac learned eventually, was about skimming stones. A group of them had been hanging around by the water when skimming stones turned into a contest and Rian claimed he got twelve hops. One of the Sullivan boys said it was only nine. They agreed to each have another go, the boy with the most hops would be the winner, and Rian lost. Then it turned into a fistfight, like all contests did, and Rian lost that, too, as anyone who took in the sizes of the two boys would have predicted. But at the moment of peak humiliation, with every student looking on, Rian said at least he had the courage to spend a night up the mountain by himself. It was rumored that this Sullivan boy still slept at the foot of his mammy’s bed.

“Why?” Macdara asked. “Of all things.”

“Because,” Rian said.

“Because why?”

“Because!” Rian said, growing red in the face with frustration. “Because I don’t have to be bigger than him to sleep up in the booley. I only have to be braver.”

Macdara had spent the day on the island helping his grandfather repair a collapsed well—the kind of careful, peaceful work he liked—and when the tide was finally low enough for him to walk across the rocks to the mainland and then home, he recognized Rian’s crouched form in the distance, waiting for him. He saw the bruise blooming on the side of his brother’s head, and knew he was about to be pestered for something. Rian begged Macdara to come with him up the mountain overnight, and to not tell a living soul.

“Barry will go,” Mac said once he’d heard it all. There were plenty of other brothers to choose from. Barry was fourteen. Macdara was gone sixteen, so this seemed below him. “Or Fearghal. Or both of them.” Fearghal was a year younger than Barry.

“They said they won’t.”

“Thomas then. There’ll be the pair of you in it.” Thomas was only six but seemed older because he was so serious. He had flame-red hair, redder than anyone else’s in the family, the reddest their mother claimed she’d ever seen, and people called him Thomas the Red. In the old days, their mother told them, people thought it was bad luck to see a redhead first thing in the morning, and if Thomas had lived in those days they’d be turning their backs to him as he walked to school.

“He said he’d be too scared,” Rian said to Mac. “There’s síóga up there and everyone knows it.”

Mac looked down at his brother. Vivid yellow furze lined the road on both sides, making a bright, beautiful tunnel leading home.

“You didn’t ask them. None of them.”

“They’ll tell everyone they were up there! I’m supposed to be going alone to prove I’m not scared.”

“But you are scared. You go looking for trouble, I swear.”

“I lost the fight! What could I do?”