Page 30 of Whale Harbor

“I saw her first. I met her before you got here.”

“But did she start hanging around over here before I got here?”

“Wow,” Jenny said from her usual spot at the sink. “Yes she did, actually. Long before either of you got here. But aren’t you two impressed with yourselves.”

The first time Mac spoke with Debra she was astride a quarter horse named Oscar. Debra and Mac were both seventeen. In those first weeks of spring, 1964, he’d spent every day mending fences. Once he was finished with the fences he cleaned out chicken coops and water troughs. He mucked the manure that had spent the winter frozen in pats and was now defrosting. Bill’s prediction proved correct. With the food they were eating and the daily labor, Mac was getting stronger, bigger. With PJ leading them, they drove the horses back to the ranch from winter pasture and started moving cattle to summer pasture.

On the summer day she rode Oscar over, PJ came marching out of the barn with an angry look on his face and asked her if her father knew what horse she’d chosen. He told her to get down right then and he’d drive her home in the truck. Her father could pick up the horse later. What was the idea bringing a stallion around his mares? Did she want to cause trouble? She could have gotten herself hurt or even killed.

“I know what I’m doing,” she said, but she seemed flustered, and Mac felt sorry for her. PJ was intimidating when he was angry. She did seem to have the stallion under control, but she got down, PJ led Oscar away, and she and Mac were alone.

“What sort of problems would Oscar cause for the mares?” Debra asked, and her expression was so serious Mac wondered if she really didn’t know how it all worked. She had long hair the color of hay and wide gray eyes.

“I’m kidding,” she said, when she saw Mac was struggling with how to put it. “He thinks I’m an idiot because I’m a girl.”

“It was dumb though. You have to admit it.”

“Maybe,” she said.

Mac squinted at her. She wasn’t the least bit shy.

“Hey, do you want to come swimming later?” Debra asked. “I’m meeting some friends from school. Your friend can come too. What do you say? Want to meet us?”

“Sure.” Mac shrugged.

“Was that Debra who rode that stallion over?” Martin asked once Debra went inside the house to visit with Jenny. Mac told him it was.

“The girls are different here,” Martin mused.

“She invited us swimming.”

“Swimming! We can’t swim.”

“We might figure it out. Or they can teach us. Debra and her friends.”

“Macdara!” Martin said. “Isn’t that very embarrassing?”

WRITING TO RIAN GAVE MAC the itch to write more, so he sent letters to Noel and Fearghal addressed to the seminary. He wrote to Sean and Barry at their Manchester address. He wrote to his grandfather and Coleman, putting both of their names on the envelope. Because Cathal would see that he’d written to his grandfather—he’d be the one to deliver it—Mac also wrote to Cathal and kept it brief. All was going well, he reported, and he hoped they were doing well at home. A few months earlier, the thought of their replies, filled with news and images from their days, would have stopped him, would have set him back to his first week in America when a livid homesickness sat at the base of his throat all day and night. Now, he had his own things going on, plus he understood a little better that the home he missed was not the one that was in the Cuan, with his mother gone, a different woman in charge. He could bear their stories now, would welcome them even, because among other things, an American girl was going to teach him how to swim.

The spot where Debra and her friends liked to meet was a still, cold bend in the river. When Mac saw how calm the water was he thought: maybe. He’d never tried learning anywhere but the ocean, but even in their small harbor at home the currents ran strong. And his “trying” had amounted to wading in as far as his knees and then dropping to his belly, to test whether he could float. There was a place near the island that looked calm when a person stood on the small crest of land that hung over it. Once, when he was there with his grandfather, he speculated aloud that if he were to simply jump in and find himself out of depth his body would probably know what to do the way the animals seemed to know what to do from the moment they were born, but his grandfather roared at him that he better not even think of it. He warned him that that spot was a trick, a well-known danger. It was the place where two waters met, and just below the surface it made a great churning.

But in this American swimming place, even at the deepest part the water only came to Mac’s chest. Standing in it up to his hips, he could feel right away that there was no great push or pull from the underneath water. Debra said she’d never met anyone who couldn’t swim, certainly not kids her own age, but she didn’t tease them about it. She was only confused—didn’t Jenny tell her the Lees lived on the coast? That there was water all around?

They tried to float at first, but tipping his head backward made Mac feel like he was falling, and he couldn’t break the habit of putting his foot down to check that he could touch the bottom. Debra was in her swimming suit, the ends of her long hair wet and stuck to her skin. She held a gentle hand at his back to steady him but that threw his concentration.

He’d seen dogs tread water. At home, he’d stood on boats and helped drive cows into the water off Inis Mór—considering the giant heft of them you’d think they’d sink straight down—but even they kept their heads above the surface and swam to shore for grazing. No one had ever taught them—they just knew. What kind of animals were humans that they didn’t just know what to do?

Beside him, Martin thrashed and splashed.

When Debra’s friends showed up they pulled off their clothes to reveal bathing suits underneath, and Mac and Martin decided with one look that the lesson was over. After quick introductions, the boys sprawled out on the grass. The girls swam and talked so fast that Mac couldn’t always follow. Martin winked at him as if to say This is fun.

It became their Sunday routine. They got sunburned at first but by the time September arrived and senior year of high school started for the Americans, Mac and Martin’s pale skin had darkened to a sort of rusty tan.

“You guys want to come to a party?” Debra asked one afternoon. There was a chill in the air that warned summer was over.

“This boy is throwing a huge party and he said we could ask you guys.”

“Ahh, I don’t know,” Mac said, as Martin said: “Sure.”