Page 33 of Whale Harbor

Mac had borrowed Ivor’s apron for a while, but now he had his own. He put it on, and bracing Apollo’s foot between his thighs he pried off the shoe the other farrier had made, and then used the tip of his knife to scrape away the dirt around the soft center. He pressed very gently, until Apollo reacted. He took out his nippers and rasp to cut away what was overgrown and then, pressing more, he saw he was right, it was a raging mastitis. A simple antibiotic and keeping it dry would cure him in just a few weeks. Ivor had the antibiotic in his kit. Apollo must be left unshod and his feet kept as dry as possible until it healed, Mac said. They finished up and told Sandy they’d be back in two weeks to check on him.

“You mean he’ll be all right?” Sandy asked.

“He’ll be good as gold,” Mac said.

Sandy began peeling bills off a wad of twenties and then stopped, pushed all the cash she was holding into Mac’s hand.

MAC HAD ANOTHER LETTER FROM Barry. Sean had been injured on a job and it was complicated at the hospital because of the false papers. Noel, fifteen now, had been kicked out of the seminary. Barry didn’t know what happened. All he knew was that Cathal went down there immediately and pulled Fearghal out too. Barry said when he asked Cathal about it he said he didn’t have to explain himself to anyone. Once home, Noel and Fearghal talked only to each other, and after a few weeks they started at the industrial day school an hour away. On weekends they did odd jobs for Honnie since all hers had emigrated and Kevin was ill.

Mac put the letter aside to think for a moment. Noel kicked out of school? Gentle, even-keeled Noel? An alarm clanged inside him, and he wished Barry were right there in front of him so they could discuss.

“Rian got in a bit of trouble you probably heard about,” Barry continued, “but that’s sorted now.” What trouble? Mac wondered. And how would he have heard?

Honnie hadn’t mentioned anything about Rian getting into trouble in her last letter. Mac had been in America for three years now and he’d lost track of them, he berated himself. He swore he never would and he had. He should have written more. Did trouble mean trouble with the gardaí or trouble with Cathal or trouble of some other kind?

Without giving it too much thought, he grabbed the keys to the truck and drove to the Western Union in Livingston to ask about making an overseas phone call. He’d read that calls could be booked in advance—he could have the operator arrange for Barry to take the call from the post office in the Cuan—but he didn’t know how much it would cost. At the Western Union, the man behind the desk told him the rule of thumb when it came to international was if the call went over three minutes you’d be better off buying a plane ticket to wherever you were calling. Was Mac sure he didn’t want to just send a telegram?

He wasn’t sure, so he drove back to Larkspur. When he pulled in he saw PJ crossing the yard and without taking time to organize his thoughts, he called out to him to wait up a second. Without a preamble, and with PJ holding a length of storm drain under his arm, Mac asked if it would be possible for Barry to join them at Larkspur. He was a year younger than Mac and just as strong, no doubt. And now that Rian was almost thirteen, could he come too? Barry could have Mac’s original job now that Mac was working with Ivor. Rian could go to school like Peter had or he could work. Mac would show him.

“Ah, Mac,” PJ said, laying the drain on the grass. Mac knew right then that it wouldn’t happen. PJ had his own brothers to worry about, his own children, a sick father back in the Cuan and a mother who’d be left alone when he died. It was bad enough he had one Joyce in the mix, how could Mac ask him to welcome two more? And how long had Mac planned to stay? Bill was no fool. He surely knew he wasn’t getting a full 10 percent of Mac’s cash jobs. He didn’t say any of that, but Mac could read it on his face.

It was meant to be a launching point, a way to get from A to B. It was never meant to last forever.

“Never mind,” Mac said.

“Bill is slowing down,” PJ said. “I shouldn’t tell you this but he’s getting all sorts of offers for the land. Big numbers. He’s not doing anything anytime soon, but once this winter is over, I don’t know. I think he’s going to take one of them. I don’t know myself what will happen.”

Mac went back to Western Union with the intention of sending a telegram to Barry asking if he should come home. Something seemed wrong, his gut told him so; he’d never had such an urgent feeling about going home since he arrived in America. But what was the point of a telegram? They’d all read it, they’d wonder why he was asking, they’d ask Barry what he’d reported, and it would be a big thing. And Mac being home would be no help—there were still no jobs and the house was overcrowded as it was. He had to decide for himself what to do.

A month went by, and he was still thinking. He went straight to the mail pile by the door whenever he got back to the house.

NEXT THING IT WAS 1967. Mac was twenty and had heard no further word about the ranch selling, no further incidents of Rian getting in trouble or Noel fighting or Sean drinking or Nuala being cruel. He felt itchy for something to happen, but what? Everyone just kept doing what they’d been doing, stacking day upon day until the weather felt a bit milder, till dripping could be heard coming from the eaves by the time the sun was high in the sky. Maybe it was all fine at home. Maybe it was just the distance that was getting to him. Maybe all of life was like this, bracing every day to see or hear something surprising, something that would make the restless feeling go quiet for a moment or two.

And then, on a late April morning, Mac woke suddenly in the dark with an overwhelming fear that he’d overslept. He and Ivor had just gotten back from a job near Great Falls late the evening before so he should feel tired, his back sore. He should be craving more sleep. It was far too early to be awake, too early to turn on the faucet in the hall bathroom that clanged and whined with the first use of the day. In the other bunks, Martin and Peter were both snoring. Simon ground his teeth. A space heater Jenny had put in the corner buzzed as it cast heat around the drafty room. He recalled the girl he met at the inn where they spent the night. He had her phone number in the pocket of his jeans, and his plan was to call her later on, when the hour was acceptable. He’d ask if maybe he could drive up to see her sometime.

Mac pushed off his bedcovers as quietly as he could, pulled on his jeans, lifted his coat from the hook, and figured he’d go say good morning to the horses. But once outside, once he’d stretched and looked at the sky to determine what kind of day it would be, he noticed a bicycle leaning against the barn. He didn’t know who it belonged to but spying it there in the navy dawn felt like seeing an old friend.

A few cows looked over as he rolled the bike along the driveway and cold mist lifted from the pasture. His hands were already numb but he didn’t want to turn back for his gloves. He hadn’t been on a bicycle since an entire ocean ago plus another two thousand miles, and he felt the clean, dry day coming on. Ivor would come collect him after breakfast and then he wouldn’t be home until near dark. He mounted the bike once he passed the main gate. Almost immediately, his thighs burned as he climbed from the valley where the ranch was nestled and up into the hills. He’d been there long enough to know the names of mountain ranges, and several of the major peaks, but every valley and pass had a name, too, which the locals knew as surely as they knew the names of the people in their family.

Mac’s chest grew warm as the road tilted upward and the pedals became even more difficult to push. The mud and loose gravel made the climb harder but he pushed and gripped the handlebars as if he might lift himself into flight, as if he might be able to carry himself upward. Ahead, he saw a deer step out from behind a grove of trees and dash up the steep incline. He decided he’d stop at the first clearing to take in the view, and then he’d head back. By then the others would be up and PJ would have made a pot of tea.

His lungs now burning with the effort of climbing, Mac finally reached a clearing and, straddling the bike, stopped to take in his reward. He let his heartbeat slow a bit as he looked at the pretty colors the rising sun made on the mountains. He patted his chest pocket for the pack of cigarettes he grabbed before he left. He fished the lighter out of his jeans.

It was so quiet he could hear the ember eat a bit of the cigarette each time he pulled. As soon as he finished the first cigarette, he lit another. Back when he was still hanging around with Debra she asked him if he was religious, and he hadn’t known how to answer. For him, there was a God who presided over Ireland who was stern and terrifying and never merciful. This was the God who refused to let an unbaptized baby be buried with his mother. The God who said he’d burn in hellfire if he so much as touched the hem of a girl’s skirt. And then there was the God who presided over America who seemed to let a lot of things slide. For Mac, the old prayers were habit more than anything else. Clean your teeth every morning and night, say a prayer when someone is ill. The words of certain prayers came as naturally and as thoughtlessly as the tides.

As he took in the view, he thought about the afternoon he climbed another mountain to the booley with Rian. Everyone was still at home. Everyone was still alive. Somewhere in his mind, that life existed alongside this one, and placing them side by side and understanding he was equally himself in both was something he could only get close to doing at that early hour, when he was alone, before the day really began. He remembered himself and Rian packing provisions for one night in the rough, how he felt like Edmund Hillary as they set out for their mountain shelter. Was that his real life? Or was this? Or was real life still in the future?

As he dropped the cigarette butt to the road to mash under his boot, Mac felt himself being watched. He squinted hard at the trees, at the shadows they made. He looked behind him to see if Martin or Simon had walked up the hill after him, but there was no one. He didn’t know how long he’d been gone. It was still early, or at least it felt early, but maybe they were looking for him. He listened a bit longer, gooseflesh rising on his neck. The deer, he remembered. The woods were full of them. There were probably fifty watching him right that second.

He turned the bicycle to face downhill, back to the day of work ahead.

But then, cutting clear across his wandering thoughts, came a snuffing sound from somewhere close by. He turned—one foot on the pedal of the bike—and about thirty feet away, in the shadows of the trees, was a grizzly. Or rather, it was the size, shape, and color of a grizzly but it was as if his mind added the information up to something that it would not compute. Time slowed. He could smell the delicious smoke of his extinguished cigarette. He could feel the warmth of the sun on the tops of his hands where he clutched the bicycle’s handlebar. The bear snuffed again. She turned her massive head briefly in Mac’s direction, then lifted her snout toward the sky. The pastures were still a winter gold and, from where Mac was standing, the pattern that the wind tracked through the grass looked like a wave. Once April turned into May, those same pastures would transform into a rich green and the pricker brambles would bend with bright berries. Mac realized that if he were to pedal away as fast as he could, he’d have to turn his back. He wouldn’t know if she’d decided to follow, if she was gaining on him.

I’m leaving, Mac said in his mind. Cathal talked to animals sometimes and swore they understood if not the words then the intention: I mean you no harm. But Cathal might have encountered the odd fox or badger, maybe. His father had never ever reckoned with an animal like this. Mac shifted the bike just a fraction and in a movement that seemed almost lazy, almost bored, the bear turned her head toward him once again. She sniffed and something in her body changed—she became interested.

Without considering any plan, without even a coherent thought, Mac went. He didn’t dare look behind him, he didn’t dare slow down. His whole body was trembling, so he focused only on balance as the bike went faster and faster downhill. He thought he heard breathing behind him, he thought he smelled musty air closing in, but after an entire lifetime passed he saw the ranch gate in the distance. Grizzlies had wandered into horse paddocks, they’d entered chicken coops, climbed through open windows of homes and trucks. A fence was nothing, a sign even less, but Mac knew with absolute certainty that if he got to the ranch he’d be safe. But turning meant slowing down, which he didn’t want to do. The gate was coming up quickly. He swiveled the handlebar and aimed for the short gap in the miles of fencing, but as soon as the wheels passed over the bars of the cattle guard, he lost control. The bike skidded and he was thrown.

When he opened his eyes, there was blue sky above him, cold earth below. He felt his pulse thrumming.