Page 34 of Whale Harbor

The storm door of PJ and Jenny’s house squealed and slapped and then came the sound of someone running.

“Mac,” Martin shouted a moment later. “We’ve been looking for you. Are you all right?”

When Mac opened his eyes and squinted, he could see Jenny was there too.

He inventoried every bone in his body from his toes to his head. His shoulder hurt. He couldn’t see the bike anywhere.

“There was a grizzly,” he said.

“Honnie’s on the telephone, Macdara,” Jenny said. “Hurry. She wants to talk to you.”

“On the telephone? Honnie?”

“At my father’s house,” Jenny said.

“PJ is talking to her now,” Martin said. “Can you hurry?”

Something’s happened, Macdara thought. When he tried to sit up, the world spun.

“Leave him,” Jenny said to Martin after a few seconds. “PJ’s probably disconnected by now. He can tell us.”

But Martin ignored her. “Macdara!” he said sternly, shaking him when Mac felt himself listing back to sleep. “It’s your brother Rian she’s calling about. Get up, will you? Rian’s run away. They’ve been looking for three days and no one can find him.”

SEVEN

How far could a thirteen-year-old boy get without being stopped, caught, sent back home? Five feet five inches tall, hair a blondish red, freckles that doubled and tripled on sunny days, a scar on his bottom lip from splitting it open and not having the edges brought together with a stitch while it healed. A boy who flipped and flopped when he slept, like a fish thrown into a boat by a wave. A boy who once bit the arm of one twice his size when that boy took a pencil off his younger brother. A boy without money or identification or even much knowledge of English, the language of the wider country to which he was born. A boy without decent shoes that would carry him mile upon mile without falling apart. A boy who’d never eaten at a restaurant and who wouldn’t know what to do if someone laid both a fork and a knife on the table and told him you were supposed to use the knife to push the food onto the fork and never ever use your thumb. Most of the gardaí between Carna and Oughterard knew who he was. He was the child who’d stolen eighteen iced and boxed little cakes meant for the rectory. He denied it, but then he was sick on the guard’s shoes. The sick stunk of cinnamon and what did Rian do? He laughed.

Anyone would know by his particular accent and turns of phrase that this was a Connemara Gaeltacht child and to pinpoint where exactly they’d only need to go there and start asking whether anyone was missing a blackguarding hooligan with a mouth on him you’d want to crack. He was a boy who was a known arguer and fighter, who once, after getting beaten with a ruler in school, told the teacher—a substitute—he’d get him later on. How could a boy of thirteen survive the elements, assuming he was sleeping out of doors, or convince a kind soul to take him in? The alternatives—the unkind souls he might have encountered—were too much to consider. This was a boy who’d never even been to the city. How far could a thirteen-year-old boy get with only the clothes on his back and twenty-four pounds he stole from the tin box his father kept hidden on a secret ledge attached to the underside of his bed?

THE DOCTOR IN LIVINGSTON ADVISED Mac to rest until the concussion healed. No heavy lifting.

“What about flying in an airplane?” Mac asked.

“Do you have a trip planned?” the doctor asked, surprised.

“I’m not sure.”

“Well, if it’s possible to postpone, that’s what I’d recommend, at least until the dizziness has passed and your headache is gone. Can it wait two or three weeks?”

On the way home from the doctor’s, PJ asked what he was thinking. Jenny was in the front with him and turned to look at Mac, who was lying on the back seat. Whenever he glanced out the window he felt like he might vomit.

“Mac,” Jenny said gently. “I know you’re worried but it doesn’t make any sense to go all the way to Ireland when—”

“You keep quiet now,” PJ said, and it was the first time Macdara ever heard him speak harshly to her.

“But PJ. The price of that flight and the whole village is already looking for him! And what about his work with Ivor? He’s building a real client base here.”

“You don’t understand, Jenny,” PJ said.

Jenny went silent.

“It’s up to you, Macdara,” PJ said. “Do you have enough for a fare?”

“I do,” Mac said. He’d been saving to bring Barry to Larkspur, then together maybe they could get a little rental in town. His idea was Rian could come along and together he and Barry would watch over him, make sure he went to school, did his studying, didn’t get up to anything bad.

“What would you do if you were me?” Mac asked.

“I honestly don’t know,” PJ said. He paused. “I do wonder what help you’d give them. It sounds like everyone is looking. If you think they missed a place, you could suggest it from here. But, Mac, you haven’t seen him in four years come November. A thirteen-year-old is very different from a nine-year-old. You know what I’m saying?”