Page 6 of Whale Harbor

As they made their way home, Eamon on Mac’s back, Rian wondered aloud if their mother knew how to get the other kind of baby because who ever heard of eleven boys and no girls? When he looked up at Macdara and saw that he’d made his brother laugh, his face shone with joy.

“Go,” Mac said, setting Eamon down. “All of you. Run. Go on to meet him.” Someone would have to walk out to the island to tell their grandfather.

NOW, THE BABY WAS TWO weeks old and Cathal was still sleeping on Crow Island. From the door of the booley the slope of the mountain became abruptly steeper on the ascent, but it was possible to climb higher by grabbing hold of stones lodged into the earth, or roots that served as steps. “Would you ever hurry,” Rian said, as Mac finally joined him.

“All right now, look,” Rian said, pointing to something in the distance, something on the beach that was a short walk from their cottage and where they gathered seaweed most mornings. From where they stood, the beach was just a slash of yellow breaking up the greens and blues. But there was also a pale obstruction Mac couldn’t identify.

“What’s what?” Rian asked.

Mac squinted and saw there was movement—people gathering. Father Damien’s somber black Oldsmobile looked like a toy as it turned onto the coast road. What was it that was drawing them together? Grayish in color, maybe an enormous boulder had rolled down from somewhere above. He’d never heard of anything like that happening before. Maybe it was one of the Russian trawlers the men were always discussing when they stood outside Gafney’s smoking cigarettes. Sighted off Inisheer and bearing the red flags of the Soviet Union, the Soviets had four trawlers in the area, and two factory ships. The men said their plan was to take all the Irish fish back with them to their country. Their fisheries needed protection, the men said, something must be done.

Maybe one of the trawlers had made a mistake and turned into their small harbor and got stuck.

“Could it be a whale?” Rian asked.

Mac looked again at the outlines of the object, and the stir it caused.

“You know what, Rian? I believe it could.”

Rian, who always had a current of energy running through him, went totally still, serious down to his bones. “I knew it,” he said in a whisper. It was the biggest thing to happen in his life so far.

“If it’s a whale, there’s something wrong with it,” Macdara said.

“We have to see,” Rian said and scrambled back down to the booley to gather their few things.

“Slow down,” Mac shouted after him, but Rian was already running full speed down the mountain, blanket dragging along the ground, his dove-white ankles flashing in the sun.

TWO

Mac had often spotted pods of whales in the distance, heading north, but only when he was farther along the coast. Never from the harbor as he could recall. Sometimes they all breached at once, rising out of the dark chop toward the sun, eight or ten of them, and the sight made his heart catch. How or why one had lost its way, he couldn’t imagine.

Once he was down the mountain—the descent far quicker than the previous afternoon’s climb—Mac stopped at home for a moment to tell his mother they were going to see the happenings at the beach.

“They’re looking for you, a ghrá,” she said. The baby was tucked into the crook of her elbow.

“For me?”

She nodded, and somehow he knew she didn’t mean his brothers. She meant the people in charge.

“Is it a whale?” Mac asked.

“So I hear. Your brothers went down to the water to see but Fearghal came back to say you should go see the postmistress as soon as you can. She’s on the beach with the rest of them.”

“Don’t you want to see it?”

“I do, of course.” She smiled. But the baby was sleeping and the cottage was entirely empty. There was no spectacle worth more than that.

“Go on. Be telling me later. Oh, and Macdara?” she added. “Tell Rian that stout Sullivan, the one his age, came around asking for him yesterday after ye left, a little inquisitor, asking was Rian up in the booley house. I said he was, so this little pip asks me is he up there by himself and is he staying the night. I don’t know what Rian’s up to but he’d better watch himself.”

“And what did you say, when he asked whether Rian was alone up there?”

“I didn’t come down with the last rain shower, Macdara.”

BY THE TIME MAC GOT to the beach the whole village had heard about the whale. School was canceled for having no point. Father Damien was there. Teacher was there. The professor from Germany who was making maps of the area was there, and so was his wife. All of Mac’s brothers were there, along with the other village children. As Mac approached, there came a long, hollow-sounding grumble from the belly of the whale, and the children who’d gotten close enough to touch the animal scattered, shrieking. Everyone took a step back.

Cathal was there holding on to his elbows for dear life and his hair sticking straight up like a broom. Mac hadn’t seen him in days.

Someone said a group from the university was on its way and that information was passed around. The German mapmaker was the one who’d first discovered the whale. He’d been out on his morning walk, and after studying the creature for a while had gone into the village and telephoned a fellow German who lived in Galway and had something to do with the study of marine life. That second German called the university group. They, in turn, had rung up the village post office and asked if there was anyone local who could meet them and be their guide. They needed someone who knew the area inside out, and who spoke English as well as Irish. The group from the university was a mix of marine biologists and one anthropologist.