Everything in This Country Must (4 page)

It was low tide, so they used long ropes to drop the boat from the pier. It landed with hardly a ripple. They stood talking a moment and the sunlight shone through their clothes, giving darkness to the shape of their bodies.

She was rake-thin and the old man carried a paunch.

The old man made a gesture toward the sea and then turned and held on to the rungs as he climbed down the pier’s rusted ladder. Even in his slowness he was fluid. He planted himself firmly in the kayak and placed the paddle across the center to stop the boat from rocking. The woman followed down the ladder tentatively. A breeze caught her dress and the old man touched her on the back of her legs. She turned and seemed to let out a small laugh as he guided her from the ladder into the double well of the boat. When she placed her foot down, the kayak hiccuped in the water.

They wore no life jackets but the man fumbled with a spray skirt, adjusting it tightly to the lip of the well. He nudged his paddle against the wall of the pier and the boat began to move out into the harbor. His paddle hit the water, sending out ripples that had long faded before she too reached out and struck, now in unison with him.

The kayak glided out and the boy’s eyes followed them all the way until they turned and moved south along the headland, a bright yellow speck on the gray cloth of the sea.

*   *   *

SO THIS, THEN
, was the Galway town where his mother had once spent her summers: sunlight, steeples, green postboxes, the stark applause of seagulls, the mountains stretching in the distance like a gift of simplicity.

*   *   *

THE BOY PULLED
on an extra shirt—it had once been his father’s—and inside there was still room for a whole boy more. He rolled the sleeves high on his forearms and crumpled the collar so that it wouldn’t look ironed. Across the caravan his mother was still sleeping. Her chest rose and fell. Her hair had fallen over her face and some of the strands had taken on the rhythm of her breathing, lifting and falling. The boy stepped across the linoleum floor with his shoes in his hands and he opened the door quickly to stop it from creaking.

Outside, the last spits of rain had just died on the wind.

On the cinder block doorstep he put on his shoes and looked out at the sea. The gray horizon bled into the gray sky so that he could not tell where the sky began and the sea finished. Only a single fishing boat broke the expanse.

Moving away from the caravan, he kicked at a few stray stones. He wore black drainpipes hitched high on his hips, exposing white socks and black shoes. The boy had not polished his shoes since he bought them and they were scuffed now like dark ice.

He followed the track that meandered muddily down the slope, steadying himself on tree branches until he reached the main road into town. It was still narrower than most other roads he had ever known. In Derry he had never been allowed to wander, but his mother said this town was safe, she knew all its nooks and crannies, it was a harmless place.

The rain had ripened the roadside grass and the boy reached the graveyard, where someone had placed a small china Virgin near a headstone. He wandered through the cemetery, patting his shirt pocket where he had a near-empty box of cigarettes stolen from his mother’s handbag. Hunching under his jacket, he lit a cigarette and then spat near a crucifix. He felt a sudden shame rise to his cheeks, but he spat again at another gravestone and walked on. He was thirteen years old and it was the fourth cigarette of his life. It tasted cruel and lovely and it made his head spin. He smoked it down to the filter, put it between his thumb and forefinger, then flicked it high out over the stone wall of the graveyard. It fizzled red through the air and the suggestion of it remained on his tongue like morning breath as he walked around the graveyard, past all the curious wreaths and statues and carvings. He looked at the names and dates on the stones, many of which were covered now with long grasses and lichen.

At one of the stones he saw an empty pint glass with lipstick on the rim and, when he looked closely, he saw that it belonged to the grave of a young man not much older than himself.

Tough shite, he said to the stone.

He turned and hopped the stile in the wall, rejoining the road toward town. The road had no markings but he balanced along an imaginary white line that twisted and curved around the corners, switchbacking once so he thought he might come around and meet himself.

A car passed him and beeped and the boy wasn’t sure if it was a greeting or a warning. He waved back weakly and stuck to the grass verge as the road cantered down the hillside into the town. He stopped and looked at the sign that gave the name of the town in two languages—he could not make the connection between them, the English being one word, the Irish being two. He tried to juggle the words into each other but they would not fit.

A few men stood brooding and malignant outside a pub at the bottom of the hill. The boy nodded at them but they didn’t gesture back.

How’re you? he said to nobody, under his breath.

Oh, flying.

And yourself?

Sound enough.

He thought to himself that he wore a shirt of aloneness and he liked this idea; he pulled it around himself as he walked for hours past quiet shops, beyond a boarded-up blacksmith’s, along a row of lime-colored bungalows, through a barren football field, over the high wall of a handball alley, then back to town, where he came to a small amusement arcade full of rude and tinny noise.

This is a stickup, he said to a machine.

He pulled a cigarette from his shirt pocket without removing the pack—the way his uncle might once have done—and he played a single video game with the unlit cigarette hanging from his mouth. It bobbed up and down as he cursed the spaceships on the machine. On one of his fingers he had, months ago, begun to tattoo a single word but had stopped when he wasn’t quite sure what the word should be. All that appeared now was a single straight line where he had stuck a hot needle into his forefinger and smudged blue ink on it.

The tattooed finger repeatedly struck the button on the video machine and the boy was well into his third game when he simply turned, left the arcade, and strolled down to the pier.

Just outside the harbor, the yellow kayak was making its way back through the water and the old couple was paddling with surety and grace. The paddles sliced the air in rhythm and the sunlight flashed on the turning blades. Seagulls flew over and around the kayak, looking for fish, he supposed, and it seemed to the boy that the birds made hunger look easy.

*   *   *

HIS MOTHER HAD TOLD HIM
: Do not say
wee.
Do not say
wee.
She said there was a landscape to language and their accents could be a dangerous curiosity right now. He thought to himself that he was a boy of two countries with his hands in the dark of two empty pockets. He walked along the distance of the pier and he said the word
wee
repeatedly until it meant nothing at all. It could have been a rope or a knot or a winch or perhaps even a thing of joy.

Wee,
he screamed, running down from the pier and all the way along the empty beach.
Wee.

*   *   *

THAT FIRST NIGHT
the caravan listed and moaned in the fugue of wind that ferried itself up from the water. The caravan sat on cinder blocks, one hundred yards from the cliff face, tethered with a chain at either end. When they switched the lights on, the boy thought the whole thing must have looked like some sad and useless lighthouse.

It’s stupid here, he said.

His mother turned around from the stove and said: Oh, it’s not so bad. You’ll see. You’ll end up loving it.

Have you heard any news?

Nothing yet.

The wind lisped through the gaps in the door and carried the smell of fresh salt water. The boy took his black Swiss Army knife from his pocket and placed it on the Formica table, flipped open the blade, and tested its sharpness on a few arm hairs. He cut down close to the skin and he wondered about a freckle on his arm, what might happen if he tried to scoop it out with the knife. He began scraping at the freckle with the tip of the blade until there was a sharp jab of pain and he thought he might have drawn blood. He sucked at his forearm and tasted nothing and, without blood, was disappointed at the whim of his pain.

When he looked up, his mother had already placed a plate of beans and toast in front of him.

The boy pushed his penknife into his plate and it slid among the beans and he thought it looked like an absurd kayak in a sea of red. He lifted it up and licked the handle and began spearing individual beans. They broke at the weight of his knife until he learned to pierce them lightly, and he held them in the air, on the tip of his knife, staring at them. He didn’t eat at all.

His mother sat down. She poured two mugs of tea from the pot and began eating her own meal, feigning indifference.

Through the steam that rose from the cups, he saw her face shimmy like a fun-house mirror. He began to blow air on his plate.

Is it too hot, love? she asked.

No.

It’s your favorite.

I’m not hungry.

You haven’t eaten all day. I bet you could eat that whole thing in, oh, two minutes flat. Less even.

You know what? he said, his voice shrill. It’s stupid here.

She closed her eyes briefly and then stared out the window. The boy sliced the beans with his knife and speared the piece of toast, which was soggy now. He lifted the bread in the air and the middle section fell out and it struck him that the bread had lost its heart. It splashed in the plate and a few small dots of tomato juice spotted the table. His mother wiped them up with her finger, let out a long sigh.

We’ll play chess, she said.

I don’t know how.

I taught you once when you were sick. When you had the chicken pox and you were home from school. You loved it.

I don’t remember that.

There’s a set in the box beneath your bed.

It’s not my bed.

We’ll play anyway, she said. I’ll teach you again.

I don’t want to.

Your father was a great player, one of the best.

The boy pushed his plate away and said nothing. He watched as his mother stared down into her teacup and he could see a tear forming at the edge of her left eye. She blinked and caught it on the corner of her dress and then she rose from the table and took the four steps across the caravan toward his bed, which doubled as a sofa. Beneath it there was a cupboard. As she yanked the door open it seemed to the boy that she was pulling at the side panel of a coffin.

Dust rose up around her and she covered her eyes and coughed, then came back over to the table carrying the chess set, which was sealed with brittle tape. She pierced the tape with the prongs of her fork. One by one she took the pieces out from the box and named them as she placed them on the table: the king, the queen, the castle, the knight, the bishop, the pawns.

I don’t like those wee pieces, he said.

She stared at him and then removed his plate from the table to make room for the board but he caught the side of the plate and said to her in a loud voice: No.

There was silence in the caravan until his mother forced her lips into half a smile and said that she would practice on her lonesome. She found room on the table by propping the end of the board out over the edge, so it looked like some sort of precipice. She lined the white pieces along the edge of the board, close to her stomach, and the boy was reminded of a biblical story where animals were shoved over the edge of a cliff.

She reached forward and moved one of the white pawns, then shunted a black pawn upward in the same corridor of squares. She hummed very softly. Soon the pieces were spread out all over the board.

Check, his mother said to herself.

The boy poked at his plate and saw the soggy heart of bread that lay there. He moved the lump around in the red sauce with his knife, bored at first, until it began to take shape. He mashed the bread with the tip of the blade and then saw what it could be. His father, a carpenter, had once told him a man could make anything of anything if he wanted to. The boy began to mold the bread quickly. He moved it around the plate with the knife and it soaked up more sauce, took on a definite form. He thought of his uncle in prison: a single cell, the darkness outside, the sound of boots along a metal catwalk, the carving of days into a wall.

He dropped the knife and began molding with his fingers.

*   *   *

IN THE LATE EVENING
, when she struggled up from the sofa, he was still awake at the table and he had created a chess piece, a knight. It was stark and red from the tomato sauce it had been dunked into. She pulled up her chair to the table and smiled at him as he lowered his eyes. Holding the shaped bread, she smiled again, put her hand on his shoulder, and told him the knight looked delicious.

It’s not for eating, Mammy, he said.

*   *   *

THE NEXT MORNING
, when he waited outside the green phone box near the pierside, he found out for sure. His mother replaced the receiver and opened the door. The hinge squeaked and it sounded like a keen, and when she stepped out her face contained such sadness that she looked like she had been on a journey containing the forecast of her own death.

He’s on, she said.

The boy didn’t reply.

She moved to hug him but he stepped away.

I’ll not go back, said his mother. They want me back but I’ll not go.

I’ll go back, the boy said.

You’ll stay here with me.

In her voice she was saying: Please.

He stood silently and watched her scan the beach road. Some forlorn tourists stood with their hands in their pockets. A middle-aged couple hauled deck chairs from the back of their car, placed them with great deliberation on the sand, tightened their coats around themselves. A young girl was being pulled along by an anemic wolfhound. An ice-cream truck upped the volume of its song. His mother appeared to be remembering things from a shapeless past, and in her eyes she couldn’t seem to make sense of how she had gotten here, this town, this street, this patch of seaside outside the phone box. She looked down at her shadow, which pooled at her feet, and she toed at the ground.