He began having his nightmare less often.
“Make that noise again.”
“Hmmnn?”
“The bird call. I like it.”
Joe pursed his lips and whistled.
Declan laughed. “I can't tell the difference between your whistle and the real thing.”
“Redwing blackbird.” Joe pointed to a bright flash of black and red in the thicket.
It was lunch hour. The small lake was a mere five minutes' walk from the school. Declan lay back in the grass, relaxed and happy, the warmth of the sun on his face.
Joe sat, watching the lake, back straight, his legs folded under him.
“Too nice a day to waste in school,” Declan murmured.
“You talk all the time of going home to Ireland,” said Joe. “But you know what?”
“No, what?”
“You will stay here. You like it too much to leave.”
“Not a chance.”
“I know it.” Joe laughed. “You're hooked.”
Declan opened one eye. “What do you say we take the afternoon off school?”
Joe shook his head. “No thanks.”
“You scared you'll get into trouble?”
“No.”
“Then why not?”
Joe grinned. “I like school.” “I'll fight you for it,” said Declan. “I win, we skip school. You win, we go back, okay?”
“I don't fight,” said Joe.
Silence. “But I'll wrestle you, if you want.”
“Wrestle?” said Declan.
Joe nodded. “No striking. Wrestling only.”
“Okay.” Declan leaped to his feet, and crouched, ready to wrestle.
Joe stood calmly and pulled off his sweater and his shirt. He peeled off his sneakers and socks. Then he undid his belt and stepped out of his jeans, and stood practically naked in his Jockey shorts.
“You don't need to undress,” said Declan, embarrassed and puzzled, glancing quickly around to see if Joe's performance was being observed.
Joe folded his clothing carefully, and placed the pile on the ground beside an old cedar tree. “I don't like to look all mussed going back to school.”
Declan laughed. “You think you're about to win?” He threw off his sweater.
“Of course.” Joe grinned and rushed at Declan, grasping his smaller opponent in his arms and throwing him down quickly with a thump, and pinning his shoulders to the ground.
Declan gasped as all the wind was knocked out of him. “I wasn't ready!” he choked.
Joe jumped up, and stood back, grinning. “Best man is two falls. First fall goes to me.” He crouched, waiting for Declan to rise.
Declan got up slowly, resting on one
knee until he was breathing normally. Then he advanced cautiously, arms ready. They met. Declan tried to get a grip on Joe, but his fingers slid uselessly off his adversary's dark skin and hard-muscled body. Joe had no trouble, however, gripping Declan's shirt and pulling him off balance.
“Wait!” yelled Declan. “I want to take off my shirt.”
Joe stood back, grinning. Declan wriggled out of his shirt and threw it to the ground, not taking his eyes off Joe, prepared should he rush again and try to take him by surprise. But Joe waited until Declan was crouching and ready, his bare skin pale and gleaming.
They met and grappled. Declan tried to get Joe off balance, but Joe was too quick on his feet, shifting and wriggling, and using his strong grip and muscular arms to force Declan down. They fell together, wrapped around each other, pulling and pushing, grunting like a pair of wild animals. Joe tried a pin, but Declan arched his back, and kicking out at the sky with his legs, managed to pull himself clear. He spun about immediately, and threw himself at Joe's dark shoulders, twisting
himself, coming up on his knees behind Joe with a sweaty, sliding half nelson. But he couldn't hold it. Joe's neck muscles strained, his arms and shoulders bulged. Declan fell back with a gasp, and Joe was on him, and they rolled about in the grass for a while, each trying to gain the advantage, until they were at the very edge of the lake, Declan on his back, too exhausted to hold Joe off. He could see a pair of mallards upside-down as Joe pinned him for the second time. “You win!” he gasped.
Joe stood back, gasping for breath, his torso soaked with sweat.
Declan rose unsteadily to his feet. “You're the powerful wrestler, Joe, right enough.” He grinned, and reached for his shirt.
“Good fight,” said Joe happily as he dressed.
The mallards, a duck and a drake, clambered from the lake and stood watching the two boys in astonishment.
“We'd better get to school,” said Declan.
The shrill, piercing whistle of a redwing came fluting up from the thicket as they started back.
At the end of October, Ana told him he had put on some weight. “You look healthier,” she said one afternoon as they strolled home from school. “More relaxed.”
Declan frowned and brushed the hair out of his eyes.
“But you need to smile. And laugh. Leah says you're not so stuck-up the way you used to be.”
“I was never stuck-up,” Declan declared hotly. “And as for smiling and laughing, I leave that to those who have reason to.”
“She thinks you're cute.”
“Where I come from cute means cunning. Like a fox.”
“She means lovable.”
“Is that right now? And what did you tell her?”
“Me?” Ana shrugged nonchalantly. “Oh, I just told her to keep her eyes off my big brother.”
Declan almost smiled.
The month of the Canada Goose was a good month for sunshine. The trees were changing color and there was a hint of fall in the air as Declan and Ana set off for school each morning.
Although Declan had earned a grudging respect from the other kids at school, he knew they did not like him. He could read it in their too polite faces, but he did not care: they were no countrymen of his. Joe was different, of course. Declan's friendship with the Indian boy was growing stronger each day.
Nor did most of the teachers take to him, Declan noticed. Though his natural curiosity led him to read most of the required texts, he handed in no work. He didn't care what they thought of him.
Mr. Hemsley, however, who taught Social Studies and who was young and cheerful, tried to encourage him. “Your test scores are very good, Declan, especially in the free response questions. I admire a student with opinions of his own.” He smiled. “Try to keep an open mind, though, and try to understand other points of view, okay?”
Miss Oliver, the elderly English teacher, wanted to know why he had handed in no essays. “You cannot hope to pass the course on test marks alone,” she said. “You're an intelligent boy; why do you take no part in the class discussions?”
“I've nothing to say,” lied Declan, not
revealing the real reason, which was that participation spelled acceptance, and he had no intention of accepting any part of this alien country. That would be falling for his aunt and uncle's trap; he wasn't that much of a fool.
The weather stayed warm right into November, month of the loon, and then was suddenly, sharply cold. Otter Harbour blazed an autumn bronze, and the huge old maples on the main street flared crimson against the sea and the sky and the dark embrace of the forest.
“Keep the books, Joe, you earned them.”
“I wouldn't have got a Second in the Juniors without you, Declan.”
“Sure, you would, Joe. You're a born scientist. I only did what you told me. If you'd had a half decent partner, you would have walked away with a First.”
“Wrestle you for them!”
“There's the bus. See you tomorrow, Joe.”
It is midnight and the wind and the ocean are restless and he too is restless in his bed, unable to sleep.
He remembers.
It is Thursday, April 16th. The day before Good Friday. Their last day.
He sees them clearly in his memory, recalls their faces on that fateful morning, their expressions, their gestures, and he searches now for some sign in their faces and voices of their doom. But there is none.
Mairead is excited, of course, because today is her birthday, and she is trying on her new white wool sweater, a gift from her mother. It is 7:45 in the morning and the three of them are in the kitchen where they eat. Mary Doyle is cooking breakfast and a man on Radio Ulster is singing, “Have I told you lately that I love you?” He sings it “luurv.”
Mairead is happy. She tells her ma that she
luurvs
her sweaterâit fits perfectly, and she
luurvs
her ma, and she
luurvs
her big brother, and she thanks Declan again for the beautiful notebook that is large and heavy and has blank, creamy pages, enough for a whole year, and which is just perfect because Mairead loves to write, and someday, she
always tells them, she will be a famous poet like William Butler Yeats.
She admired the notebook in Marks and Spencer some weeks earlier. “It would make a perfect diary too,” she said. Declan checked the price and made a quick calculation; he would be able to afford it if he was careful with his pocket money. It had a picture on the cover of a beautiful Victorian lady seated at a desk, writing. “It's so elegant,” Mairead said, as she stroked its cover with her fingers.
She is a skinny kid with long, long legs, who walks daintily with her back straight; she has brown hair and lively blue eyes. She takes after her ma. Declan is supposed to take after his da. The new sweater helps fill her out a little and looks good on her. “Take it off while you eat your breakfast,” says their ma, so she peels it off carefully over her head and suddenly she's skinny again in a faded pink T-shirt that says Make Love Not War. She folds the sweater neatly and carries it into the living room and places it on the back of the sofa for later.
Breakfast is fried eggs and refried boiled potatoes from last night's dinner and toast and marmalade with hot milky tea. Mairead
likes tea whenever her ma lets her have it, but mostly she drinks milk. Declan is old enough to choose whatever he wants. He is reading a science fiction book while he eats his breakfast.
Their ma opens the kitchen window and throws out a handful of crumbs for the birds. Then she sits down with her tea and toast. She takes Declan's book away from him. “Manners at the table, Declan. I swear to heaven you'll be reading in your grave.”
Declan, remembering, ransacks the memory, listens and watches his ma keenly. But despite “grave,” there is no inkling of death in either her voice or her manner. She is relaxed and happy on her daughter's birthday, looking forward to their outing in the city. She sips her tea, her elbow cupped in her hand, the hot teacup near her pale cheek, her blue eyes drowsy and fond.
The initial excitement of her birthday gifts over, Mairead is now dreamy. She sips at her glass of milk and gazes over her mother's head out the kitchen window at a pair of spring sparrows on the sandstone window ledge pecking jerkily at the breadcrumbs. Ten is an important birthday. She had three
birthday cards, one each from Declan and her ma, and one from her friend Rosaleen.
There is not a sign of doubt or foreboding on her dreamy young face, not a hint in her happiness that today is the day she must die.
Declan, still remembering, sees himself finish his breakfast and get up from the table. He watches himself run up the stairs and brush his teeth, then grab his lunch off the kitchen table where his ma has left it for him, kiss his ma and Mairead hurriedly, unthinkingly, absent-mindedly, thinking only of Tim O'Malley waiting for him, ready for school, unaware that this is the last time he will ever see his ma and Mairead alive.
Several hours later he is summoned to the headmaster's study, and the headmaster is nodding at him. His old, serious face, the creases around his mouth as he speaks the words. The policeman is standing beside the headmaster's desk. Help? Who can help? Death is a scythe that cuts you down.
He walks home. The house is empty. Everything is tidy and in its place, just the way they left it before they went off on their birthday jaunt. His eyes search for a message,
a note, some final word scribbled by his ma, but there is nothing. The kitchen counter is neat: the toaster with its bright daisy-yellow cover, the teapot with its blue wool cap, cleaned and rinsed, the brown plastic dishrack emptied of its knives and forks and plates. There are still a few crumbs left outside the window from the sparrows.
He sits on the old sofabed in the living room and stares at his ma's pictures of Pope John XXIII and the Sacred Heart hanging on the wall, Jesus with his long, sad, suffering face, left hand pointing to his burning heart, a prayer in the lower margin: “Come to Me, all ye who are heavily burdened and I will give you rest.”
Mrs. O'Malley from next door comes in. “Are you there, Declan, love?” And when she sees him sitting there, his school bag still clutched in his hand, she says, “Oh sweet Jesusâthey killed your ma and the child!” And starts crying and sits beside him and clutches him to her shoulder, weeping hot tears into his hair.
Father Coughlan, the parish priest is next. He tiptoes into the house and makes the sign of the cross and takes Declan's hands
into his own. “God be with you, boy, in your time of trouble.” And he blesses him and tells him he must be strong and does he wish for him to send Mrs. Moloney from the rectory to stay in the house with him for a week or so while he telephones his uncle, Matthew Doyle, in Canada? Declan is staring at the Sacred Heart. He shakes his head. He will be all right; Mrs. O'Malley will be coming in.
When he gets rid of everyone, he locks the door and climbs the stairs. He opens his ma's bedroom door and stands there, just looking. On the wall over the bed is another Sacred Heart picture. Suffering. The room is very empty. Then he goes to Mairead's room which is his own room also, divided in two by a curtain strung up on a pair of wall hooksâthe house, like all the others in the row, has only two bedrooms. The diary he gave her for her birthday is on the hurriedlymade bed. There is a pair of soiled white socks on the floor beside the bed. Her green blazer, part of her school uniform, hangs on the back of a chair. He picks up the diary and stares at the Victorian lady on the cover.