UNLIKE THEIR SOLITARY spot on the sea ledge in Ballyroan, in the city the Wards were just one among many caravans. Tents and horse-drawn wagons lined the riverbank and rose out of ditches as if a new city had been built overnight. As Lily rushed across the busy street in search of Johanna, she remembered that the tinkers came to Galway at Christmas because there was money to be made. There were holy pictures to be hawked to the pious, wreaths and beads sold to the festive, fortunes told to the desperate who had no family, no faith, only a little droplet of hope that 1957 would be better than 1956. As she rushed down the stairs from the bridge, she could see their campfires dotting the banks like torches lighting the way. Few settled people would walk all that way along the river, pass tent after tent, observe the eyes peering out, and not feel the blood drain out of their faces. She tried to see which direction Johanna had gone, and imagined the tinkers looking up to watch as the settled girl came running toward them, waving, her hair flying behind her like a flag.
Later, as the bus approached the crossroads in Conch, Lily was still too angry to speak. Anger at Johanna for running off, for never listening. Frustration with herself for not making clear the dangers of the city before they got there, for not telling them there was a difference between giving the poor crathurs butter and flour and a bit of work and actually going to their camps, trying to make friends. Then she felt panic—what kind of girls were these? So brazen, so fearless. That boy was sound enough, but the way his people had stood outside their stalls and watched them had given her chills. Then she felt a surge of love; thanks be to God nothing had happened to the girls. There they were, swinging their legs in their seats, heads swiveled toward the window so they wouldn't have to look at Lily. Greta was fading; Lily could see it. She had her glasses on, but her eyes were closed. She had her arm looped in Johanna's. Then Lily was angry all over again. Never in a million years would she have dreamed of running off on her own mother.
"Are you going to tell Pop?" Johanna asked once they'd gotten off the bus.
"You think I'd keep a secret from your father?" Lily said.
Johanna shrugged. "You didn't tell him Julia came that day until she died and you had to tell him. You don't tell him half of what you give to the tinkers in town. I saw you push a coin into a woman's hand last year and from the look on her face I'd say it was a big one."
Lily felt her blood rush to her cheeks. With the short winter days, it had been dark for hours. The bus could still be seen in the distance, its electricity-bright inside lighting the fields on either side. Lily reached out and slapped Johanna across the face. She thought about slapping Greta too, but she was afraid she'd break the glasses. Johanna turned away, and Lily slapped her on the side of the head, catching her on the ear. She reached over, got a good grip of the girl's skirt, lifted it, slapped her bare legs. She slapped her and slapped her, the cold night bringing an extra sting to both Johanna's legs and Lily's palm. Greta stood by, sucking her knuckle, gasping back long sobs.
"That's the end of it now," Lily announced finally, and struck out in the dark toward home. Greta rushed up beside her and grabbed her hand. By the time they'd covered the three miles, Lily didn't see any reason to tell Big Tom what had happened.
Winter turned into spring, and with spring came the water bailiff. Big Tom had a routine he did every year where, without warning, he would put his finger over his lips and shush everyone around him. If he was eating, he'd put his fork down and go over to the window. If he was milking, he'd stop mid-pull. In the spring of 1957 he clenched his pipe in his teeth, stomped across the kitchen, and threw open the back door. "Do you hear them?" he demanded, asking Lily and each of his children one by one. Just like every year, they fell for it, if only for a few seconds. His expression was serious, his voice grave. "By God, I can hear them, and my ears are a lot older than yours."
"What is it?" Johanna asked. The boys had already caught on.
"Now, Tom," Lily said, hurrying over to the window. "It's bad enough as it is. I don't think we need a performance."
"Oh," said Johanna, and sat back. "I know."
"Greta," Big Tom said, "close your eyes now, girl, and listen well."
"The hens. Is it?"
"Now that you've got glasses, have you forgotten how to use your ears? What else?"
Greta listened, but couldn't hear anything. Big Tom was grinning, everyone was looking at her. The routine was vaguely familiar, but she couldn't remember the answer. She took off her glasses, and just as she had them folded and safe on her lap, she heard the water bailiff's bicycle coming up the road. She knew it was the bailiff by the loose gear that hung down and clanged against the spokes of his front wheel. The bailiff's arrival signaled only one thing.
"The salmon," Greta said.
"By God, I never lost faith in you, girl," said Big Tom, laying his hand on her head. Greta flushed, felt loved. But still, it was confusing. Mr. Joyce said that the water bailiff was supposed to guard the river against people who would take the fish, but Big Tom looked forward to him every year. It was as if the salmon waited patiently at a starting line way downstream until they heard the bailiff's bicycle, which they understood as the signal to take off. Big Tom and the bailiff were friends—Greta often heard them talking in the field behind the cottage. They'd been in the same primary class. Big Tom often mentioned the nine children the bailiff had at home, and how much it costs to feed such a family, and to mention it so often meant that they must be friends. But then sometimes when they passed on the road they acted as if they didn't know each other at all.
Big Tom and the boys managed the odd catch in the late summer and early autumn, but spring was the real salmon season. According to Lily, there were poets who said that to see the rivers of Connaught in the spring and early summer was to see water turned to silver. On a clear day the fish caught the sun like thousands of mirrors just below the water, and once in a while, out of impatience or determination to get ahead, one would burst out of the water and shoot into the air, arcing against the sky before diving in again. They were so crowded and the water rushed so quickly that sometimes one of the fish would get trapped against a rock and pounded by the impact of the water and its fellow salmon until it died, sometimes slipping back into the water, sometimes left on the rock to dry in the sun and the wind.
Every spring, the water bailiff unlocked the little hut on the bank of the river and swept it out. He set up his wireless, turned the old stool right side up, and got a long stick to knock down the cobwebs. He leaned his shotgun against the wall.
According to Big Tom, the Ballyroan portion of the river was the best. The salmon were drawn to the blackwater pools, deepest where the river ran behind the Cahill cottage. Where the river ran near town was too public. Too public for what, Greta didn't know. For fishing, she supposed. So many people talking and walking around on land would scare the fish away. And maybe where the river ran near town there was no good spot to fish at night, when it was quiet enough to trick the fish. She also wasn't sure why, when Big Tom and Jack discovered someone from Conch fishing in the Ballyroan section of the river one night, they'd come home in a panic and discussed it at the table all night.
"When he says the Ballyroan part of the river," Johanna informed Greta in the spring of 1957, "he means Mr. Grady's part."
Greta took this information and added it to all the other bits she'd collected about water and salmon and fishing and rights. She tried to read Lily, but that made her even more confused. Sometimes Lily seemed dead set against taking fish from the river, but once in a while, usually after supper—when there was nothing to do until bed except talk and Big Tom went on about how it was everyone's river and plenty in it to go around, and no person had the right to own the river no more than they had the right to own the sea or the air—Lily nodded along and made no attempt to stop his talk. Plus, no one was more excited than Lily when Tom and the boys caught a big load. And yet each night when Big Tom fetched the net and the boys readied themselves to leave, she tried to talk them into staying home. She was afraid of something, Greta realized in 1957. It was the first time she knew that her parents could be afraid of things.
In the Grady family, river rights were handed down from generation to generation like the Belleek jug that sat on the Cahills' kitchen mantel. The bailiff's shelter was like a miniature house, so small that if Jack, Little Tom, and Padraic held hands, they could make a circle around it. Just big enough for the bailiff to escape the rain, Big Tom said. The point, after all, was not to be comfortable, but to be on the lookout for poachers. On the nights when the bailiff did not come, Mr. Grady took his shotgun and his electric torch and walked up and down the banks of the river himself. Greta had collected enough information to know that these were the nights when Big Tom and the boys had to be most cautious.
Greta once asked how Mr. Grady expected the bailiff to know what was happening at every point he was supposed to be guarding. No man could see what was happening miles upstream, and in some places the river was very wide.
"It's impossible to know," Johanna said. "That's why they get away with going with the net. And the bailiff is Pop's friend. Don't you remember us delivering to his wife the odd morning?"
"Shut your mouth about the net, girl," Lily said, her eyes wide and serious, her teacup paused between the table and her lips.
In the Cahill house, the punishment for taking salmon from the river without permission was not discussed. Johanna thought it was likely a money fine, and at eleven years old the idea of money had just come into focus. It was one thing, she had recently started to see, to have enough to eat because your own land and animals provided food, but when it came to things that you had to buy in a shop, things you could get only by handing over notes and coins—that was a different story. Greta—who by 1957 had accepted the idea that what her father did with the net at night was not allowed—thought the punishment must be something more severe. "They'll take him away," she speculated as she and Johanna, awake in bed, listened to their father and the boys get ready in the kitchen. "Lock him up. Not just him, but the boys too. They all do the net, not just Pop."
"Who will lock him up? Mr. Grady?"
"Not Mr. Grady. The authorities."
"What authorities? The gardai?"
"I don't know. But it has to be something besides money."
"But isn't money bad enough? Where would they get it?" Johanna lowered her voice. "They don't have any, you know."
Greta considered this. "Maybe it starts with a money punishment; then, when you can't pay, they lock you up."
Johanna turned over this possibility in silence. It was almost midnight. After a few minutes they heard the back door close and Lily moving around the kitchen by herself. It was a cold job, and none of the men bothered with waders. They had a long-established system and worked quickly and quietly. After midnight the four walked through the back field until they reached the river; then they turned and walked upstream to shallow water. Big Tom carried the net. Jack carried the shotgun. Little Tom walked slightly ahead, Padraic slightly behind. Once they reached the shallow stretch, Little Tom and Padraic crossed the river in silence—no splash from their boots, no gasp when the ice-cold water soaked through their pants and touched their skin—and two on one side, two on the other, the four walked downstream. Then, when they reached Big Tom's favorite blackwater pool, Big Tom took hold of one end of the net and threw the other end across. Once the two across the river had hold of the net, they were able to circle the pool of fish, catch them in their beds. Jack's job was to keep his back turned on his father and brothers and stare out into the fields and the dark riverbanks, the shotgun clenched in both hands. Johanna had seen it once. Greta had heard them describe little bits and pieces of the scene so often that she felt she had seen it too.
Greta also wondered if she, Johanna, and Lily would be punished for taking care of the salmon once the men got it back to the house. It was their job to clean and salt the fish. Too much or too little salt and the fish would go rotten; just the right amount and they could last for weeks. Lily always took a few out of each haul and hung them inside the chimney to soak up the smoke of the fire. These were Big Tom's favorites, but to Greta, the chimney fish always tasted of turf.
During the spring, summer, and autumn they ate fish at every meal. Salmon and eggs, salmon and toast, salmon and potatoes, salmon stew, salmon chopped up and mixed with flour and eggs and fried into little cakes. In addition to stuffing themselves full of it, Johanna and Greta also had the job of delivering the salmon in and around town. It was a somber operation—Johanna as the bearer of the fish, Greta as the companion charged to make conversation, keep everything light, swing her arms alongside her sister and appear to the world as two girls out for a walk. Johanna stowed the fish in the bag she used when she went in to sell eggs, and they went only to the houses Lily trusted. There were two bed-and-breakfasts in town, and one small hotel with a restaurant; the girls delivered salmon to these places as well. Jack and Padraic took the horse and cart to deliver to places farther away, places miles down the coast road, where people from England came in the summer and stayed in the single large hotel in the area or the private bungalows that lined the beach. Greta wondered if people could smell the salmon in their hair and their clothes, just as she had smelled earth and animals on the shawl of dead Julia Ward. Big Tom insisted that fresh fish didn't give off any odor, yet their cottage was swollen with the smell, and each night they cleaned little flecks of pink flesh from under their nails and off their jumpers. Lily put fresh wildflowers in every room. She grated orange peels and boiled cloves. They slept with the windows open and took turns watching out for Mr. Grady on the road.
In town, even the people who didn't buy from the Cahills knew what they were up to. Greta heard it in their voices when people said hello, good morning, what a wonderful day for a walk. Most seemed happy to see them, as if she and Johanna were just after playing a big joke and everyone was on the verge of applauding.
"Them eggs have a strange shape to them, Johanna Cahill," Mr. Doherty said with a wink as they passed one day, and then he laughed and laughed as they quickened their pace. "You must have very unusual hens at your place."
"If you're interested in buying these unusual eggs," Johanna shouted back, "speak to my mother."
Greta had also noticed that there were one or two who were not amused to see them, who stood at the half doors of their homes, arms folded, to watch them and see whose house they'd visit next. Mr. Cox, whose wife was sick with a disease that made her tremble so much her daughters had to hold her down during Mass, said quietly one morning as they passed, "Tom Cahill is a thief and will go the way of thieves."
Greta felt her legs go weak and her heart begin to beat very fast. "What did he say?" she whispered to Johanna, though she'd heard perfectly well. Without answering, Johanna took her by the wrist, and they ran the rest of the way.
Big Tom said that if people weren't buying from the Cahills, they were buying from someone else. A few had the courage to go out with their own nets, and to these, Big Tom said, he wished best of luck. No one had access to those blackwater pools like Big Tom. The Cahills had been taking fish from the river since before Big Tom was born, before his father was born, and before his father as well.
Each spring, when the bailiff first knocked on the Cahill door, it sounded to Greta as if he and Big Tom were reading from cards, the way they do at school when they put on a performance. The two men had the same conversation every year.
"Now, John," Big Tom said when the bailiff came to the house in the spring of 1957. "I know what you're after and I'm telling you, you won't find what you're looking for here. It's Grady who has the idea in his head."
"Sure, I know it, Tom. And I also know that river is big and full to the brim. There's enough fish in that river to feed all of Ireland. And how are the boys?"
Big Tom shrugged, reached up to pry something from between his teeth. He clamped his hand on the man's shoulder. "Can I get you anything? A drop of poitin on this cool night?"
John Hogan looked around, and as Greta listened and Johanna watched from the cracked kitchen door, the house seemed to hold its fishy breath.
"I would, if it's in it. Mind you, just a drop now, Tom."
Mr. Grady was another story, and when any of the Cahills saw him coming on the road, they were to tell Big Tom or Lily immediately. If someone in the family was out, whoever was home was to tie a handkerchief on the knob of the front door as a warning. Jack and Padraic could handle themselves, and Mr. Grady never bothered with Little Tom. He liked to get the girls, alone if possible, and there was an often-repeated story about Johanna, at four years old, announcing to Mr. Grady what a fine, big fish her Pop had caught the day before—how if the fish had feet and were to stand up, he'd be almost as tall as herself. Big Tom had had to give up the net for weeks.
Lily tried to keep the girls away from him, but they had to go to school, their chores took them far from the house, and there were plenty of opportunities for Mr. Grady to catch them on their own. Lily accepted this and worked on Greta in particular.
"What did you have for supper last night?" Lily asked. Mr. Grady would never start so bluntly, but it was an exercise. First, Lily warned, he might make conversation about what he ate the day before. He might even mention that salmon were in season.
"Rabbit," Greta said.
"And lunch?"
"Only a piece of brown bread."
"And did I see your father and brothers go out the house late last night? No trouble, I hope?"
"Last night? Sure they were asleep in their beds from eight o'clock on."
"Good girl, only don't blink so much. And don't fidget with your hair. And don't you dare put that knuckle in your mouth when he's talking."
Greta's sight wasn't perfect, but it had improved tremendously. After only a few weeks she'd stopped feeling nauseous. She'd even stopped putting her hands to her face every few seconds. Despite her improved eyesight, Lily knew that people still saw something wrong with Greta, as if they'd decided something about her so long ago that a change as simple as glasses could do nothing to alter that opinion. The old goosi-ness had not disappeared. At nine, Greta walked and sat and listened the way she always had, out of habit. The heavy black-rimmed glasses added a kind of last stroke, a final ingredient to the whole concoction. People thought she was slow, simple, and Lily knew this was why, out of all of them, Mr. Grady would want to put his questions to her; like most people, he thought Greta was too innocent to lie.
One morning in late spring, just after dawn, Mr. Grady surprised Greta as she was walking from the henhouse back to the cottage. He came up behind her and wished her good morning. He smiled as she looked around, confused about where he'd emerged from. Coming up behind her that way meant he would have walked through the fields, waded through the stream, marched through the soft and muddy ground between his place and theirs. She looked down at his wellies, which were splattered with fresh mud. He was a small man, not nearly the size of her father, and his shadow barely outstretched hers. The brim of his cap was pulled so low that all Greta could see of his pale face was the ginger-colored stubble on his cheeks and throat.
"Did I scare you, Greta?" he asked, stepping in front of her so she had to stop walking.
"No, Mr. Grady. Fine day." She took a few steps to her left, pretending to look at something on the ground. She hoped her mother would glance out the window and see them there. Lily and Johanna were inside, draining the brine, removing the bones that came away easily and piling them in the pot to save for boiling. "What brings you down our way?" she asked. On several occasions Greta could recall, and even more that she couldn't recall but had heard recounted, he'd been angry enough to walk straight down the Cahills' lane and knock on their front door. He'd shouted at Big Tom, demanded payment for use of his property and for taking away business that rightfully belonged to him, but as far as Greta knew, he'd never sneaked through the fields and popped up in their yard with a smirk like the cat who got the cream.
"Where's your father?"
"Him and the boys went to the crossroads to meet Mr. Devine's bull." They'd filed off that morning with two young cows that had never calved. Greta knew that they would wait by one of the abandoned cottages until Mr. Devine arrived and Big Tom gave him money for his bull to hop up on the cows' backs. Greta also knew that sometimes they had to wait a long time for the bull to be ready to hop up a second time. Lily had sent her and Johanna to give him a message once, and they arrived as the bull was beginning to twitch and pace. Just as the bull leaped and the cow staggered forward, Big Tom had roared at them to go away. "You know what they were doing, don't you?" Johanna had crowed as they raced home.
"And your mother is inside?" Mr. Grady asked.
"Yes."
"And Johanna?"
"Inside as well. Well, now that I think of it, they might have gone around front. My mother wanted to have a look at the whitewash. There's mud up to the eaves. Will we walk around front and I'll get her for you?"
Greta took a few steps toward the front of the cottage, but Mr. Grady stayed put.
"Is it chores they're doing inside?"
"It is, of course. Pop and the boys will be back soon."
"And what kind of work could they be doing that they'd need to pull the curtains?"
Greta glanced over and saw that the curtains in the kitchen and the back room had been pulled since Mr. Grady had come into the yard. Greta smiled. "Now, Mr. Grady, why don't we go around front and I'll get Mother."
"No, Greta. I think we'll walk to the back door and you'll tell her I'm here to see her about something." His pale face had become flushed. His voice lost its cheerful, gloating tones and sounded like a chord pulled too tight.
"Will you wait here while I get her?" Greta lowered her voice and in a volume barely above a whisper said, "She might not be dressed."
As Mr. Grady looked at her, Greta fought the urge to push her glasses higher on her nose. She realized that she was chewing her lower lip, and she stopped. She smoothed her skirt. She concentrated on staying perfectly still. "She wasn't feeling well yesterday, and she'd be very cross if I—"
"Go, then," said Mr. Grady. "I'll wait here."
Greta walked across the yard as if someone else were in charge of her limbs. She glanced around, as if observing different things in the yard, a casual task, off to fetch her mother. When she reached the back door, she pushed it open halfway, then slipped inside.
"What does he want?" Lily asked. She was standing behind the door. Johanna was sitting on the stool.
"To talk to you."
"How does he seem?"
"Different," Greta said. "Something..."
"Christ," Lily said. She took off her apron, smoothed back her hair. "Stay here," she said to the girls.
"Why didn't ye hide everything?" Greta asked once Lily had left. She waved her hand over the rows of salmon, mounds of rock salt, piles of bones, scales, heads, and tails covering every surface.
"I don't know," Johanna said, throwing up her hands. "I told her. 'Into the drawers,' I said, and made off with a tray, but she was just like a statue watching out the window. I asked her what will we do, and she didn't answer. I pulled the curtains myself. I don't think she would have done it."
"The drawers are full up already. That might be why she got funny. Under the beds would be better—just until he went."
Observing through the slice of space between the curtains, the girls watched their mother walk across the yard and give Mr. Grady a big smile. She patted his arm. She pointed out something in the henhouse behind him. He didn't turn to look, and at one point, as he was speaking, he looked so cross that Johanna wondered aloud whether he was going to spit, and if he did, what their mother would do. Greta heard her mother's soft, calming tones ride gently over his angry ones. It was her shushing voice, the one she used whenever she held a baby. Mr. Grady wasn't having it, and after a few minutes he pointed at Lily, his finger so close to her face that if she nodded, he would have touched her nose. Even after she turned away and walked back to the house, he stood there staring at the back door, as if deciding whether to push his way inside.
Johanna gave up her stool when Lily came back in, and the three of them were silent as they waited for Mr. Grady to leave. Johanna watched at the window while Greta sidled up closer to Lily and threaded her fingers in her mother's thick hair.
"He's gone," Johanna announced finally. "He just turned up the coast road."
Upon hearing the word, Lily dropped her shoulders and let out a long breath, as if she'd been holding it the whole time she'd been talking to Mr. Grady. She inhaled deeply, then let it go again.
"Now," she said after she'd collected herself. "No sense getting your father with all the work he has to do. You two finish up here."
"Are we still going to town, myself and Greta, with the ones that are ready?" Johanna asked. "Every house along the north road is expecting us."
"No. Today I'll bring them myself."
The boys and Big Tom did not return for their midday meal, and if Lily had not predicted that this might happen, Greta would have worried that Mr. Grady had taken his angry face and his pointing finger down to the crossroads. Unlike Lily, Big Tom would not have used his soothing voice. The boys would have taken places beside Big Tom, arms folded, as Mr. Grady's red face went scarlet.
"How much are the salmon worth?" Greta asked Johanna some time after Lily left. Johanna was fixing the hem on one of Lily's skirts. After stowing the new fish in the places left vacant by the ones Lily had brought to town, they'd parted the curtains and opened the windows, letting in the flies and the gnats along with the fresh air. They never handled money when they delivered the fish in town; Lily took care of all of that separately.
"Enough," Johanna said, rooting through Lily's box of thread to find the closest match.
"What do you mean?"
"Enough is what I mean. Enough to have to take them from the river in secret and sell them in secret, so what do you think? Enough to make Mr. Grady look like he was going to blow steam out of his ears."
"But maybe he just doesn't like Pop."
"Well, he doesn't like Pop, but don't you know the bailiff keeps a shotgun that Mr. Grady gave him? And on the nights when he doesn't come, Mr. Grady walks up and down the river himself with it?"
"To shoot someone?"
"Greta, it's time you copped on, don't you think?"
"That's what I'm trying to do, Johanna. And Jack takes a shotgun too, doesn't he? And we know he's not going to shoot anyone."
Johanna rolled her eyes.
"You don't know either. Why don't you just say you don't know, instead of pretending all the time that you know everything."
"I know that this is the way it is. Always has been. Always will be."
"So, is going with the net the same as if Pop and the boys went over to Mr. Grady's house and busted in the door and took his money and whatever they could put their hands to and then went and sold his things in town?"
Johanna pulled the needle through the fabric, pulled it up, up, up over her head as far as she could reach. Then she leaned forward as if she were giving it a kiss and snapped the thread with her teeth. She tied off the stitch, smoothed the edge of the skirt across her lap.
"Well?" Greta asked.
"I'm not talking to you," Johanna said.
Since walking away from Mr. Grady in the yard, Lily had felt a tremor in her body that she couldn't manage to still. Her hands shook, her knees shook, her heart felt out of rhythm. Twice on the way to town she'd had to stop pedaling the bicycle so she could get a better grip on the handlebars. One of those times she'd been tempted to walk down to the ocean, unwrap the dead fish from their brown paper packaging, and throw them all into the Atlantic. She pedaled fast through the crossroads without even lifting her hand to her sons when they shouted hello. She'd been pleasant to the man, but in return he'd pointed his finger in her face and raised his voice. A man who does that to a woman, to a neighbor, to a person he knows full well he'll have to pass in the road for the rest of his life, doesn't care anymore, and this thought made Lily breathless. When she looked at him, she'd seen hate, and she also saw that his hate had been handed down to him alongside the river. His father had hated Big Tom's father, and his grandfather had hated Big Tom's grandfather, and while she was seeing all of this, she also pictured Johanna and Greta looking out the window at her to watch what she would do.
That night, Lily waited until the house was asleep to tell Big Tom that Mr. Grady had been to visit and that he'd been more angry than she'd ever seen him. The girls had been buzzing around Big Tom all evening, looking at him, looking at Lily, asking with their expressions whether he knew. Lily ignored them. It was better to wait and get him alone, in private, in their bedroom. It was an off night, and when Big Tom said he planned on getting a big sleep, he meant it. He refused to open his eyes.
"And?" he said.
This, Lily thought, is the man I married. Ten pregnancies, five children mostly grown.
"And he got Greta."
At this Tom opened his eyes and turned toward Lily. "And?" he said.
"Stop saying and. Greta was brilliant, no worries there, but he told me he knows all about the hotel and the B and B's. Private houses are bad enough, but he said the other business went over the line. And he said that when the county official came to pay him for what they take upstream, he was told the stock was low. He said it was like stealing money from his pocket."
Big Tom grunted.
"He's serious, Tom. He's had it."
"Well, I've had it as well. Did he ever think of that?"
Lily kicked off the covers and sat up. Tom saw things in black or white, always had, but there had to be a way to explain to him that feeling she had when Grady's face was in front of her. She'd grown up in Ballyroan just as Tom had. She knew it was no sin to take food from the river God gave them. Even before she and Tom married, her family took the fish the Cahills gave to them and were grateful to have it. But there was a difference between her and Tom; Lily was scared, and Tom didn't know what it meant to be afraid of anything. And the situation in Ballyroan wasn't the same as it had been when Lily and Tom were children and there were enough people around to protect and defend the Cahills. Lily had never missed having neighbors as much as she had that afternoon when Johanna first spotted Grady in the yard.
"He's in the right, Tom," Lily said. "It's time to stop now, before this gets any worse. He'll do like the man in Clifden who started getting water bailiffs from the north or from some other part, paying their whole wage himself and giving rewards for what they can discover at night, and then where will you be? The system he has now is a fool's system, and he knows it. Someone from Conch will turn in Tom Cahill? After shaking your hand in town for the past forty years? It's a laugh, actually. And he's through."
"I'm through as well."
"Jesus, Tom—" Lily stopped, reversed, began again more calmly. "We could make up the loss somehow, couldn't we? What if we sold a piece of land? We hardly use that back-road field Gibbons sold you before they left, and it's hard to get to."
Big Tom was quiet for so long that Lily began to feel a nugget of relief crack open in her chest and spread along her limbs.
"Sell it to who?" Big Tom said finally.
"Well, I don't know. We'd have to figure that out."
"Lily, sometimes I wonder about you. Gibbons gave me that field for less than we make selling eggs in one month. Who would take it except for me? Useless, rocky land—it's a wonder the cows haven't starved. We need that river, do you understand? We need what that river brings in."
"Well then," Lily said, "look at those Dennehy boys who went off to Germany to work in a pottery and how well they're doing. Or the boys could do half years in Manchester, back and forth. It's not the same as going to America, where we'd never see them again. You don't need all three of them here. They could take turns coming and going." Lily paused, let her eyes follow the slight crack in their bedroom ceiling where it ran from the top of the window to the door. She took a breath. "You're forgetting that it's his right. It's his river, his fish."
"No, Lily. You're the one who's forgetting."
The next afternoon, the loose gear on John Hogan's bicycle clanged like an alarm as he sped along the coast road, then turned down the Cahills' lane. Lily and Big Tom had headed off together earlier in the afternoon to settle up accounts, Lily hoping to mark an early end to the season, Tom seeing it only as a routine collection of payment and orders. John Hogan hopped off the bicycle before it came to a complete stop and took a few fast skips alongside before abandoning it to the dirt. Looking left and right, he rushed to the Cahills' door and pounded.
Inside, sitting with legs crossed and facing each other on their bed, Greta and Johanna froze their game of fidchell. They pushed the small board under one pillow and swept the empty spools they used for players under the other pillow.
He waited, pounded again. "It's John Hogan."
"Will we answer?" Greta whispered. This was unexpected. Before leaving, Lily had told them to stay inside and if Mr. Grady came back, to ignore him and keep the doors locked tight. No one said anything about the bailiff.
Johanna put her finger over her lips and shook her head. Like the night months before, when they went spying on the tinker camp, Greta fought the urge to pee.
Outside, the bailiff gave up and circled around to the back of the house. He pounded on the back door, and the sound, that much closer than the front door, made Greta jump and clap her hand over her mouth.
"Will he bust through the door?" Greta asked. Johanna shook her head more vehemently than the first time and scowled, as if commanding Greta to stop asking questions.
The pounding stopped. The girls heard footsteps crunching the gravel at the side of the house. John Hogan poked his head into the stable. He whistled into the hay shed, squinting in the shadowy darkness. There, he spotted the three boys, fast asleep and half buried in hay.
"Lads!" he shouted, taking hold of Padraic's boot and giving it a shake. "Where's Big Tom?"
The boys, groggy, stared at him for a moment and then sprang into action, Jack and Little Tom tumbling down from the highest mounds of hay and landing on their feet. No one answered the man.
"Fair enough," John Hogan said. "But pass him this message. I've been let go. Grady's got two men from Roscommon coming to take positions along the river, starting tonight. Former guards, both of them. No ties to Conch or to Ballyroan, you understand? You tell your father from me. Tell him to think hard on it, and I'll say the same to the three of you as well."
Big Tom and the boys stayed away from the river for two weeks. Big Tom was like a thunderstorm trapped inside the small cottage, stomping around in his heavy boots, his expression a dark cloud the rest of the family stayed away from. Lily restrained herself from pointing out that her prediction had come true, that the fool's system had been put to bed. In the evenings Big Tom stood at the gate and watched for the two strangers from Roscommon to pass his door. He never laid eyes on them, and after a few days he concluded that they must be getting lodging from Grady as well. This made him even more angry.
The boys, on the other hand, were delighted. Instead of sleeping, they took their pipes to the shed and talked away the long daylight hours left after coming in from the fields. Twice they walked to the crossroads and caught the van to Oughterard, where the local parish hosted dances on Friday nights in the month of June. They stumbled home at two and three in the morning, complaining of the van's many stops but also keyed up over the girls they'd met, who'd danced with whom, who'd seen the culprit who spiked the punch, who'd witnessed the bloody fight that rolled into the cemetery. They clammed up when Greta came around, and more so when Johanna came, because she demanded details of the girls' outfits, hairstyles, the music that was played, the names of songs, the order of the songs, and so on. She begged to go with them next time, and they swore they'd never bring her.
On the first of July, Big Tom decided enough was enough. The day was overcast, and the night would be the same. "There will be no moon tonight," he said to Lily at supper, and the boys exchanged looks. "It'll be black as tar out there, and I know the fields and the riverbank like I know the rooms of this house. So do the boys."
"And so does Grady, and knows you'll be looking for a black night like this one," Lily said.
"Grady knows this land as well as I do? My eye. I hear that river flowing all day and all night. The river on one side, the ocean on the other. East and west. And every rock that lies between."
"And can Grady not hear the water from his place?" Lily asked. Big Tom glared at her. After dinner he went as he always did on river nights to lie down for a few hours.
Also as always, he told one of the boys to wake him just before midnight. "We'll do it a little different tonight," he said before leaving the kitchen. "We don't need three on the net. If we have to, we'll take a smaller catch. Padraic, you take the second shotgun and go wide with Jack. Make sure you clean it, and clean it well. Little Tom is the strongest, and the two of us will handle the net."
The boys nodded, taking the change in stride. Lily had gone quiet and was holding on to the arms of her chair. Greta looked at Johanna and saw that she'd noticed too. Lily stared blankly at her husband, then at her boys. Then her gaze ambled across the room and rested on Greta and Johanna. She jumped into action, standing so abruptly that her chair hopped backward. She rushed across the kitchen. "Out!" she shouted at the girls. "To bed!" She followed them into their room, and for the first time in years she helped them out of their clothes, yanked off their shoes. She plucked Greta's glasses from her face and pulled her sweater roughly over her head.
"It's only gone half eight," Johanna protested. "It's still bright out."
"You're hurting my ears!" Greta cried as Lily pulled and pulled, Greta's head caught in the head opening.
"I'm sorry, love," Lily said. She tugged gently, and the sweater gave way. She tucked them in and had to lie half on top of Johanna to reach Greta for a kiss. After kisses she sat at the edge of their bed, and the girls pretended to fall asleep. With her eyes closed and Johanna's warm breath brushing against the back of her neck, Greta let out a long yawn.
When all three heard Big Tom's snores come from the other side of the wall, Lily left them.
At a quarter to twelve Little Tom opened the door to his parents' bedroom. When the light from the lantern didn't wake his father, he went and touched his shoulder. Lily was in the kitchen making tea.
After dressing, Big Tom joined the boys in the kitchen. The curtains were pulled tight, and the room was lit by a single lamp, the wick lowered as far as it could go without the flame going out. If Lily had her way, they'd get ready in the dark, but no, Big Tom would never agree. Lily put a steaming mug in front of him, and he slurped it down. The two shotguns waited side by side at the back door. At midnight Big Tom fetched the net from its hiding place and told the boys to shake a leg. Lily stepped outside the back door and was relieved to find the sky as inky black as Tom had predicted. The night was warm, and the air was very still.
"There'll be a big rain later," she said as they brushed by her. The boys kissed her cheek one by one.
"Don't wait up," Jack said.
"We'll be back in an hour," Padraic said.
Jack walked about twenty feet ahead, Padraic twenty feet behind. As they disappeared into the darkened field, Lily watched Padraic look left, look right, pointing the shotgun in whichever direction he was facing. He'll make himself dizzy, she thought, and was tempted to call out to him. When she looked again, he was gone. She went back inside, blew out the lantern, and lit a single small candle. She placed the candle on the floor in the corner farthest from the window.
At a quarter past, Lily heard the girls talking in their bed. At twelve-thirty she heard their bare feet slide along the worn wood planks of the hall floor. She listened to the kitchen door creak open, inch by inch.
"Don't tell me you're both up."
"Couldn't sleep," Johanna announced, pushing the door open all the way and flopping down in Big Tom's chair. Greta sat in front of the cold fireplace. She almost asked if they could build a fire, but then she remembered.
At one A.M. Lily went to stand watch at the back door.
At one-fifteen she walked out into the yard as far as the hay shed and peered out into the empty darkness. After a few minutes she pressed forward, walking past the stable to the wall that marked the boundary of their first field. She saw a light in the corner of her eye and turned to find the lantern she'd snuffed out an hour earlier bobbing toward her. When the girls reached her, she snatched the lantern away and gave them each a pinch. "I could kill you both," she said, but instead of extinguishing the flame, she put the lantern on the ground and pulled the girls close. She decided to give Big Tom and the boys another fifteen minutes, and if they weren't back, she was going to take that lantern and march straight down to the river. She'd yell for them if she had to. She'd have the girls yell too. Damn them to hell anyway. She'd call the gardai if she had to. She'd wake all of Conch.
If they'd been caught, Greta reasoned, the gardai would have made a racket dragging them away. There would have been shouts. They'd have heard Mr. Grady's voice cut through the dense night air. Big Tom would never go silently; he would have cursed and sworn, and the boys would have done the same.
"What in the world is keeping them?" Lily whispered.
Then all three heard a pair of thunderous cracks, one call and one answer, and the night was split in two.
Years later, Greta would still not know whether she actually remembered the second half of the night or if she'd merely visualized what she'd been told. The picture she pieced together looked as if it belonged inside one of those toys she'd once seen in Norton's shop. While Lily was shopping, she'd picked up the toy, looked through a peephole, and seen what looked like fragments of a stained glass window, and when she turned the dial, all the colors and shapes collapsed and came together again, collapsed and came together, constantly turning into something else.
The two blasts were soon followed by real thunder and rain so heavy it pressed down the nettles and the long grass. Big Tom was dead. That was the first thing that soaked in, though Greta would never be able to recall the moment she knew, if she'd still been standing out by the wall or if she'd made it back home with Johanna before realizing what had happened. Sometimes she remembered Lily telling her in the kitchen. Sometimes she remembered listening on the other side of the kitchen door as the boys recounted the story for Lily. Sometimes she was sure that no one ever told her; she simply knew.
It was a funny thing, in a way, with all the shotguns that had been present that night—Jack's, Padraic's, and those of the two strangers—Big Tom had drowned in his own river. Grazed by a shot meant only to scare him, he stumbled and fell. The rush of the water carried him for about thirty feet, until his head became wedged between two rocks. Unaware that their father was in trouble, one of the boys—which one was a secret they decided not to tell—fired back at the strangers but missed, instead finding the chest of Mr. Grady, who was observing the capture of the poachers from a few yards away. In the spot where Big Tom died, the water was two feet deep.
The boys carried him home, laid him on his bed, pulled off his shirt, loosened his belt, touched and retouched his face with the backs of their hands. And this Greta was sure she remembered firsthand: when they pulled off his boots the river poured out and ran to every corner of the room.