ON A CLEAR OCTOBER morning in 1963 Lily and Little Tom stood apart on the crowded pier in Galway City as they waved goodbye. There was no dock in Galway for so huge a ship, so the small packet boat made trip after trip carrying luggage and passengers in groups of a dozen. It made for a long goodbye, the ship anchored out in the ocean, the figures on board too far away to recognize but close enough for their mothers and brothers and wives to keep trying. Michael Ward had been one of the first to go over, earning part of his way by unloading the luggage and delivering it to first-class cabins. Johanna and Greta were in one of the last groups, the cash from the sale of the bull in pockets Lily had sewn onto the underside of their skirts.
Johanna had surprised all of them by crying through supper the day before, and she was still sniffling, Lily could see, as the packet moved its passengers away from the pier. Greta hadn't eaten a thing and had spent the night before vomiting into a basin while Lily rubbed her back. "If you hate it," Lily promised the girl, "you can just come home." Greta promised she would hate it, and why go to the bother of going all the way to America just to come back again and be short one bull? And why couldn't she and Johanna just get jobs in Conch? And so what if there were no jobs in Conch? Couldn't they take the bus to Galway and get jobs there? How could there be no jobs in Galway either? It wasn't possible. But Lily had already decided that the girl would go with her sister, would see a new place, would meet people from all over the world and earn some money for herself. It was like Sister Michaela said that time she cycled all the way to Ballyroan to see for herself whether Greta was ready for school: it was time. She'd given the girl no choice.
As the small boat drifted farther away, Lily could tell that Greta had already lost sight of her. She watched her youngest scan the crowd, the water, her face screwed up as if she'd tasted something sour. She and Johanna were pressed together on the narrow bench seat, Johanna with one hand holding tight to the leather strap of their shared case, the other hand squeezing Greta's, telling her it was fine, if she needed to lean over the side and vomit, then do it, the wake of the boat would carry it away, and no one knew them anyway. It's cruel to send that child, Lily thought. It's heartless of me to make her go. But then next to her guilt over making Greta go was the danger she felt at the idea of sending Johanna without her sister. She watched Greta clutch her stomach and heave and Johanna reach over to stop her from leaning too far over the side. It'll be just like that in New York, Lily thought. They'll be there to pull each other back, speak the language of home.
In their suitcase, thanks to Lily, they had each packed three clean skirts, three blouses, a sweater each, knitted by Lily, underwear, socks, toothbrushes, two clean cotton washcloths, a bar of soap, a single hairbrush to share, a new package of bobby pins. Johanna hadn't wanted to bring anything at all, claiming she'd wear the clothes on her back and start from scratch once she got to America. Greta, at the moment Lily intervened, was headed in the opposite direction and had every single thing she owned stacked in piles at the foot of the bed. Ready for transfer to the case were every old and yellowed gansy, every threadbare pair of underpants, even the old cardigan she wore for milking. After Lily decided on what they absolutely needed, she let them each bring something extra. Johanna's choice: a road map of the United States she'd bought in Galway. Greta: the contents of the old cookie tin she kept under her bed, dumped into an old pillowcase and tied off at the top.
As the packet reached the halfway point between the pier and the ship, Lily could just make out Greta's dark head bobbing with the rhythm of the tide, Johanna moving slightly away on the bench and looking up at the sky. Through the crowd, she saw Little Tom shake his head and then look over at her.
An hour later Lily and Little Tom made their way through the narrow cobblestoned streets back to the bus station, Lily dreading their return to the silent cottage, recalling the chaos of a short time ago, the comings and goings of a full house and herself giving out about tracked mud, Little Tom wondering whether he'd like sleeping in his sisters' room and whether his own room could simply be hacked off from the rest of the cottage, broken up into pieces, and heaved into the ocean. The cottage was sinking in that corner, and maybe taking off that room would free the rest of the rooms from the deadweight.
They were on top of him before they noticed him, Lily's chest square against the pony's flank, the man making a wet, clicking sound with his mouth as he led the animal out of her way.
"Pardon, Missus," the man said, pulling his hat down over his face and plowing shoulders-first into the crowded byway, the pony walking behind him. From the window of the bus a short time later they saw him again, this time playing his fiddle down by the river, his hat turned skyward like a hand held out palm up. There were no tents down by the river, no wagons either, and Lily remembered that it was October and he should be at the horse fair in Ballinasloe.
"He didn't see us," Lily said to Tom, who was seated across the aisle. "He wouldn't know us, anyhow."
And down by the place where the fresh water of the river rushed up unseen against the salt water of the harbor, Dermot Ward leaned against a bench and ran through every song he could think of about the men of myths, the women who mourned them. Finally, his elbow screaming, his neck aching, his shoulder crying to be let loose, he exhausted himself enough to face the songs he'd gone down to the river to sing in the first place, the old, beaten ballads about leaving for America.