Declan and Joe stood on the clam shell beach near the mouth of the river. Behind them, houses of weathered cedar straggled in random array along the river bench. Smoked and dried salmon hung on racks under orange tarpaulin shelters. Behind Joe’s village, snowcapped mountains reared high above the dark line of fir and spruce.
Joe pointed toward the river mouth where it emptied into the sea. “Do you see? The far side of the sandbar.”
Declan looked. He saw a ridge of rocks near the far shore, but that was all.
Joe laughed. “You will see when we get closer. Get in.” He waited until Declan was kneeling in the front of the canoe, then he pushed off and leaped in. “Grab your paddle.”
The current was weak. They paddled past the sandbar to the middle of the river where the current grew stronger and stronger until the canoe was moving swiftly toward the river mouth. Joe steered in the direction of the rocks.
Declan stared ahead, his heart racing with excitement. Now he could see it, a narrow corridor of white water boiling through two walls of rock. Declan swore silently. He was a fool to have listened to Joe. They would never make it through that narrow channel in a canoe! The frail craft would break into a thousand pieces, and they would be thrown into the churning river and hurled against the sharp black rocks.
They moved closer. “Paddle!” Joe screamed over the roar of the torrent. Declan paddled. The nose of the canoe swung straight. They were in the dark corridor. The canoe leaped and bucked in the frothing foam like a frightened horse. Declan was terrified. The walls of rock on both sides were but inches away. He could see daylight ahead where the rock walls ended, but they would never make it. Joe was screaming something, but Declan, deafened by the roar of the river, soaked by the spray, and certain he was about to die, could think only of his drowned, battered body being swept out to sea, never to be found.
The front of the canoe lurched up, then down, scraped the side of the rock, lurched again, and catapulted out of the foaming crevice into the wide river mouth. They were through! The noise was behind them now. The canoe slowed as the river joined with the sea.
Declan turned. Joe was laughing. “Wasn’t that . . . wasn’t that . . . wild!”
Declan could not speak. His heart was like a drum in his chest.
Joe let out a whoop of joy.
They turned and paddled back in the slow-moving current near the village shore. Ana had an important part in the school Christmas play.
“Last year we did ‘Scrooge,’” she said to them all one evening.
“You were the Ghost of Christmas Past,” said Kate. “I helped Ana make the costume,” she explained to Declan.
Ana said, “This year we’re doing ‘Amahl and the Night Visitors.’”
“Ah, yes, the story of the little crippled boy,” said Kate. “We saw it in Dublin one time, remember, Matthew? The year Mountbatten was killed by a bomb, and his young grandson, and another boy?”
Matthew looked up from his book. “Nineteen-seventy-nine. The same year we saw the Pope. The first time a Pope ever visited Ireland.”
“Ah, the Pope was lovely,” said Kate with a sigh. “I’ll never forget him. ‘On my knees I beg of you to turn away from the paths of violence,’ he said.”
Matthew frowned. “In those words?”
“Those very words,” said Kate. She turned to Declan. “A third of Ireland’s population went to see him in Dublin at Phoenix Park. Ah! The excitement! We saw him again in Drogheda, and followed him to Galway. The Galway racetrack, of all places! Matthew and I shivering in our sleeping bags all Saturday night behind the paddock. Then Sunday morning, you never saw so many people in one place in all your life! And the fine day for it. Your ma couldn’t come because of the baby.” She laughed. “You, Declan! You were that baby! It was almost October, and you only the month old. Ah! The lovely baby you were!” To Matthew, she said, “I can’t believe it’s thirteen years gone since! But it was all lovely, every bit . . . “
“Kate!” said Ana impatiently.
“We’re ready, child. Aren’t we all waiting for ye?” She appealed to Matthew and Declan, who grinned, but said nothing.
“It’s an opera in one act,” said Ana, as she gave them each a copy of the libretto. “I have the part of the mother. It’s a big part. So I need . . . “
“It’s lovely you getting the part of the mother,” said Kate, “but I’m not surprised one bit; you sing like a nightingale, doesn’t she, Matthew, doesn’t Ana sing like a nightingale?”
“ . . . I need . . . “ said Ana.
“She does, right enough,” agreed Matthew, nodding.
“I need you all to help me learn it. Declan, you are the crippled boy. Your name is Amahl. You hop about on a crutch. Matthew, you’re Melchior, one of the wise kings—would you please put your book away? Kate, you’re the second wise king, Balthazar—could you please stop thinking about the Pope? Thomas, you’re the third wise king. Your name is Kaspar and you’re quite deaf, so mostly you sing ‘Eh?’ whenever anyone sings anything to you. Don’t worry; I’ll give you a sign.”
Thomas looked confused. While Ana went on giving instructions to Matthew and Declan, Kate took Thomas aside and patiently explained to him what he was expected to do. When she was finished, Thomas was grinning happily. “Eh! Eh! Eh!” he said.
“Not yet, Thomas,” said Ana. “Ready everyone? Now don’t forget to sing your part when it comes your turn. Don’t worry about how it sounds.”
“Who sings the parts of the shepherds who watch their flocks by night?” asked Declan who had been looking ahead in his libretto.
“Mr. Hetherington has a special chorus of shepherds, but we could all do it together,” said Ana.
Kate played the piano. They began unsteadily, amid much laughter, but once over the first couple of pages, became caught up in the story. Whenever there was the slightest pause in the singing Thomas rushed in with his “Eh? Eh? Eh?” Which added to the noisy confusion.
Kate had a good voice, and sang confidently as she led on the piano.
Matthew sounded like a foghorn.
Declan was not altogether sure he liked being a crippled boy.
Finally, they reached the end of the opera. Amahl left his home to join the three wise kings on their journey to the Christ Child in Bethlehem and they all sang together the shepherds’ hymn of peace.
Kate said, “Ah! That was lovely, so it was.”
Ana gave orders for a regular practice every evening after dinner.
Matthew had scavenged a child’s discarded swimming pool for Harper’s swimming needs, but the pup had come along so well after several weeks of fish shakes that Matthew thought he might now be ready to return to the sea.
“He doesn’t look quite ready to me,” said Ana. “What do you say, Declan?” She smiled her slightly tilted smile and gave him a wink.
Declan shook his head at Matthew. “Needs another week or two, I’d say.” He knew how attached Ana had become to the pup, and if he were honest, he would have to admit he was now fond of him too; Harper had become a pet, splashing his tail and flippers in the water, and barking with excitement whenever he saw them coming to play with him.
Matthew said, “You think so? Then it might be a good idea to feed him some live fish.”
Ana agreed. “Then he’ll know what to eat when he goes back home to the sea. Good idea, Matthew.”
So Harper stayed with them a while longer, his fish shakes now supplemented with live herring from the bait tanks at Pender. Ana could not bear to feed the live fish to Harper, so Declan had to do it while she watched. “What a pity one animal must die so another can live,” she said. “God sure created a strange world.”
“You’re right, Ana. None of it makes sense. Sometimes I think God is crazy.”
Ana said, “Bite your tongue!”
“No worse than you saying He’s strange!”
“I didn’t say God is strange. All I meant was, who says a seal is more important than a herring? Huh? They’re both animals, they’re both alive, right? Look at the way we kill and eat animals! Who says a human is more important than a pig or a calf or a lamb?”
Harper gobbled the herrings enthusiastically one after another, his shiny nose and whiskers reaching for the next even before the last had been swallowed.
“Well, Harper has no worries about the question,” said Declan, emptying the last of the bucket into the happy pup’s wide open mouth.
Whenever Ana had to stay at school and rehearse for the school play, Kate asked Declan if he wouldn’t mind staying to walk Ana home along the dark road.
Ana wanted to take his arm. “Makes me feel like a real sister,” she explained.
“You’re not my sister, Ana. You’re not even my cousin.” He kept his arm straight so she couldn’t hold on to it.
Ana was quiet for a while, then she recovered and chattered about some of the funny rehearsal mistakes: John Basinger, who played the part of the page and whose duty it was to carry the train of each of the wise kings as they entered Amahl’s humble cottage, had pulled too hard on Kaspar’s train, and Kent Niamin, who played the part of Kaspar and whose mother’s heavy brocade curtain material was pinned uncertainly around his thin hips, was left standing in his Jockey shorts.
Declan laughed.
“You must have been totally bored watching us all make fools of ourselves,” said Ana.
“I liked watching you,” Declan admitted.
“All those shepherds falling over one another. The script just says ‘shepherds’ without saying how many. Mr. Hetherington put in two whole classes of kids from grades four and five so he could get more people involved. What a scream. But they sound good, don’t they, the shepherds?”
Declan had liked the shepherds. “I liked the shepherds.”
“And you liked me too?”
He had hardly taken his eyes off her. “I liked you the best.”
“Thanks.”
Then Declan asked Ana what she wanted to be.
“When I grow up, you mean? I haven’t thought about it too much. But working with animals would be interesting; a vet maybe?”
They walked along in silence. Then Ana said, “I’m afraid to ask you the same question, Declan.”
“Why?” But he knew what she was thinking.
“I’m just afraid you’ll start on again about joining the IRA and setting Ireland free from the English and all that stuff . . . “
“It’s not stuff!”
“Okay, sorry, but I can’t stand it. I don’t want to think of you being killed before your life really starts. My heart goes cold.”
Declan was silent. She sounded a lot like Mairead sometimes. He took her hand. It was like ice.
Another evening, after rehearsal.
“You’re very gloomy and silent. What is it? Didn’t you like the way the rehearsal went?”
“It isn’t that,” said Ana.
“What, then?”
“I was just thinking.”
Silence.
“I was thinking that I wish you weren’t leaving us. I really do.”