"Eventualities. A good woman can look far down the line and smell what's coming before a man even gets a sniff of it."
He shines the light along the strand to find our footprints and follow them back, but the only prints he can find are mine. "You must have carried me there," he says.
I laugh at the thought of my carrying him, at the impossibility, then realize that it was a joke, and I got it.
When the moon comes out again, he turns the lamp off and we easily find the path we took through the dunes. We stop at the top and he puts my shoes back on and then his own and knots the laces. We turn and look at the water.
"See, there's three lights there now, where there was only two before."
I look out across the sea. There, the two lights are still blinking, but with another, steady light, shining in between.
"Can you see it?" he says.
"I can," I say. "It's there."
And that is when he puts his arms around me and gathers me into them as though I were his.
After a week of rain, on a Thursday, the letter comes. It is not so much a surprise as a shock. Already I have seen the signs: the shampoo for head lice in the chemist's shop, the fine-tooth combs. In the gift gallery there are copybooks stacked high, Biros, rulers, mechanical drawing sets. In the hardware, the lunchboxes and satchels and hurling sticks are left out front, where the women can see them.
We come home and take soup, dipping our bread, breaking it, slurping a little, now that we know one another. Afterward, I go with Kinsella out to the hay shed, where he makes me promise not to look while he is welding. I am following him around, I realize, but I cannot help it. It is past the time for the post to come but he does not suggest that I fetch it until evening, after the cows are milked and the milking parlor is swept and scrubbed. "I think it's time," he says, washing his boots with the hose.
I get into position, using the front step as a starting block. Kinsella looks at the watch and pulls down his handkerchief as if it was a flag. I race down the yard to the lane, make a tight corner, open the box, get the letters, and race back to the step, knowing that my time was not as fast as yesterday's.
"Nineteen seconds faster than your first run," Kinsella says. "And a two-second improvement on yesterday, despite the heavy ground. It's like the wind, you are." He takes the letters and goes through them, but today, instead of making jokes about what's inside of each, he pauses.
"Is that from Mammy?"
"You know," he says, "I think it could be."
"Do I have to go home?"
"Well, it's addressed to Edna, so why don't we give it in to her and let her read it."
We go into the parlor, where she is sitting with her feet up, looking through a book of knitting patterns. Kinsella slides the letter onto her lap. She opens it and reads it. It's one small sheet with writing on both sides. She puts it down, then picks it up and reads it again.
"Well," she says, "you have a new brother. Nine pounds two ounces. And school starts on Monday. Your mother has asked us to leave you up at the weekend so she can get you togged out and all."
"I have to go back, then?"
"Aye," she says. "But sure didn't you know that?"
I nod.
"You couldn't stay here forever with us two old forgeries."
I stand there and stare at the fire, trying not to cry. I don't so much hear as feel Kinsella leaving the room.
"Don't upset yourself," the woman says. "Come over here."
She shows me pages with knitted jumpers and asks me which pattern I like best, but all the patterns seem to blur together and I just point to one, a blue one, that looks like it might be easy.
"Well, you would pick the hardest one in the book," she says. "I'd better get started on that this week or you'll be too big for it by the time it's knitted."
Now that I know I must go home, I almost want to go. I wake earlier than usual and look out at the wet fields, the dripping trees, the hills, which seem greener than they did when I came. Kinsella hangs around all day, doing things but not really finishing anything. He says he has no disks for his angle grinder, no welding rods, and he cannot find the vise grip. He says that he got so many jobs done in the long stretch of fine weather that there's little left to do.
We are out looking at the calves, who have been fed. With warm water, Kinsella has made up their milk replacement, which they suck from long rubber teats. They look content lying there in a fresh bed of straw.
"Could ye leave me back this evening?"
"This evening?" Kinsella says.
I nod.
"Any evening suits me," he says. "I'll take you whenever you want, Petal."
I look at the day. It is like any other, with a flat gray sky hanging over the yard and the wet hound on watch outside the front door.
"Well, I had better milk early, so," he says. "Right." And goes on down the yard past me as though I am already gone.
The woman gives me a brown leather bag. "You can keep this old thing," she says. "I never have a use for it."
We fold my clothes and place them inside, along with the Ladybird books we found on the stand at Webb's in Gorey: The Three Billy Goats Gruff, The Ugly Duckling, Snow-White and Rose-Red. I can remember how the lines go, can match my memory of the words with the words that are written there. She gives me a bar of yellow soap and my facecloth, and the hairbrush she bought for me. As we gather all these things together, I remember where we got them, what was said, the days we spent, and how the sun, for most of the time, was shining.
Just then a car pulls into the yard. I am afraid to look, afraid it is my father, but it's a neighboring man. "Edna," he says, in a panic. "Is John about?"
"He's out at the milking," she says. "He should be finishing up now."
He runs across the yard, heavy in his Wellington boots, and minutes later Kinsella sticks his head around the door. "Joe Fortune needs a hand pulling a calf," he says. "Would you ever run out and finish the parlor off? I have the herd out."
"I will, surely," she says.
"I'll be back just as soon as I can."
"Don't I know you will."
She puts on her anorak and I watch her go down the yard. I wonder if I should go out to help but I come to the conclusion that I'd only be in the way. I sit in the armchair and look out to where a watery light is shining off the zinc bucket in the scullery. I could go to the well for water for her tea. It could be the last thing I do.
I put on the boy's jacket, take up the bucket, and walk down the fields. I know the way, could find the well with my eyes closed. When I cross the stile, the path does not look like the same path we followed on that first evening here. The way is muddy now and slippery in places. I trudge on along toward the little iron gate and down the steps. The water is much higher these days. I was on the fifth step that first evening here, but now I stand on the first and see the surface of the water reaching up and just about sucking the edge of the step that's one down from me. I bend with the bucket, letting it float then sink, as the woman does, but when I reach out to lift it another hand just like mine seems to come out of the water and pull me in.
It is not that evening or the following one but the evening after, on the Sunday, that I am taken home. When I come back from the well, soaked to the skin, the woman takes one look at me and turns very still before she gathers me up and takes me inside and makes up my bed again.
The following morning I do not feel hot, but she keeps me upstairs, bringing me warm drinks with lemon and cloves and honey, aspirin.
"'Tis nothing but a chill, she has," I hear Kinsella say.
"When I think of what could have happened."
"If you've said that once, you've said it a hundred times."
"But—"
"Nothing happened, and the girl is grand. And that's the end of it."
I lie there with the hot-water bottle, listening to the rain and looking through my books, making up something slightly different to happen at the end of each, each time.<
br />
On Sunday I am allowed to get up, and we pack everything again, as before. Toward evening, we have supper and wash and change into our good clothes. The sun has come out, is lingering in long, cool slants, and the yard is dry in places. Sooner than I would like, we are ready and in the car, turning down the lane, going up through Gorey and on, along the narrow roads through Carnew and Shillelagh.
"That's where Da lost the red heifer playing cards," I say.
"Wasn't that some wager?" the woman says.
"It was some loss for him," Kinsella says.
When we get to our lane, the gates are closed and Kinsella gets out to open them, then closes them behind us, and drives on very slowly to the house. I feel, now, that the woman is trying to make up her mind whether she should say something to me, but I don't really have any idea what it is, and she gives me no clue. The car stops in front of the house, the dogs bark, and my sisters race out. I see my mother through the window, with what is now the second youngest in her arms.
Inside, the house feels damp and cold. The lino is tracked over with dirty footprints. Mammy stands there with my little brother, and looks at me. "You've grown," she says.
"Yes," I say.
"'Yes,' is it?" she says, and raises her eyebrows.
She bids the Kinsellas good evening and tells them to sit down—if they can find a place to sit—and fills the kettle from the bucket under the kitchen table. We move playthings off the car seat under the window and sit down. Mugs are taken off the dresser, a loaf of bread is sliced, butter and jam left out.
"Oh, I brought you jam," the woman says. "Don't let me forget to give it to you, Mary."
"I made this out of the rhubarb you sent down," Ma says. "That's the last of it."
"I should have brought more," the woman says. "I wasn't thinking."
"Where's the new addition?" Kinsella asks.
"Oh, he's up in the room there. You'll hear him soon enough."
"Is he sleeping through the night for you?"
"On and off," Ma says. "The same child could crow at any hour."
My sisters look at me as though I am an English cousin, coming over to touch my dress, the buckles on my shoes. They seem different, thinner, and have nothing to say. We sit in to the table and eat the bread and drink the tea. When a cry is heard from upstairs, Ma gives my brother to Mrs. Kinsella and goes up to fetch the baby. He is pink and crying, his fists tight. He looks bigger than the last, stronger.
"Isn't there a fine child, God bless him," Kinsella says.
Ma pours more tea with one hand and sits down and takes her breast out for the baby. Her doing this in front of Kinsella makes me blush. Seeing me blush, Ma gives me a long, deep look.
"No sign of himself?" Kinsella says.
"He went out there earlier, wherever he's gone," Ma says.
A little bit of talk starts up then, little balls of speech they seem to kick uneasily back and forth. Soon after, a car is heard outside. Nothing more is said until my father appears and throws his hat on the dresser.
"Evening, all," he says.
"Dan," Kinsella says.
"Ah, there's the prodigal child," he says. "You came back to us, did you?"
I say I did.
"Did she give trouble?"
"Trouble?" Kinsella says. "Good as gold, she was, the same girl."
"Is that so?" Da says, sitting down. "Well, isn't that a relief."
"You'll want to sit in," Mrs. Kinsella says, "and get your supper."
"I had a liquid supper," Da says, "down in Parkbridge."
I sneeze then, and reach into my pocket for my handkerchief, and blow my nose.
"Have you caught cold?" Ma asks.
"No," I say, hoarsely.
"You haven't?"
"Nothing happened."
"What do you mean?"
"I didn't catch cold," I say.
"I see," she says, giving me another deep look.
"The child's been in bed for the last couple of days," Kinsella says. "Didn't she catch herself a wee chill."
"Aye," Da says. "You couldn't mind them. You know yourself."
"Dan," Ma says, in a steel voice.
Mrs. Kinsella looks uneasy.
"You know, I think it's nearly time that we were making tracks," Kinsella says. "It's a long road home."
"Ah, what's the big hurry?" Ma says.
"No hurry at all, Mary, just the usual. These cows don't give you any opportunity to have a lie-in."
He gets up then and takes my little brother from his wife and gives him to my father. My father takes the child and looks across at the baby suckling. I sneeze and blow my nose again.
"That's a right dose you came home with," Da says.
"It's nothing she hasn't caught before and won't catch again," Ma says. "Sure, isn't it going around?"
"Are you ready for home?" Kinsella asks.
Mrs. Kinsella stands then, and they say their goodbyes. I follow them out to the car with my mother, who still has the baby in her arms. Mrs. Kinsella takes out the cardboard box with the pots of jam. Kinsella lifts a four-stone sack of potatoes out of the boot. "These are floury," he says. "Queens they are, Mary."
My mother thanks them, saying it was a lovely thing they did, to keep me.
"The girl was welcome and is welcome again, anytime," the woman says.
"She's a credit to you, Mary," Kinsella says. "You keep your head in the books," he says to me. "I want to see gold stars on them copybooks next time I come up here." He gives me a kiss then, and the woman hugs me. I watch them getting into the car and closing the doors and I feel a start when the engine turns and the car begins to move away.
"What happened at all?" Ma says, now that the car is gone.
"Nothing," I say.
"Tell me."
"Nothing happened." This is my mother I am speaking to, but I have learned enough, grown enough, to know that what happened is not something I need ever mention. It is my perfect opportunity to say nothing.
I hear the car braking on the gravel in the lane, the door opening, and then I am doing what I do best. It's nothing I have to think about. I take off from standing and race on down the lane. My heart feels not so much in my chest as in my hands. I am carrying it along swiftly, as though I have become the messenger for what is going on inside of me. Several things flash through my mind: the boy on the wallpaper, the gooseberries, that moment when the bucket pulled me under, the lost heifer, the third light on the water. I think of my summer, of now, of a tomorrow that I can't entirely believe in.
As I am rounding the bend, reaching the point where I daren't look, I see him there, closing the gate, putting the clamp back on. His eyes are down, and he seems to be looking at his hands, at what he is doing. My feet batter on along the rough gravel, the strip of tatty grass in the middle of our lane. There is only one thing I care about now, and my feet are carrying me there. As soon as he sees me, he grows still. By the time I reach him, the gate is open and I am smack against him and lifted into his arms. For a long stretch, he holds me tight. I feel the thumping of my heart, my breaths coming out, then my heart and my breaths settling differently. At a point, which feels much later, a sudden gust blows through the trees and shakes big, fat raindrops over us. My eyes are closed now and I can feel him, the heat of him coming through his good clothes, can smell the soap on his neck. When I finally open my eyes and look over his shoulder, it is my father I see, coming along strong and steady, his walking stick in his hand. I hold on as though I'll drown if I let go, and listen to the woman, who seems, in her throat, to be taking it in turns sobbing and crying, as though she is crying not for one but for two now. I daren't keep my eyes open and yet I do, staring up the lane, past Kinsella's shoulder, seeing what he can't. If some part of me wants with all my heart to get down and tell the woman who has minded me so well that I will never, never tell, something deeper keeps me there in Kinsella's arms, holding on.
"Daddy," I keep warning him, keep calling him. "Daddy."
Sam Lipsyte
FROM The New Yorker
THE DUNGEON MASTER has detention. We wait at his house by the county road. The Dungeon Master's little brother Marco puts out corn chips and orange soda.
Marco is a paladin. He fights for the glory of Christ. Marco has been many paladins since winter break. They are all named Valentine, and the Dungeon Master makes certain they die with the least possible amount of dignity.
It's painful enough when he rolls the dice, announces that a drunken orc has unspooled some of Valentine's guts for sport. Worse are the silly accidents. One Valentine tripped on a floor plank and cracked his head on a mead bucket. He died of trauma in the stable.
"Take it!" the Dungeon Master said that time. Spit sprayed over the top of his laminated screen. "Eat your fate," he said. "Your thread just got the snippo!"
The Dungeon Master has a secret language that we don't quite understand. They say he's been treated for it.
Whenever the Dungeon Master kills another Valentine, Marco runs off and cries to their father. Dr. Varelli nudges his son back into the study, sticks his bushy head in the door, says, "Play nice, my beautiful puppies."
"Father," the Dungeon Master will say, "stay the fuck out of my mind realm."
"I honor your wish, my beauty."
Dr. Varelli says things like that. It's not a secret language, just an embarrassing one. Maybe that's why his wife left him, left Marco and the Dungeon Master too. It's not a decent reason to leave, but as the Dungeon Master hopes to teach us, the world is not a decent place to live.
Now we sit, munch chips.
"If they didn't say corn, I wouldn't think of them as corn," Brendan says.
He's a third-level wizard.
"Detention?" Cherninsky says, and stands, squats, stands, sits. He's got black bangs and freckles, suffers from that disease where you can't stay in your chair.
"He chucked a spaz in Spanish," I say. "I heard one of the seniors."
"The teacher rides him," Marco says. Marco despises the Dungeon Master but loves his brother. I like Marco, but I'm no fan of Valentine. I'm a third-level ranger. I fight for the glory of me.
The Best American Short Stories® 2011 Page 20