Everything in This Country Must (13 page)

They watched the sun disappear on the horizon. It was a magnificent red and it seemed to spill itself out generously into the sky. The seagulls let out thin and labored squalls as they defiled low over the pier. The water lapped gray against the stonework. The boy thought there was a loneliness to everything in the world. His mother turned and held his hand briefly and told him to make sure he was home before night fell.

*   *   *

THE DARKNESS WAS COMPLETE
and already a couple of stars had risen in the east.

He stopped for a long time by the pierside phone. The ring came high and hard. The receiver vibrated on its hook. He opened the door of the booth and the wind moved the coiled wire. His hand hovered in midair and then he decided against answering it. It sounded as if the phone itself were mourning. Soon his mother would come down from the caravan and hear it and she would answer and then he would know for definite. He found himself shaking and he lowered his chin to his chest when the ringing stopped.

He stole around the side of the house and peeped into the window and saw the Lithuanian couple sleeping, back to back.

The woman’s hair was unloosed and a few strands had fallen across her husband’s face. The old man seemed gigantic beside her.

The boy could still feel her kiss from days ago on his head like a stigmata. His chin felt cold against the pane of glass. He dipped away from the window and went around the side of the house.

The boat was easy to handle without the paddles and he lifted it by the lip of the well with just one arm and negotiated the short driveway, snagging it once on a rosebush.

It felt light with his new strength.

He dragged the kayak behind him onto the beach and stood a long time looking out to sea, the phosphorescent waves rolling onto the sand like brothers. There were no boats out on the water and the sea was a deep black. His blood was racing. Dizzy, he turned and walked up the beach to the life preserver pole, propped the kayak up against it. He steadied the bow in the sand and then used the rope to tie the boat to the pole. His fingers trembled but still he made a tight knot. The kayak stood against the pole like a misshapen man and there was a dapple of birdshit where the mouth should be. He sat down and stared at it for a while, tried to calm his hands.

The phone rang again in the distance. He rose and walked the beach, looking over his shoulder at the kayak, until he found some large rocks at the very front of the pier.

He carted the rocks down and made a large pile at his feet. He lifted the first one high and felt the shudder in his body as he hurled it toward the kayak. He was surprised at the arc of the rock, confused that it had come from his fingers. It hit the boat with a loud thud, bounced back, and threw up a flume of sand where it landed. He bit his lip and hurled another.

A rim of moon hung in the sky. The wind chilled his arms. The tide moved insistently.

He picked up a larger rock and flung it, and again it just bounced away from the kayak and he cursed the boat’s resilience. He went close to it and bashed a rock repeatedly at one point until a tiny hairline crack developed. Combing the beach again he found even larger rocks. His whole body was trembling now. He was on a street. He was at a funeral. He had a bottle of fire in his hands. He was in a prison cell. He pushed a plate away from his bedside.

It was only with the twelfth rock and another long ringing of the phone that he saw at last the spidery splint of fiberglass.

A jolt of adrenaline hit his stomach as he neared the boat. He began to hit it with his fists until blood appeared on his knuckles, and then he rested his head against the coolness of the kayak and he cried.

When his sobs subsided the boy lifted his head from the boat, looked back over his shoulder, saw the light from the house of the Lithuanians, the front door open, the couple standing together, hands clasped, the old man’s eyes squinting, the woman’s large and tender.

Also by Colum McCann

This Side of Brightness

Fishing the Sloe-Black River

Songdogs

ACCLAIM FOR
Everything in This Country Must

“[A] stunning new book … Told in McCann’s lush prose, these stories are both mesmerizing and painful.”

—
Minneapolis Star-Tribune

“Captures that peculiar nexus of hormones, deprivation, and political imperative on a Northern Irish child coming of age.”

—Susan Salter Reynolds,
Los Angeles Times Book Review

“There is no denying the discipline that has gone into
Everything in This Country Must.
”

—Charles Taylor,
The New York Times Book Review

“McCann has the knack of capturing the intensity of these strongly held views in a low-key prose that underscores their vitriol and in a way that disturbs the reader’s sensibilities.”

—
Richmond Times-Dispatch

“Masterful. These emotionally charged, beautifully controlled tales can only enhance McCann’s already considerable reputation.”

—
Kirkus Reviews
(starred review)

“These are powerful stories—gritty, memorable, and ambitious. The novella goes straight to the heart, both in terms of its theme and its emotional punch.”

—Edna O’Brien, author of
Wild Decembers

“Beautifully, poetically written … The need to read them over and over again can’t be denied.”

—
Booklist

“Colum McCann’s stories are brooding, meditative, and lyrically controlled to that delicate point where the emotion within them intensifies with each succeeding reading and recognition. The political turmoil of Northern Ireland finds here an answering, subtly respondent voice—wonderfully skilled and deeply felt.”

—Seamus Deane, author of
Reading in the Dark

“Further evidence of McCann’s remarkable gifts as a prose artist as well as storyteller … In each of these pieces, the miracle is how McCann, with prose so terse and spare, is able to create worlds so emotionally complex and moving.”

—
Library Journal

EVERYTHING IN THIS COUNTRY MUST
. Copyright © 2000 by Colum McCann. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. For information, address Picador, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.

Picador
®
is a U.S. registered trademark and is used by Henry Holt and Company under license from Pan Books Limited.

For information on Picador Reading Group Guides, as well as ordering, please contact the Trade Marketing department at St. Martin’s Press.

Phone: 1-800-221-7945 extension 763

Fax: 212-677-7456

E-mail: [email protected]

“Everything in This Country Must” first appeared in
The Atlantic,
a section of “Hunger Strike” in
GQ,
and a version of “Wood” in
The New Yorker.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

McCann, Colum.

Everything in this country must : a novella and two stories / Colum McCann.

    p. cm.

ISBN 0-312-27318-5

1. Northern Ireland—Social life and customs—Fiction. 2. Social conflict—Northern Ireland—Fiction. I. Title.

PR6063.C335E93 2000

823'.914—dc21

99-43614
CIP

First published in the United States by Metropolitan Books, an imprint of Henry Holt and Company, LLC

eISBN 9781466848672

First eBook edition: May 2013