The bathtub, she thought, staring at it, was big enough for him to flop over in. He’d splash and grin. She thought of getting a bar of Lifebuoy soap.
Denny knocked on her door again late in the afternoon. He had come back on foot carrying a brand-new canvas knapsack.
‘‘I must have heard you in my sleep,’’ Norah lied. ‘‘I lay down with a headache after my lunch, and wasn’t I dreaming of you?’’
‘‘What was I doing?’’
‘‘You were playing the piano,’’ she said. ‘‘It’s just come back to me now.’’
‘‘You were dreaming, all right,’’ Denny said.
They went down through the house to the cellar, and Norah pointed out a workbench near the coal bin he could use.
‘‘Couldn’t I take it over there to work on?’’
‘‘You could not.’’
While she watched him unpack the knapsack she listened for a telephone call from Mary or the rap of her stick on a window. ‘‘Isn’t Mary feeling well?’’
‘‘She’s all right.’’
Which told her nothing. ‘‘I wondered if it was a doctor I saw stopping in this morning.’’
‘‘Not for Aunt Mary. She thinks they’re all quacks.’’
He’d been given instruction, Norah thought, on what he could say and what not. She was furious, not so much at what she might be missing, but at the idea of Mary’s taking advantage of his innocence. She had made up her mind from what she’d seen of Mary’s visitor that morning that he was on a mission from Donel Rossa. He might even be bringing her the monthly holy water. He looked like a bootlegger and his long-nosed car suited the notion.
‘‘Will you save your tin cans for me, Norah? Donel says I should set them up on the fence posts in the far field and practice.’’
‘‘You know this is all my property, Dennis.’’
‘‘Oh, I do. Donel said I should ask you.’’
‘‘I’ll save you the tins.’’
‘‘Thank you, Norah.’’ His smile was like honey.
It would do for the day, she thought. ‘‘You’d better go now. She’ll be waiting for you.’’
‘‘She will. She’ll want to hear.’’
‘‘To hear what, Denny?’’
‘‘About Donel’s construction business. Mr. Murray shook hands with him. It’s going to be great for Hopetown-for the whole valley.’’
Norah smiled. ‘‘How nice!’’ she said.
‘‘Mary! Come outdoors quick!’’
‘‘Quick!’’ she mocked.
And when she got to the stoop: ‘‘Look!’’ he insisted.
‘‘I can hear them,’’ she said.
Fading fast into the morning mist even as their cries grew dimmer, the Canadian geese were going south.
‘‘Would God they were coming back.’’ She drew her shawl tighter. ‘‘For God’s sake put your shirt on, Denny. You’ll catch your death of cold.’’
‘‘I won’t.’’ He still washed, naked to the waist, at the pump by the well. He shaved at the kitchen sink.
They had eggs for breakfast that morning, and though she knew he was only half listening, she told him, and probably for the second or third time, she thought, of how as children she and Norah waded in the stream at home, groping the sand with their toes for duck eggs. Whoever found one got the top when her father opened it for his breakfast the next morning.
‘‘Did you and Norah fight over it?’’ He was listening after all.
Donel stopped on his way into town. He was a little early, due at the lawyer’s office within the hour to sign the final papers. The teacup trembled in his hand. He put it down. ‘‘I’ll be glad to get this over with,’’ he said.
‘‘Will you have a drop from my bottle to settle you?’’ Mary said.
‘‘Not on your life, macushla.’’
He had brought her the last ‘‘smile.’’
He stretched out his hand and held it steady, but his teeth were clenched. He took up the cup again. ‘‘I’m clean, Mary.’’ He toasted her-or himself-with the lukewarm tea: ‘‘Slainte.’’
Let Norah ridicule him all she liked, Mary thought, but they would never know a man more Irish.
Norah was on the lookout. She had been from the moment she heard Rossa’s car drive into the yard. The family car, no less. He sometimes drove her and Mary to Sunday Mass in it. Lately he’d been driving it into Hopetown. It was more befitting a businessman than the Ford truck. She knew Denny would be going back to the farm with him-to shuck corn and then to go hunting with him in the morning.
He would come soon for the gun and take it away for the first time. And what would she have left? A bag of tin cans with holes shot through them. She caught a whiff of her cologne. She’d used too much of it. And dreamed too much. She’d worn out a paltry thrill remembering it. Only once had she come even close to telling him she loved him.
He’d been at the cellar workbench that day, his back to her, and what she told him was of her love for music and how beautiful she thought his voice was. When he seemed to stiffen, she thought it safer to talk about the piano and how she’d hoped someday to even play it herself. She’d been pleased at the moment for what she said then: ‘‘But it’s my heart and not my head that’s musical.’’
And Denny, looking around to her in the expectant silence: ‘‘Couldn’t you sell the piano?’’
‘‘I don’t need the money, Denny.’’
‘‘Aunt Mary would have,’’ he said.
Denny came out from the barn with Rossa. He put his knapsack and a box of Mary’s preserves, no doubt, in the rear seat of the sedan. He stepped back and watched Rossa drive off. Without a glance her way, he went back in to Mary.
He would not come till the last minute, waiting for Rossa to return and hurry him away.
She watched the traffic coming into town, not a car a minute, but picking up these days. She couldn’t believe it had anything to do with Donel Rossa’s new enterprise, Hope County Construction. County no less.
She moved away from the window and then went back to straighten the curtain. By sheer chance she saw the black long-nosed touring car drive past the house and on into Hopetown. When she thought about it, she wasn’t a bit surprised.
In the late morning she heard Dennis open the cellar doors. She called down to him to leave them open, that she would close them when the sun was gone.
‘‘I didn’t want to bother you,’’ he said at the bottom of the kitchen stairs. ‘‘Donel didn’t think he’d be this long. Mary says it’s the lawyers that’s holding things up.’’
‘‘Ah, yes, what Mary says.’’ He was like a silhouette between her and the shaft of daylight. ‘‘I’m coming down,’’ she said.
‘‘You don’t need to, Aunt Norah.’’
He didn’t want her to. He wanted to go off, gun in hand, without even a thank-you-very-much. ‘‘I’m coming down.’’
He lifted the storeroom door for her when she went in to switch on the lights. ‘‘I was going to fix this for you, wasn’t I? When I come back from Donel’s.’’
She followed him to the workbench. ‘‘What if Rossa doesn’t come, if something happened to change his mind?’’
‘‘He’d let us know,’’ Denny said. He took the gun from the rack he had built for it and broke it to be sure the chamber was empty.
‘‘You are such a foolish boy, Dennis. You believe everybody. The Revenue agent in the rain that morning: I could have told you the truth about him. But Mary spat at me when I even mentioned him.’’
‘‘That bastard,’’ Denny said.
‘‘No, Denny. He’s worse. He’s a gangster. I would take my oath on it. And isn’t he back today for the celebration?’’
‘‘He’s back?’’ Denny questioned as though he didn’t understand her.
‘‘You don’t forget an automobile like that, Denny. When Donel left here this morning, it came by right after him. What an odd coincidence, I thought at first and then I realized: Of course, they’re going to the same place.’’