The Collected Stories by John McGahern Page A

worms into the box, the word
Moran
came, and I carefully opened the door to listen. It was my father’s voice. He was excited.
    ‘I know. I heard the exact sum. They got ten thousand dollars when Luke was killed. Every American soldier’s life is insured to the tune of ten thousand dollars.’
    ‘I heard they get two hundred and fifty dollars a month each for Michael and Sam while they’re serving,’ he went on.
    ‘They’re buying cattle left and right,’ Farrell’s voice came as I closed the door and stood in the darkness, in the smell of shit and piss and the warm fleshy smell of worms crawling in too little clay.
    The shock I felt was the shock I was to feel later when I made some social blunder, the splintering of a self-esteem and the need to crawl into a lavatory to think.
    Luke Moran’s body had come from Korea in a leaden casket, had crossed the stone bridge to the slow funeral bell with the big cars from the embassy behind, the coffin draped in the Stars and Stripes. Shots had been fired above the grave before they threw in the clay. There were photos of his decorations being presented to his family by a military attaché.
    He’d scrape the fare, I’d be conscripted there, each month he’d get so many dollars while I served, and he’d get ten thousand if I was killed.
    In the darkness of the lavatory between the boxes of crawling worms before we set the night line for the eels I knew my youth had ended.
    I rowed as he let out the night line, his fingers baiting each twisted hook so beautifully that it seemed a single movement. The dark was closing from the shadow of Oakport to Nutley’s boathouse, bats made ugly whirls overhead, the wings of ducks shirred as they curved down into the bay.
    ‘Have you thought about what I said about going to America?’he asked, without lifting his eyes from the hooks and the box of worms.
    ‘I have.’
    The oars dipped in the water without splash, the hole whorling wider in the calm as it slipped on the stern seat.
    ‘Have you decided to take the chance, then?’
    ‘No. I’m not going.’
    ‘You won’t be able to say I didn’t give you the chance when you come to nothing in this fool of a country. It’ll be your own funeral.’
    ‘It’ll be my own funeral,’ I answered, and asked after a long silence, ‘As you grow older, do you find your own days in the war and jails coming much back to you?’
    ‘I do. And I don’t want to talk about them. Talking about the execution disturbed me no end, those cursed buttons bursting into the air. And the most I think is that if I’d conducted my own wars, and let the fool of a country fend for itself, I’d be much better off today. I don’t want to talk about it.’
    I knew this silence was fixed for ever as I rowed in silence till he asked, ‘Do you think, will it be much good tonight?’
    ‘It’s too calm,’ I answered.
    ‘Unless the night wind gets up,’ he said anxiously.
    ‘Unless a night wind,’ I repeated.
    As the boat moved through the calm water and the line slipped through his fingers over the side I’d never felt so close to him before, not even when he’d carried me on his shoulders above the laughing crowd to the Final. Each move he made I watched as closely as if I too had to prepare myself to murder.

Lavin
    When I knew Lavin he was close to the poorhouse but he’d still down mallet and cold chisel to limp after the young girls, crooked finger beckoning, calling, ‘Come, give us a peep, there must be a few little hairs beginning,’ and that strange inlooking smile came over the white stubbled face while the girls, shrieking with laughter, kept backing just fast enough to stay outside his reach.
    When I heard people speak of Lavin it was in puzzlement that when young and handsome he had worked such cruel hours at his trade, though he had no need because his uncle had left him Willowfield, the richest farm around; and he had taken no interest in girls though he could have had his pick; and