Chapter 1 :: Page 6

   "What the hell you gonna do, find yerself a nice Irish gal? Or an American one? You'd have a better chance at that for those are the only kind coming through here these days. Why don't you just go back there? Jesus! There are some good looking women fer you. At least they have all der teeth." James began laughing, too loud for the morning, but I couldn't help but chuckled.
   Mrs. O'Malley reappeared. "Look at yerself, James. If you wouldn't look in the gutters all the time, you might find a good Irish girl who'd take care of you. And why should you find a complete woman, you're lacking in some yerself," she said without much emotion.
   James’s laughing stalled. He didn't like it when Mrs. O'Malley remanded him and he felt she was hard on him. James was waiting for his chance, his big break. He thought it would come in one day.
   I had sold tobac before and a lot of other things, too. I didn't mind at all. I had gone out with James on a ship once all the way down to Lisbon. It was a long ride in the belly of an iron ship. I had slept in a hammock. There were long lines of bunks and rough men and a few rough women. I stayed up late and tried to read, but the swaying of the ship on the waters and the smell of men all the time, tinned in all the time. It didn't sit too well. I promised myself I would try it again when the weather was better. I understood the men on those ships, or at least, many were like James, just waiting. I never understood why there were women there. I never thought it was funny. Melville had made sailing seem different, but its always different in books. We had been shipping iron ore.
   James tucked his feet underneath his chair. He had half of a foot on one leg. When he was younger, he had joined up with a young Catholic boys group and blew his own foot off. He kept a piece of wood block in the front of his shoe to make up the difference.
   Mrs. O'Malley ate her breakfast while moving, not ever once sitting down. She kept a good house.
   The land the house sat on was raised on an elevated spot of old seabed. The grounds around the house were fertile and had once yielded an excellent crop of English Roses and other plants to homes that cultivated gardens. Mrs. O’Malley hadn’t kept a garden since she had been a little girl. It was the one element of living at her house I wished I could change, along with the other things of course.
   I looked out the back window. A chunk of sea view crept between the last row of houses. Clouds parting, Howth Head could be seen, especially on late nights when the moon was full.
   Mrs. O'Malley was about thirty-eight years old. I wasn’t certain. She kept herself clean and dressed well. Her arms were a little thin and muscular. Her husband had died about five years ago and she had never

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