Chapter 19: Rainey's Funeral

We buried Fergus Rainey on a gray morning with the gulls screaming over the harbor wall.

I had not slept.

I had read the second paper twice in the hospital car park, and it said the same thing both times.

The coast guard wanted me in their office on Monday, about forty crates on a boat called the Marigold.

I put the paper in my pocket and carried the coffin anyway.

There were six of us at the handles.

My second took the front left.

Nolan took the front right, in a black coat, without being asked.

Behind us, up the cemetery road, came the dockers.

They came on foot in twos and threes, in work boots and Sunday jackets.

Every man held his cap in his hands.

I counted a hundred and forty before I stopped counting.

The gray-haired foreman walked at the very front.

He was the man who had thrown his cap on the floor of the hall.

He did not meet my eyes until we reached the grave.

Then he stepped up beside me and took the last handle out of my second's hand.

"Fergus Rainey loaned me the money for my wife's surgery," he said, very low. "Nineteen years back. Never asked it returned."

"I didn't know."

"He wouldn't have told you." He hefted the weight. "I'm sorry about the hall."

"You were angry."

"I was a fool," he said. "Let me carry him."

We lowered Fergus into the ground.

The priest said the words, and nobody cried out loud.

When it was done, I knelt and put a handful of dirt in with the others.

Something hard pressed against my knee.

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