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“WHAT’S THE PROBLEM?” MARTIN ASKED him later, as they made their way back to Larkspur. “It’s a party.”

“I’m not too sure the boys really want us there. It’s a bit awkward when we see them, isn’t it?”

They’d run into Debra and some of the other girls in town now and again, and always said hello, but they’d both noticed when any of them were with boys from school the boys always wanted to keep moving. They weren’t rude, exactly, but they also made it clear they weren’t interested. To Mac, who couldn’t have explained why, the boys seemed more American than the girls. The girls were just themselves, American yes, but chatty and fun and knew everything about music and movies and styles of clothes. They talked about politics sometimes, Dr. King’s speech, or the law that said employers of government workers couldn’t fire women for getting married or getting pregnant. The girls said that their history teacher told their class that Vietnam was going to become a lot more important to Americans soon. Mac decided he’d start reading the newspaper PJ got delivered on Sundays when PJ was through with it.

But the boys were different. They were mostly standoffish and gave away nothing. “Hey,” was usually all they ever said when Debra or one of the other girls introduced them. Most played American football. They drank beer from cans.

But Martin was determined, and finally, Mac relented. He’d been there ten months. He’d bought himself a pair of Levi’s and two button-downs in Livingston. He’d bought a few T-shirts. But the item he treasured most, that he paid far too much for, so much he had to stop on the sidewalk outside the store and ask himself if he should go straight back in and make a return, was a pair of genuine leather boots. They were dark brown but had a paler brown inlay of eagle’s wings.

The party started at seven so that’s when Mac and Martin showed up. They found their host around back pouring ice into coolers. There was a tower of plastic cups and cases of beer. No food.

“Oh hey,” the host said. They didn’t know his name. “You’re the Irish guys.”

“We were told seven,” Martin said, and Mac flinched. Mac knew they shouldn’t have come. They didn’t know the rules. They didn’t know how to be yet.

“Macdara,” Mac said, extending his hand.

“No one will get here till nine,” the boy said, as if this fact should have been obvious.

It was rude. No one at home would be so rude. They’d be offered something to drink, welcomed, never made to feel like they shouldn’t be there.

“Need help?” Mac asked, grabbing a bag of ice.

“Knock yourself out,” the boy said, and into Mac’s thoughts landed an American word for the first time: asshole. Mac wished they’d driven around for an hour once they saw the house was empty. They should have only approached when they could see the party was well underway. He was inclined to just skip the whole thing but Martin had a crush on one of Debra’s friends, a girl named Penelope.

When Debra arrived she was wearing a pink-and-red sundress that had thin straps like strings. One kept slipping off her shoulder.

“You look lovely,” he told her that night. The yard was crowded but they were alone in that way Mac found people sometimes could be in a crowd.

“That’s a funny word,” she said, and then she rose onto her tiptoes and kissed him.

SIX

One evening in November, when Mac had been in Montana for a year, Martin was reading a letter from his mother, sharing the bits he knew Mac would be interested in. “Oh,” he said. “Barry left England. He’s moved back to the Cuan.”

“My brother Barry?” Mac asked. “Is she sure? Why?”

“She doesn’t say,” Martin said.

He told himself it didn’t mean anything that none of them had replied to the letters he’d sent. At the very least, he thought it was understood that they should all know one another’s whereabouts. He wrote to Barry that night asking what had happened. He got a letter back a few weeks later. Barry didn’t ask a thing about Montana or Mac’s life in America, he only said he had to leave England because Sean was drinking too much. There was nowhere to be after work but the pub, and when he drank too much Sean got rowdy and picked fights. Then because of the fighting he’d gotten them both banned from the jobsite and the landlady wouldn’t let them in the house during work hours, so there was once again nowhere to be but the pub. Barry had had enough. He was very sorry Cathal had paid for his papers and he’d pay him back one day but England was not for him.

“Cathal is worse than ever,” he wrote. Mac assumed that meant their father drinking, disappearing. It all came back to him so completely, so fully. There was no mention of Rian in the letter. He wondered if the promised toilet had ever come to be.

“ARE YOU AND DEBRA AN item?” Jenny asked him after breakfast one morning.

“What?” he asked, choking on his juice. He and Debra went to the movies and to the diner in town. Whenever they saw each other they made a plan for when they’d see each other again and he liked having something to look forward to. He didn’t think of Ireland when he was with her. He didn’t think of himself as the second eldest of eleven brothers. He was just a recently arrived American with a job on a ranch. She asked once in a while if he was homesick, and he told her he was not.

They drove around a lot. He took in the signs for places: Bridger, Chimney Rock, Pine Creek. All full of ordinary people who had their own ordinary lives. Things had happened, things that sat lodged at the base of his throat most days, but he was fine, and he had a place to sleep and work to tackle and a pretty girl to make plans with on the weekends. They fooled around on the wide bench seat of her dad’s truck, and she made it clear she was willing to go all the way, but it scared him, and he was embarrassed that it scared him because the boy was supposed to be the one to want to go for it, not the girl. Or at least, that’s what he’d always understood. He knew there were ways to prevent a baby, but he needed to study them and make sure he really knew how those things worked. Whenever she mentioned a future with him in it, he felt some engine inside himself that had been chugging mindlessly along begin to cough and stutter.

“Are you being careful?” Jenny asked, to which Mac turned a deep red. In America a person could buy a condom in most any general store; in Ireland they had to be smuggled from the North or from England.

“We’re not—” But he physically could not say it. “We don’t—”

“Okay,” Jenny said. “Good. I’ve known Debra since she was born so I feel a little responsible for her. I told PJ to check with you but he’s beyond awkward, don’t ask me why. I’m Catholic, too, and I’m not like that. Anyway, I just wanted to say be smart.”

Debra was lovely to look at and fun and he liked her, yes, but he didn’t think about her too much when she wasn’t right there in front of him.

NEXT THING THEY WERE BUNDLED again, there was snow on the ground, and it was 1965. There were no significant blizzards that winter, nothing out of the ordinary. The farrier who went to all the local ranches took a kick in the ribs and asked PJ if Mac could go around with him to his clients until he healed. He’d noticed Mac had an interest in horses and had gotten good at the work. He could use the help. PJ said that would be all right with him.