The Summer My Brother
Was Home From College

The morning after Mum tried to walk into the river, I went to stay with McKenna, the dowser who lived down the road. It was my older brother’s idea.

“Just for a few days,” was how Fionn pitched it to me when he got back from the hospital. “Until she’s had a chance to rest, like.”

This was the night they pulled her out of the water. We were in the front room, drinking tea. She was everywhere—from the robin sketches on the walls to the plastic tarps smothering the good chairs. Even the way the television remotes lay on the coffee table, head-to-toe like they were sharing a single bunk—even there I felt her presence. Or maybe it was her absence I was feeling.

“Can’t I stay here?” I asked.

“I can’t take care of me and you and the house all together. McKenna’s decent, we’ve talked down the pub before, he’s sound,” he said, like he was trying to convince himself as much as me, before adding, “I didn’t know who else to ask.”

At twenty, Fionn was ten years my senior. He was the kind of person everybody loved: tall and handsome, hard-working, gentle. God plays favourites, Mum liked saying. But despite how little I’d seen of him—he was at college in America and had only recently arrived home for the summer—I hated him the same way I always had.

“I wouldn’t be any bother.” I felt tiny on the sofa. “I could stay in my room.”

“I can’t leave you here all day on your own, Ruan. I’ve work.”

“Will we drive over, at least?”

“No need, we’ll walk.” He stood, stretched. “Look, go on away now and get some sleep, yeah? It’s been a long day.”

I could tell we wouldn’t be seeing much of each other. It was the same tone he used on the phone when I asked if he’d time for some online FIFA later, or when I told him about a film I’d watched and urged him to see it. Anytime I complained to her, Mum said that because he was older, he had less time than I did, and I should be mindful because it would happen to me too one day.

McKenna was a spindly man in his fifties with wire-rimmed glasses who wore his flannel shirts tucked in. The next day, when Fionn walked me over to his house, we found him waiting out front with his hands clasped behind his back.

“Well,” he called out to us as we unlatched the gate. “It’s a fine morning for it, anyway.”

“That’s it,” Fionn called back. “That’s it precisely.”

I lagged behind my brother, my schoolbag—packed with pyjamas and a change of clothes—thunking against my back with every step. At first glance, the house looked just like ours, a bungalow that faced the road side-on with two large windows framing the wooden front door. There were differences, though. McKenna’s door bore a fresh coat of tomato-red paint, whereas ours was a faded blue, and while our vegetable patches had long ago become overgrown with nettles and dandelions, his were lined with green shoots in orderly rows.

“I’m not much in the way of a chef, but the lad won’t go hungry,” McKenna was saying as I joined them on the doorstep. “We’ll manage.”

“That’s it,” Fionn said again, pulling me into his waist. “I’ll see you tomorrow, pal. Be good for Phil, won’t you?”

He let go of me to shake McKenna’s hand. We watched him stride down the path and set off in the direction of home. He didn’t look back.

“It’s not easy on him,” McKenna said, once he’d disappeared from sight. “You understand that, sure you do? It’s hard on your brother.”

“He’s big,” I said.

“Well,” he said, and sniffed. “Big men don’t have it any easier than small ones.”

He picked up my bag and showed me inside to the spare room, where a maroon towel-and-washrag set had been laid out at the foot of the bed. I sat on the mattress as McKenna fussed with the hangers in the wardrobe. Mum had pointed him out to me in the supermarket once, whispered he was a dowser like it was a slur, and then explained how, in ancient Ireland, people believed they could find water by walking around with sticks and waiting for them to start shaking, helped along by fairies, the wee folk. Reasonable people knew it was bollocks, she’d said. But out west, they still liked to believe.

“Well,” McKenna said, closing the closet door. “Are you hungry at all, Ruan?”

Although I wasn’t, I said I was, because I could see he needed something else to do now that the hangers were in order, and he darted out of the room like he’d just smelled something burning. I removed my pyjamas from my backpack and slipped them under the pillow. Then I took out my toothbrush and tube of toothpaste and carried them over to the cracked porcelain sink in the ensuite. Having nothing else to unpack, I lay down, listening to the sounds coming from the kitchen: pots banging, a tap running, and then the frantic burble of boiling water.

It struck me that I had no idea which river she’d tried to walk into. I didn’t quite know what it meant, walking into a river, but that was exactly what Fionn told me when he got back—he said she’d walked into a river but she was okay, she just needed to stay a night or two in the hospital so they could keep an eye on her. She hadn’t come home after work that evening, was how it happened, and we were both wondering, and then Fionn sent me to my bedroom and said he’d wake me when she got back, and it turned out it was all because she was walking into a river, somehow, and I didn’t even know which river.

Rooms, you could walk into. Rivers, not so much. You couldn’t walk into doors either, not unless you wanted to hurt yourself. I imagined Mum walking into a door, banging her forehead and staggering back with her eyes gone crossed. It was a nice image, a funny one, I’d never seen her do anything silly or comical or anything like that, and I was still picturing it when McKenna came in and said the pasta was ready.

After we ate, McKenna told me he had to work, I was to come along, and would I mind doing the honours of selecting a dowsing rod. The four Y-shaped sticks hanging from iron nails above the hall table all looked the same to me, stripped of twigs and leaves, the handles sanded smooth. I stood on my tip toes to take down the first rod from the left as he appeared in the hallway, wearing a backpack of his own and clutching a weather-beaten map in one hand.

“Good choice,” he said. “That was the first one I ever found.”

“Where do they come from?”

“The wee folk leave them around. All you’ve to do is keep your eyes open. Take a look here, good lad, and let me know what you think.”

He knelt down so I could see the map, which was crisscrossed with red pen scratchings. Some seemed to be marking trails, whereas others were scavenger-hunt Xs. The margins were full of notes, scribbled in an illegibly tiny hand.

“This is us,” he said, pointing with a close-bitten fingernail at a spot near the middle, and then he traced a few squares over to a crossroads. “This is your house, over here. We’ll be going for Phelan’s today. That’s your family’s land, isn’t it?”

I had a feeling it was, though the fields around our house all looked the same to me—yellowing, knee-high grass, wildflowers and cow poop, three-rung iron gates you could swing open or climb over. Mum had told me they were named after farming families from the past—Phelan, Nolan, Nocton, Fallon—but I could never keep them straight in my head.

The sun was high in the sky. I trailed a few steps behind as McKenna led the way around the back of his house to where the farmland started. We clambered over the gate and tramped through first one field, and then the next, and then the next. I recognised Phelan’s when we reached it—Mum and Fionn and I once had a picnic here, underneath the broad branches of the oak tree in its center, and it was fun, but for whatever reason we never did it again.

Ahead of me, McKenna had stopped moving. “There’s water here,” he told me when I caught up. “There’s a well wants digging. Been looking a good few weeks now.”

I pictured him heading out with his backpack and his map, day after day, wandering around while he waited for his rod to start shaking. “Can you find water you already know is there?”

“How do you mean?”

“Like a pond,” I said. “Or a river.”

McKenna hesitated, and then he said, “No, Ruan, you can’t.”

It sounded like a lie, but it would’ve been rude to say so, and in any case, I had no way to prove it. He turned away and started walking again, slower now, holding the rod out in front of him. This time, I kept pace, watching his hands for any sign of movement, but the rod remained stubbornly still the entire time.

I lost count of how many fields we trekked through like that—him following the rod, me staring at his hands, not another soul in sight. When the sun reached the tops of the ash trees on the horizon, we stopped by a stone wall. McKenna produced two aluminium foil packages and handed me one. We ate the ham sandwiches in silence, swiping away midges and swilling from a thermos of lukewarm tea.

“You’re being very brave,” he said, balling up the foil once we finished. “You know that, sure you do? When your mother gets better, she’ll be very proud.”

McKenna took off his glasses and started polishing them with the end of his shirt, which had come untucked during the dowsing. “My father was a drinker,” he said. “It was him showed me how to find water, and I loved him, but he was a drinker. Went missing for days sometimes, two days, three days, just missing. So I know a bit of what you’re feeling. It’s hard when they’ve the taste for the bottle. On the children, I mean. It’s always hard on the children.”

“How d’you know my Mum’s a drinker?”

He glanced up at me, the pale tips of his ears reddening. “What’s that?”

“Nobody tells me anything,” I went on. “So I was wondering if somebody told you she was a drinker or if you figured it out yourself.”

McKenna gazed at me for what felt like a long time, his glasses forgotten in his lap. Then he put them back on and stood, stuffing the end of his shirt into his trousers.

“We’ll head on back now,” he said. “I’ll fix us something to eat back home.”

“No water today?”

“Not today, no.” He smiled ruefully. “Well. There’s always tomorrow.”

I wondered if he believed that. There were only so many tomorrows. Eventually, he’d run out.

He picked up the rod by the long end, and then, as if changing his mind about something, handed it to me. All the way through the fields and back to his house, I held it the way he had, clutching its handles as lightly as I could without dropping it. I paid attention to the sensations in my fingers, staying alert to any tremors, no matter how slight, but never felt a thing.

After we ate more pasta for dinner, I went to the spare room while McKenna recorded the trip on his map. About an hour later, the phone rang. I heard him clomp over and mumble something indistinct, and then he called my name.

The landline was in the hall, across from the dowsing rods. I took the receiver and held it up to my ear as McKenna went back to the kitchen.

“Hey, Ruan,” said my brother’s voice. “How’re you keeping?”

“I’m good,” I said, and told him about the day—how we’d made it out to Phelan’s field, where we had the picnic that one time, and then beyond, only we didn’t find any water.

“There’s always tomorrow,” Fionn said, and I wondered did grown-ups have some kind of dictionary they shared amongst themselves. “Listen, what do you think about coming to see her a bit later? I could pick you up. She’s, you know. She’s not…” His voice trailed off and he sighed, sending a wave of static crackling through the black plastic. “She’s awake, Ruan, but she’s not feeling herself. I want you to be ready for that. You’re a big boy now, you can handle it, I know you can, but I just wanted to let you know. So you can be ready.”

“Okay,” I said. “I’ll be ready.”

“Good man. I’ll stop by later. Just finishing up some work.”

“Okay,” I said again.

He hung up. I replaced the receiver in its hook and went into the kitchen, where McKenna was poring over the map, red pen in hand, lips pursed. He glanced up when I appeared, a strange, unsettled look in his eyes.

“Fionn’s picking me up later,” I told him. “Going to go see Mum.”

He leaned back in his chair. “That’s a good thing to do, Ruan. A kind thing. I’m sure your mother will be delighted. How do you feel about it?”

“Good,” I said.

“You should be ready for her to be not quite herself,” he said. “She’s been through a hard time. She might be quiet. Might find it hard talking.”

I waited for him to go on, hoping to finally get some insight into what effect walking into a river might have on a person, but despite how his mouth was working, he seemed to have nothing more to say. After what felt like a polite amount of time, I excused myself to go and get ready.

Back in the spare room, I changed clothes, swapping my sweaty white t-shirt for the black Top Gear one I’d packed the night before. I brushed my teeth and washed my face the way Mum had taught me, scrubbing behind my ears, and then I went to sit on the bed and wait for my brother.

I didn’t know what I’d say when I saw her. With any luck, Fionn would be able to help out on that front. The whole summer, it had been getting harder to talk to her—she left early for work and returned late, and the few times we were in the house together, she was too tired to make much conversation.

I tried to remember if I’d seen her drinking recently, but she hadn’t been home enough to draw any kind of conclusion. It was a bit like McKenna’s map. Marking off all the places there was no water didn’t make it any easier to find it the next time. All you learned was where not to look.

The sky turned purple, then deeply blue, then black. Every half hour, I went into the hallway to stare at the phone, as if by looking at it I could make it ring. At one point, I heard McKenna make a call, but he put the receiver back without saying anything. The digital clock on the bedside table read ten thirty-five when he appeared on the threshold of the spare room, his silhouette backlit by the naphtha glow from the kitchen.

“Might be time for bed now, Ruan,” he said, his reedy voice carrying through the gloom. “I’m say your brother got caught up at work. And maybe it’s no harm. Your mother needs her rest. There’s always tomorrow.”

If I had to hear that phrase one more time I was going to scream. He lingered a moment and then went out. After a few minutes, the light from the kitchen disappeared. I heard him pottering around in his bedroom, opening and closing drawers, before those noises vanished as well and the house was still.

I lay there in the dark, thinking. It was easy for Fionn. He knew which hospital she was in, what it was like in there, why she walked into the river, what walking into the river had done to her. He also knew which river she walked into.

In my head, I replayed the scene I’d been imagining all evening: Fionn and me in Mum’s car, going over to the hospital. The last time he was here he didn’t know how to drive, he’d learned during the school year in America, and I’d already asked him maybe a dozen times if we could go out driving together. So far, he’d been too busy with work. But in my head we were in the car, and while we were driving he was preparing me for what she was like so I wouldn’t be too scared. When we got to the hospital, we’d get a cup of tea from the machine and then go in to see her, and even though I didn’t know what I’d say or what she’d be like, I’d have him with me so it would be alright. And on the way back we might talk or we might not talk but we’d be either talking or not talking together. We were brothers, after all.

If only I knew which river she’d walked into, I’d have something. We’d both know at least that one thing, and then he might understand he could trust me with the rest. As I was thinking that thought, another one appeared by its side, so simple and clear that I was shocked it hadn’t occurred to me before—if nobody was going to tell me which river she walked into, there was no reason I couldn’t go and find it myself.

The dowsing rods were right down the hall. McKenna was asleep; the snores rattling through the quiet were proof enough of that. Even though he had said you couldn’t find water you already knew was there, I didn’t know where this particular water was, so there was no reason it shouldn’t work. I felt like an idiot for not thinking of all this sooner and wished I was just a bit older, not necessarily Fionn’s age but maybe twelve or thirteen, for example, because then I wouldn’t have wasted so much time lying around not thinking of it.

I got to my feet, shouldered my backpack, and crept out to the hall. At the front door, I picked another dowsing rod at random off its nail—I figured there was no point using the one that had proved so useless earlier—and slipped on my trainers. I was worried about the door, but needn’t have been: it eased open soundlessly and closed behind me with only the softest of clicks.

The balmy air smelled sweetly of freshly cut hay. I set off the same way we had that afternoon, going around the back of the house and over the gate into the first field, where the tall grass was the colour of bones, thanks to the full moon overhead. I took the dowsing rod in both hands and went left, instead of straight ahead towards Phelan’s.

I walked the same careful way McKenna did when he started dowsing properly. I could’ve been the only person on the entire planet. Even the insects were being quiet. Through one field, over a gate, through the next field, over the next gate—I walked on and on, losing myself in the rhythm of step following step.

After a while, the air got colder; at one point, a breeze whipped up that forced me to stop and retrieve my pullover from my backpack. I kept on, my eyes glued to the end of the rod before me, which I realised must’ve been left out for him by the wee folk, just like the other three hanging in the hallway.

I didn’t know much about the wee folk. We’d done them a bit in school—I knew about changelings, for example, and I knew you couldn’t disturb them if you were building roads or they’d curse your road and you’d be in trouble. Although our teacher never told us whether or not you could pray to them, I didn’t see what harm there was in trying, and started sending messages from inside my head:

I’m looking for a river, I thought to them. The one Mum walked into. I’m looking for a river, I’m looking for a river, I’m looking for a river.

I thought it over and over, tramping through field after field, until the thought-words lost all meaning and became thought-sounds. The air was getting colder all the time but I kept thinking to the wee folk I was looking for a river. And then, maybe two hours after I’d started walking, I felt something in my hands.

I pulled up short and it stopped, but then I felt it again: a barely-there trembling, stronger in my left hand than my right. I glanced around me—I no longer had any idea where I was, the entire world had collapsed into an endless succession of lookalike fields—and veered off to the left, feeling it rattle more vigorously, as if in acknowledgement. I continued that way, changing course here and there when I noticed the shaking was more forceful on one side than the other, until I heard the noise of running water up ahead.

Part of me wanted to stuff the rod into my backpack and charge on, but I knew that would be betraying the wee folk who’d been helping me, so I stuck to my pace, my pulse quickening as the noise got louder. Before long, I came across a creek with steeply sloping banks on either side and the rod went still in my hands.

I edged closer, my trainers squelching in the muck. The water was running fast, hurrying, cackling. Lapping blackly at the dark ground. By its moving edges I could make out little jumping insect-flecks that looked like dust in the faint moonlight. I found a twig, threw it in, and watched the current vanish it.

Was this the river Mum had walked into? On the one hand, I wanted to believe so—I’d found it all on my own, nobody but the wee folk had helped—but on the other, it seemed a terribly lonely out here, nothing around but the trees and the grass, and I didn’t like the image of Mum taking off her shoes and socks and walking in by herself.

In any case, I wasn’t sure. It didn’t look very deep; she couldn’t have made it all the way in. And even if she did, there was a high chance she’d be carried off, it was running that fast. Walking into this river wouldn’t make any sense at all. It couldn’t have been the right one.

But Fionn and McKenna didn’t need to know that. When I got back, I’d tell them I found the right one, and if they asked how I knew I’d say I just knew, the wee folk had shown me. McKenna would understand; if Fionn doubted me, McKenna could explain it.

I’d go back in the morning and tell him and he’d know we were the same. I wouldn’t be his little brother any longer, I’d just be his brother. The thought was as warm and comforting as a blanket, and I kept repeating it to myself as I set my backpack on the grass and lay with my head against it, the earth rushing up to meet me.

The branches overhead were a spider’s web and the few stars I could make out were flies, waiting to be eaten. I looked at them and listened to the wrong river until my eyelids got too heavy to keep apart.

When I woke, the indigo sky was tinged with pink and I could see my own breath. I had no idea where I was, but figured if I went in one direction for long enough, I’d come across something familiar. I pulled on my backpack and set off.

My feet were throbbing and my throat was dry, but I didn’t care. After about an hour of plodding through still more fields, I heard the sound of traffic, and not long after that, I came upon a country lane I recognised—it was the regional road that led into our village. I climbed over the low stone wall and, positioning myself on the hard shoulder, started trudging towards town. It must’ve been about eight in the morning. Dawn had ended and wouldn’t be returning until tomorrow.

Into town, past the pub I’d eventually be old enough to enter, around the corner to the street we lived on. I had already made up my mind I wouldn’t be stopping in to see Fionn—he knew where I was if he needed me—but I paused all the same when I realised Mum’s Toyota Corolla wasn’t in the driveway. It was only when I made it to McKenna’s house and saw it out front that I began to wonder if I might be in trouble.

McKenna answered the door and said, “Jesus Christ,” and before he could say anything else, my brother appeared behind him.

He stepped past McKenna and wrapped himself around me. “Ruan,” he said hoarsely when we broke apart. “Where the hell have you been?”

“I went to find the river Mum walked into.” I took the dowsing rod out of my backpack and handed it to McKenna, who took hold of it like he’d never seen one before. “I want to see her,” I said, turning back to my brother. “I understand it all now.”

“Listen, I’m sorry,” he said, although he didn’t sound very sorry, he sounded like he was trying not to shout. “About yesterday. I know I should’ve called, but it’s not good to see her, I promise it’s not, she’s not the Mum you’re used to, and—”

“Take me.” I jerked my head at the car in the drive. “I saw the river, I know what she’ll be like. Let’s go. Please.”

Fionn looked at me with a funny expression I’d never seen before, not angry or scared but somewhere in between, and then he turned to McKenna.

“Phil,” he said, “I’m sorry for all the trouble.”

McKenna, still holding the dowsing rod, said he was the one who was sorry. Fionn grabbed my arm and marched me to the car, yanking open the passenger-side door.

“In,” he said, his mouth barely moving. “If you’re so sure you want to see her.”

I slung my backpack into the footwell and clambered in after it. Fionn slammed the door, stalked around the front of the Corolla, and flung himself into the driver’s seat. Resting his hands on the wheel, he squinted through the windshield, like there was something in the far distance he was trying to make out.

The only sound was our breathing. I opened my mouth to tell him about the river—about how the rod had started to shake when I was getting close, about how it was deep enough for a whole person to fit and that’s how I knew it was the one she walked into. But before I could make a sound he took his right hand off the wheel and slapped me so hard my head snapped against the window with a dull thud.

Nobody had ever hit me before. It didn’t hurt at first and then it hurt a lot. I felt the pain in my mouth, then my cheek, and then I felt it everywhere.

“Sorry,” he said immediately, and he bent forward to rest his forehead on the steering wheel. “Jesus Christ, Ruan, I’m sorry.”

I was surprised by how much it was hurting. In films they could take eight or nine blows before falling down. I doubted I’d last that long if they were all like that one. But brothers hit each other, I knew. That was just something brothers did.

“I don’t know how to do any of this, pal,” he went on, rattling out the words without stopping for air, “I don’t know why I thought leaving you there was a good idea, and why I thought you couldn’t handle seeing Mum, and—I love you, Ruan, you’re the most important person in the world to me. You’re my brother.”

I didn’t say anything because it felt right, not saying anything.

“Alright,” Fionn said, straightening. He looked at the wheel and then his lap and then the rear-view mirror and then the wheel again. “Alright, alright.”

He twisted the key. The engine grunted and then erupted into a wonderful throbbing growl I felt in my chest. Pulling out of McKenna’s driveway, we turned right, the opposite direction from our house, and we were the only car on the road.

Fionn shifted gear and the throbbing in my chest got deeper. Whatever was waiting at the hospital didn’t scare me. I’d been dreaming all year about going driving with my brother and now I was and it was good. On the other side of my window, the fields picked up speed.