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people.

HUNGER STRIKE
    T HE BOY WATCHED from the headland above the town. He saw the old couple as they took the yellow kayak out from the house. They shunted it with difficulty to their shoulders and carried it toward the pier.
    The old woman walked at the rear. The man was slightly bent, but he was still a good foot taller than she. She held the boat as high above her head as she could, but still it sloped down toward her. Their faces were lost beneath shadow as they shuffled down the tarmac road. Between them, resting on either shoulder, were the paddles. As they walked, the man and woman seemed like some strange and lovely insect. When they got to the edge of the pier they shucked the yellow kayak from their shoulders and busied themselves with getting it to water.
    It was low tide, so they used long ropes to drop the boat from the pier. It landed with hardly a ripple. They stood talking a moment and the sunlight shone through their clothes, giving darkness to the shape of their bodies.
    She was rake-thin and the old man carried a paunch.
    The old man made a gesture toward the sea and then turned and held on to the rungs as he climbed down the pier’s rusted ladder. Even in his slowness he was fluid. He planted himself firmly in the kayak and placed the paddle across the center to stop the boat from rocking. The woman followed down the ladder tentatively. A breeze caught her dress and the old man touched her on the back of her legs. She turned and seemed to let out a small laugh as he guided her from the ladder into the double well of the boat. When she placed her foot down, the kayak hiccuped in the water.
    They wore no life jackets but the man fumbled with a spray skirt, adjusting it tightly to the lip of the well. He nudged his paddle against the wall of the pier and the boat began to move out into the harbor. His paddle hit the water, sending out ripples that had long faded before she too reached out and struck, now in unison with him.
    The kayak glided out and the boy’s eyes followed them all the way until they turned and moved south along the headland, a bright yellow speck on the gray cloth of the sea.
    *   *   *
    SO THIS, THEN , was the Galway town where his mother had once spent her summers: sunlight, steeples, green postboxes, the stark applause of seagulls, the mountains stretching in the distance like a gift of simplicity.
    *   *   *
    THE BOY PULLED on an extra shirt—it had once been his father’s—and inside there was still room for a whole boy more. He rolled the sleeves high on his forearms and crumpled the collar so that it wouldn’t look ironed. Across the caravan his mother was still sleeping. Her chest rose and fell. Her hair had fallen over her face and some of the strands had taken on the rhythm of her breathing, lifting and falling. The boy stepped across the linoleum floor with his shoes in his hands and he opened the door quickly to stop it from creaking.
    Outside, the last spits of rain had just died on the wind.
    On the cinder block doorstep he put on his shoes and looked out at the sea. The gray horizon bled into the gray sky so that he could not tell where the sky began and the sea finished. Only a single fishing boat broke the expanse.
    Moving away from the caravan, he kicked at a few stray stones. He wore black drainpipes hitched high on his hips, exposing white socks and black shoes. The boy had not polished his shoes since he bought them and they were scuffed now like dark ice.
    He followed the track that meandered muddily down the slope, steadying himself on tree branches until he reached the main road into town. It was still narrower than most other roads he had ever known. In Derry he had never been allowed to wander, but his mother said this town was safe, she knew all its nooks and crannies, it was a harmless place.
    The rain had ripened the roadside grass and the boy reached the graveyard, where someone had placed a small china Virgin near a headstone. He wandered