The kids are still squatting over their piece of metal. When Cal leans on the gate, they stop banging and watch him.

“Morning,” Cal says to the bigger one, the boy. “Is your mama home?”

“Yeah,” the boy says. He has overgrown dark hair, a worn-out blue sweatshirt and enough of a look of Trey that Cal knows he’s in the right place.

“Can you ask her to come out here for a minute?”

Both kids stare. Cal recognizes that slight drawing back: the wariness of kids who already know that a stranger looking for your parents is likely some incarnation of the Man, and the Man is never there to make things better.

“I was out having a nice walk,” Cal says, grimacing ruefully, “and look what I went and did to myself.” He holds up his wet foot.

The little girl giggles. She has a sweet dirty face and brown hair pulled up in two uneven pigtails.

“Yeah yeah yeah,” Cal says, mock-offended. “You go ahead and laugh at the dummy with the soggy boot. But I was wondering if your mama might be able to give me something to dry it off a little, so I don’t have to squelch my way down this mountain?”

“Squelch,” the little girl says. She giggles again.

“That’s right,” Cal says, grinning back at her and waggling his foot. “Squelch all the way home.”

“We’ll get Mammy,” the boy says. He pulls on the girl’s sleeve, hard enough that she overbalances and sits down on her behind in the dirt. “Come on.” And he runs off round the back of the house, with the little girl trying to keep up and look back at Cal at the same time.

While they’re gone, Cal looks the place over. It’s run-down, with the window frames peeling and sagging, and moss growing between the roof tiles. Someone has made an effort here and there, though. There are flowerpots on each side of the door, with a multicolored crop only just dying off, and to one side of the yard is a play structure built of random pieces of wood and rope and piping. Cal would have expected a woman alone up here with a mess of kids to have a dog or two, but there’s no sound of barking.

The kids come back circling a tall, scraggy woman in jeans and the kind of bafflingly ugly patterned sweater that only exists secondhand. She has rough red-brown hair pulled back in a sloppy bun, and a weather-beaten, high-boned face that must have been verging on beautiful, way back when. Cal knows she’s a few years younger than him, but she doesn’t look it. She has the same wary expression as the kids.

“Sorry to disturb you, ma’am,” Cal says. “I was out walking, and I was foolish enough to step off the road. Found myself a nice big puddle.”

He holds up his foot. The woman gazes at it like she has no idea what it is and doesn’t much care.

“I live a few miles down thataway,” Cal says, pointing, “and that’s a long walk with a wet foot. I was wondering if you might be able to help me out.”

The woman moves her gaze to his face, slowly. She has the look of a woman who’s had too much land on top of her, not in one great big avalanche but trickling down little by little over a lot of years.

“You’re the American,” she says in the end. Her voice is rusty and unaccustomed, like she hasn’t done much talking lately. “In O’Shea’s.”

“That’s me,” Cal says. “Cal Hooper. Pleased to meet you.” He holds out his hand over the gate.

Most of the wariness fades. The woman comes forwards, wiping her hand on her jeans, and gives it briefly to Cal. “Sheila Reddy,” she says.

“Hey,” Cal says, with pleased recognition, “I’ve heard that name before. Now where . . .” He snaps his fingers. “That’s it. Lena. Noreen’s sister. She was telling me about her young days, and she mentioned you.”

Sheila looks at him without curiosity, waiting for what he wants.

Cal grins. “Lena said the two of you used to run wild together. Get out your windows at night and hitch rides to discos.”

That finds Sheila, enough to get a faint twitch of a smile. One of her top teeth is missing, near the front. “That was a long time ago,” she says.

“Know what you mean,” Cal says ruefully. “I remember when, if I went out, I was heading half a dozen different places and I wasn’t coming home till daylight. Nowadays, three beers in Seán Óg’s and I’ve had just about all the excitement I can handle for one week.”

He gives her a sheepish smile. Cal has had plenty of practice being harmless. At his size, he has to put the work into that, specially with a lone woman. Sheila doesn’t seem afraid, though, not now that she’s placed him. She’s not the timid kind. Her first wariness wasn’t of him as a man, but of whatever authority he might be carrying with him.

“Back then,” he says, “I’d have thought nothing of walking home wet. These days, though, my circulation isn’t too good; by the time I make it all the way down the mountain, I won’t be able to feel my toes. Could I trouble you for a handful of paper towels to soak up a little of this, or an old cloth? Maybe even a dry pair of socks, if you’ve got some to spare?”

Sheila examines his foot again and finally nods. “I’ll get something,” she says, and she turns and goes back behind the house. The kids hang off the play structure and watch Cal. When he smiles at them, their expressions don’t change.

Sheila comes back carrying a roll of paper towels and a pair of men’s gray socks. “Now,” she says, passing them over the gate.

“Miz Reddy,” Cal says, “you just saved my day. Much obliged to you.”

She doesn’t smile. She watches, arms folded at her waist, as he makes himself comfortable on a boulder by the gatepost and takes off his boot. “Excuse my foot,” he says, with an embarrassed grin. “It was clean this morning, even if it’s not now.” The kids, who have edged closer to watch, giggle.

Cal wads up paper towel and presses it inside his boot to soak up some of the water, taking his time. “It’s beautiful country round here,” he says, nodding at the mountain slope rising behind the house.

Sheila takes one glance over her shoulder and then looks away again. “Maybe,” she says.

“Good place to raise a family. Clean air and plenty of space to run wild; there’s not much else a kid needs.”

She shrugs.

“I was raised a country boy,” Cal explains, “but I was in the city a long time. This here looks like paradise to me.”

Sheila says, “I’d be happy enough if I never saw it again.”

“Oh?” Cal says, but she doesn’t answer.

He tests the boot, which is about as dry as it’s going to get. “I’m fond of hillwalking,” he says. “The city turned me fat and lazy. Now that I’m here, I’m getting back into good habits. Although I better get back into the habit of looking where I put my feet.”