I didn’t know what to say. I was looking at the cover of Kill Dusty Fog. I was wondering if cowboys ever got depressed. You never heard about it. Maybe they hadn’t the time.

Peter said, He would be gone for a week or more, drinking wherever he could get drink. He would take cattle to the fair of Kenmare and not come back until he drank the money. He was a terror for it. Then he’d be recovering for a few weeks and then he’d start again. What he died of was cirrhosis of the liver and he died in the asylum. Only for my mother’s wages we would be destitute altogether. He died roaring. If anyone had it coming he had.

Don’t say that, I said. It’s too sad. He was your daddy.

I was thinking that if my dad went bankrupt there would only be my mother’s salary. That my dad would die if he couldn’t make money because money was all he ever thought about. It was his one and only skill. It was his secret baby.

I’m not saying that your father is going the same way.

He’s not. He hardly drinks at all.

He nodded. He was watching me. He had small quick eyes but they were bright enough. He was a very tall man but he was shy. Now when he was watching me he was doing it sideways, out of the corners of his eyes.

We had a bit of a farm back in the valley there, he said, and my daddy drank it. He drank the farm and he drank the house and when he was locked up roaring and shouting for seeing things my mother packed up and moved down here to the seaside. She got a job teaching because her husband was in the asylum and the priest took pity on her. It was a shame in those days to have someone in the madhouse. People said she drove him mad, would you believe that? They always say that sort of thing. They have to blame someone. But he did it himself. When he was sober he was a nice man. He used to play pitch and toss with me.

I said that my friend’s daddy made a splint out of matchsticks for a robin with a broken leg and afterwards the robin used to come inside their house during cold weather. Peter said the leg probably troubled the robin and the cold made it worse. His own knee troubled him when it was wet.

Would you come up and look at my dad? Like I don’t know if he’s safe to leave alone.

I will. I’ll drive you back up. Finish your tea and we’ll go.

I said I couldn’t drink any more.