to the trunk upstairs. I take forty of the hundred pounds in the trunk and the ledger. I’ll add this to what I have in the post office and I have enough to go to America. On my way out I take the sherry bottle to save it from being wasted. I sit by the River Shannon near the dry docks sipping Mrs. Finu- cane’s sherry.Aunt Aggie’s name is in the ledger. She owes nine pounds. It might have been the money she spent on my clothes a long time ago but now she’ll never have to pay it because I heave the ledger into the river. I’m sorry I’ll never be able to tell Aunt Aggie I saved her nine pounds. I’m sorry I wrote threatening letters to the poor people in the lanes of Limerick, my own people, but the ledger is gone, no one will ever know what they owe and they won’t have to pay their balances. I wish I could tell them, I’m your Robin Hood. Another sip of the sherry. I’ll spare a pound or two for a Mass for Mrs. Finucane’s soul. Her ledger is well on its way down the Shannon and out to the Atlantic and I know I’ll follow it someday soon. The man at O’Riordan’s Travel Agency says he can’t get me to Amer- ica by air unless I travel to London first, which would cost a fortune. He  can put me on a ship called the Irish Oak, which will be leaving Cork in a few weeks. He says, Nine days at sea, September October, best time of the year, your own cabin, thirteen passengers, best of food, bit of a holiday for yourself and that will cost fifty-five pounds, do you have it? I do. I tell Mam I’m going in a few weeks and she cries. Michael says,Will we all go some day? We will. Alphie says,Will you send me a cowboy hat and a thing you throw that comes back to you? Michael tells him that’s a boomerang and you’d have to go all the way to Australia to get the likes of that, you can’t get it in America. Alphie says you can get it in America yes you can and they argue about America and Australia and boomerangs till Mam says,For the love o’ Jesus, yeer brother is leaving us and the two of ye are there squabbling over boomerangs.Will ye give over? 355