In truth, he hated the work of farming and would thrive in town, where he took up, full-time, his occupation of blaggard-at-large. My father, Damien McDaragh, was a small, fiercely beautiful man, a great dancer in his youth. Sometime before I was born, the socket of his right eye had been caught on the horn of a strawberry cow and, though he kept the eye, he could not keep it from drifting towards the wall. This cast gave him an untrustworthy air, and he did his best to live up to it. He had a great hunger for gambling.
